The Effects of Hair Loss and What You Can Do About It
Hair loss happens. It happens to the young, to the old, to men and to women. It can be caused by your genes, attributed to an illness or medical condition, or be the unfortunate side effect of a medication. Just as hair loss can be caused by so many different reasons, people react to hair loss in just as many ways.
For some, hair loss is a natural part of life. A change which they, at most, embrace or at the very least, are unconcerned with. However, a great many people are uncomfortable with hair loss. So many in fact, that a billion dollar industry has sprung up to offer solutions. In 2011, the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery published census results which indicated that the market size of the hair restoration industry, at that time, was $1.88 Billion.
In order to understand why so much money flows into this market, we must first examine the psychological effects of hair loss. Our desire to don thick, glorious locks can be pinned to essentially one reason – culture. For ages, cultures of all kinds, all over the world, have held hair high on the list of societal beauty standards. Even tracing back to Biblical times, we find the story of Samson, whose hair gave him superhuman strength. This story is a perfect example of our culture tying hair to virility for men. There are many similar examples of society tying healthy hair to the standard of ideal beauty for women.
Though never a good idea to allow such societal appropriations of beauty to determine one’s own self-worth, hair implant surgery can be a great option for people who want to gain back, for their own sake, something they feel they have lost.
Hair implant surgery is generally done using a grafting technique which removes, by aid of either a scalpel or a tool called a punch graft, sections of scalp and hair follicle from thick areas of hair and then transplanting them to areas of baldness or thinning. Since this method uses your real hair, which continues to grow and need to be trimmed, etc. it produces the most natural looking results of all hair restoration procedures. Unfortunately, being the most natural looking solution for correcting hair loss also means that it does not come cheap. Hair implant surgery usually costs between $5000 and $16000, depending on the number of treatments needed. Following the procedure, it is common for the transplanted hair to fall out, but since the follicles are working and intact, new hair will grow in filling out the previously bald or thinned area. In order to achieve the best results, more than one surgery is often required, with a few months of healing time in between each.
Like any medical or cosmetic procedure, your results will depend largely on the skill of the doctor. Choosing the right doctor for you can be an easy process, thankfully, by taking advantage of online directories, such as www.implants.com. With a full directory of talented doctors to choose from, finding the right one for your needs is a quick search away.