Once you get a ht, is it possible to rock a bald head later in life?

[spiral]

I've shaved my head before and don't absolutely hate it but I do prefer having hair.

Say 5-20 years after my 1st ht, I have some bad recession.

Could I shave my head and look okay or would weird balding patterns and fue scars make it look bad?

[Gatsby]

If you have any inkling to shave your head in the future then do not get surgery. You will have life long scarring regardless of the procedure.

[HairEnthusiast101]

40 minutes ago, Gatsby said:

If you have any inkling to shave your head in the future then do not get surgery. You will have life long scarring regardless of the procedure.

What by chance does it look like? Just white dots everywhere or like raised scars?

[Dillpickle123]

4 hours ago, JoDimaggio22 said:

What by chance does it look like? Just white dots everywhere or like raised scars?

White dots everywhere 

[HairEnthusiast101]

1 minute ago, Dillpickle123 said:

White dots everywhere 

Does fairer skin people get away with less noticeable scarring compared to darker skin? 

[Mike10]

probably not

[general-etwan]

You can, if you don’t set expectations at having a super smooth baby scalp. 

Joe Rogan is an example. There are methods to decrease the appearance of FUT or FUE scars, though nothing is perfect. 

[GoliGoliGoli]

 

18 hours ago, JoDimaggio22 said:

Does fairer skin people get away with less noticeable scarring compared to darker skin? 

I think if anything fairer skined people may be more likely to show the scars, despite the facts that the scars appear white. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like darker skinned people don't scar as much as lighter skinned folks.

 

I think the extent to which you have noticeable FUE scars probably depends on a ton of factors, mainly how your body heals

Edited October 31, 2022 by GoliGoliGoli

[Z--]

IF you aren't okay with how bald or balding looks now, what makes you think that'll change five or ten years down the line?

If feel like you can rock the bald look; shave and forget about transplants. You'll save time, money and plenty of agonizing wait this way. Added benefit is 0 scarring...

Conversely, if balding is stressing you or strikes you as unpleasant, that isn't going to change in a decade. Only you may lose more hair in that time. Assuming you are a decent candidate and not young or aggressively in the process of loss, a hair transplant may not be a bad idea.

Edited October 31, 2022 by Z--

[HairEnthusiast101]

4 hours ago, GoliGoliGoli said:

 

I think if anything fairer skined people may be more likely to show the scars, despite the facts that the scars appear white. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like darker skinned people don't scar as much as lighter skinned folks.

 

I think the extent to which you have noticeable FUE scars probably depends on a ton of factors, mainly how well your body heals and how your body heals

Very true. Yes I assumed it probably depends a ton on ability to heal. Didn’t know if pale skin does better at hiding but probably doesn’t much matter. 

[pkipling]

Everyone's gonna heal/scar differently, so there's no way to know for sure just how noticeable it would look, buuuut - as the others said, even if it's mild, it will still be something. So then it's just a matter of what you're personally comfortable with and what you consider "bad." 

If you're on the fence about it and you already like the way you look with a shaved head and you think you'd be bothered by even a small amount of noticeable scarring, then it really would be worth considering not getting a HT. Once you do, you can't go back. 

Not sure how old you are, but you could also keep a HT as an option in your back pocket and see if your hair loss has stabilized years down the road. If you reach the point where you feel like you have minimal loss and it's not gonna progress much more, then it'd be worth considering. 

[gillenator]

Might it really come down to how well you heal and how visible the scarring ends up being?

[GoliGoliGoli]

27 minutes ago, Zelimkhan Zankarhanov said:

Short answer is no. 

Some people scar worse than others but the truth is even with FUE in the best hands you will still have thousands of white little scars...

You cannot expect to shave your head and have it looking homogenous. That will never happen. With FUE you have even more scarring than with FUT. Only difference is that it's spread out. 

You will be dealing with 2 main issues. Your balding pattern will still show even with a razor shave and you will have noticeable scarring. 

If you want to rock a shaved head then SMP is the way to go. Stay on Finasteride of course. And be careful the SMP industry is a freakin minefield too. Do your research extremely carefully.  A crappy blueish or unatural too straight SMP tattoo is the worst case scenario and it's a true pain in the butt to laser off...

99% of people will not notice the FUE scars if it's a few years after the HT, unless they're really looking at the back of your head. Assuming normal healing properties. 

[mr_peanutbutter]

the nacho guy from better call saul had fue and shved it all down, possible combined with smp

 

joe rogan - as already mentioned - had fut and shaved it all down

 

benedict howedes - a german football player had fut and only buzzed, meaning there is some horseshoe going on, probably to cover the scar

 

 

 

google those and you have an image on how it looks like

[A Fue Good Men]

1 hour ago, GoliGoliGoli said:

99% of people will not notice the FUE scars if it's a few years after the HT, unless they're really looking at the back of your head. Assuming normal healing properties. 

You really can’t throw a blanket statement like this out there. It all depends on how many grafts you have removed, the punch size, the hair and skin color contrast, the patients scarring and healing characteristics, etc.

 

To OP if you plan on shaving down to the skin then do not get a ht, this is not possible without evident scarring.

[mmokin]

On 10/31/2022 at 3:18 AM, JoDimaggio22 said:

What by chance does it look like? Just white dots everywhere or like raised scars?

Depends alot on the surgery and how you heal but white dots is the best case scenario

[GoliGoliGoli]

35 minutes ago, 5BetaReductase said:

You really can’t throw a blanket statement like this out there. It all depends on how many grafts you have removed, the punch size, the hair and skin color contrast, the patients scarring and healing characteristics, etc.

 

To OP if you plan on shaving down to the skin then do not get a ht, this is not possible without evident scarring.

You're probably right and I was a bit on the hyperbolic side, but most people aren't going to spend a lot of time looking at the back of your head was my overall point. But yes it of course depends a lot on your healing qualities as I mentioned

[MisterBreakfast]

I'm just going to chime in.  Before I knew about hair transplants, when I saw FUE scars on a bald head, I'd assumed it was people with a birth defect, or a scalp disease.  For FUT scars, I knew what FUT scars were somehow (not sure why), but they were still obvious to me.

When I asked my SO what she thought about transplant scars, she said she much prefers the FUT line to others. She's seen FUE scars in real life, and doesn't like their appearance.  Not sure what other women might think.

That being said, yes it is possible.  But I imagine that if you are self-conscious today about losing hair, you are probably going to be self-conscious tomorrow when you have a bald head and obvious scarring. 

People often pass it off as "oh I won't care so much in the future".  I'm here to tell you that you will still very likely care about looking your best in the future if you care about how to look now.

Quick edit:

To add a slightly more positive note, I think it's best to plan to use all the tools necessary to help you not get to the point were your scars will show. But I think we all have to accept what might one day happen if these plans fail

Edited November 2, 2022 by MisterBreakfast

[HairIsLife]

Would be better to buzz it

[WhereIsMyMind]

It is something I wouldn't worry much about tbh. It has solutions still. But yeah, don't expect that creating thousands of scars in your head will magically disappear.

[ciaus]

On 10/30/2022 at 7:34 PM, spiral said:

I've shaved my head before and don't absolutely hate it but I do prefer having hair.

Say 5-20 years after my 1st ht, I have some bad recession.

Could I shave my head and look okay or would weird balding patterns and fue scars make it look bad?

 

These screenshots below are taken from a patient that received verteporphin injections earlier this summer to help minimize scarring right before getting the hairs were removed. If nothing else you can see what the fue extraction scars look like on the left sides.

Verteporphin is an FDA approved drug for treating macular degeneration that has been recently discovered to also inhibit some of the unwanted scarring process that makes scars easier to see. This is still in the experimental phase and @DrTBarghouthi , a member here, is the only doctor known to be conducting actual trial work with a human patient currently. He's also documenting some re-growth of new hairs in the areas the hairs were extracted from, which is very exciting because it means the potential for more hairs to transplant again later on.  The left side screenshots are just normal scarring without any verteporfin, and the ones on the right did get verteporfin. 

 

 

 

 

[pkipling]

On 11/3/2022 at 3:16 PM, ciaus said:

 

These screenshots below are taken from a patient that received verteporphin injections earlier this summer to help minimize scarring right before getting the hairs were removed. If nothing else you can see what the fue extraction scars look like on the left sides.

Verteporphin is an FDA approved drug for treating macular degeneration that has been recently discovered to also inhibit some of the unwanted scarring process that makes scars easier to see. This is still in the experimental phase and @DrTBarghouthi , a member here, is the only doctor known to be conducting actual trial work with a human patient currently. He's also documenting some re-growth of new hairs in the areas the hairs were extracted from, which is very exciting because it means the potential for more hairs to transplant again later on.  The left side screenshots are just normal scarring without any verteporfin, and the ones on the right did get verteporfin. 

 

 

 

 

I'm fascinated by this and just now catching up on some of the threads! Could be a great option, especially for people like OP who are extra concerned about scarring. Although I don't understand how hair can re-grow when the entire graft was removed... What is the hair growing from? It just re-creates itself out of thin air? If that's accurate, I'm going to need to find a dumbed down explanation because that doesn't even seem physically possible. Lol 

[MisterBreakfast]

The biology is complex, but to greatly over simplify everything...

Every one of your cells carries the information for all cells.  During development and healing processes certain cells can differentiate into specific cells, and they "know" how to differentiate based on what cells are nearby, what proteins they are around ect.  It's very complicated, but essentially if you can push certain types of cells to differentiate into hair cells during healing, the idea is you can encourage cells to become new hair follicles, even if the old ones are removed.  The cells know to become hair based on their surroundings (hormones, inter cell signaling, protein and nutrient availability ect ect).  

 

[gillenator]

On 11/1/2022 at 6:25 PM, 5BetaReductase said:

You really can’t throw a blanket statement like this out there. It all depends on how many grafts you have removed, the punch size, the hair and skin color contrast, the patients scarring and healing characteristics, etc.

 

To OP if you plan on shaving down to the skin then do not get a ht, this is not possible without evident scarring.

Totally agree.

[jwolfe890]

Has anyone gotten SMP and been able to shave their head? I'm wondering how effective SMP is for razor shaves or if its only intended for some hair.