Can You Wear a Hat After a Hair Transplant?

Wearing a Hat After a Transplant

In the aftermath of a surgery, your newly-transplanted follicles are bound to be fragile.

In addition, you want to let your scalp breathe a little after the procedure.

This is essential to both stimulate growth and to make sure that you don’t trap sweat and dirt in your scalp, which can likewise cause problems.

For these reasons, you’ll want to make sure you wait at least six days before you put on a hat. 

If you need to wear something on top of your head before then, you’ll want to make sure it is extremely light.

Maybe a light hood or hoodie.

You may look a bit like Friar Tuck, but at least the sensitive hair follicles won’t be interfered with in the same way as a suffocating hat would be.

If you absolutely must wear a hat, it needs to be extremely loose fitting.

This is true whether you make use of Follicular Unit Transplant (FUT) or Follicular Unit Excision (FUE),

Both of which involve taking hair follicles from an area on your body in which they are still healthy and in abundant supply and then transplanting them back on your scalp in areas where they have diminished.

Either way, the procedure’s first few days can be touch and go.  The scalp is likely inflamed, red and raw.

This is another reason for avoiding hats in your first few days, namely that placing one snugly or even partially on your head alongside the grafts can pose serious damage to the newly-implanted grafts.

They compress them, thus stunting their growth, or even dislodge them completely.

Damaging your grafts at this crucial juncture could mean that you’ve spent thousands of dollars for nothing.

Just as annoyingly, if they dislodge some grafts, they could leave you with ridiculous-looking patchy hair growth that looks less like a full head of hair and more like a bad wig that’s been put through the shredder.

Add to that the fact that wearing a hat so soon after an operation on your scalp can irritate the sensitive skin and be painful, 

and it should be clear that wearing a hat sooner than six days simply isn’t worth it.

If you want to be completely safe, after 10 days your grafts should be in a condition where you should be able to wear any kind of hat.

Wearing a hat in the first 10 days after a hair transplant can cause damage to the delicate grafts. If you must wear a hat, make sure it's loosely fitted and light.
Summary
wearing motorcycle helmet after a hair transplant

Wearing a Motorcycle Helmet After a Hair Transplant

One of the main reasons people look into hair transplant surgeries is to be able to enjoy activities they loved in their youth, and few things say “youthful” quite like motorcycles.

There’s something to be said for the devil may care attitude that comes with riding a bike, but you might well wonder whether it’s good for your hair grafts.

While we have the romantic image of the wind blowing through one’s hair James Dean-style while riding,, that much wind rushing against your scalp that fast at that amount of pressure can blow the grafts right out.

Of course, most motorcycle riders know better than to ride so recklessly, which is why they wear helmets – but can you wear those so soon after a hair transplant?

You can probably already guess that the short-term answer to that question is a resounding “No.” 

You shouldn’t wear a motorcycle helmet soon after a hair transplant, certainly for the first 3 weeks after the procedure.

All of those reasons for not wearing a hat are exacerbated even more with wearing a motorcycle helmet.

It needs to fit even tighter, for obvious reasons, and it isn’t like motorcycle helmets are very breathable compared to the fabric used in a baseball cap.

Add to that the fact that a helmet can trap heat and cause your head to get very warm – another bad sign for the health of your newly-transplanted hair follicles

– and it starts to become clear just what a bad idea wearing a helmet prematurely can be.

That’s why you’re going to want to make sure that you wait at least three weeks before you even think about putting a helmet back on.

In the meantime, you’ll have to find an alternate way of getting around.

Wearing a Bandana After a Hair Transplant

What about a bandana?

You might well think that this would be a better solution given the fact that, unlike a tight hat, a bandana does not need to fit your scalp tightly. 

The material in a woven bandana is much lighter than your average fedora or baseball cap, meaning it’s both more breathable and not as tight around the sensitive grafts. 

The former point is important for allowing your scalp to breathe and prevent a build up of sweat and dirt, 

while the latter can help ensure that you do not compress or dislodge the grafts or irritate your skin.

Still, if you have to wear a head covering post-op, a bandana, a hood, or an extremely loose-fitting hat are your best bet.

Wearing a motorcycle helmet in the first 3 weeks is not advised. However, there re less restrictions on wearing a bandana as it is a lighter material.
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Wearing a Hat After the 10-Day Mark

10 days after your hair transplant procedure, you should be in the clear to wear a hat as you did before your surgery. 

What’s more, you’ll probably want to wear a hat at this point because while the procedure itself should not produce any long-term scars that would be visible to others after your hair grows in, 

Before that period there may still be some evidence visible.

What’s really important about wearing hats even after the 10-day period is to let your scalp breathe whenever possible. 

Even though this is not as important as in that initial five- to six-day period, 

You need to make sure that you remain gentle with your scalp until your new hair has grown in thick enough to where you don’t need to worry about it anymore.

It is completely understandable why you might want to wear a hat in the aftermath of a hair transplant surgery. 

Even so, you want to make sure that you don’t cause all of that time,  money, and effort to go down the drain simply because you wore the wrong hat at the wrong time.

Thankfully, with the help of this guide, you can wear a head covering the right way with confidence without disturbing your new hair transplant.

How Long Do Hair Transplants Take to Grow?

Hair Transplant Speed

The first thing to note about hair transplants’ growth rate is that it will inevitably be different for different people based on a variety of factors, listed below.

What’s important about that is to not panic if you find your hair transplant growth rate at the lower end of the spectrum.

This is natural, and as mentioned below, there are plenty of ways you can speed the process up.

So just how fast can you grow a new head of hair?

As early as a few days to two weeks after the procedure, you should start to notice progress.

At this point the follicles you have had implanted should be entering what is known as a “natural resting phase” in which they begin to take root.

These first small hair follicles will then be shed about two to four weeks after the initial procedure.

Then you have something of a lull, as the above process pushes out old hair follicles and sets the roots of the freshly-implanted ones.

After about three months, you should start to see fresh hair growth.

After that point, you should see continued growth for the next several months. The period between the three to six month point is often especially dramatic.

Just how long can it take?

As a rule of thumb, you should see about 30% of the new hair by the end of the third month, 40% by the end of the fourth month, 50% by the end of the fifth month, and so on up until the ninth month.

Still, it isn’t uncommon for new hairs follicles to start sprouting 12 months after the first surgery, and some even see progress for an additional six months after that.

The hair can change its appearance throughout the process as well.

The first hairs may be more scraggly or wiry-looking.

The further into the growth process, the straighter, thicker, and more mature the hairs become.

Between this and the aforementioned long growth window, if the first results you see don’t seem like much, don’t panic.

It can and often does take several months before you get the rich, thick head of hair promised by hair transplant procedures.

Hair growth varies between individuals. Full growth can take anything from 6 months to just over 12 months, depending on the individual.
Summary

What Can Affect the Growth Rate?

That said, you might still want to speed up the growth process, and thankfully, there are several ways to give it a boost.

For starters, some people are just lucky and are genetically predisposed to have their hair grow back faster. That’s not within your control, so focus on things that are.

For example, you’ll therefore want to avoid anything that jeopardizes the initially-fragile new follicles implanted in your head.

Refrain from swimming, biking, running, and other activities that expose your scalp to fast movement and water or air rushing past it at an intense pace.

On the flip side, massaging the scalp can help stimulate growth.

Certain topical ointments and medications can also help turbocharge things.

One of the biggest hair transplant lifehacks is to pay attention to your diet.

What you eat can have a significant impact on how fast and healthily your new hair comes in.

Key hair transplant dietary advice includes:

  • Making sure you stay well-hydrated
  • Consuming a vitamin C-rich diet (think citrus fruits and red peppers)
  • Consuming foods with lots of polyunsaturated fatty acids
  • Adding high fiber oatmeal, almonds, and eggs to your routine
  • Vitamin B6 (taken in moderation, often found in capsule form)

Then there is the skill level of the surgeons themselves.

A skilled surgeon can choose the best follicles and plant them in the best spots to stimulate fast, sustained growth.

Conversely, weaker hair follicles or poor surgical skill can slow down the proceedings, such as if the hair is taken from a site resistant to Direct Hair Transfers.

Transplanted hair should ideally not be DHT resistant, and should be implanted smoothly and with the utmost skill, hence why finding an accredited surgeon is so important.

Finally, there’s the question of FUT versus FUE.

The former may be a bit faster in terms of the average transplant time, but the latter provides a smoother, more natural-looking head of hair, and boasts a faster recovery time too.

As such, on average, FUE tends to grow in faster.

How Long Do Hair Transplants Take to Heal?

The Timeline for Recovery

The first thing you need to keep in mind when thinking about how long it will take to recover from your hair transplant surgery is that different people will experience different procedures differently.

For starters, you’ll want to decide whether you want a single or several procedures.

On the one hand, there are limits to what can be done in a single round even with the best treatments.

On the other hand, the more treatments you receive, the longer the recovery time may be, even if the results are better and denser.

Either way, like the treatment itself, your recovery time will be multi-layered.

Most doctors will require you to wear bandages and gauze for a couple of days, and an antibiotic or anti-inflammatory medication for a few more days after that.

 

Still, most people can return to work and resume their lives 10-14 days after a hair loss procedure, although you’ll probably want to hold off on things such as taking a dip in the pool for a little while.

hair transplant growth timelines
Although everyone will be different, this shows one person’s hair transplant recovery time line.

The timetable for the procedure “taking root” long-term, however, will indeed take longer.

About two to three weeks after your surgery, the hair that has been transplanted will start to fall out, but that’s all part of the process, and over the next few months you should start to see new natural hair start to grow in on its own.

After six to nine months, you should notice at least 60% new hair growth.

As such, while short-term recovery from the surgery itself should take just a couple days, it can take months to reap its full benefits.

Although you can return to normal life within a couple of weeks of a hair transplant, there is variation between people's recovery times. Full hair growth can take many months.
Summary

What Impacts the Healing Process?

The first and most important factor to discuss here is which hair transplant method you choose.

The big divide in the hair transplant world today is between FUE and FUT.

This graph shows expected hair regrowth timeline. But remember, some clients will have faster results and some slower.

While FUT may be a shorter procedure – somewhere between 4 and 12 hours, whereas FUE is typically at least 10 – total recovery time tends to favour FUE.

FUT tends to take two to three weeks at least, whereas FUE is often faster by at least a week.

It is also essential that you monitor any medical conditions carefully and make sure that they do not flare up or exacerbate your recovery time from this procedure.

More grafts can also mean a longer recovery process.

FUT will typically result in a longer recovery time compared to FUE. Age and pre-existing conditions can also slow down the recovery process.
Summary

How to Speed up Your Recovery

To maximize your chances of your recovery time being as fast as possible, you’ll want to follow a few basic hair and self-care tips:

One of the biggest mistakes people make is allowing their scalp to dry out or panicking and overdoing it in the other direction and soaking it.

Wash your scalp a moderate amount, and make sure to dry it completely afterward.  Above all, be gentle.

Some swelling is normal in the immediate aftermath of a hair transplant.  Apply ice or a hot compress as needed. If the swelling doesn’t subside within a few days, contact your doctor.

hair transplant recovery
It’s normal to have redness and inflammation in the few days post-op

For some, PRP can help speed up the recovery process by infusing your scalp with fresh plasma.

Keep your new hair grafts well-nourished with whatever hair growth supplement (for example, multivitamins and minerals) your doctor suggests. On the other hand, you should avoid untested and unrecommended products.

Not only may they not be beneficial but, depending on the chemicals they contain, they may actually harm your scalp and hair growth and recovery.

Once you’re ready to apply shampoo again, do so with a light touch, massaging your scalp.

Resist the urge to scratch your scalp too much in the days following your treatment.

Refrain from engaging in strenuous activities such as running or biking.

That great feeling of “wind whooshing through your hair?” You need time to let your new hair implants take root and grow firmer so the wind blows through your hair rather than blowing follicles loose.

Aftercare mixtures can help the growth be more sustainable.  Rosemary, lavender, peppermint, and similar options are ideal.

What could slow down your recovery?

On the flip side, there are a couple things that might actually slow down your recovery time that you’ll want to avoid, starting with violating any of the above recommendations.

Being too rough too early and putting too much strain on your scalp can cause the follicles to pop out before they ever really take root.

In addition, underlying medical conditions can slow recovery time.

That said, hair growth is so genetically-determined that this is less a hard and fast rule and more of something to ask your doctor about,

so they can give you more personalized recommendations and tell you if your conditions will limit your recovery time.

Finally, a botched surgical job will obviously take a longer time to recover from, so make sure you hire a well-reviewed surgeon with top skills and the latest techniques.

All of these tips taken together can help you recover from a hair transplant that much faster.

Has Xherdan Shaqiri Had a Hair Transplant?

The Case for Hair Transplants

He may be one of the most electrifying players behind Liverpool’s Premiere League championship, but Xherdan Shaqiri has also been known for displaying evidence of hair loss throughout his career,

From the Swiss National Team to Milan to Stoke City.

Pictures and reporting for Stoke City in particular establish Shaqiri as having some form of male pattern baldness.

With that much chatter, and pictures to back up the changes in his hairstyles, it isn’t hard to see where the idea of him having some hair loss might emerge.

If you look at photos from earlier in his playing career, you see him with a much fuller head of hair than in his Stoke City years or the earlier part of his stay with Liverpool.

has shaqiri hd a hair transplant?
A young Shaqiri with a full head of hair
A later picture shows early male pattern baldness with receding corners in particular

A 2019 hair transplant?

Conversely, while his years playing for Stoke City and initial years with Liverpool were marked by what certainly looks like a receded hairline, after a trip to the injured list in 2019, he returned with not just a goal but a fuller head of hair.

A picture in 2019 shows Shaqiri with a more filled hairline; sparking rumours of a transplant

Did he time it right?

What’s more, Shaqiri is of the “right age” to be a candidate for considering hair transplants statistically-speaking.

While everyone’s hairline is different, certain age groups are more prone to it than others.

While 28 years old is hardly the biggest age group for hair loss to emerge, at 25% your late 20s and early 30s are likely to be the first time in your life where it starts to become a possibility.

That increased statistical possibility, paired with the undeniable before-and-after photos pre and post-injured list stint in 2019, certainly paints an interesting albeit circumstantial case for Shaqiri having received hair transplants.

What type of procedure could he have had?

What’s more, the fullness and thickness of Shaqiri’s hairline following his return may give an indication of what type of procedure he may have had.

The fact his hairline is both visibly thicker and yet any signs of surgery are largely invisible point to an expert process, not mere hair plugs or some inexpensive solution like that.

FUE hair transplants are one such possibility.

He wouldn’t be the first famous footballer to go down that road, with Wayne Rooney having had FUE treatments in the past.

Follicular Unit Excision, or FUE treatments are among the best-regarded within the industry as well as by those who try their techniques.

This is in large part because FUE scars from transplants are small, round, and not visible when done properly.

By contrast, FUT scars are bigger and far more noticeable.

What’s more, FUE is more resilient than FUT, meaning you can have multiple treatments without as great a risk of them showing through.

Since what we see with Xherdan Shaqiri is more hair and not more obvious sewn-in scars, visual and industry evidence gives a decent circumstantial case for FUE hair transplants.

Looking at the before and after photos, and the timeline, there is a good possibility Xherdan Shaqiri had a hair transplant - most likely an FUE hair transplant.
Summary

The Case Against Hair Transplants

For as strong as the case for stating that Xherdan Shaqiri has hair loss may seem at first, the more you look, the harder it comes to say anything definitive.

The timeline is rather odd.

At no stages, did he go through the typical “shaved-look” that typically comes straight after having a hair transplant.

Why is that?

Perhaps he had a hair transplant that didn’t require shaving of entire scalp.  This would be extremely unusual, as most clinics advice against this due to the technical difficulties.

Secondly, there are some extremely clever barbers who can hide hair loss very effectively.

For example, with the use of hair fibres and hair systems.

Could he have had these done?

It cannot be ruled out.

And finally, Shaqiri himself has never said anything.  Neither have his representatives or colleagues.

 

 

Lack of a "shaved head" stage casts doubt on whether Shaqiri had a hair transplant. Also his new hair can be explained by clever hairstyling from a skilled barber. And finally Shaqiri himself has never said anything
Summary

Our Conclusion

On the one hand, we always need to be careful about making assumptions about people’s private lives.

On the other hand, the evidence seems stacked in favor of showing that Xherdan Shaqiri has had hair transplants in the past.

His hair is richer and fuller without a sign of scarring, which is a tell-tale sign of typical FUE procedures.

When to Get a Hair Transplant | Surprising Answer

If you’ve been struggling with thinning hair, you might think that a hair transplant could fix all your problems.

It’s one thing to think that when you’re in your 40s or 50s, but if you’re still in your mid-20s and are already thinking about a hair transplant, you might want to wait – and here are a few key reasons why.

1. More Income

First and foremost, quality hair transplant is expensive.

At best, you’re looking at least around $2000, and that’s for comparatively minor transplants in regions such as Greece and Turkey where they are performed at much more affordable rates than the United States and the United Kingdom.

Realistically, you’re probably looking at a high four-figure price, and it could be several thousands of dollars at that.

What’s more, that does not even cover the cost of actually getting to these clinics.

As stated, Greece and Turkey may be less expensive than the United States and the United Kingdom in terms of the average price of hair transplants, but getting there can still cost hundreds of pounds or dollars.

Twenty-somethings are not famed for having vast amounts of disposable income.

The past dozen years have been particularly harsh for young job seekers entering the workplace, so the chances of your getting the money necessary for a quality hair transplant at that age may be as slim as the hair follicles concerned.

Wait until you’re a little older and have more income to spend on a proper procedure.

2.Is your hair loss rate stable?

Will your current rate of hair loss stabilise in the near future?

It is perfectly possible.

And most good clinics won’t consider you for a procedure anyway, until your hair loss stabilises.

Before wasting thousands of dollars you may not have and causing yourself more stress, see a doctor, and make sure that the cause of your hair loss isn’t preventable.

Sometimes it can be due to lifestyle and possibly even stress.

A simple shampoo or stress relief techniques might help save your hair and thousands of dollars.

3. Technology Gets Better

As with every other field, technology in the hair transplant industry is bound to get better in the years to come.

Just in the past 10 to 15 years, we’ve moved past hair plugs and far faker-looking techniques to more natural-looking restoration efforts.

Thanks to scientific research, we know so much more now about hair density, angulation, and what works and what doesn’t in terms of replacing lost follicles.

If you like a computer game but hear it’s buggy, you might wait until patches are released for it before you make your purchase.

You only have so much money, and you’d rather not waste it on an experience that isn’t up to expectations.

Likewise, if a hair transplant sounds appealing, do some research, see what’s being worked on, and wait for even more tech-and-hair-savvy upgrades and new techniques to “take root.”

4. Career reasons

Another reason you may be considering hair transplants is modelling or acting career.

That said if you think you can trick modelling agencies with a transplant, think again.

They’re experts in manipulating appearances themselves and can tell what’s fake and what isn’t.

That said if you’re in a modelling career right now and your agency recommends you go to an accredited hair surgeon (and will compensate you for it) that could help improve your hairline and secure your job.

Modelling is a cutthroat industry, and you have to be willing to do almost anything to get ahead, but you should never do anything that doesn’t make you uncomfortable or could leave you in future debt – and that includes an uncompensated hair transplant in your 20s.

5. Conclusion

The biggest argument for a hair transplant in your 20s is if your doctor or modeling/acting agency tells you it’s absolutely necessary.

Getting one that young can cost a lot of money, and may require follow-up procedures as your hair loss advances

By contrast, if you wait until you’re older, the chance of a second operation is far less.

What’s more, you’ll likely have more money, be able to afford better clinics and treatments, and the techniques themselves may be better.

Then there’s the psychological impact. Losing your hair young can damage your psyche, but so can a botched hair transplant that leaves you feeling even worse.

Take the time to consider your options carefully, talk to accredited professionals and those you love and trust, and make an informed decision that’s best for you.

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