My hair loss started at 21. I don’t want men to make the same mistakes as me when it comes to treatment

I spent £30k on hair transplants. This is everything I learnt

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As a man, you’re seen as vain for caring about your receding hairline or a bald patch of scalp on the back of your head. The idea that a full, glossy head of hair makes you a real man is something that men are shown through TV, movies and social media: perfect hair makes you appealing to women. It’s a notion that goes back thousands of years to the Bible, where all of Samson’s strength is stored in his braids.
The same is starting to happen for beards, too, as they’re back in fashion in young people. This is a huge problem for male self-esteem as only just over half of men can grow a full beard in the first place. The ability to do so is a genetic lottery.
I was saddened to hear that Mathieu Vigier Latour, a French student, had tragically taken his own life at just 24, after a botched beard transplant carried out by an untrained estate agent in Istanbul, but not at all surprised. As a hair restoration expert, I meet countless men who’ve had a dodgy beard or hair transplant procedure that wrecked their self-esteem, and suicidal thoughts as a result aren’t rare.
I’ve been there myself – and I want to share my story so that other men don’t make the same mistakes.
My own hair loss began when I was just 21 – 30 per cent of men experience the onset of hair loss by 30. Before that, people used to call me The Hoff (David Hasselhoff’s nickname) because I had so much hair. It became a huge part of my identity.
Seeing it recede was traumatic. I’d wake up every morning, look in the mirror and despair. At first I was in denial, and refused to believe that I was losing my hair for good already. I had 13 separate hair transplant surgeries, largely repair procedures, before I was finally happy with my locks.
At around the same time, I lost my father in an accident, which turned my life upside down. My dad had the most fantastic head of hair, and I looked up to him enormously and wanted to be just like him. I began to fixate on my hair as the loss progressed and my mental health worsened, because I knew what was coming next. On my mum’s side of the family, all the men were fully bald by 25.
In 2002, shortly after university, I went travelling around the world. I was in America and went to watch the Super Bowl, where I saw an advert for hair restoration treatments at a renowned US clinic. I thought that this could solve all of my problems – but it was only the start of them.
The message from that American clinic was much the same as that thrown at younger men seeking the same work today, that the procedures involved are simple, affordable and totally pain-free. So the seed was planted, and because I’d already joined the family business, in property management, I had the £6,000 (or £11,000 in today’s money) to do it quickly.
I had my first hair transplant a month later, a relatively small procedure called a “strip” transplant. It’s an older technique where surgeons cut out a small strip from the back of your scalp, where your hair likely still grows, before dicing it up and implanting the follicles into your hairline where your hair has fallen out.
Then they stitch you back up again. Like many people who’ve had this sort of transplant performed on them shoddily, I was left with an unsightly scar on the back of my head that runs from ear to ear.
Most surgeries today use grafts of single follicles rather than a whole strip – though this can also cause scarring all over the back of your head if performed badly. I was told what to expect upfront, though not that I could be left with a scar that heals poorly. I still wanted to go through with the procedure because I was desperate for something that would make my hair look naturally full and be the “Hoff” again.
I had been living under a hat, even applying makeup like concealers to try and get my hair to look presentable. Clinics like the one I visited prey on that sort of desperation and tell people what they want to hear, to get them to hand over their cash.
I started to experience suicidal thoughts after that first surgery. My hairline looked very unnatural and “pluggy”, and the scar on my head was a brand new point of insecurity. It left me even more unhappy and isolated than I had been beforehand.
Hair transplants take at least six months to grow in, so I didn’t see any growth at all until then, but once it came in, I sought out more surgery to give me a more subtle appearance. I spent years flying back out to the States or to different clinics in Europe for two or three-day trips for different procedures to adjust my hairline and repair my scarring.
After my initial surgeries, I went back to living under a hat. I opened up to friends and family about the procedures I’d had in 2010, after I’d slowly started to go out and about with my head bare.
But my wife, Natalie, had known about my struggles with my hair since I met her in New Zealand while I was travelling, when I was 26. By that point I felt much more confident in my appearance, but I still hadn’t dared to date properly. It was pure luck that we met.
My wife has always been massively supportive of my work in the hair restoration space to help other men who are considering a transplant or have suffered a poor one. I’ve written a popular e-book about hair loss and my own experiences, called The Hair Raising Truth, and I give peer support and advice to other men through my website, Spex Hair. I often appear on the Bald Truth Radio Show.
Finally, in 2020 at the age of 44, after 15 years and more than £30,000 spent, I had the procedure that left me happy with my hair. It was carried out by surgeons at Harley Street Hair Clinic in London, where Wayne Rooney actually had his surgeries in 2011 and 2013, which made hair transplants more mainstream. When the growth came through half a year later, I finally felt at peace with my appearance. Four years on my hair looks naturally thick and healthy.
The most important thing for men to know is that a hair or beard transplant should be a last resort. There is a huge amount of deceit in the hair restoration industry, and it’s crucial that those interested seek out ethical and honest advice from a trusted surgeon.
Today I religiously take one milligram of finasteride, a hair loss prevention drug, every day, and I use a medicated shampoo called GroMD. I also use a minoxidil solution from Dense Hair Experts to keep blood flowing to my scalp. Had this been available to me in my twenties, I may never have needed a hair transplant in the first place.
Most importantly, though, I’d like younger men to know that it’s okay to feel however they do about their hair loss. Being distressed by it doesn’t make you some sort of egomaniac. Almost all of us men lose most of our hair, but having that happen when you feel it’s before your time can be crushing.
Fortunately there’s an awful lot of information on the internet about hair loss and how to stall or prevent it now. I would refer anyone who needs more information to the International Alliance of Hair Restoration Surgeons and plead with them not to rush into operations. It’s my hope that more men seek this sort of trusted support out, instead of hopping on planes to Turkey.
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