- Now the robot stuff begins. - [Doctor] We'll be doing robotic hair restoration for the hairline. - Whoa! By far the boldest thing
I've ever done with my hair. It's crazy, it's just one day for me to just get over this thing that has been silently
eating away at me for years. Oh my God, my face! - You look awful! - [Zach] Thank you! And over the course of the day, I'm like, huh, am I crazy, or is my
head turning into a blueberry? This is just literally, if I try and smile, this
is what it looks like. (upbeat rock music) - I'm getting hair restoration surgery. This is the first thing that really bothers me, is that it's just going back. I really debated a lot about whether to make these videos or not. I wasn't going to. I just said, you know what,
this is just a thing for me. This is my personal life, and I'm just gonna go ahead and fix it. I don't know, it felt weird to do this and to try and hide it. We share so much of our lives with you that to hide this would
feel so hypocritical. If doing my hair that day gets me excited and makes me feel good, I wanna do that. But if I don't wanna do my hair that day, I wanna also do that. - So, when I was looking
up Barber Surgeons Guild, because of the robotic
technology that they had, that's when I knew that that would put his hair concerns at rest. Because your concern was surgery, and your other concern was scarring. - I'm hoping that through this video, you can understand why I'm doing it and why I felt this was a
necessary step in my life, but also that if this is something that you're struggling with
or you have similar anxieties, that you know that there are options, and hopefully these two videos can show you what those options are. (rock music) - We sorta break things here
into two different categories. What can we do to stop hair loss? And then what can we do to bring hair back that's already lost. The bringing hair back
that's already lost, that's restoration. So, as a rule of thumb for
guys, what we wanna do is kinda average this between chin and nose, nose and brows, brows to hairline. Also, raise your eyebrows all the way up. You never wanna get
really about a centimeter too close to that future highest crease. It'll look funny down the road. - For me you recommended,
was it, Zone One restoration? - Yeah, so, frontal hairline,
temples, edges we call them. So, we'll draw it out together,
you know, moving individual hair follicles from here to
here, to add more density. - And, that's kind of
reconstructing the hairline. - That's reconstructing things, yeah, and giving you more natural hairs there, more volume you can work
with in defining things. - The thing that drives me crazy
is that I put my hair here, but then, sometimes.
There's like a line, there's like a little triangle between
the bottom of my hair... - I think the best thing to do for you is we kind of take this central line, and we just kind of bring this
down a little bit, over here, and we re-establish these angles. The most important
thing to keep in mind is this is the hairline we are committing to, not just for now, but
for when you're older, because these are permanent
hairs that we're moving, so we don't want to make it inappropriate-looking as you age. We want to keep it... - What would inappropriate be? - Well, I mean, you don't want to go and make a 16-year old hairline,
and be an 85-year old guy. - I want to look the way
I looked when I was a kid, because I was an awkward
looking kid. (laughs) So, it's haircut day, the
day before the procedure. He said we're going high and tight, and I just found out how high and how tight we're going. Oh my, wow! - So, first, you're going
to come in the day before, and we're going to do our
pre-procedure haircut, and style consultation
with one of our stylists. We'll take the back and sides short, and then you'll get
the opportunity to chat with one of our stylists,
too, about the hairline, kinda bring some thoughts
to the table in the morning. - So, your challenge is like, you have to make it high
enough for the surgery, but you don't want it to look stupid. - Yeah, I wanna give
you a wearable haircut. - Whoa! Whoa. That's different. - Hey! All right! Wow! - [Zach] It's very different! - That is a tight fade! - [Zach] Yeah. - With that, and your new
glasses, you look like your name is Zachariah,
- Very hipster. - You live in Brooklyn, yeah. (surprised gasping) - Whoa! My goodness! You look like a Rugrat. - [Zach] A rugrat? (laughs) - So, what's the benefit
of acting proactively, versus waiting until it's something you can't ignore anymore. - The longer you wait, the more you lose. First, it's going to
save you a lot of money. Second, you're not going to change your look so dramatically. - A lot of people, in
their head, they're like, I'll just wait until it gets
worse, and worse, and worse, and then do something about it. - For me, I've tried to ignore it. - The thing is, when you do a procedure, it really does take six months to a year to really appreciate the
final results from it, and enjoy those benefits. We always encourage
people to do something. Stop the progression of hair loss. - Holy hipster Moses! I just look like a
totally different person! I think it's the hair, plus the glasses. Like, I look like the guy at
a party who's telling you why gentrification is good, and also bad. I look like I brew my own Kombucha. I look like I want you to know why I listen to vinyl, and only vinyl. I look like I traded in my
car for a fixed gear bike. This is something to work with, and I do think it'll
grow in more naturally. I do think this is definitely
better than being bald, and you know, they were
trying to give me a haircut that achieves what they need
to achieve for the surgery, but, I can wear, and grow into... I'm nervous for tomorrow, I don't know, it's all so much more real,
now that I have this haircut. It is crazy, like this is, by far, the boldest thing I have
ever done with my hair. I'm just gonna go forward, confidently, and, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what else to say. I'll see you tomorrow. So, we're here, it's the day
of the procedure, I don't know, there's really nothing more to say. Let's just do it, I guess, right? - Good to see you again, man. - Yeah, likewise. - All right. So, we've done
a few things for you already, and you're looking great. So, today what we are doing is, we're going to be using the robot, taking some of these hairs back here and filling in this area
of thinning up here. - Okay. - The procedure starts
pretty early in the morning, you arrive between 7:00
and 7:30 in the morning, we start the planning. That takes us about half an hour. We're going to draw things out together, take a bunch of measurements,
take into consideration, if you talked to the
stylist the day before, and we're going to make a plan. I don't want to change your look too much, I just want to give you a lot of density. Change this roundedness, and give it a little bit more
of an angular sort of look. You can always go lower
later, you can't go higher. Let's draw it out,
splitting the difference, and see how it looks. - Yeah. We're going to go a
little more conservative, because I still want to be me. - This is what we propose. - Oh, wow! Yeah, I mean, looks good to me. - All right, we have a plan? - We got a plan! - So, I'm just drawing the box
back here, that the doctor's going to numb, where we're
going to get the hair from. - Why do you need it short? - [Nurse] For the robot to recognize it. The robot needs it between one millimeter and 1.3 millimeters. - [Zach] The robot's not that smart yet. - That makes it smart,
because it can recognize it shorter than we can. - Are you lint rolling my head? - I'm hair rolling your hair. (Zach laughs) - At that point, we give
you what we call the hookah, it's our nitrous oxide machine
that's an on-demand system. - So, the pain level is
low, and I'm going to be able to just drive myself home after this? - The way we do it, yes. The nice thing about using the nitrous is a very short half-life. So, it's very quickly acting, but very quickly out of your system. - All right, once you start
feeling that a little bit, we'll start with the numbing injections. This is really the worst
part of the day, okay? It's super quick. - Okay. - So, just focus on this vibration here, it's going to help distract the nerves, the same nerves that respond
to pain respond to vibration. There's a little bit of adrenaline mixed in with this numbing fluid. - That's why I'm feeling
hyped up right now. - If you're feeling a
little bit, yeah exactly. - Okay, because I didn't
have any caffeine today, and I feel hyped the fuck up. - All right, I think
that's going to do it. I'm gonna let that soak in
there for about five minutes. - That was the tough part. - That's the tough part. That's it. - So, if you feel anything
sharp throughout this process, you have to let me know, okay? - Okay. - Otherwise, I won't know,
and I'll just keep going. I will be making the new hair pores. - You're making new pores? - [Dr. Rome] New pores for the hair, so that's a manual process. Little tiny millimeter
little pores everywhere. And that, you're not
going to feel a thing. - So, is he, just like, stabbing little holes
in my head right now? - [Cameraman] That's what
it kinda looks like, yeah. - So, you do this manually? - [Dr. Rome] Yes. - [Zach] And then, the robot... - [Dr. Rome] Gets us the hair. - [Zach] That's so crazy. I've recently started doing
acupuncture. Is it like that? - It's less painful than
acupuncture, because it's all numb. You're not going to feel a thing. - [Greg] You notice, we
always call it procedure. Dr. Rome doesn't even
like to call it surgery, the "S" word, because
it's so non-invasive. - [Dr. Rome] It's not
like...there's no stitches. - [Greg] You're awake the whole time. - I've always been like,
when am I gonna have a month to not be on camera, to recover. - [Dr. Rome] We treat a lot of people that are on camera, performers. Within 7-9 days, generally
anyone can be back on camera after this. - [Cameraman] What's going on over here? - Oh! A mistake to look at! (laughs) - [Cameraman] You don't
think that's awesome? - (stutters) - [Cameraman] Look how cool that is! - Okay, let me just look at
it again, with the perspective of "Wow, how cool!" Wow, I mean, yeah, that is pretty cool. Okay, I'm gonna really watch. (Zach laughs) Oh, my god! When you think of hair restoration, you think of the horrible plugs, or like toupees from the 70s. - Back in the day, oh, man, the surgeries were totally crazy. I mean, things that you would
do if you really wanted hair. First of all, there's no hair transplants, so they, basically, put a breast
implant under your skin... - I'm sorry, what? - Oh yeah, you were walking
around for months with a - With a boob head?
- giant implant. Yeah. Then the plugs came out. The hair plugs were this procedure where you take these big punches of five, six millimeter punches, and put in, and it never
really looked good. - Yeah. - After that, this procedure came out called the strip procedure, commonly known as follicular
unit transplant, or FUT. - So that is, they take hair from the back and then you put it other places. - Yeah, they take hair
and skin, like a big cut. - Like a long strip of skin.
- Chunk it out. - Ear to ear.
- Either staple it closed, or suture it closed. You're left with a big scar,
pain after the procedure, numbness that can last sometimes forever because you cut the nerves
that travel up this way. And then in the 90s, what we call follicular unit transplant,
one hair at a time, came out. From there, now we're doing robotic FUE. What they were doing in the 90s, doing one at a time with a little punch, we're using a robot with
artificial intelligence and algorithms that can help
us identify and scan the hair. So it's come quite a long way. - It's weird to say, but this is a totally pleasant experience. - Yeah. - When I get up, am I allowed
to stretch and bend over? Or if I bend over will blood
shoot out from my head? - No, you can stretch out. This looks awesome, man.
- Sick. - I'm really happy with the way it looks. - I love how enthusiastic you guys are. Like every time they do something good, they're like "Oh yeah,
this looks really good." - So you can see here all
the new sites are created. He has a part to the right. The pattern kinda goes like
this, and it's gonna be awesome. - Yeah, I mean, that wasn't bad at all. It was very pleasant. I'm almost woozy just because
I've been pseudo-napping. And I was told that was the bad part. I feel like that was worse for you watching than it
was for me experiencing it. Now the robot stuff begins. But first I'm gonna go pee. 'Cause I am literally
an eighty year old man. (upbeat rock music) All right, so we're doing it? - We're doing it. You're gonna feel some pressure at first, and then it'll release, okay? - Okay. - [Dr. Rome] So the robot is going to start harvesting the hairs one at a time and we'll be taking each hair out that the robot frees and elevates. - Is it doing it? - [Nurse] Yes. - Whoa, I feel nothing. - [Nurse] That's good. - It actually kinda feels nice. - [Dr. Rome] Actually the first
surgical robot in the world, not even just for hair, that uses true artificial intelligence. So it's actually autonomously moving and making its own decisions in real time based on how
we set our parameters. So as the robot is harvesting, what you see on the screen
are a few different things. First, you see some green dots. It's the robot tagging, and identifying, and counting all the hair follicles. So, it gives us a live read of essentially how many
hair follicles there are. Those green circles
represent the next move. And then there's the purple
circle which is two moves ahead. Blue circles represent
a blocked out radius, how much of an area we want to block off from any hair that it takes. - I basically just monitor Chappie to make sure that he doesn't go too close to each other when he's punching. 'Cause I can move my hand and he can pretty much just go for it. - [Zach] If you're taking
hairs from the back of my head, I'm not gonna look thin in
the back of my head now? - No because remember
we said that you need 50% of the hair loss here before
you start seeing thinning. So at the same time here,
I would have to take 50% of these hairs before
it looks thin there. With one procedure, I don't
know maybe I take 5-8% of the hairs back there. It's not significant. - You said 5%?
- Five percent to 10%. - That's all it takes? - For a procedure like
this, not more than that. Then what we do is take them and then we examine them
under the microscope. Make sure they have every component that they need to be
successful for growth. And then we take those
hairs after we examine them and we mix them with it
with this ATP solution. That's adenosine triphosphate. Basically energy for hair to help increase survivability of the hairs. And since I already made the hair pores, the new recipient sites this morning, then we go and put those right back in. - Ooh, I had a crazy night with Chappie. I swear it is so soothing. We've been working really hard and this is kind of like a
much needed break for me. So now you guys are taking my little hairs and you're putting them
in the holes in my head. Is that correct? - Yes. - And then what keeps them there? - [Nurse] Your blood kinda
coagulates around them and acts like glue and holds
them until it figures out that it's the same DNA
as the rest of your body. Then it starts the healing process. - [Zach] Oh, so if you put someone else's hair follicles in my head,
would my body reject it? - [Nurse] Yeah, it would
definitely reject it and push it back out. - Also, I've just been refreshing emails. I've been texting the rest of the guys. I've just been like hanging out. - So the benefits of robotic
FUE versus obviously the strip, in my opinion, is number one, no scar. There's no pain after this procedure. I've done thousands of these. We just get such accurate
reads of the hair follicles, we can identify exactly
what we want to get. - So there's thousands upon thousands of men out there in the
world who have done... - Millions. - Millions of men. - Oh yeah, this is the most common considered cosmetic or
aesthetic procedure for men. All right, so this is what
I turned your blood into. - What are you talking about? My blood's not yellow. That looks like you peed in a syringe. You're basically just putting
blood back on top of my head? - [Dr. Rome] You can think of this as like fertilizer essentially. - I will think of it as
fertilizer atop my supple head. - All right, so I'm just
gonna unwrap you here and finish cleaning you up. - [Zach] It's crazy, it's
just like one day for me to just get over this thing that has been silently
eating away at me for years. I'm grateful that I finally
mustered the courage to confront this and
do something about it. Hey, thank you guys so
much. I appreciate it. - [Woman] You're welcome. - It's my pleasure. - Thank you. After I leave here, there's a lifestyle change as well, right? - So you made that first step, so now you want to maintain that. So as your hair starts to grow back and gets thicker and fuller, start changing the products you use. Change the way you look at the products. - So from when you do the
restoration for the hairs to kind of grow back full and strong, that's about a 12 month journey? - Yeah, so after a few months
they'll just begin to grow out and then this really takes about a year before the final results come in. - It's the day after the surgery, back in the office. Do you guys wanna see my scalp? - Yes. - Kind of. - I want to see your brains. - Three, two, one. - Oh, how 'bout that. - [Keith] The back looks funny. (mumbles) Wow, it's got the most clotting. - So recovery was relatively
easy, pretty painless. I had all these crazy looking scabs. They gave me this antibacterial cream that I rub gently on the back of my head. But a few days in, I did notice that my face was getting... puffy. Oh my god, my face. It's day three and I'm realizing that maybe I should've iced my face more. Apparently with inflammation, once you got it, you just gotta wait. So this is my face for the next few days. So I'm taking Bowie on his walk. I'm out in the world and
just trying to pretend that I don't look totally crazy. It looks like I had someone
beat the shit out of me. So over the next couple of days, my face continues to swell until I am totally and
completely unrecognizable. Hello (laughs) I am four days post-op and I woke up this morning and I was like, "Hmm, I wonder if my
swelling has gotten better?" It hasn't. I look crazy. I look like my face got
stung by a hundred bees. I'm definitely super self
conscious when I go out in public. I just went to pick up a salad and I just kinda kept my
head down the whole time. I just, I don't know. It's just literally if I try and smile, this is what it looks like. (goofy giggling) - Oh no! (laughs) - [Zach] Is it sadder in person? - Oh my god, it's so much worse. (laughs) It's so much worse! Does it hurt? - [Zach] Nuh-uh. - You look awful. - [Zach] Thank you! (Kelsey laughs) So Maggie is convincing me
to take off my sweatpants and get out into the world, so I'm trying to just gently comb. Now I look like a dad on vacation. The weirdest thing is
throughout the whole week, I looked like a real human,
I just didn't look like me. Like that guy exists
somewhere in the world. His name's probably... Bobby. It's my first time out in the
world, so I'm just documenting that I kind of look almost normal. - Yeah, your face is really growing on me. I mean, I know it's
growing on you, literally, but it's growing on me. - I am one week post-op. My face swelling is almost entirely gone and now every morning I get
to soak my head in a towel. Back of the head looks good. And now these are all gonna fall out. What do you think? This is your first time
seeing it in person. - It looks incredible, not only that, but from a distance when you were walking, I thought you were a different person. - Wow. - I fucking love it bro. - I said this before
in our other interview, but I would not have done this
without you, so thank you. Then we get to think about
what hairstyles we want to do. - I know. That's what I'm excited for. - I am so, so happy that I did this. And I am so psyched and amped to see what it's gonna look like
six months down the road. This whole journey has really
allowed me to own something that has been weighing down on
me so negatively for so long. Instead of it controlling
me, now I'm controlling it. I am excited to have my hair back and to be able to do things with it. And yeah, I'll probably have some days where I just let it go. Honestly, I just wanna do the messy look. That's my dream. If I could just hashtag
wake up like this, ugh. (sentimental piano music) (upbeat rock music) (funky techno music)
