It began slowly, with handfuls of hair circling the plug gap within the bathe. Then finally British bodybuilder Tracy Kiss started to note she may see her scalp when her hair was moist. “I always had really thick hair,” Kiss stated from her dwelling in north London. “It was kind of inconvenient that there was so much of it.” But shortly after the start of her two youngsters at 25, Kiss — who is now 38 — couldn’t imagine that her “massive head of hair had become a whisper.”
In the mornings, selecting a coiffure grew to become much less about self-expression and extra about disguise. Kiss typically tied her hair up flat to her head to cover the thinning at her temples, or cycled by means of extensions, wigs and hats. “In photos I would just look and think, ‘Oh my god. It’s getting worse by the day,’” she stated. Her blood take a look at outcomes confirmed she was poor in nutritional vitamins like iron. She exhausted hair dietary supplements, specialist shampoos and even PRP injections (a dermatological process the place her personal plasma was injected again into her hair follicles in an try and stimulate development). “It makes you feel so demoralized,” stated Kiss. “You feel as a woman, your hair is your crowning glory. So to take that away, you almost lose your identity.”
Tracy Kiss shares moments from her hair transplant surgical procedure.
According to Harvard well being consultants, at the least one third of women expertise some type of hair loss throughout their life. While there are a myriad of causes, feminine sample hair loss — which may stem from a fancy mixture of hormone imbalances and household historical past, also referred to as androgenetic alopecia — is the most typical, with one research suggesting it impacts round 40% of women within the US by the age of fifty.
NCS spoke to 3 women who determined to deal with their hair loss by means of surgical procedure. Hair transplants are the one beauty process the place male sufferers considerably outnumber females, however the variety of women opting in rose by greater than 16% between 2021 and 2024, in keeping with the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery (ISHRS).
Kiss first got here throughout the process in 2011 after researching therapy choices for her boyfriend on the time who additionally struggled with hair loss. Interested in what a transplant may do for her, she enquired — however stated she was rejected on the idea of her gender. “I consulted with surgeons, and they said hair transplants are only for men,” she remembered. “It wasn’t available at all.”
It took her 11 years of analysis, round $3,400 and one prepared physician to lastly let her go underneath the knife. “Initially they said no,” she stated. “I just pushed hard enough that they said yes.” In 2022, she flew to Turkey to have 2,500 follicles implanted throughout her hairline and temples utilizing a typical method referred to as Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE), whereby clusters of hair follicles are eliminated immediately from a delegated donor space, often on the pinnacle. Kiss stated she had a fast restoration, going out for dinner instantly after surgical procedure and weaning herself off ache treatment simply 24 hours later.
According to plastic surgeon and hair transplant specialist Dr. Greg Williams, the surgical procedure is available in many styles and sizes. The women he sees embrace these experiencing traction alopecia, a situation typically attributable to repeatedly tight hairstyles that injury the follicles and trans women trying to decrease and “feminize” their hairline.
The main reason behind hair loss for cisgender women in each the US and the UK is genetics. Yet Williams says this camp is “often not an optimal patient group for transplant.” The situation, he explains, can worsen over time if not stabilized. “When I speak to women with female genetic hair loss about having a hair transplant, it’s about buying time rather than being a long-lasting solution,” he stated. Hormones, being pregnant, post-lactation issues, stress, sickness and diet, a number of elements “affect female hair much more” than male, Williams argues. “We don’t understand female hair loss,” he stated.
Still, extra women than ever are looking for out the process. Thirty-two-year-old Ayca Bozok from Germany traveled to Turkey, the place her mom was born, to obtain an FUE hair transplant throughout her hairline and parting. She remembers her hair began to skinny round 15 years outdated, when she was nonetheless in secondary college. “It made some days worse for me in the morning to style my hair,” she stated in a video name. “I was using a lot of bandana scarves to cover it up.” For Bozok, dropping her hair when she was forging an identification was probably the most tough. “You’re just developing as a female,” she stated. “You just have your looks. You don’t even have an academic status, you don’t have a job, money, anything else.”
She was recognized with androgenetic alopecia as a teen, however a traumatic life occasion triggered Bozok’s hair loss to speed up in her early 20s. “I lost my hair within a week,” she stated. “That was a really hard experience for me, because before it was gradually getting thinner.” In a state of emergency, Bozok took out a scholar mortgage to pay for a number of rounds of PRP injections and diet plans. She believes that these remedies, together with lowering total stress, meant she was in a position to get better about 60% of her hair after a couple of years, however feeling trapped by the restrictive day by day routine of hair fibers (a powder used to create the looks of thicker hair) and different camouflaging strategies, she nonetheless determined to pursue a transplant in 2024. “One day, I was annoyed. I didn’t want to use the fibers anymore,” she stated.
Bozok recounts her method as “super impulsive.” She didn’t do a lot analysis to seek out her surgeon, evaluate costs or examine what sort of transplant method she can be receiving. Before she knew it, she was WhatsApp messaging her surgeon pictures of her hairline. While Bozok stated she didn’t particularly share her androgenetic alopecia prognosis along with her surgeon, she did inform them that genetic hair loss ran in her household. She stated the clinic agreed on implanting 3,500 follicles for round $2,900, though due to her skinny hair density technicians couldn’t extract greater than 2,800 follicles on the day of her operation. She described a “moderate, bearable pain” for eight days after surgical procedure. One yr on, Bozok is glad along with her outcomes and has been documenting the therapeutic course of on Instagram and TikTok — the place a few of her movies have reached hundreds of views. But she tries to be sensible about her expectations and understands that due to her prognosis, the transplant could not final ceaselessly. “People in my comment section have told me that they’ve lost their transplanted hair after two years, five years, 10 years,” she stated. “My state of mind is I enjoy it as long as I have it.”
For many women experiencing genetic hair loss, discovering an answer will be like chasing a shifting goal. Awareness of hair transplant surgical procedure has skyrocketed within the final decade, with ISHRS reporting that procedures in Europe alone elevated 240% between 2010 and 2021. But Williams is involved that new transplant clinics set as much as meet rising demand are exploiting the desperation that comes with feminine sample hair loss. “Patients with hair loss, both men and women, are psychologically very vulnerable and ripe to be taken advantage of,” he stated. “It’s heartbreaking.”
Sam Evans, a 40-year outdated from Northampton, England, believes she was poorly assessed for the hair transplant she acquired in 2024. Evans started to note thinning and bald spots a decade in the past, however for a very long time ignored her hair loss because of the disgrace she felt. “I probably cried most days getting ready,” she stated in a video interview.
In 2019, Evans noticed a specialist in hair and scalp well being — also referred to as a trichologist — who suggested that she could be coping with feminine sample hair loss. After an unsuccessful spherical of PRP injections in 2022, she stated the nurse beneficial Evans to a hair transplant clinic in London. “I look back now and obviously wish I had done my research,” she stated. “I just went with the initial recommendation.” The surgeon Evans noticed knew she had androgenetic alopecia and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) — two circumstances that may trigger unpredictable hair loss.
She paid roughly $8,500 for her transplant, which took over 10 “excruciating” hours to finish. Evans additionally says the anaesthetic didn’t absolutely numb her ache. “I was just sobbing the whole time,” she stated, tearing up on the reminiscence. “It was a really, really tough day.”
In the 2 weeks instantly after her operation, Evans felt too self-conscious of her therapeutic wounds to go away the home. “It’s just a constant reminder every time you look in the mirror,” she stated. “It’s just not pleasant.” She discovered the restoration aggravating due to the “many rules” she needed to abide by to present her grafts the perfect likelihood of success — and struggled to sleep in consequence.
Evans’ physician advised her she would seemingly have to obtain two or three transplants due to her skinny hair. “It was clear my hair isn’t very dense,” she stated. But she trusted the process would solely go forward if her surgeon thought “the grafts would be of good quality.” Now, Evans believes she has total thinning attributable to her genetic hair loss situation — that means there was no space of her scalp wholesome sufficient to reap hair from to implant within the first place.
As her physique recovered from the shock of the surgical procedure, Evans began to lose much more hair. “If anything, my hair is worse than it was beforehand,” she stated. Evans stated her surgeon, although clear on the actual fact there is at all times a threat of failure, assured her that her hairline can be strengthened by the transplant. Specifically, she got here away believing that she would be capable of put on it up in a ponytail. “I cannot do that,” she stated. Now, she depends on wigs day by day and has even launched her personal wig model. “It sounds dramatic to say, but wigs have changed my life.”
Williams believes some women are being accredited for the surgical procedure with out receiving a correct prognosis of the basis reason behind their hair loss or being operated on regardless of not being good candidates. He thinks that for some unscrupulous surgeons, it may be laborious to say no to a affected person. “You may cut corners and operate on people who you know would be better off delayed until they go on medication to stabilize their hair loss,” he stated.
He campaigns for higher regulation and public consciousness surrounding transplants, which he thinks sit in a “gray area” between “surgical and non-surgical,” that means no accreditation or coaching is needed to hold them out. “Hair transplant surgery is interesting because it’s a crossroads between healthcare and running a business,” Williams stated. “In the majority of cases, it’s being done in private clinics, behind closed doors,” he stated. “Nobody knows what’s going on in there. Nobody’s inspecting.”
Samantha Evans and Ayca Bozok describe their experiences.
For Kiss, the process enabled her to step again in time. “You never know what you’ve got until it’s gone,” she stated. “And the feeling of getting it back is the most euphoric second chance.” But not each lady experiencing hair loss is as fortunate. Bozok says her transplant success turned bittersweet after she came upon her progress movies had been getting used to promote unevidenced hair loss remedies on social media with out her consent. “I was shocked,” she stated. “When I was dealing with hair loss, I was buying lots of things because you’re so desperate.” Bozok confronted what she referred to as “scammy” companies, requesting that they take away her pictures and movies from their feed. Some complied, whereas others merely blocked her. “The sad part is people will buy the products because they buy the hope,” she stated.
Williams recommends that these trying for hair loss therapy first obtain a prognosis from a specialist and by no means pay for a transplant with out immediately chatting with the surgeon who will probably be performing it. “In the first consultation before you’re booking in, ask who is going to be making the incisions in my skin,” he stated. Physicians must also be related to the ISHRS, which offers academic coaching, scientific follow pointers and a code of conduct that members should abide by.
For Bozok, Kiss and Evans, sharing their transplant expertise on-line has given them every a group and a help system — no matter whether or not their surgical procedure labored or not. Thousands of individuals have tuned into Kiss’ YouTube movies documenting her therapeutic course of, and Bozok’s Instagram DMs are flooded with requests for recommendation and reassurance from different feminine sufferers. Even males attain out to her, asking how they could possibly be extra supportive to the women of their life experiencing hair loss. For Evans, the net community has been nothing wanting “empowering.”
“That’s where I realized that androgenetic alopecia for women is really, really, really common,” she stated. “We all connect with each other, we share our stories, we support each other.”