I am interested in a beard transplant but can it just make a beard look thicker or will it work for someone with no facial hair?
What is it with beards, already?
The rise of the beard in contemporary culture has taken off in recent years. Men in their early twenties are sporting magnificent, thick beards that cover not just their chins and under their nose, goatee-style, but their cheeks too. Men who struggle to grow even a half-decent goatee are experiencing beard-envy. What self-respecting, manly-man doesn’t want to have a go at a bit of beard-wearing at some point in their life? Even if it’s only for the duration of an outdoorsy mountain-climbing vacation?
I have no facial hair – can I get a transplant?
The trend for beard transplantation is about as recent as the fashion for full-frontal beard-wearing, so it’s unsurprising that there’s little documentation of an entire beard-transplant. Plenty men have undergone treatment to fill in some patchy gaps in their beard – the patchy beard is fairly common and in fact few men can actually boast a naturally full and thick beard like George Clooney’s or Ben Affleck’s or Jack Black’s or even that crazy guy from Hangover – Zack Galifianakis. And who’s to say these guys didn’t get a bit of beard transplant treatment too?
Where does the hair come from?
A beard transplant is often achieved by taking beard hair from under the chin, and relocating it in high visibility areas on the cheeks, so if you are someone with no facial hair whatsoever this isn’t going to work for you. However, hair follicles are sometimes extracted from areas of the scalp that are resistant to male-pattern baldness, and grafted onto the cheeks, with similar results. Chest hair can even be used – it has similar coarseness to beard hair – to achieve a convincing beard, although given the requirement of around 3-4000 hair follicles to produce the ideal beard, chest hair may be insufficient for the job.
How popular are beard transplants?
Relatively few men are seeking beard transplants – there is a higher proportion of men who are more concerned with threat of androgenetic alopecia and a hair transplant to correct a receding or balding hairline continues to be a much more popular procedure, with only as few as ten men per year requesting a beard transplant in any one clinic.
