Restoring Self-Esteem with Hair Transplantation

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So, this was an interesting study. I want us to kind of review it was the relationship between self-esteem and hair transplantation satisfaction, and men with male pattern baldness. This study hit plus in 2018 in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology. Um, and what they did was they essentially did a self-esteem study using the Rosenberg self-esteem scale. And they did this both before and after, um, hair transplantation, what they found, not surprisingly that in the 1100 male hair transplant patients with hair par hair loss, their self-esteem rose significantly afterwards. Um, and, um, uh, that's why, um, it's one of the best, um, ways of treating patients with this. Um, however, patients with extremely low self-esteem tended to be, um, worse post-operative satisfaction, which makes sense as well. Let's kind of dive into the analysis of this. Um, so this isn't looking at the results of the hair study and, and what it didn't correlate the results of someone's hair transplant result with a patient.

It just correlated with their ASCE and what to expect. So essentially, um, almost all the patients in this study by these authors noted that the improvement in their hair loss had a direct correlation in how confident they were. And, um, to me, this is not surprising. We see this in men after man, after man, um, who has hair loss and how this changes their lives, this confidence. Um, again, the classic example of this is you see the guy, you know, coming in before kind of, uh, shyer, uh, wearing drab colors and afterwards, um, he's got sunglasses on he's living his best life. He's driving his convertible and that's not really a cliche. It happens in our, our men and they feel like life has an extra sense of vibrancy for them. And that extra bit of confidence affects their mood and it affects them on basically every level, um, because a lot of men with hair loss, it seems to permeate and affect them on a daily basis.

Again, I'm not just speaking to this as my patients, as being abstract. I'm speaking to me as actually being a hair transplant patient. I notice this, that when I was taking photos, when I would, um, interact with others, I was conscious of my hair loss and hair was such a vital part of who I was and me not having that there, me losing that part of me. Um, I, I didn't feel quite like me and my facial shape. It changes slightly when your hairline regresses back, it starts to trend back. You start to see more hair loss along your temples, and you start looking at photos. You don't look quite as well. You don't look quite as healthy. And for me,

Again, being married, having kids, this wasn't necessarily about me trying to find that, um, other person I already have my, um, significant other, um, who I've been married to for close to 20 years. This was about me feeling the best I can feel, being the most confident. So if I'm happy I can affect those in my life. Um, and I can be a better version of myself if I'm happier, everyone around me is happier. Um, and if I'm miserable, I can make people miserable with me. And again, not that I wasn't miserable, but I just wasn't as energetic for some of our men though. Uh, this is again gonna be important, important for them to get confidence, to do better at work confidence, to meet that significant other or confidence just to do better in their day to day life. And this is why I love hair transplant because not only has it transformed a lot of my patients, it's transformed my very, um, uh, my very existence and, uh, it's something I wanted to do.

And I didn't realize how much of an impact it would have on me until I did it. And, uh, if I look at photos of myself, I kind of cringe because, um, I look back at my old photos and like, wow, I had that much hair loss. And when I look at myself now I am wearing hairstyles. I don't know if I could even wear in my twenties. I think I still had a little bit of that temple hair loss that kind of crept in and me wearing my hair back and a man bun. This is the best my hair has ever looked ever.