Hey guys, this post is about my battle with losing hair and the story of how and where I got the hair transplant I am so far happy with.

I have been losing hair since I was 15, but I wasn’t losing enough to care too much back then. The boys in my family all have a lot of hair, except for an uncle, so I never thought I would be balding at such a young age. I have a mix of wavy and curly hair. My hairline was so thick that my forehead was only two finger sizes. Back then I always thought the falling hair would grow back and that I shouldn't worry too much. It’s true that hair falls out in cycles and new hair fills in those spots, but if the falling is much more than the rejuvenating then you know there is a problem. This is how thinning of my hair happened. It took years to see a noticeable change in hair density. The old me always thought that it will stop falling eventually which is why I didn't take any action to prevent further hair loss. I guess we sometimes tend to not accept or admit certain things about ourselves until we realize we can't run away from it. My hair was breaking so bad that every time I stroke my hair in the shower I would see at least 5-10 dead hairs in my hand. It never stopped. I remember sitting at my desk and playing with my head over my notebook in order to get the dead hair out, and my notebook would fill up with hair. It was scary! My hair once very thick became thinner. Losing hair affected me in certain ways. I stopped using hair gels because it made my thinning even more obvious. When I combed my hair in the morning I tried my best to cover the balding spots. I worked in the restaurant business so if I ever had to grab something off the floor I made sure I bent my knees to grab it so the top of my head isn’t visible to anyone. I always tried fixing my hair even though there wasn’t much hair left. My hair loss made me extremely insecure about myself. It was time to do something about it.

I started doing research about hair loss. I came across multiple hair loss forums and read a bunch of stories. I never thought that I would need a hair transplant one day because I assumed my hair would grow back if I tried using products that stopped shedding. Some products helped slow it down, but no product helped as much as I needed it to. One thing that helped slow down my hair loss was coconut oil. Last year I applied organic coconut oil on my hair and left it on for 30 min. I repeated this twice a week. I used it on my face too since it has countless benefits. My skin looked great every time. However this was not a permanent solution. My hair was still falling. I also bought IGROW Laser Led Helmet. I used this every other day. What this does is it uses light to strengthen hair follicles while re-growing hair with low-level light. This too was not very effective. I also used countless hair products. One was called Hair Lush. It's a caffeine fortified hair thickening treatment. 50mL of this costed me about $50. Used Rogaine Hair Products. Also used Revivogen Scalp Therapy. It costs around $100. This product helped me slow down my hair falling, but did not stop as well.

After spending a lot of money and time on products that weren’t a solution to hair loss, I decided that the best option for me is to get a hair transplant. I knew it would get the job done. Started reading a lot of stories about people who have done hair transplants. Almost all of them had great results and this gave me lots of hope. I am a 25 year old recent college graduate looking for a job, so like most guys in the same position, I don’t have too much money saved up. In fact, most college graduates are all in debt let alone having around at least $10,000 to cover a transplant in the States is almost impossible for many. It shocked me how expensive these Hair Transplant Surgeries were. There was no way I could be able to pay tens of thousands of dollars but I was desperate and had to do something before I went balder. I knew it was going to be easier and less expensive for me to get a hair transplant overseas because simply I couldn’t afford the cost. I also wanted the best work for less the money.

I did hours of research every day to figure where in the world I can do this. I figured that the best hair transplant doctors with affordable costs are located in Turkey. This comforted me extremely because my family is also from Turkey. In the end I found a doctor named Dr. Resul Yaman in Istanbul. I read success stories, saw his articles in the news, and found out he’s the second best doctor for this type of thing in Turkey. I gave him a phone call, and ended up sending photos of my hair to get his ideas on it. He talked to me and comforted me over the phone. He was sure he could help me and all the research made me trust him. I flew out there in the fall so plane tickets weren’t too pricey. He speaks English, and also has multilingual translators there with him to help make the process easier on the patients. Dr. Resul Yaman looked at my hair and quickly made some calculations to tell me how many grafts we can take from the donor area. This was very important for me because my hair is thin all around. He drew some lines on my head and explained in detail where I need most of the grafts for a better/natural look. The next day I went to get the surgery. Dr. Yaman and his staff talked to me to comfort me because I was extremely nervous. Everything went very smooth thankfully. They checked my blood to see if my body can take anesthesia. Minutes from starting, I was taken to a room to get my head trimmed and washed. During the hair transplant Dr. Yaman kept a conversation with me to ease me even more. His team was also very friendly. They made sure I was comfortable where I was laying. The surgery took about 8-9 hours with a 15 min break for food. I had 3500 hair follicles transplanted. About 2000 of them in the front and the rest in the middle and the vertex. The treatment, plane tickets, hotel stay (at Divan Residence in the same building as Dr. Yaman’s clinic), and staying in Istanbul for about a week cost me around $6,000. Istanbul is a beautiful city so I also looked at is as a vacation as well.

I know how hard it is to be balding. You feel very insecure and don’t mind spending some money to solve the problem. A friend of mine got a transplant for $11,000 in San Francisco, California, where we both reside and he was happier with how my hair looked a few weeks after we both had the transplant. It’s ridiculous, so I hope my post can help you find a second option if you too are having trouble with costs, or finding a trustworthy doctor here.

Good luck,

Bayram