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How turkey hacked the hair-transplant industry
- cactusplant7374 5mo agoHas there been any progress on cloning hair follicles? I don’t want to move the hair around. I simply want more hair.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- Traubenfuchs 5mo agoYes, yes it's coming. In 10 years.
- Maken 5mo agoJust in time for fusion energy?
- postsantum 5mo agoYes, imagine endless energy and endless hair. It's like nuclear and hippy again, but stronger and ai-government-mandated
- Tangurena2 5mo agoOh, just like in the movie Gentlemen Broncos.
- boringg 5mo agoNo no fusion energy company is going public shortly so the technology must be closer than that :)
- XorNot 5mo agoThere wasn't an effective weightloss drug until suddenly there was though.
- embedding-shape 5mo agoCould I donate mine to you? Been shaving my head for the last 20 years and I cannot wait for it to stop growing eventually... Seemingly it grows faster every year, as I need to continuously increase how often I trim it, I simply want less hair. Edit: I love that someone downvoted me for offering my hair follicles to a random stranger, downvotes truly happen randomly here :)
- ratg13 5mo agoYou can't donate hair follicles .. it has to come from your own body
- embedding-shape 5mo agoBut all these people in Turkey walking around with their brand new hair follicles, aren't those from other people? Or from the same person, just elsewhere?
- sonic45132 5mo agoThey take your existing hair follicles from areas that aren't thinning and move them to the thinning or bald area.
- embedding-shape 5mo agoSo in theory if I want less head-hair and more chest-hair, I could in theory do this by moving the hair follicles? Interesting stuff.
- Tangurena2 5mo agoThat would not be practical. Visible body hair (and head hair) is "terminal hair". Peach fuzz is "vellus hair". Androgens turn vellus hair into terminal hairs (and are also the driving force for male pattern baldness). There was a big stink on social media about the character Aloy in the game Horizon who had vellus hairs visible on her face - like every other human woman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_hair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_hair
- giarc 5mo agoI saw a headline about this the other day. I couldn't find it but did come across this article. https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/genetic/lab-grown-hair-follicle-regeneration-breakthrough/ https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/genetic/lab-grown-hair-f... No idea if ZME science is reputable at all.
- TylerE 5mo agoTotally unreputable. That is not a scientific journal. That is some guy (Who's degree is in geophysics) biog. The article was written by him.
- giarc 5mo agoHere's the journal article from the authors mentioned in the article. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41762869/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41762869/
- stavros 5mo agoThey tried, and it sort of worked, but they couldn't stop the resulting cancer from getting cancer.
- tokai 5mo agoWords are truly losing their meaning if its a hack to develop a business.
- patates 5mo agoYeah they totally isomorphed that industry!
- embedding-shape 5mo agoI can't read the article myself, but the blurbs I can read: > Turkey’s billion-dollar hair-transplant industry is the result of a constant process of innovation. [...] it’s also a tale of “hacked” medical equipment and algorithmic craftsmanship Seems there was some actual "hacking" involved, if they had to patch medical equipment, but who knows how much of the article is actually about that, I can't actually see any text.
- graemep 5mo ago> I can't actually see any text. Turn off JS
- asibahi 5mo agoIt’s hacking when it’s someone you don’t like.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- antonvs 5mo agoIn this context it's being used in much the same way as in "growth hacking", which is an actual position people hire for.
- wil421 5mo agoHack is being used to get more clicks.
- m000 5mo ago
- patates 5mo agoMy grandmother used to say, "the Americans are going to space while we're just growing butt-hair". She was so close!
- rvnx 5mo ago[flagged]
- barnabyjones 5mo agoThe first gulp from the glass of wealth will make you reach for the stars, but at the bottom of the glass, a hair transplant is waiting for you.
- kilroy123 5mo agoSo I spent time living in Istanbul a few years ago. It really was wild. In the touristy areas (near where I lived), you really would see loads and loads of bald guys walking around with stitches on their heads. If I were bald, I would totally go there and do the same.
- brightball 5mo agoIt's interesting to read about. I visited one of those Bosley places in the US. The pitch came across as very...predatory? It did not inspire confidence. They would only consider scheduling you for the surgery if you could demonstrate that you'd use other measures for a year, meaning finasteride, one of those laser hat things, etc. They did talk about how few surgeons there were that do this stuff well though. Also talked about scalp injections I think? It's been several years. I just decided to let it go naturally and deal with it.
- simiones 5mo ago> The pitch came across as very...predatory? It did not inspire confidence. They would only consider scheduling you for the surgery if you could demonstrate that you'd use other measures for a year, meaning finasteride, one of those laser hat things, etc. I don't want to defend the esthetic surgery industry in general, which I do think tends to be quite predatory, but doesn't this sound like the opposite of that? If they really wanted to fleece you, wouldn't they offer surgery instead of the safer and cheaper treatments?
- JackFr 5mo ago> If they really wanted to fleece you Tip: Bald people the worst to fleece.
- brightball 5mo agoFelt more like an upsell. Maybe predatory was the wrong word.
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- Ringz 5mo agohttps://archive.is/KxRaw https://archive.is/KxRaw
- olalonde 5mo agoI did it a few years ago when I was living in Istanbul. One evening, a friend of mine wouldn't shut up about the procedure. I ended up booking it almost on a whim, mostly just to prove him wrong. I did the transplant the next day. In the end, I was very happy with the results. I think it cost around 1500$. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/olalonde/olalonde.github.com/master/pics/before-after-hair.jpg https://raw.githubusercontent.com/olalonde/olalonde.github.c...
- koolba 5mo agoHow did it hold up over the past few years?
- olalonde 5mo agoHolding up pretty well. Here's a picture from yesterday: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/olalonde/olalonde.github.com/master/pics/me-daidai.jpg https://raw.githubusercontent.com/olalonde/olalonde.github.c.... The transplant was in 2021.
- frnz 5mo agoyou or the dog? In both cases: respect!
- olalonde 5mo agoShould've clarified: the dog is 100% natural and procedure-free. Life is unfair :)
- kuhzaam 5mo agothat is actually one of the better and more natural-looking hairlines I've seen. They did a good job!
- smalltarget 5mo agoLooks great! So you get the procedure, and then what happens after? Whats the recovery process like?
- laszlojamf 5mo agoThe title just goes to show that 1. the turkish government had reasons for trying to get people to use "Türkiye" instead. 2. It's still not working. I 100% thought this was about birds until clicking
- embedding-shape 5mo ago> I 100% thought this was about birds until clicking Same, I was really curious reading about the hair transplant industry organized by turkeys and got really disappointed :(
- randunel 5mo agoShouldn't you spell it Tuerkiyesh government, then?
- OkayPhysicist 5mo agoTurkish isn't pronounced "Turkey-ish". It's just "turk-ish" as in, "of or relating to the ethnic group the 'Turks'". "Turkiyesh" (Turkish is perfectly phonetic, they don't play games with vowels combining to make all sorts of sounds like English) would be a different thing, being of or related to the country Turkiye.
- stavros 5mo agoNo, that's not it. The problem is that "How turkey" means a bird, but "How Turkey" means the country.
- n64controller 5mo agoWayne Rooney lost his strength, motivation and creativity directly after his hair transplant. Some speculate the pills you need to take forever afterwards mess up your hormones. It's not worth it just to look good for women and "impressing" other people. His body turned into a fat womens body.
- olalonde 5mo agoThere are no pills to take afterwards, except perhaps painkillers. Some people who are balding chose to take finasteride but it's unrelated to the procedure itself.
- maxprimes 5mo ago> Some people who are balding chose to take finasteride but it's unrelated to the procedure itself. Couldn't that be the pills Wayne took?
- olalonde 5mo agoIt's possible, but finasteride doesn't cause weight gain or muscle loss. In fact, it slightly increases free testosterone due to less of it being converted to DHT. He probably just got older and became less active.
- hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 5mo agoExcess testosterone can be converted to estrogen.
- olalonde 5mo agoYes, finasteride can cause a very slight estrogen increase (~15%) but nothing like bodybuilders who inject anabolic steroids for example (3x-5x+ increase). It's similar to the estrogen bump from gaining 10-15 pounds of fat. In any case, it doesn't cause weight gain or muscle loss.
- TrackerFF 5mo agoAs a guy that started experiencing moderate hair loss in his 20s, I spent countless hours researching the Turkish hair transplant industry. It's a case of having the right people at the right place, at the right time. Turkey have some of the leading doctors and clinics in this field, and have had for years. They were also located in a place which was close to both customers from Europe and the Middle-East, and could offer FUE (Follicular Unit Extraction) procedures at a very nice price. Even the very top doctors there were charging a relatively modest price, compared to their (more) western colleagues. And I guess with the sheer volume they'd go through, they discovering new best practices, techniques, etc. along the way. Back when I did research on this, now 15 years ago, the industry was starting to really take off. This was reflected in the prices that the best clinics charged. Some of them jumped up 50% in a short time, when photo-driven social media like Instagram started blowing up. And then a whole industry sprung out of it. Many excellent clinics, tons more mediocre (to horrendous) ones that are only trying to compete on price. Guess this also goes for the dental industry there.
- embedding-shape 5mo agoDid your research turn up anything about the hacked medical devices that the article is talking about? Is that not relevant to the industry at large too? Seems like that kind of could have been a "make it or not moment", or no?
- anukin 5mo agoWhich clinics are good based on your research? Did they survive the boom or went under?
- econ 5mo agoI think Turkish factory style dentists accumulate something like 100 times more experience?
- manmal 5mo agoDentists are usually booked well, how would that work? Is that vibe dentistry?
- econ 5mo agoTheir private practitioners typically earn $25,000 - $45,000 per year and public sector dentists earn roughly $10,000 - $15,000 Pretty much what a western dentist charges for a handshake. So you get endless rows of teeth flying there.
- manmal 5mo agoIf they earn that, surely they don’t have many customers or they would earn more?
- __turbobrew__ 5mo agoWhy are so many people brainwashed to think baldness==bad? My hair really started to go down around 30 years old and am going to have to shave my head at some point, but who cares? Why does it matter?
- stavros 5mo agoWhy are so many people brainwashed to think that anything makes an aesthetic difference? We just like what we like, having a great head of hair when you're older is rare, so it's more attractive.
- endemic 5mo agoIf it makes someone feel better about themselves, why not?
- __turbobrew__ 5mo agoThe question is why do people feel bad about themselves? Everyone gets old, it is part of life. Why can we not accept that?
- gacgacgac 5mo agoIt's not necessarily feeling bad. It might be something makes one feel better. I'm not unhappy with how I look. I'm happier after a haircut and a hot shave. Sometimes we make choices because they take us from "whatever" to "this rules".
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- IncreasePosts 5mo agoBecause society (random people you interact with) treats you differently depending on your physical characteristics. And dealing with a bunch of people who are mean to you for no real reason is harder psychologically to deal with than dealing with a bunch of people who are nice to you for no reason. Ask any person who was overweight and lost weight whether they noticed strangers being nicer to them after their weight loss.
- stavros 5mo agoI did one in Thessaloniki, Greece eight years ago. Here's a photo album of me before, during, after, and recently: https://immich.home.stavros.io/s/transplant https://immich.home.stavros.io/s/transplant
- smalltarget 5mo agoThank you for sharing. I asked this of another commenter - but whats the post-procedure process like?
- stavros 5mo agoIt was painful for a day or two, and I couldn't touch my scalp at all for a few days, I had to sleep on a rolled-up towel. That's it.
- IncreasePosts 5mo agoIs your hair thinning again, or is it just the angle between the last two pics?
- stavros 5mo agoI'm not entirely sure! It might have thinned a bit, but it also depends on my haircut, angle, and light.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- triceratops 5mo agoWhy is "turkey" lowercased? For that matter the country's official name is Türkiye as of 2022.
- randomtoast 5mo agoLet's talk turkey, does it really matter?
- triceratops 5mo agoDoes anything matter? If there are things that matter, grammar is one of those things.
- gacgacgac 5mo agoYes? The country is named Türkiye, we should use that name? The etymology here is interesting and has a looooong history. The country has officially been named Türkiye for over a century.
- jnwatson 5mo agoAnd Germany's official name is "Bundesrepublik Deutschland". I get to call it Germany though.
- triceratops 5mo agoBut not germany.
- marky1991 5mo agoThis sort of language policing is pointless.
- triceratops 5mo agoI mean it matters here. "turkey" and "Turkey" legitimately have different meanings.
- lifestyleguru 5mo agoI don't understand how can you trust these foreigners-oriented clinics in counties with otherwise miserable healthcare. These clinics are not an exception from dysfunctional healthcare system, they are the very result and fruit of it.
- Daishiman 5mo agoTurkey has reasonably good health care by any metric, what are you talking about?
- lifestyleguru 5mo agoGlobally ranks along Poland, Belarus, and Albania. Having first hand experience in one of them the only advantage of healthcare from this league is "it somehow exists, sometimes".
- Daishiman 5mo ago"Bad health care" is what you have in Peru with nonexistent state services and thoroughly incompetent doctors. Turkey's is middle-of-the-road, which is actually pretty decent for a lot of the life-saving interventions for mainstream diseases. The life expectancy is three years lower than the EU, which is, again, not bad by any stretch of the imagination.
- lifestyleguru 5mo agoIf you don't fall through the cracks because of cronyism, corruption, or neglect it's somehow helpful with mainstream diseases. That's the level of healthcare. Life expectancy in these regions is mostly from diet, lifestyle, avoiding wars, and at times from avoiding the healthcare actually.
- atleastoptimal 5mo agoIt is a huge unspoken reality how much one's physical appearance affects the way they are treated, their life outcomes, and ultimate success in social/romantic relationships. Hair transplants, leg lengthening, plastic surgery, etc. will all explode over the next decade as AI erodes humans' ability to be successful via their industry and intellect.
- keybored 5mo agoIt’s one of the most spoken about things in the world somewhat indirectly. > as AI erodes humans' ability Lol here we go again.
- asdff 5mo agoThe irony is that none of this stuff actually works as intended. Plastic surgery is obvious. Lip injections are obvious. Leg lengthening, I mean have you seen the proportions after?? Hair transplants too. If the most wealthy people getting these procedures look botched, what hope does anyone have really. Also, are we acting like steve jobs wasn't still a handsome man with his grey thinning head? It doesn't come from getting legitimate validation from others. It comes from one's own fear of aging and their own mortality. Sorry, but we all shrivel up like a raisin by the end. Trying to beat that back with these means just seems so futile. Spend that cash on therapy instead to tackle your body dysmorphia.
- atleastoptimal 5mo ago> Plastic surgery is obvious Survivorship bias, you only notice the plastic surgery that isn't good. Most of the time it's invisible, your brain doesn't process the individual change, you just get the sense that the person looks better/less tired/more put together. >Lip injections are obvious Same phenomenon, but even if they are obvious some people like that aesthetic, in the same way that dyed hair/painted nails are obvious, but that's the point >Leg lengthening, I mean have you seen the proportions after For some men it is far better to be 6' with wonky proportions than 5'7" with perfect proportions. There is far more hate directed towards short men than men with long legs. >Hair transplants too. I mean are we acting like steve jobs wasn't still a handsome man with his grey thinning head? Not everyone is as handsome as Steve Jobs. If you have a handsome face you can get away with balding, if not then its a further infliction on how people percieve you. >Sorry, but we all shrivel up like a raisin by the end If we all die after 80 or so years then what's the point of doing anything? Why get a job, why put any effort into personal grooming?
- toomanyrichies 5mo agoI had mine done in Rio de Janeiro, not in Turkey, but I understand the costs are similar for both. I had 2 sessions performed 6 months apart, total cost of about USD $5,000. In the US it might have been $20,000 or more. Each session was about 10+ hours, but with the local anesthesia it went by surprisingly quickly. I take dutasteride and apply topical minoxidil daily. This was in 2023, and I'm largely happy with the results since then. If I had my 20s to do over again, I would have tried to go just the medication route and avoid the procedure. I do think that would have resulted in a more natural appearance vs. what I have now.
- hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 5mo ago>I take dutasteride and apply topical minoxidil daily. This is so extremely harmful. I wish you the best of luck. Edit: To whoever I upset, yes it is harmful to suppress your sexual hormones daily. Originally it was never intended for hair loss but for prostate cancer until Merck & Co. figured out they could market it as a 'hair loss pill'. You will find the popularity of fin/dut inflated on Reddit these days as (paid) moderators will remove anyone who speaks against it even those with first hand horror stories.
- trallnag 5mo agoNot everyone is affected by the side effects you are mentioning. If 100 % of men were experiencing them I doubt Dutasterid would still be such a popular drug for bph
- hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 5mo agoLet me be clear: hormone suppression is not a "side effect" it is the effect. Ironically, the side effect is the hair growth. Edit: systemic effect is not 0% even with topical, enters your bloodstream nonetheless. To respond to the guy marketing below (HN limiting replies).
- IncreasePosts 5mo ago
- josefrichter 5mo agoWalking thru the streets of Istanbul, it seems that female nosejobs are even more common than male hair transplants.
- mrandish 5mo agoIf you're considering this, what I learned during my hair transplant journey may be useful. There are a variety of surgical techniques to address hair loss including different kinds and degrees of transplants and scalp reductions. Most hair loss progresses over many years until it eventually reaches a stable state. A big part of getting optimal results is identifying your kind of hair loss, where you are in the progression and correctly estimating how it will continue - then matching the proper technique or combination of techniques. Some less-than-ideal outcomes are from mismatching the procedure(s) to the patient or doing too much too early in the loss period. If the progression occurs differently than expected after the procedure the outcome can become unbalanced. A few patients can be one-and-done but for many patients multiple steps over time can increase the odds of optimal outcomes. Generally, you should NOT push for one-and-done unless you're that rare candidate. Figuring out the pattern, progression and matching the correct plan of attack is where the experience and diligence of the practitioner matter most. While a lot of hair loss clinics market the 'artistry' of their doctors, the reality is that performing the procedures tends to be fairly rote. My eventual outcome was great, but I totally lucked into it. It was still the late 90s when my hair loss progressed from "just some thinning" to the early stages of "have you considered a comb-over?" I went to a clinic and was told I was most likely early in a 'full loss' progression and that I'd probably need more than one scalp reduction before even starting transplants. They also advised waiting more than a year between scalp reductions for optimal results. I was disappointed because I'd been hoping to walk in and walk out a few hours later with "Brad Pitt hair." But just having turned 30, I was feeling insecure about my hair, still dating and looking for "The One." So I signed up and insisted the surgeon "go big" on the first scalp reduction. The procedure itself was fine but the week-long recovery kicked my ass and for several months afterward my scalp felt stretched to the limit. To be fair, they did fully warn me on all this, I just hadn't taken it seriously enough. As I recovered, I decided it just wasn't worth it and gave up on the hair thing. After it had settled for a year, the one big scalp reduction did improve things back to "just thinning" but eventually the loss progressed (as I was warned it would). But I'd already decided "it is what it is". Fortunately, it turns out when I met "The One" a couple years later she didn't care about my hair (despite being, according to my friends, waaaay out of my league) :-). Jump forward another ~20 years and my now-wife is seeing a plastic surgeon for C-section scar removal and mentions "If you still care, they do hair transplants." Thanks to the now-ancient mega-scalp reduction, my hair never reached "full loss" but it'd stopped somewhere deep in comb-over territory. I didn't care that much but decided to do a consult anyway. Based on my unique history, the doc asked for year-by-year photos to gauge how things had progressed since the scalp reduction (photos from kid birthday parties worked well). Turns out that doing the mother-of-all scalp reductions and waiting ~20 years to reach full progression was, accidentally, the perfect plan. Now the target was clear, unmoving and reduced enough they could nail it in a one-and-done transplant by taking ALL the donor hair - which is rare. Most procedures are done on patients still in progression, but each patient only has a limited amount of donor hair, so they don't 'harvest' all of it because some will be needed later in the progression. They just don't know exactly where yet. So I did it and ~5 years later, it still looks perfect. The procedure took most of a day but was pretty easy. The interesting part was the top-notch, deeply experienced plastic surgeon didn't do the procedure herself. It was done by two sub-contractor technicians who travel from clinic to clinic over a multi-state area doing nothing but transplants all day, every day. The doc explained its really best because they can do it very well and fast (apparently speed in parts of the procedure can improve the follicle survival rate). Of course, she checked in during the day and was on-hand in case anything went wrong. You don't need Sully Sullenberger in the cockpit on every milk run, as long as he's there on the rare flight that ends in the Hudson River. tl;dr In my experience, once you have a skilled assessment, correctly matched procedure(s) and plan of attack, then using lower cost technicians to do the actual procedure should be fine - as long as there's an experienced back-stop available in the event of an "unscheduled water landing" (do 737s have scheduled water landings)? My only other concern would be ensuring they don't harvest too much, too early from some patients. Doing so would probably lift their 90-day customer satisfaction but at the expense of nefing 10-year C-Sat. To be fair, that could happen at pricier U.S. clinics too (my technicians had both started in those places and we got to gossiping over that long day).
- kevthecoder 5mo agoSome related research (in mice) from the news this morning (mainly in the last couple of sections of the article) - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg7p8n9g2klo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg7p8n9g2klo
- fapi1974 5mo agoWhat I think is surprising about this article is that I would expect the top HN comment to call out that it's an advertorial for the Turkish hair replacement industry. It's like something you'd usually find on the Yahoo News page - the only reason it seems to have survived on the front page of HN is because it's in Wired and it's got the word hack used inappropriately in both title and body. If I can't rely on HN to sniff out the paid BS, what do I have to do, figure it out myself?
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- slipperybeluga 5mo ago[dead]
- damnitbuilds 5mo agoThis article is just an advert disguised as journalism. " Most experts agree that Turkey’s strategy for success in hair transplantation no longer relies on low prices or volume; instead, it hinges on creating an unshakable brand value through innovation, purpose-built technological equipment, and medical expertise that has proven itself on a global scale. "
- game_the0ry 5mo agoThis concept in known as medical tourism. [1] I was business admin student in college and my concentration was in entrepreneurship. Part of the program was a class were I had write a business plan and I chose medical tourism. This was back in 2006-ish. Even back then, there was trend where Americans would travel abroad for surgery, but cosmetic surgery was not that popular. Mostly people would go to India, bc the quality of care was high and orders of magnitude cheaper. Good to know my entrepreneurial instinct was somewhat accurate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_tourism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_tourism