Value of White Hair

I have white hair. Most of the pictures on your website are of people with dark hair. Are white haired people also candidates for hair transplantation? Are the results of transplants on white hair people as good as darker hair people?

White hair is always better than dark hair for hair transplants. There is a good reason why white is better — it glistens and reflects light. The reflection of the light impedes the eye’s ability to descriminate what it is seeing and the reflection always makes the hair shaft look bigger. I always tell my white or gray haired patients not to dye it black, because they give up the value that the white hair gives in producing a fuller head of hair. That’s the up-side.

For a good example of a patient with white hair, please take a look at Patient OD in the NHI photo gallery. Also, another example is the close up below photo of white hair that glistens by reflecting ambient light. Please click the photo to enlarge and you well see only the dark hairs in focus. The white hairs are almost invisible, yet the light that is reflected shows far more value than even the dark hairs that are so well defined on the close up.

The down side for people with white hair is that it is almost invisible to the eye, even on magnification. To get good yields from the harvesting of white hair, you need to use very high powered microscopes so that you see every hair and do not unintentionally damage it.

Note: This video is of surgical nature and may be too graphic for some viewers.