Footballer Wayne Rooney seems to be in the press more for his hair than his goal scoring ability these days. True to form, he has recently been crowned number one celebrity hair transplant, with actor James Nesbitt, chef Gordon Ramsay and even Elton John making the top 10.
Whilst hair transplants are a good way to remedy shiny bald areas of hair loss, it's better to see them as the last resort, rather than the first port of call when looking to treat your thinning hair. We see so many men at our London clinics who think that a hair transplant is the only solution to their hair loss woes, but there are other less invasive options.
Before we look at other ways to treat hair loss, let's first take a look at the trials and tribulations of our Wayne and his ever changing hairdo. Back in June 2011, the Manchester and England star set Twitter ablaze by announcing that he'd had a hair transplant, on the basis that he was going bald at 25 and thought "why not?"
However, when just six months later Rooney's hair was looking thin once again, poor Wayne may well have been wondering, just, "why?" The answer to this question lies in the fact that there is no 'cure' for hair loss, and hair transplants need to be maintained, even when the hair being transplanted is from areas which generally don't bald, like the back of your own head.
If you fail to maintain your transplant, you may well end up needing another one, which makes it a rather costly temporary fix (Rooney allegedly forked out 30k for the pleasure!) even for a premiership footballer. If only Wayne had had a chance to do some research on his hair loss earlier: for areas of the scalp affected by male pattern baldness, which will usually appear as a receding hair line or thinning on the crown, a treatment course including medication can often be enough to halt the rate of hair loss and regrow hair naturally, without the need to turn your scalp into a hair jigsaw puzzle.
There's no need to limit yourself to one medication, either. A combined treatment approach using two clinically approved medications: Propecia tablets and a high strength minoxidil cream, can block the hormone that causes hair loss on the scalp in men with a genetic disposition to it, and also help scalp follicles begin to produce healthy, thicker hair once again.
So, before you start moving your hair around, check in with a hair loss specialist and find out whether a hair transplant is absolutely necessary, and unless you're totally bald on the top of your head, it probably isn't. If Wayne is busy kicking himself for not acting sooner with his hair loss when he should be kicking his way to some goal scoring action, don't follow in his footsteps- check out your other options first.