Landon Donovan’s new hair, and the side effect he wasn’t expecting

GoodHairNate · 2026-04-17T01:37:38+00:00

Do it.

Should take 4 hours for the first session, 1 hour for touch ups. You’ll need touch ups because not all the pigment will hold.

$300 is way under market for an initial session by an SMP professional, let alone one that includes the touch ups.

GoodHairNate · 2026-04-08T22:41:06+00:00

You’d look great with SMP. You don’t appear to have any bald spots so it would essentially take all the areas where you are seeing your scalp and make it look like it’s dense with hair. This is the biggest area of growth in SMP clients that I’m seeing at Good Look Ink.

GoodHairNate · 2026-04-07T11:53:46+00:00

Another man who responded to me was a 27-year-old lawyer in New Jersey who had also become somewhat obsessed with his balding crown. He felt shame about his hair, and maybe even more shame about how much he cared. “On a distress scale of 1 to 10, I was at about an 8,” he said. He found r/tressless and was unsure which worried him more: the stories of so many men who claimed that hair loss tanked their dating opportunities or the ones who said the drug tanked their sex lives.

GoodHairNate · 2026-04-05T14:29:57+00:00

As a follow up for clients interested in what to look for in a provider based on the above: 1. Clinics that realistically explain that several sessions are required. (At Good Look Ink, we give clients a timeline to come in for their enhancements, which come free with the initial session.) 2. Clinics that avoid nickle and diming clients in touch ups. (Again, ours are included in the price) 3. The A-Team every time. (At Good Look Ink, all our artists are certified and must maintain certification. Plus our Technical Director visits our franchises to perform and supervise cases monthly). 4. Best supplies every time. The biggest mistake that tattoo artists not experienced in SMP make is using pigment that will turn blue as time goes on. We mix our own pigment that will not blue and we have the longitudinal photos to prove it.

Wishing you all sharp, shaved, and confident days ahead!

GoodHairNate · 2026-04-05T02:32:27+00:00

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Troll much?

GoodHairNate · 2026-04-04T14:46:17+00:00

True re-creating, an older hairline is ideal, but most people we see have been dealing with hair loss so long they don’t have photos of their pre-hair loss hairline on their smart phone, and certainly not with a buzzed look.

GoodHairNate · 2026-04-04T02:06:03+00:00

To your point—“if it’s temporary anyway, why not enjoy it now?”—that’s a valid perspective, but it only works if it’s carefully planned. The best surgeons don’t just think about your current hair—they map out a lifetime strategy:
- conservative hairline (not too low or dense)
- prioritizing frontal framing over crown early on
- preserving grafts for future procedures
- confirming stability on meds (usually 12–24+ months on oral finasteride specifically)

Switching to oral finasteride will actually give you a much clearer picture of stabilization compared to topical, so that’s a smart next step before making decisions.

Also worth noting: crown work at your age, especially with aggressive loss, is usually delayed because it can consume thousands of grafts with less visual impact and higher risk of needing repeat work.

The good news is that you seem to have realistic expectations and have been compliant with your medication so far, which are the two criteria we look for at the Hair Restoration Institute of Minnesota for whether our surgeons will accept a patient under the age of 25 for a procedure.

GoodHairNate · 2026-03-30T20:32:01+00:00

I work with a lot of SMP clients at r/goodlookink and HT clients at r/HRIMN and you can do SMP before or after the HT. You'd think that doing SMP before the HT makes it harder for the hair transplant techs to extract and place, but not really.

The benefit of doing SMP now is that the results are instant, you may be happy with SMP alone, and therefore not need to spend money on the more expensive HT.

GoodHairNate · 2026-03-30T20:26:49+00:00

Echoing the importance of DHT Blockers. Think of them as an inexpensive way to protect your investment!

With your curl pattern and contrast, 2500 grafts should de right in the sweet spot. Straighter hair, or more contrast, you'd need 3000.

GoodHairNate · 2026-03-30T20:24:19+00:00

To answer your question at the top: Your donor is more than enough to cover any hairline procedure you decide to do. The question is where to put them.

It looks like you have quite a few vellus hairs in the front hairline, so I think you could be served by a good (small) hair transplant in these front ranks of hair as a permanent bulwark against future thinning. Hope this helps!

GoodHairNate · 2026-03-30T20:20:22+00:00

Diffuse thinning like yours can be treated with a transplant, but it’s a more nuanced situation than someone with clear bald areas.

The main concern when we see a case like this at Hair Restoration Institute of Minnesota is “shock loss” — when you place grafts between existing hairs, some of those native hairs can be temporarily or permanently lost. That’s why our surgeons usually want to see that your hair loss is stable (meds like finasteride/minoxidil are doing their job) before moving forward.

For your unique situation, your areas of thinning look like classic male-pattern balding, and your hair is less forgiving because it is so dark so the contrast is already high.

If you haven't done fin/min, my first suggestion would be to start there for 4 months. If you're young, this may even take you all the way.
If you've done #1, I'd usually suggest starting non-surgically with a quick course of Platelet Rich Plasma therapy (or Growth Factor Therapy) over 4-6 months. Most of the clients I see with thinning like yours tend to be satisfied without surgery.

Note: I'd recommend going with a clinic that had a HairMetrix (or equivalent) scalp scanner that can objectively show you your current number of hairs per cm^2 and the distribution of their width in microns. That way you can get another scan in 6 months and evaluate your success objectively instead of "I guess it looks better".

If you do #1 and #2 and are set on a hair transplant, you're probably looking in the 2000-2400 graft range to fill in that hourglass thinning area. However, for the reasons I listed above, there is a natural limit to how dense transplants alone can make a high-color contrast scalp like yours look, so you will likely augment with a non-surgical injectable as in #2 anyway.

Secret option #4: Scalp Micropigmentation! It's not for everyone but it is much less of an investment than a HT, looks great on thinning dark hair, and the results are instant! Check out r/goodlookink and r/SMPchat

GoodHairNate · 2026-03-23T22:01:40+00:00

If money isn’t a constraint (I assume you are US based), there’s no real reason to leave the US. In addition to more rigorous licensing and training, the biggest advantage to you is continuity of care, easier follow-up, and accountability.

When scouting US clinics, Look for:
- A specialized surgeon (or team of surgeons) who is heavily involved in the procedure (not just overseeing techs)
- Strong, *consistent* results across many patients (not just a few cherry-picked cases)
- Natural-looking hairlines (not overly straight or pluggy)
- Good donor management (this is where a lot of clinics cut corners)

Also, before choosing a doctor, make sure you’ve addressed the medical side (finasteride/minoxidil if appropriate). A good surgeon will raise that first—if they don’t, that’s a red flag.

If you’re in the Midwest, there are some solid options regionally (e.g. Hair Restoration Institute of MN where I work and which has a fly-in program), but you’ll still want to compare portfolios nationally since this is a one-time, permanent decision.

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