The Truth About the "Turkish Hairlines" Cure for Baldness (With Before-and-After Pics)
The condition we call male pattern baldness stretches back thousands of years, if not further. For so much of human history, it’s just been a fact of life — if you’re born with a penis between your legs, and you live long enough, you will die with the hair having left the top of your head.
Like so many physical experiences of being human, this predictability should mean that there’s no shame in it. As some people say, birthdays are just proof that life couldn’t kill you this year either.
But in societies where people care so much about how they’re seen by other people, and so much of how we’re seen by other people is visual, signs of aging are often more like a scarlet letter than a badge of honour — something to be ashamed of, something people want to try to hide.
Modern science has made incredible advances when it comes to helping people deny the realities of age, from plastic surgery operations to Viagra to Botox and more. People are willing to spend a lot of money in order to look younger than they feel, and feel younger than they are. And this economic reality drives wave upon wave of research into how to make people's dreams of eternal youth come true.
RELATED: Why Men Go Bald and What to Do About It
The past decade has brought with it a potentially world altering development — for a price, and not one reserved only for kings, you can stave off baldness in a way that’s both convincing and almost, dare we say it, natural. Surgeons have created the hair transplant, taking hair follicles from the back and sides of the patient’s head — regions not affected by traditional male pattern baldness – and grafting them to the top and front.
As this surgery heals, your body grows your own hair through pre-existing holes in your skin, the way it always did… but now you no longer look balding. It’s a kind of miracle. At least, that’s what the people offering this surgery — which is currently primarily associated with Turkiye — say. But what is it like in practice?
In the fall of 2024, AskMen’s senior editor, Alex Manley, received the treatment (as well as a round trip to Istanbul and hotel accommodations there) free of charge from EsteNove, a Turkish clinic, in return for an honest review. This is their story:
Background Info
As of this writing, I’m 37 years old. I first started losing my hair, like lots of guys do, in my 20s. I remember feeling a quiet shame about it for a long time before anything else happened, probably long before it was noticeable or visible to anyone else. I still remember one particular comment an acquaintance made about combovers when I was 25 or 26, and wondering whether it was pointed at me or not.
Still, as I aged, my hair continued to thin. It had always been quite fine, but the fineness combined with the thinning meant that if it got at all wet, it was easy to see right through to my scalp. Catching a glimpse of myself with sweaty hair was deeply painful. Going on dates or dressing up for nice events always entailed an unpleasant experience in front of the mirror.
When a PR person representing the Turkish hair transplant clinic EsteNove emailed me to ask if I’d be interested in undergoing the procedure in return for an AskMen review, I was shocked. It took many months of follow-up emails before I agreed to explore the idea in more depth, having a video call with one of the clinic’s surgeons to discuss the procedure and whether I qualified to undergo it.
After further thinking it over and getting legal clearance from AskMen’s parent company, the clinic’s PR person booked flights for me. I was going to Istanbul to get a famous Turkish hair transplant.
Hair Transplant Procedure
I flew from Montreal, where I live and where AskMen was founded, to Frankfurt and then to Istanbul, where I was met at the airport by a representative of the clinic. After a brief stop at the hotel, I got to see a little bit of the city thanks to a tour guide the clinic had arranged for, who walked me through the famous Hagia Sofia and surrounding area.
After a dinner with two other clinic associates, I went back to the hotel, located not far from the European bank of the Bosphorus Strait, to crash. I’d be up early the next morning getting my hair done, after all.
The next day, my ride (the clinic arranged for a chauffeured ride in a limo-esque car from a local service each time I had to get from one part of Istanbul to another) took me across the bridge into the Asian side of the city, to a private hospital where their surgeries take place.
Having them go down in a hospital context, as I learned, means there are medical doctors nearby should anything go wrong, and starting in the morning is important because they can take up to six hours.
After an initial round of photos to document the pre-surgery state of my hair, I had my head shaved. A surgeon then discussed what would happen with me and drew a new hairline on in purple marker.
As someone with a fairly pronounced widow’s peak beforehand, they wouldn’t be able to recreate that exact shape during the procedure, as the tip is located far enough down my forehead that it lies atop forehead muscles as opposed to taut scalp skin.
However, the surgeon made sure to give me a similar shape, as per my request, and worked some jags into his lines to produce a more natural hairline rather than one that was excessively clean.
The procedure itself, unfortunately, was not a particularly pleasant experience. I lay down on a table in the center of the operating room and they got to work numbing me. The clinic used a special technique to inject an initial anaesthetic into the scalp before actually using needles. However, the process of these two rounds of anaesthetic was quite painful. Not unbearable, but certainly the most physically painful thing I experienced in 2024.
Then, the surgery itself started. It was undertaken not by the surgeon I had spoken with, but by a trio of junior-seeming technicians who didn’t speak English. Getting a real-deal surgeon to perform the process is available as part of one of the more expensive packages; having a group of junior technicians working in tandem means the surgery moves faster.
Periodically, an EsteNove representative who could speak English came into the room and asked me how I was doing or updated me on the process. Otherwise, it was a lonely and strange experience as I watched my blood soak through tissues that accumulated on a side table and listened to the Turkish songs playing on the radio.
Around four or five hours into the procedure, I started to feel cold and weird, and clammy. I was getting the sweats and started to feel nauseous. When I attempted to communicate this with the technicians, it took multiple attempts before they paused the surgery.
When I did speak loudly enough to be heard, the English-speaking intermediary then rushed in to ask what was up, and the group sprang into action to address my discomfort. Most likely, the blood loss had started to get to me.
They tilted me at an angle so it would rush to my head, and attached me to a saline drip IV. Within a few minutes I started to feel better, and before long, the surgery continued, eventually ending not long afterward without further incident.
After its conclusion, I sat for another round of photos, before being offered a meal. The meal was the Turkish version of hospital food, and did not take into account my stated dietary preferences (I’m a vegetarian) so it ended up being a very underwhelming culinary experience after an unpleasant six hours on the table. Nevertheless, it was a relief to be done with the surgery.
I was run through the basics for taking care of myself over the next few days by a nurse, given a significant amount of special shampoos, sprays and multivitamins, as well as pills to reduce my swelling, pain and infection risk, then driven back to the hotel.
Back in my room, I was free to examine my head. The top area (called the AFSASFA area) was covered in a uniform crust composed of tiny ruby red scabs from where the follicles had been transplanted. It looked like my pate had been bejeweled. The back and sides, called the donor area, was covered in bandages. Exhausted from the experience, I fell asleep almost immediately, despite the fact that it was only about 6:30 p.m. local time.
Recovering From Hair Transplant Surgery
Though the initial surgical process only lasts for a few hours, it’s far from a one-and-done thing. As I learned, hair transplant surgery also involves a lengthy process of aftercare in order to protect your scalp, nourish the regrowing hair and give yourself the best chance at having a successful result that you’re happy with.
In the very short term, you’re taking the above-mentioned pills several times a day for the first week, avoiding direct sunlight, and wearing button- or zipper-based tops to avoid catching your recovering head any fabric while putting on a T-shirt or sweatshirt.
At night, you’re using an EsteNove-provided neck pillow to sleep semi-upright on your back for the first two weeks, to ensure that you don’t rub your recovering scalp on anything overnight.
For those accustomed to front or side sleeping, as I am, this may prove to be something of an adjustment period. I’m very good at falling asleep in general so it didn’t massively impact my sleep health, but your mileage may vary if you’re someone who struggles to fall asleep already.
Also, for the first few months, you need to take an EsteNove-provided multivitamin daily, spray an EsteNove-provided hair regrowth formula on your scalp twice a day, and wash your hair with an EsteNove-provided shampoo daily or once every other day.
Additionally, in the early going, you have to avoid any activity that might damage your scabbed-up scalp as it’s healing, including drinking alcohol, having sex, working out or any kind of sports, using a comb, swimming, wearing hats, getting your hair dyed, or spending time in dusty areas like construction sites.
As time passes, these restrictions drop off, until the six month mark, at which point you’re free to live your life normally (though you still have to use the shampoo and regrowth spray for several more months).
While these additions to my to-do list at times felt onerous, knowing they were in service of a greater good (having nice hair again) made them easier to bear. As well, EsteNove created a WhatsApp chat with one of their specialists, which not only meant I had someone to reach out to if ever I had any questions, but also meant that they were reaching out to me at regular intervals to monitor my regrowth process.
What to Consider Before Getting Hair Transplant Surgery
If you’re anything like me, hair loss probably bothered you for a long time before you started thinking about addressing it concretely.
During that decade-plus-long period between first noticing hair thinning and getting the procedure done, I had a lot of time to think about the issue, and a few years prior to the surgery I did try topical regrowth foam (did not see results after a month or two and discontinued use).
However, there were lots of aspects that I realize, in retrospect, I didn’t really think through, including doing research about the procedure beforehand.
Have you tried shaving all your hair off and seeing how it looks?
Fully bald may not be how you see yourself, but there’s no shortage of sexy men out there who’ve embraced the chrome-dome look, and until you have a visual of it, you might not know how it’ll look on you.
This was the case for me — I’d never imagined myself fully bald, only known that I hated feeling balding. When I looked in the mirror for the first time after the procedure, I saw what I looked like without hair for the first time.
Scabs from the surgery notwithstanding, I realized that the bald look worked on me a lot better than I’d anticipated. I’m not sure it would have been enough to forgo the surgery entirely given that I wasn’t paying for it, but it might have changed the calculus if I had been.
So, if you’re not sure you have the money to afford a hair transplant procedure, you might want to try baldness on for size and see how it feels.
If you’re too anxious to shave off your remaining hair, try getting someone to Photoshop an image or two of you to bald, or try on a bald cap. If you don’t hate what you see, you might have your answer — and one that’s much more affordable than a transplant.
Can you afford the plane ticket and hotel costs as well as the surgery itself?
Because the surgery is time-consuming and requires skilled technicians proficient in quickly and accurately transplanting the follicles, it isn’t cheap.
Even considering it’s taking place in a country like Turkiye where manual labor is cheaper than in America, the cost of a surgery is likely out of reach for the average person.
The package that I underwent costs $3,500, which is a sizable chunk of change, but keep in mind you’ll also need to pay for travel and accommodations costs.
Further, you’ll need to plan to remain in Istanbul for two nights after the surgery as you undergo the initial healing and remain close by for additional checkups. Even with relatively cheap flights, you’re most likely looking at $5,000, before considering food and drink.
If you travel with a friend, relative or partner, that can reduce your overall accommodation costs, but their travel costs won’t be negligible and they’ll have to leave you behind to enjoy themselves in Istanbul.
Can you handle waiting six months before your hair grows in?
The hair transplant procedure doesn’t lead to overnight results — nor is it effortless.
In order to set yourself up for success, there’s a long list of products, behaviors and situations to avoid, as well as taking pills and using foam daily, plus regularly using special shampoos and hairsprays. You’ll spend the first six months likely spending much more time caring for your hair than you ever have before.
Further, you’re not supposed to wear a hat during the early months of recovery, which means going outside is an exercise in letting people see your scabbed-over head.
If you live in a particularly hot, cold or wet climate, not having any head protection can be a non-trivial difficulty to navigate. Thankfully, EsteNove provided me with a free (branded) bucket hat to protect my scalp from the sun during months 3-4.
Hair Transplant Results
So, here’s why you probably clicked on the article. Does the procedure work? The short answer is yes. Here’s some photo evidence to give you a sense:
As noted above, the procedure did not immediately grant me thick, beautiful hair. In fact, even the end result isn’t as dense as the natural hair of people with average or high-density locks. However, it’s both significantly denser than the pre-procedure result and dense enough to easily pass as a full head of hair with minimal product use, brushing or sculpting.
Whenever people in my life commented on it, they were impressed with how good it looked. Regularly getting compliments on my hair was a non-negligibly nice part of the experience, and something I wasn’t super used to during my period of having very thin hair.
In practical terms, this meant that the period after the hair had mostly grown in, around the six month mark, was one marked by radically decreased levels of hair stress for me.
I no longer worried about how my hair looked at regular intervals. I no longer felt anxious about being caught in the rain or getting sweaty. I no longer felt the need to keep a baseball cap on me at all times when going cycling during the summer, because when I took off my helmet, the top of my head didn’t look like a gruesome piece of trash. And I no longer worried about how I’d look several years down the road as my hair loss worsened.
This is perhaps the true achievement of the hair transplant procedure. It can’t make you magically love yourself or the way you look, but it can remove a significant source of anxiety, stress and self-doubt from your day-to-day experience via a single-day procedure that, combined with approximately a year of aftercare, will produce potentially lifelong results.
If you have the money to afford it and are comfortable either looking strange or hiding from the world during the first few months of the regrowth period, it’s absolutely worth it. And frankly, it does genuinely feel somewhat miraculous. It’s incredibly impressive that human ingenuity has made such a thing possible, and that there are technicians skilled in the art of translating it to the real world.
However, if you, like most people, can’t spend several thousand dollars on a cosmetic procedure, options like trying out the fully bald look or waiting for alternate hair regrowth options to come on the market (or for this one to become more accessible) may be the better bet. Wiping out your savings or going into debt for such a procedure is highly unlikely to be a wise approach.
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