Stem cells for hair: the part that’s decided before you arrive

This is the only page here about something I haven’t done to myself. My hair was never a thing I had to think about, so I have no timeline of my own to hand you, and I’m not going to invent one. What I have is the other side of the conversation. I’m the one people write to before they decide to come to Bangkok, and I’m the one they write to afterwards to tell me what happened. This page is that view.

 

Jump to: What I can and can’t tell you · Why the timing is nearly all of it · What happens on the day · Before and after the appointment · What the first weeks look like · The ones I remember didn’t come for their hair · What I say when somebody asks if it’s worth it · The questions I get · Who this isn’t for · Side effects · What I was told it does

 

What I can and can’t tell you

The rule I built this on is that we don’t offer anything we haven’t tried on ourselves first. This is the page where I have to tell you that rule has a hole in it, and I’d rather say so at the top than have you find it at the bottom.

 

I haven’t had this one. There was nothing to do. So there’s no week-by-week here, no before and after of mine, and nothing I can put my own name to the way I can on the other pages.

 

What I’m not short of is the conversation. I speak to these people myself: while they’re deciding, which is usually a long stretch of questions, and then again after, when they tell me what did or didn’t change. I’m not reading a summary somebody else wrote. But it’s still their body and not mine, and I’ll keep flagging that as we go, because the distance matters more on this page than anywhere else on this site.

 

Why the timing is nearly all of it

Here’s the thing I say to every single person who asks, and it is a terrible sales line.

 

If there’s nothing there, you can’t wake something that’s already dead.

 

The explanation I was given is that this works by signalling to follicles that are weakened but still alive. It is talking to something that still exists. Which means the ceiling on what’s possible was set long before anybody books anything. Not by the injection, and not by anything anyone does on the day. It’s set by how much is still there on the day you ask.

 

That produces a shape I find awkward to sit with. The person most desperate to do something about it is usually the person furthest down the road, with the least left to work with. The person it has the most to work with is the one who has noticed a bit more scalp in a photograph and decided it’s nothing to worry about yet. “Earlier is better” isn’t a slogan. It’s the explanation read backwards.

 

I’ve got two people in mind while I write that, and they’re standing at opposite ends of the same line.

 

One is a man in his forties who came here for something else entirely: a pain problem that had nothing to do with his head. While he was at it, he added the hair treatment, and the reason he gave was that he was worried about how thin it might get later. Not now. Later. His wife’s view, which he passed on himself and seemed to enjoy passing on, was that he was imagining the whole thing. He is the person this has the most to work with, and he arrived almost by accident.

 

The other had been dealing with hair loss for years before she ever wrote to me, with a long history behind her and other medication in the picture. She asked better questions than almost anybody I’ve spoken to. She just asked them later.

 

Neither of those is a result, and I’m not going to turn them into one. One of them reported back to me about something else entirely, and the other hasn’t told me. I’m telling you where they were standing when they walked in, because that is the part this page is actually about.

 

I’ve written elsewhere that you don’t miss what leaves you slowly. Hair is the strange exception to my own sentence. It’s the one thing you can actually watch leaving, in the mirror, for years, and still do nothing about. I don’t say that to hurry anybody. I say it because it’s the one place where the usual excuse doesn’t hold.

 

What happens on the day

A numbing agent goes on first. Then the cells go into the scalp across the area being treated, by injection and by microneedling. The appointment is about half an hour. This isn’t the one that goes into a vein, there’s no surgery and no stay, and you walk out and get on with the rest of your day.

 

Every person I can think of who did this did it alongside something else: a joint, an infusion, their face, a drip. The explanation I was given is that hair tends to do better when it’s approached from more than one direction at once than with any single thing on its own.

 

I’m deliberately not telling you how many sessions, or how far apart. Those answers are different for the man who wrote to me this morning than for the woman who wrote yesterday, and they’re set by a doctor after seeing you in person. Copying them off a stranger’s website is how people end up disappointed by something that was never designed for them.

 

Before and after the appointment

This is the list I was given to pass on. It’s the clinic’s, not mine.

 

Before: drink enough water the day before. Eat something light and not oily on the day. If you colour your hair, do it at least seven days before. Wash your hair on the morning of the appointment.

 

After: stay out of direct sun for at least 24 hours. Go gently on your hair and scalp for the next few days, with no hard brushing and no hot styling. Skip anything strenuous for 24 hours. Keep drinking water. Leave harsh chemical products alone for a few days.

 

What the first weeks look like

The explanation I was given is that hair grows on its own cycle, and nothing about that gets rushed. The first change people are told to look for comes at around four to six weeks, and it keeps moving over three to six months. That’s slower than almost anything else I write about here. So the first fortnight generally tells you nothing, and the people who come expecting it to tell them something are the ones who get anxious.

 

One man wrote to me a week after his appointment. He’d come over around his sixtieth birthday and had an infusion at the same time, and he wrote to say his hair and nails were growing. I was glad he felt that good. I don’t count it. By the explanation I was given, a week is far too soon for the scalp to have had anything to say, and I’d rather tell you that than put his sentence on this page as if it were a result.

 

The thing people thank us for most, when they do, isn’t a result. It’s having been told in advance which part probably wasn’t going to move. I’ve never once regretted saying that to somebody beforehand.

 

The ones I remember didn’t come for their hair

If you asked me for the cases that stuck in my memory, they’d all be the wrong cases for you to plan around, and I’ll tell you why in a second.

 

They’re the people who came in for something else entirely. Something structural, something systemic, something that had nothing to do with how they looked. Then somewhere down the line, the thing they mention to me, sometimes months later and usually as an aside, is their hair. Nobody sold it to them. Nobody wrote it on a form.

 

One person told me that a few days after something unrelated, their hair had stopped coming out the way it had been. Another, recovering from a long illness, put their skin and their hair near the bottom of a much longer list.

 

I’ve watched that pattern often enough now that I expect it, and I still can’t use it. The thing that makes those cases remarkable is exactly the thing that makes them useless as a promise: nobody saw them coming, including us. You cannot order that outcome. If somebody shows you a page of stories like those and asks you to book on the strength of them, what they’re selling you is the one part of this nobody controls.

 

What I say when somebody asks if it’s worth it

I don’t answer should-I questions. That isn’t modesty. I’ve never met a version of that question that had enough information in it for a stranger to answer.

 

What I do instead is turn it around and ask what’s still there. That’s the only question that decides anything.

 

When somebody who lost it years ago writes to me wanting to hear that this is the thing that brings it back, I tell them what I’ve told you: you can’t wake what’s dead. That answer loses us bookings most weeks. I’m glad about all of it, and if this ever stops being worth saying, you should stop reading anything on this site.

 

For hair, it’s often not a short conversation. The people who’ve thought about it longest tend to write to me for weeks before they book anything, and I’d rather have those weeks than not.

 

The questions I get

Will it bring hair back where there’s none left?

No. That’s the whole point of the timing section above, and it’s the answer I give most often.

 

How fast?

The explanation I was given is a first change at around four to six weeks, still moving at three to six months. Anyone telling you it’ll be sooner is telling you about their marketing, not your scalp.

 

Is it permanent?

I don’t have a ten-year answer for you, and I’d be suspicious of anybody who does. What I’d say is this: whatever was happening to your hair before is still the thing happening to your hair. Nothing here switches that off.

 

Does it matter why my hair is going?

More than anything else on this page. What I was told is that hair loss isn’t one thing. It can be the inherited kind that follows your hormones. It can be shedding after a period of stress. It can be a hormonal shift, such as pregnancy, menopause or the thyroid. It can be inflammation or poor circulation in the scalp. Or it can be the immune system turning on the follicles. Which one is yours is a question for a doctor who has looked at your scalp, not for me and not for a search box.

 

Does it hurt?

I haven’t had it, so I’m not going to describe a sensation I’ve never felt. What I can pass on is this: a numbing agent goes on first, and the people who’ve told me about the appointment afterwards described it as quick and surprisingly comfortable. One simply called it pleasant. Those are their words, not mine.

 

Is it for men or women?

I’ve had this conversation with both. In the conversations I’ve had, what’s behind it tends to be different from one person to the next, and that matters far more than who’s asking.

 

Is this the same thing as exosomes?

No. The explanation I was given is that exosomes are something cells release, not cells themselves. This page is about cells. People ask me to compare the two all the time, and I’m not going to do it here.

 

Can I do this alongside other things?

Almost everyone I’ve spoken to did. The explanation I was given is that hair tends to do better with more than one approach at once than with any single one, and PRP is one of the things people pair it with. Which combination suits your scalp is a doctor’s question.

 

I’m already on other medication. Does that matter?

Put it on the table before, not after. A lot of the people who ask me about this are already taking something that has its own relationship with hair. That’s common enough that it’s usually the first thing worth mentioning, and it should go to whoever is looking after you rather than into a search box.

 

Who this isn’t for

This is the screening list as it was given to me. The old version of this page didn’t have one at all, which tells you something.

 

An active infection at the time. Active cancer. Pregnancy and breastfeeding, with a wait of six months after giving birth. An autoimmune condition that isn’t under control.

 

And one more that isn’t medical and gets left off every list like this: unrealistic expectations. It’s on ours on purpose. It’s the most common reason somebody shouldn’t do this, and it’s the only one on the list that a conversation can fix.

 

Side effects

I can’t give you my own account here, and that’s why this list matters more on this page than on the others, not less.

 

What I was handed for the scalp itself: some redness or tenderness where it was treated, for a day or two, and a scalp that can feel sensitive for one to three days.

 

What I was handed for cell treatments generally: a low-grade fever, feeling tired for a day or two, soreness where the needle went, a mild headache or chills, and something that feels like the start of flu and then isn’t.

 

“I was fine” is a sentence I’ve earned the right to say on other pages. I haven’t earned it on this one.

 

What I was told it does

I’m not going to explain the biology in my own words, because it isn’t mine to explain.

 

The explanation I was given is that it signals to weakened follicles that are still living, and that it supports regeneration in the scalp itself. It is said to act through cell signalling and tissue repair, and to be associated with support for continued growth. What people usually look at when they judge it is density, the thickness of each hair, and the condition of the scalp underneath.

 

There is published work behind that, and two pieces are listed at the bottom of this page. I’m not the person to weigh them up for you, and I’m not going to wave them at you as proof of anything. That’s a move I distrust when other people make it.

 

So here’s the honest ledger. That’s the list of what it’s said to do. On this one page out of all of them, the list of what I’ve watched happen in my own body is empty.

 

Related: Stem cells: the whole of it · Stem cells for skin and face · What to expect on the day · Safety questions I get asked

 

Everything on this page happened to other people. That’s the limit of it, and I’d rather draw the line myself than let you assume it isn’t there.

 

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References

1. Anderi R, Makdissy N, Azar A, Rizk A, Daouk R. Stem cell therapy for alopecia areata: review and clinical applications. J Dermatolog Treat. 2020.

2. Qu M, Xiong L, Lyu Y, et al. Exosomes in hair regeneration: from pathophysiology to treatment. Front Cell Dev Biol. 2022.

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4. I’m George. Thirty years in business, then ten years trying this whole field on myself before offering it to anyone else.

5. This is where I write down what I use, what I stopped using, and what I’d never do again. More about me →