Is It Okay To Transplant Gray Hair In A Hair Restoration Procedure?

This question comes from a concerned member of the Hair Restoration Social Community and Discussion Forums:

I’m a male, late 30s, with a salt and pepper mixture of gray and dark hair investigating a hair transplant procedure. My question involves my gray hairs and transplanting gray hairs from the universal donor zone. Should my hair transplant surgeon try to remove a strip with as little gray hair as possible? Will the gray hairs be difficult to properly prepare under a microscope? Should the hair technicians try to blend black and gray hairs when preparing the follicular unit grafts?

First, it’s important to realize that many hair restoration patients possess gray or graying hair, and this issue is handled by experienced hair transplant surgeons on a daily basis. Meaning that transplanting gray hairs during a follicular unit transplantation (FUT) or follicular unit extraction (FUE) procedure should not be an issue.

Removing a follicular unit transplant strip to purposely avoid gray hairs is not an optimal strategy and would most likely not be done by a reputable transplant surgeon. The universal safe zone (where follicular unit grafts can be safely extracted because these follicles are resistant to the hormone that causes hair loss) is limited, and the surgeon will likely want to safely extract a significant amount of grafts during the procedure. Because of this, strategically ignoring pieces of the donor area because of gray hairs would not be a good idea. Especially because, under normal circumstances, gray hairs are just as viable as ones that still retain a natural hair coloring.

Furthermore, although it can be more difficult for technicians to visualize gray hairs under a microscope, certain landmarks (such as the cap over the dermal papilla) allow for dissection of follicular units containing gray hairs with accuracy and precision. Also, interestingly enough, although follicular units naturally come in clusters of 1 to 4 hairs, these hairs do not turn gray as a unit. This means that some follicular units may contain several natural colored hairs and several gray/white hairs. Since the follicular unit is the manner in which hair naturally grows, dissecting these clusters any further would almost certainly cause follicle damage. However, this does not mean a hair transplant surgeon could not focus smaller follicular units (1-2 hairs) that only contain natural colored hairs into certain regions (such as the hairline) to create a more youthful appearance.

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Blake Bloxham – formerly “Future_HT_Doc”

Editorial Assistant and Forum Co-Moderator for the Hair Transplant Network, the Hair Loss Learning Center, the Hair Loss Q&A Blog, and the Hair Restoration Forum

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