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Baldness is a condition that is common to both men and women. Although the exact causes of baldness is still yet to be verified, certain factors like hormones, heredity, age and even stress can be contributory factors of this condition. Hair loss that resulted from diseases or non-hereditary factors can still grow and be replaced naturally but hair loss resulting from common baldness is regretfully permanent.

In men, baldness begins with the thinning of the hairline. Then, there’s the appearance of a bald spot by the crown of the head. For women, bald patches are uncommon. They only experience a diffused thinning of hair.

The causes of baldness are conceptualized through factors like natural hormones, diet, improper hair care, pregnancy, medications and certain diseases. In order to find effective baldness treatment, you need to initially know the underlying cause of the condition.

As mentioned earlier, regretfully, common baldness is incurable. The only way to go about this is to undergo hair replacement therapy. This procedure has been existent since the 1950s. No worries – surgical hair replacement is a known low risk procedure.

What surgeons do in this procedure is remove tiny plugs of one’s hair-bearing skin. Then, they transplant them to tiny holes in one’s scalp. These plugs are actually taken from the band of hair that extends from over one’s ears to around the back of one’s scalp. In one session, surgeons can transplant 60 to 100 hair plugs. The diameter of each is just the same as the diameter of a regular pencil eraser. To minimize discomfort during surgery, mild sedation and local anesthesia is given to patients.

With this procedure, hospitalization is no longer necessary. In fact, after a couple of days from the operation, you’ll see tiny scabs forming around every hair graft. When these scabs disappear, donor hairs would fall out. Then, new hairs will generally start to grow after a few months.

At an average, the cost of this procedure would start at around $2,000 per round of surgery. The usual numbers of sessions are three to four, depending on how extensive the bald area is.

These days when hair has become a conspicuous element in most cultural definitions of youth, sexuality and fashion, it is only natural to be bothered at the sight of thinning hair. This is especially if it’s you hair that’s thinning and getting bald. Just as the causes of baldness vary, proper assessment is necessary in order to determine how you can bring back your lost hair. If it’s a permanent condition, don’t worry – there are currently more advanced ways to resolve this dilemma.

If you have been wondering about how to deal with your balding issues I am sure you have heard the term Hair Plugs. When I first heard about these I wasn’t sure what it meant so I did some research to find out. Actually, the hair plugs procedure is not new at all. The term originated in the 1950’s when a couple of pioneering surgeons started to treat balding by transplanting growing hair from one area of the patient’s scalp to the bald spot. But, the procedure was first utilized twenty years before that.

During the 1930’s Japanese doctors were doing facial hair implants using this same method. They were mostly interested in eyebrow implants for women and mustache and beard renovation for men. They were really quite successful and were getting good results until World War II started which put a stop to their research. Most of their information was lost due to the war effort.

In the 1950’s surgeons in the US started experimenting with the procedure. They were interested in treating baldness caused by male pattern baldness which is the result of a genetic condition named Androgenic Alopecia. Since the balding area of a man’s scalp is so large it was determined that groups of hair would be transplanted. There were two main methods used. The first actually removed a round plug of scalp from the back of the head which had 10 to 15 hair follicles and their hair shafts intact. Men almost never lose their hair at the back of the head so this is a place to use as a donor site.

Then, once it was removed and cleaned, the plug was inserted in an incision that had been made in the balding area. There were usually several hair plugs transplanted in this way. This did give some hair growth in the bald spot but it was spotty and not very attractive. The hairs tended to stick out every which way because the surgeon had very little control over the directional placement of the individual hairs.

Although these were plugs which were being transplanted, the name actually came from the appearance of the new hair growth. It looked like the artificial hair which is plugged into the a cheap doll’s head with tufts sticking out all over. As you can imagine this was not very pleasing.

Now fast forward almost 60 years and we have a completely different set of results from hair plugs. Now individual hairs and their support structures are removed from the donor site and inserted in the thinning area with no cutting and sewing. A specially designed surgical instrument actually does both processes. This allows the hair restoration surgeon to place each individual hair in a way that matches the directional growth of the surrounding hair giving a very natural and pleasing appearance.