Publications
Partners
You’d think with a face and body like his, he’d never have to waste a single second worrying about his looks. Yet for years there’s been one aspect of his appearance that has been a constant source of anxiety for Janez Vermeiren.
The former Top Billing presenter had just turned 36 when he first noticed it. Looking in the mirror one day, he realised his hairline was receding.
Although hair loss is a condition that affects 80% of men to varying degrees, Janez was mortified.
“In my line of work when you start getting a receding hairline, you get a complex about it,” he says.
But the father of three felt powerless to do anything about it, so for eight years he simply had to grin and bear it.
“If you look at my Instagram, I wore caps whenever I played sport or went to the beach or every time I was on camera outside,” says Janez (44), who these days runs his own film production company in Cape Town.
But recently when he complained to his wife, Juliana Vasconcelos (37), about how tired he was about having to cover up, she pointed out that there was something he could do.
“She just said to me, ‘Listen here, there are solutions these days. You can actually get a hair transplant’.”
READ MORE | Top tips for a healthy scalp – and when you should see a doctor
Janez started researching all the options and even sought advice from a good friend, former Proteas captain Faf du Plessis, who has had a hair transplant too.
“I think if you do something like this it’s important to do your homework,” he says.
After weighing up all the options, Janez decided to take the plunge last month and have a follicular unit extraction (FUE) transplant done at a hair restoration clinic in Sandton.
The procedure involved doctors making tiny incisions in the front of Janez’s head, where he was losing hair, then plugging these gaps with hair follicles extracted from the back of his head.
“It was surprisingly a very pleasant experience,” an upbeat Janez tells us, adding that all he suffered after the nine-hour procedure was a slight headache for which he took two Panados.
For the first 10 days he kept a low profile, working from home, and when he ventured out he wore a loose-fitting cap.
“Now I’m back at the office and you can hardly see it,” he says, referring to the tiny incision marks. Although he’ll have a full head of hair only in the next year, he can already see an improvement, he says.
The only thing he regrets is that he didn’t get it done sooner. “It’s not a big deal anymore. It’s not a lot of suffering. It gives you the confidence. It stops you from wearing caps and it’s perfectly safe.”
Janez isn’t the only SA celeb who has opted for a hair transplant. Stars such as Victor Matfield, JP Duminy and Mi Casa’s JSomething have all had treatments to restore their crowning glories.
We take a look at why hair transplants are trending these days and what they entail.
WHAT CAUSES PERMANENT HAIR LOSS FOR MEN?
It’s usually genetic and it often looks like a horseshoe shape on top of the head, says specialist hair transplant surgeon Dr Larry Gershowitz.
“We only lose hair on the top, never the back or the sides and that’s why it’s a relatively easy diagnosis.”
Genetic hair loss happens because receptors on the hair follicles react to the presence of testosterone, causing follicles to shrink and hair to grow out looking thinner and fall out faster.
“As soon as that male hormone kicks in from about the age of 11, the hair starts thinning already in 80% of boys,” Dr Gershowitz says. “Hair then becomes thinner, finer and lighter and eventually disappears.”
But the hair on the sides and the back of the head don’t have the same genetic code, meaning it doesn’t react to testosterone. “It’ll never fall out,” Dr Gershowitz says.
So follicles can be harvested from here to plug the gaps elsewhere.
HOW HAIR TRANSPLANTS WORK
Follicular unit extraction (FUE) is the most common hair transplant surgery used worldwide and takes about seven to nine hours to perform. Surgeons use a dentist’s drill to harvest individual hair follicles from the scalp, then make tiny incisions on the bald spot in the direction in which the hair would naturally grow.
“We then take those little follicles containing one, two or three hairs and plant them into those little slits,” says specialist hair transplant surgeon Dr Larry Gershowitz.
Patients are awake during the procedure, but they are given a local anaesthetic to numb the pain.
Once the surgery is done, it takes three to four months for the follicle to generate new hair and up to 18 months for the hair to fully grow.
The hair that’s transplanted isn’t sensitive to testosterone, so there’s a 100% guarantee it will grow.
Another transplant option is follicular unit transplantation (FUT). During this procedure, which takes around five to 10 hours, a tiny piece of the skin is removed, usually from the back of your head, containing hair follicles.
The hair follicles on the skin will then be removed and transplanted to cover the bald spots. The downside of this procedure is that it does leave a small scar on the back of the head.
THE COSTS
FUE ranges from R38-R40 per follicle and an average surgery will use between 1 000 and 3 000 follicles, says hair transplant surgeon Dr Boudine Lohlun. So it could be between R40 000 and R120 000.
Dr Gershowitz says the FUE procedure would cost between R40 000 and R60 000 depending on the size of the area. It’s classified as a cosmetic procedure, so medical aids usually don’t cover it unless the hair loss is due to trauma such as a car crash or cancer.
RISKS INVOLVED
Although the surgery is low-risk, patients could end up with an infection or bleeding if they don’t follow post-care instructions.
For the first 48 hours, you can’t wash your hair and patients are advised to get as much rest as possible. Other risks are scarring and unnatural-looking hair growth.
WHO SHOULD HAVE THE PROCEDURE?
Specialists recommend patients have a hair transplant when they’ve lost enough follicles to merit it – in other words when you start seeing the scalp.
You need to be in good health and have enough donor hair, Lohlun says. If there isn’t enough hair on the back of the head, beard hair as well as hairs from other parts of the body can be used.
The procedure won’t work for hair loss due to inflammation or conditions like androgenic alopecia (where hair thins at the crown and frontal scalp eventually resulting in partial or complete baldness), she adds.
Dr Gershowitz says patients must be realistic in their expectations.
For instance, if there’s only a small band of hair at the back of your head, which is close to end-stage baldness, you shouldn’t expect your whole head to be covered with hair.
“We can put a little bit of hair in the front, but we can’t do the whole area,” he says.
ADDITIONAL SOURCE: HEALTHLINE.COM
