Resuming Physical Activities After Surgery

Hi Doctor,
I am an avid weight lifter and exercise quite frequently. I heard that after surgery, I won’t be able to my normal routine physical activities for 3-4 months. Is this true? What type of weight lifting am I allowed to do in that period and for how long? Thanks.

There are two types of surgical approaches in harvesting of donor hair. One is where the surgeon removes a strip of skin and then sutures back together (standard for today’s Follicular Unit Transplantation). I generally ask people who have strip harvesting to hold off on body presses, sit-ups and other such types of exercise that can strain neck muscles for a few weeks after the surgery. All types of aerobic exercises. otherwise, are ok.

The second type of surgery is Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE), where the follicular units are harvested one at a time. With this procedure, you can resume full exercise within a few days of the surgery with no limitations at all. The FUE surgery is more expensive than the strip surgery and the surgeon can not as easily move as much hair in a single surgery. This means that FUE requires more procedures.

Patients who had FUE surgery have not complained about pain, but those that have had strip surgery generally have some discomfort, mostly on the first night.