Yet, there are still a few facts about hair transplant surgery that are not widely known. 1. A large percentage of men have balding issues. In fact, 50% of American men that are 50 years old or older are dealing with some amount of hair loss. Hair problems in today's society beg to be conquered. Some do it by shaving their heads completely. The doctor will blend it in with the grafts as he goes. It may seem odd, but once the grafted hairs are set, they are just as strong as the rest of your hair. You can cut them, comb and brush them, and even dye them in time. New hairs start to grow within three months. You will find you need haircuts more often, as your hair will grow about one or two centimeters per month. Hair transplant surgery is surely less painful than it was in earlier times when larger sections of scalp were excised. This involved more cutting to take out the donor hair and more cutting to insert the donor hair into the recipient site. Hair transplant surgery was a very painful procedure in the past. The doctor will explore both the hair loss you have suffered, and the hair growth you still have. This is very important, because knowing where the donor hair for the hair transplant will come from is imperative. The doctor will also want to know the patterns of baldness and hair growth in your family history. If you cannot think of anything but how your balding head looks, it is a good indication that you need to do something. This kind of thinking can distract you from enjoying the good things in life. It can also mean that you are not fully focused on the activity you are engaged in at the time. This could go so far as being dangerous. Certain types of auto-immune diseases, such as alopecia areata can now be treated by means of hair transplant techniques by using the donor strip method. Yet, in the future, hair cloning will make hair transplant easier for these people who often have very little hair to use for grafts. Some people believe that hair transplant grafts using cloned hair would be about the same cost as the usual hair transplants that are available today.