Turkey with the good hair

Speaker 1 Have you seen people on social media talking about going to Turkey? I'm going to Turkey, baby.

Speaker 1 Thoughts on people going to Turkey for these hair implants?

Speaker 3 Very, very good. Okay.

Speaker 3 Turkey is really... You know, I'm not a big fan of medical tourism.
I was on Nightline talking about medical tourism, the dangers of medical tourism. But Turkey and hair transplants...

Speaker 5 They know what they're doing.

Speaker 6 There are five reasons why I chose Turkey for my hair transplant. Reason number one is, of course price.
Turkey is one of the cheapest places you can go to to get your hair transplant done.

Speaker 6 Every single

Speaker 5 I know has gone to Turkey.

Speaker 5 To get the transplant?

Speaker 4 Oh yeah.

Speaker 5 Like

Speaker 5 RuPaul has this euphemism for dying. Say you know so-and-so has left for Paris.

Speaker 5 And I say, well, she's gone to Turkey.

Speaker 1 Men are going to Turkey and they're not going to see the Hagia Sophia. We're going to look into what's going on in Istanbul, Istanbul, Istanbul, on Today Explained.

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Speaker 1 Turkey, Turkey, Turkey, Turkey.

Speaker 1 Alex Abad Santos, you wrote a piece for Vox.com about a trend I've seen on social media lately, men traveling to Turkey for hair transplants.

Speaker 1 You see people going, oh, he went to Turkey or Turkey did him a solid. Wow, Turkey really ate with that hair.

Speaker 1 Why is everyone saying this all of a sudden? Is it all of a sudden or have been people saying this forever?

Speaker 4 I mean, Turkey really ate with that hair. It's pretty good.
I like the idea that the entire country of Turkey just decided to make this man's hair really great.

Speaker 4 I think there's a lot of male beauty that's obviously popped up, a lot of style. And I think one of the things that kept popping up for my algorithm was, I just got a hair transplant in Turkey.

Speaker 4 Here's what it is. And then it eventually became like this meme and it's like ironic joke of like guys in Turkey who have all like bleeding skulls.

Speaker 4 So I think it's becoming like this pop culture thing that like Turkey is a place for hair transplants, whether it's like social media or celebrity gossip or celebrity gossip and social media together.

Speaker 4 Huh? There's a lot of turkey. You're just flooded with Turkey.

Speaker 1 Okay, because regular people are going to Turkey for hair transplants, but celebrities are doing it too.

Speaker 4 I mean, do we want to talk about the celebrities we think we had it, allegedly?

Speaker 9 I don't want to lost you.

Speaker 1 We don't want to blow up people's spots, right?

Speaker 2 Right, right.

Speaker 1 Let's let's punch up. Like, Tom Brady definitely had like a hair transplant situation, right?

Speaker 4 I think he might have had some. I think, like, one of the people that he's getting brought up into this conversation, and God bless.
And I think this is a compliment. It's like Andrew Garfield.

Speaker 4 All of a sudden, Andrew Garfield is like, maybe he got a new hairstylist maybe it's propecia maybe it's like some kind of thing but like everyone's like wow this man's hair has gotten a lot better in the last like five years maybe it's maybelline or maybe it's turkey okay let's leave him alone let's talk less about andrew garfield and more about turkey because you wrote a great explainer for vox.com about the whole turkey phenomenon.

Speaker 1 Why turkey?

Speaker 4 So yeah, that's basically the question I wanted to know. What I found out is that it's a little bit of like a chicken and the egg.

Speaker 1 You sure it's not a turkey and an egg?

Speaker 4 A turkey and an egg, I guess. Basically, what had happened was turkey had always kind of like this influx of good health care.

Speaker 4 And that translates into a lot of like doctors that are practicing and a lot of like good infrastructure. And what happened was those doctors started doing hair transplants.

Speaker 4 And as it got more popular, all the this word of mouth kind of grows and grows and people start going there and like start making turkey a destination.

Speaker 4 And like basically turkey, Turkey's hair transplants in Istanbul have become like synonymous with each other. And it's just like a brand now.

Speaker 4 I think like one of the things that's kind of fascinating is that this is the one

Speaker 4 procedure that like men have. Yeah.
And it's like, okay, well, the men have this one thing. They have this hair transplant and they're all going to Turkey.

Speaker 4 And I think like also one of like the weirdest things is that it's now being treated kind of like a bachelor party. Like all these places are very luxury.
They serve brunch.

Speaker 4 They drive you around in Mercedes-Benzes and like it's a luxury experience, which feels more like Vegas than a hair transplant.

Speaker 11 I am Adam Hurley. I've been a grooming journalist for about 13 years.

Speaker 11 I cover the men's beauty industry. I write about all things that might be cosmetics, they could be procedures, topicals, things like a hair transplant.

Speaker 11 It's a big umbrella, but I try to cover it all as a generalist.

Speaker 9 The

Speaker 11 cost of a hair transplant is extremely expensive. Your insurance is not going to cover this.

Speaker 11 And if you go to a place like Istanbul, you know, it has the reputation of being a hair mill, but that's to its benefit too.

Speaker 2 Exactly how large Istanbul's hair clinic industry is is impossible to pin down. Actually, is now Istanbul is seeing the capital of the hair transplants.

Speaker 1 There are hundreds of clinics across Turkey that offer hair transplants, bringing in hundreds of thousands of mainly men from around the world each year.

Speaker 11 If you go to the place where they are just pumping out hair transplants over and over and over and the technology has gotten so good, your hair transplant doesn't need to cost as much.

Speaker 11 Let's say you're going to do the average hair transplant.

Speaker 11 That in Istanbul might cost you somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000, but in the US, depending on the zip code, could cost you anywhere between $20,000 and $50,000 or upwards of that.

Speaker 11 And to be honest, I just have a really hard time recommending anyone spend that much money on something when there is a much more affordable option in a city that has so many world-class doctors.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you're looking to drop three to $5,000 on a trip to Turkey to get new hair. I'm guessing that's without airfare, of course.
What do you get for that when you show up?

Speaker 11 You would have them picking you up at the airport. They would be shuttling you to and from your hotel to the clinic.
You would have a really clear itinerary.

Speaker 11 You should feel like you are in great hands all the way through, being looked after. And typically, that will include hotel.

Speaker 11 And so, you're looking at the hospitality, the transportation, and the care, as well as the procedure itself.

Speaker 1 Which clinic did you choose? What was it called?

Speaker 11 My clinic is Dr. Sirkin Aigen.

Speaker 11 Come to Turkey, find your way to Dr. Sirkin Eigen with expert stay.

Speaker 1 Okay, so when you get to Dr. Sirkin Eigen, what does he do? How does this process work exactly?

Speaker 11 Okay, so you don't necessarily have to buzz your hair. Snip, slip.
If you're fine buzzing your hair and you're not being secretive about your hair transplant, I would encourage you to do so.

Speaker 11 It makes it a lot more rewarding, I think, to see the entire process go through.

Speaker 11 So they will, let's say they're buzzing you down, and then what they're going to do is they're going to anesthesize you and you can choose different versions of that but they're really not going to fully put you under so that you can sort of come to if need be.

Speaker 11 And what they're going to do is they're going to extract follicles uniformly from the back of your head, whereas they typically used to take a strip of skin from the back and that would leave a scar.

Speaker 11 Now they're taking it more uniformly, it's going to heal up. And they've got little pens that make clean incisions.

Speaker 11 They can plant it at the optimal angle and then each graft can grow naturally as it would a normal hair.

Speaker 11 And about 90% of these will survive, assuming you do all the proper protocol in the month following as the scalp is recovering.

Speaker 11 What does your head look like when you walk out of this procedure? It is bloody.

Speaker 11 It has been bandaged up because they've got a big diaper type thing over the back and sides of your head where they took all the grafts from

Speaker 11 and then you are really bloody up top and then you're gonna scab over mine almost turned into this uniform scab helmet over the next few days wow uniform scab helmet yeah and it takes about

Speaker 11 it takes about 10 to 15 days to slowly loosen itself are there a lot of dudes walking around turkey with uniform scab helmets yeah but it takes a few days for the scab helmet to form i mean the the pictures you see on social media the turkish hairline strokes that's accurate.

Speaker 12 When you realize that not everybody went to Turkey for vacation, Turkish Airlines, Turkish hairlines.

Speaker 11 And one thing I have to say is that's a really encouraging thing to see if you are going there because you're not going to feel weird.

Speaker 11 No one's going to look at you weird in the airport on your flight home.

Speaker 11 And you see guys with fresh hair transplants, like just, you know, staring at the Galata Tower in Istanbul and just out having dinner.

Speaker 11 Personally, I would just order dinner and stay in the hotel room to each their own.

Speaker 11 But it is a very surreal and weird thing, but it's reassuring when you're in such a vulnerable state to see so many other people doing it.

Speaker 11 And even the hotels, a lot of times, they have partnerships with these clinics.

Speaker 11 So it's this weird, sad, but also shared feeling when you look around the hotel brunch and it's all people who either had a hair transplant the previous day or who are about to go have a hair transplant in an hour.

Speaker 11 And there's this really nice camaraderie that's there of all these people from all different countries around the world.

Speaker 1 Because, like, what? Because balding is something we're made to feel ashamed of. And here you're seeing people who are embracing

Speaker 1 their desire to have hair again. Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 11 I don't think it's that balding is something we should be ashamed of.

Speaker 1 Not that we should, I don't think we should be ashamed of it, but I think it's something that maybe we are made to feel ashamed of.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I agree with you there. I think it's a sign of like virility or vitality or something, youthfulness, sure.

Speaker 11 I also just think if you have the option of having hair, you can always shave it off and

Speaker 11 rock a bald look. But if you are bald, that's a period.
There's punctuation on the amount of things you can have.

Speaker 11 And that was a big reason I wanted a hair transplant in the first place is I'm a grooming editor. I have to have a canvas to try products.
And to, you know,

Speaker 11 I've grown my hair to my shoulders twice since my hair transplant, just so I can try blow dryers and hair creams and all these different things. And if I lost that,

Speaker 11 I do lose my virility as a grooming editor, you know? Totally.

Speaker 1 Adam's kind of locked into his procedure for life.

Speaker 1 He told us he'll be taking hair growth meds to keep his new hair even with his old hair until he dies, his new transplanted hair, even with his, you know, natural hair. That's a big commitment.

Speaker 1 I assume you haven't had this procedure, Alex?

Speaker 4 I have not had a hair transplant.

Speaker 1 So as a reporter who's who's written about this procedure but hasn't done it himself can you just tell us you know from your

Speaker 4 objective vantage does the transplant look good i mean compared to transplants from back in the day from like all the research i've done for this story yes they look pretty good they're like they're very unclockable everyone i spoke to says the only person who can tell is my barber and i think that is possibly the biggest compliment that you can get for a hair transplant that no one can tell only my barber can tell

Speaker 4 and especially when you compare it to like the 80s and like there were lots and lots of advertisements for hair plots and there was a lot of like hair restoration stuff that did not look good but what I guess like the biggest difference is they figured out or doctors have figured out better ways to like extract hair follicles and put them in places like back in the 80s like they were taking clusters of hair

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 4 transplanting them to a new spot. And

Speaker 4 they didn't really know like the hair was growing or like how the patterns of the hair.

Speaker 4 And so it would kind of look like doll hair. And that, and that is a term that you want to avoid.
Like, you never want your hair to look like doll hair.

Speaker 4 I think people would rather be bald than have doll hair.

Speaker 1 Alex Abad Santos from Vox.com, Adam Hurley from blue-print.co.

Speaker 1 Adam also writes for GQ.

Speaker 1 Traveling for your cosmetic needs or even your medical needs is nothing new, but it certainly is more popular than ever. We're going to find out just how popular it is next on Today Explain.

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Speaker 7 He better call turkey with the good hair.

Speaker 1 Today, Explained is back. I'm Sean Ramastrom, and I'm joined by David Vequist.

Speaker 1 He's the director of the Center for Medical Tourism Research at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. David, you study medical tourism.

Speaker 1 Does that include the more cosmetic stuff we talked about earlier in the show?

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we look at a variety of, if you will, kind of patient consumerism that's occurring throughout the world, not only traveling for cosmetic surgery, but traveling for fertility treatments, traveling for surrogacy.

Speaker 2 Speaking of that, been in the news here recently, which is birth tourism, which is people going to other countries.

Speaker 2 For example, people from Latin America coming into the United States to have children in the U.S. so they have dual citizenship.

Speaker 2 Also, the idea of pharmacy tourism, which we see, for example, Americans purchasing pharmaceuticals in Canada.

Speaker 2 Also, deaf tourism, people traveling to either in the United States, certain states that allow doctor assisted suicide, or people that go internationally to places like Switzerland.

Speaker 2 Also, including gender change or gender reassignment surgery. Some of the best surgeons in the world are located in the country of Iran.

Speaker 1 Now I just think we should stop talking about everything we're talking about and just talk about how that happened.

Speaker 2 It's a really interesting and controversial topic.

Speaker 2 So it's illegal to be gay in Iran and it's sometimes punishable by death. However, if you were to undergo gender reassignment surgery, it is legal to be trans.

Speaker 2 And so many of the surgeons in Iran actually ended up

Speaker 2 helping people with these transitions and they became some of the most successful and competent surgeons on this surgery in the world.

Speaker 2 So because of that, because of this expertise that grew within the country, again,

Speaker 2 because people felt this pressure to get these gender reassignment surgeries in the country, people from around the world traveled to Iran, a religious theocracy, to be able to get these surgeries.

Speaker 2 And it's just a very fascinating story.

Speaker 1 It sounds like from what you're saying, from that brief tour you gave us of all the medical tourism, cosmetic tourism, health tourism, whatever you want to call it going on around the world.

Speaker 1 If we just took like a look at a world map and had sort of flight trackers for all of the flights that were taken for these kinds of purposes, we would see like a fully colored-in world map of people going from this continent to that and the other for various procedures.

Speaker 2 That's correct. People are wanting the value equation in healthcare, which means they want the healthcare they want at the price that they want, at the time that they want, where they want.

Speaker 2 It tends to be that both affluent, people that have disposable income, the wealthy, tend to travel more for medical tourism. And also we see

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 less economically

Speaker 2 well-off people,

Speaker 2 people that don't have as much disposable income, they also travel more often.

Speaker 1 So you're saying this is something that rich people do, certainly, but it's also something that poor people do.

Speaker 2 Yes. Yeah, it's really fascinating.

Speaker 2 So where I'm at here in South Texas, we're very familiar with the trend because in the Rio Grande Valley, which is on the southern border of Texas with the northern border of Mexico, we have some of the poorest counties in all of Texas.

Speaker 2 And we also have a shortage of particularly primary care physicians in those regions. And so these are some of the poorest and less economically well-off people in all of the United States.

Speaker 2 And they travel frequently into Mexico for access to pharmaceuticals at the pharmacea, for dental and also for medical care. And it's very common.

Speaker 2 So that tends to, if you will, show this consumerism that's going on. Again, you can understand it with the wealthy because they're looking for perhaps some of the best care on the planet.

Speaker 2 But when you look at people that are essentially impoverished or in poverty situations, that they're traveling as well.

Speaker 1 Is there a dark side to this for those who are less wealthy?

Speaker 1 I mean, if you're rich and you go to Iran for gender reassignment surgery and something goes wrong, maybe you can just easily buy your way out of that that situation.

Speaker 1 But if you're poor, maybe you get stuck, maybe there's a language barrier, and then what? Like, how ugly can this get for people?

Speaker 2 So, we had a situation a little over a year ago now where a group of people drove into Texas and they drove across the border into Mexico.

Speaker 13 It happened in the border state of Matamoros, just three miles away from Brownsville.

Speaker 14 They took a trip across the border last week for a cosmetic surgery, and that's when they were possibly mistaken for a rival cartel.

Speaker 14 They were chased by gunmen who were opening fire on their white minivan. Now two people were found dead.
The other two survived and are back on U.S. soil recovering this morning.

Speaker 2 And so that shows you, if you will, the possible safety and security issues of going into a foreign country.

Speaker 2 But we find from some data, for example, the CDC looked at data from Americans in 2016, and they found that the overall self-reported bad outcomes that occurred from the actual surgery itself were about five percent which is actually um

Speaker 2 reasonable from um depending on the type of procedure but there are people that travel internationally and uh in the past have included people that of wealth and affluence and and that could choose any health care they wanted in the United States.

Speaker 2 Kobe Bryant traveled to Germany.

Speaker 1 For healthcare?

Speaker 2 Yes. Yeah.
Alex Rodriguez, when he was with the New York Janches, traveled. Recently, Kurt Cousins traveled to the Caribbean.

Speaker 2 And you see probably a lot of Instagram influencers that have traveled to foreign countries to get access to cosmetic surgery.

Speaker 1 I think that's what brought us here to you is how much social video has blown up this industry. Can you give us a sense of how big it is at this point?

Speaker 2 So it's a very large industry. When you look at people traveling domestically,

Speaker 2 it's very large.

Speaker 2 And then when you look at the international, when you include health, wellness, dental, cosmetic surgery, all the things that people are traveling for, it's truly hundreds of billions of dollars.

Speaker 2 It's possibly a $1 trillion industry worldwide.

Speaker 2 Interestingly, it's also a very ancient trend. So, for example, when

Speaker 2 I was helping the Egyptian government by training some Egyptian physicians and hospitals on how to receive international patients, I went on a Nile cruise is what they provided as the compensation for doing this training.

Speaker 2 And on the way back from Ashwan up to Cairo, the tour guide had a stop at an ancient temple.

Speaker 2 And on the temple wall, there was a formulary for these procedures and these potentially medications that were given by the temple priest to people.

Speaker 2 And it was well known at that time that throughout the world, people would come to Egypt to get access to some of the best medicine in the world.

Speaker 2 So, not only is it a very ancient trend, but it appears to be a trend that keeps coming back over and over again.

Speaker 1 Professor David Vequist, University of the Incarnate Word, Hadi Mawagdi produced our show today.

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