‘America’s No. 1 Hair Restoration Surgeon’ On How To Beat Baldness
“I’m confident we’ll be able to clone hair in the next 10 years. Elon wants to get to Mars; I want to have hair cloning.”
“In the world of hair, time equals follicles. If you’ve lost time, you’ve lost follicles. Every day that you’re not on effective treatment, time is working against you.” That’s perhaps the biggest takeaway from our conversation with Dr. Alan Bauman, a leading board-certified hair restoration physician who’s treated more than 34,000 patients since the 1997 opening of Bauman Medical, which has since grown into a 12,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art stand-alone “hair hospital” in Boca Raton, Florida.
Over more than two decades, his practice has become a destination location for hair restoration, attracting patients from across the globe seeking his experience and artistic surgical talents. Drawing on the medical expertise that’s earned him Aesthetic Everything’s “No. 1 Hair Restoration Surgeon in North America” title for eight years running, Bauman gave Maxim a crash course in the incredible follicular feats that are happening in the hair restoration field right now.
How has hair restoration technology transformed since you started practicing in the 1990s?
Hair restoration has seen light-years of growth since I first started. The most important thing to know is that hair transplants have become much less invasive and can be 100 percent natural. Years ago, we used to take a strip of scalp that was dissected into grafts and then implanted into balding areas. Today, we’re extracting and implanting individual grafts containing as little as a single follicle without the need for staples or stitches, thus avoiding that old telltale linear scar and prolonged downtime while delivering completely natural results.
The other thing that’s changed dramatically is the methodologies of noninvasive treatments to help protect and enhance the non-transplanted hair. Years ago, it was just medications like Rogaine (minoxidil) or Propecia (finasteride). Today, we have Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP), Low-level Laser Light Therapy, nutritional supplementation, haircare, scalp care—and amazing new treatments in the world of Regenerative Medicine.
Why should men consider hair restoration treatment?
Most people want to maintain their hair because hair is a sign of beauty, youth, vitality and health. And the reason it’s a sign of those things, in my opinion, deals with evolution. If you think of Stone Age cavemen and cavewomen, they needed to carefully pick partners who would help propagate the species. If someone’s losing their hair, then they may not necessarily be such good candidates. Hair is a sign from across the room that your DNA is good, that you’re youthful, and that you’re healthy and vital.
Fast-forward to today, we know that a full head of hair helps professionals. A study was done a number of years ago with two identical résumés—one from a guy with hair loss, one from a guy without hair loss. And the guy without hair loss got more calls back. That’s why most people on TV, in the movies, in politics, in positions of influence—they get their hair fixed.
What are some telltale signs that a man will go bald, and when is the right time to start seeking treatment?
Hair loss can start any time after puberty. I have college student–age patients who are coming in between semesters and seeking hair restoration because they have so much hair loss. It’s genetic, so look at your family—your parents and grandparents. Genetics play a role in determining your risk. You can also do DNA testing to help determine whether you’re at risk for male hair loss and what treatments will work best. It’s important for people to know that you can lose 50 percent of your hair without it being noticeable to the naked eye. Unless you’re measuring your hair, you might miss a huge amount of loss.
The measurements that we do in the office include two different types of measurements. One involves using an AI-powered microscope that enables us to count hairs and calculate hair density, as well as quantify the quality of the hair, which assigns a value to the thinness or thickness of hair in each different zone. We can compare the most permanent zones, which live around the sides and the back of the scalp, to the areas that are at risk, like the crown area where the swirl is, the frontal hairline or temples.
The other method of measuring is called cross-sectional trichometry or “HairCheck” for short. That’s basically making scientific ponytails in different areas of the scalp and measuring how thick that bundle of hair is using an electronic caliper. It’s a very sensitive measurement, meaning that when you compare the good areas to the bad areas, you can see the differences. Cross-sectional trichometry can also give patients a baseline measurement so they know how well they’re doing on treatment when we measure that exact same area later on.
Tell us about what sets Bauman Medical apart from other hair restoration and rejuvenation clinics.
The thing that distinguishes us is the way that we care for our patients; we take a holistic approach. Not only are we keen on delivering high-quality results for patients, but we provide an excellent experience from the first call, click, or visit. From the way that my team treats you when you walk in the office, to the types of evaluations that we do, to the procedures themselves, we make sure that the patients are comfortable. Crucially, we make sure that the results look great, are completely undetectable, and deliver what the patients want, whether that’s more coverage or more naturalness.
Walk us through some of the most popular treatments offered by Bauman Medical.
We’ll start with the most invasive first: hair transplants, which are less invasive than they used to be. The surgical technique is called FUE, Follicular Unit Extraction. FUE procedures enable us to extract individual grafts, which contain hair follicles, one at a time, and we artistically implant those into the thinning or balding areas. Because there’s no big area that needs to be sutured or stapled, there’s a lot less downtime—you can head back to the gym in four days and get a sweat going. There is some visible crusting that lasts for six to eight days, but after the crusting is gone, it’s virtually indestructible, so you can go train MMA if that’s your thing.
When it comes to noninvasive therapies, the idea is to protect and enhance the function of the hair follicles—the ones that are destined to weaken or die. Those treatments might include reducing stress and/or alterations in lifestyle, like getting better sleep, better nutrition, adding supplementation and medications. Lifestyle factors play a big role in terms of how your hair grows because your hair is home to the most highly metabolic cell population in your body. It’s very receptive and responsive to changes in hormonal status, stress, sleep-wake cycles, nutrition and fuel.
There are also non-chemical treatments that you can do at home, like red-light therapy, aka Low-level Laser Light Therapy. Those require portable and powerful devices, which are prescribed. Because male-pattern hair loss is a chronic and progressive condition, it will get worse with time without treatment, so you have to be on treatment long-term. Just like maintaining your muscle mass, keeping your skin healthy and keeping your brain on point, these treatments require dedication, discipline and the appropriate regimen over time if you’re at risk for hair loss.
What about “lunch-hour treatments?”
“Lunch-break treatments” can be done here at the office and only take about 30 minutes to an hour. These would be injectable therapies or applying some type of therapy to the scalp to stimulate hair regrowth.
Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) treatments involve harvesting and concentrating a patients’ blood platelets and injecting them back into the scalp in a very specific way that delivers the best results. TED, or Trans-Epidermal Delivery, takes about a half-hour or 45 minutes, but it doesn’t require any needles. It uses a technique called sonophoresis, which uses ultrasonic sound waves to make the skin more permeable. Think of water on the skin of your hands—it just rolls off. Well, if your skin becomes more permeable, you can actually push large molecules through the skin. Sonophoresis is used in the TED treatment to push very powerful growth factors and peptides through the skin to treat shedding and improve hair growth.
How much do these different types of treatments cost?
The cost of hair transplants can vary based on the degree of hair loss and the patient’s goals. Hair transplants today, performed by an ABHRS board-certified hair restoration surgeon like myself with minimally invasive techniques and using regenerative therapies, can range anywhere from about $10,000 to $50,000 per treatment. PRP treatments, which are needed once per year, or an annual TED treatment package, which includes one treatment per month for four months, can cost around $3,000 to $4,000. A high-quality laser device, like the Turbo LaserCap, is going to be in the $5,000 category. Medications are typically custom-compounded for quality and accurate dosing, so those are going to be in a range of about $80 to $100 a month.
I could see how regaining confidence in your hair could have a snowball effect that could improve one’s general health and wellness.
I have a good story. A good friend of mine, who was my classmate in medical school, came to visit me. I hadn’t seen him in many years, but he wasn’t in good shape. He wasn’t taking good care of himself; he wasn’t working out or eating right. He was living a toxic lifestyle, and he was concerned about his hair. We restored his hair with transplantation and protected the at-risk areas with some non-invasive therapies, and I told him about some of the stuff that I was doing myself, like my workout regimen, my nutritional supplements and my mentors in the field of health and wellness. This guy came back 12 months later with a phenomenal head of hair from the transplant, and he looked totally different. He lost weight. He looked well-rested. He looked toned. He looked tanned. I asked him what was going on, and he’s like, “Dude, you changed me. As soon as I saw the hair growing, I knew I had to take care of myself.”
What are some hair treatments that people should avoid?
There are a lot of disasters that are happening in Turkey when it comes to hair restoration. You can get a cheap hair transplant for a nickel on the dollar, but here’s the problem: You can end up with this cookie-cutter straight hairline and hair that’s growing in bizarre directions, your valuable donor area could be completely destroyed, and there are all kinds of risks in terms of infection and bleeding. They literally send the people back on the planes—which is, by the way, a low-oxygen environment that’s NOT recommended for optimum healing—literally bleeding into their bandages. There are no rules and regulations, there’s no standard of care, and there’s no medical licensing necessary. Unfortunately, as well-known patient advocate Spencer Kobren says, a lot of these guys are the “walking wounded,” and they can no longer be helped.
Are there any snake oil treatments to beware of?
People get into trouble thinking that there’s a magic vitamin or lotion that’s going to result in amazing hair regrowth, but the bottom line is that the hair follicles are dead and gone, and the only thing that’s going to restore it is a hair transplant.
What excites you about the future of hair restoration technology?
I’m always excited about the possibility of hair follicle cloning, or what we call hair follicle multiplication. We don’t have that yet, but what we do have in preparation for that is hair follicle stem-cell banking. I may not need hair follicle cloning today, but I don’t want to be 70 years old and clone my 70-year-old (aged) hair; I want my 53-year-old hair. That’s why I banked my stem cells last year: because I’m confident we’ll be able to clone hair in the next 10 years. Elon wants to get to Mars; I want to have hair cloning…for all of us who might need it!
This article originally appeared in the July/August 2024 issue of Maxim magazine.
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