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This is a followup to a thread I started last year showing my daughter and I planting trees here in Virginia. Last week I had the opportunity to go with her school class to Costa Rica to Earth University. In addition to helping on several family owned farms, and at a primary school building a greenhouse, we got to plant trees to help with a flood zone reforestation project.
My reason for posting this is to illustrate why I often use “tree planting analogies” when I blog and talk to patients. I’ve now planted maybe 1200 trees. Granted, the examples in this set of pictures shows pretty small seedlings compared to the threads I posted last year (please see “proof that Dr. Lindsey plants more than just hair” by searching on this site’s archives if you are interested), but planting hair is almost exactly like planting trees. And I enjoy both.
For example, if you have very fine hairs, just like skinny trees, it takes a lot more to cover a backyard. If you have big bushy middle eastern hair, like bushy trees, you need far fewer trees to cover the same yard. Planting hair and trees takes time, patience, and attention to detail so as to not break the root bulbs (of the hair or the tree). Lastly, patients often ask how the techs placing grafts get the hair to aim the correct direction. Its just like with trees: if the hole is straight up and down the tree will grow vertically, but if you aim the hole at an angle and say off to the north west…the tree can only be placed in the hole so as to grow that direction. Similarly with hair, the row of singles we place around the frontal hairline or in the crown as a swirl, dictates the growth angle of the hairs, regardless of who places the grafts. And the doctor makes the hole dictating directionality of the hairs that will grow.
Dr. Lindsey McLean VA
My reason for posting this is to illustrate why I often use “tree planting analogies” when I blog and talk to patients. I’ve now planted maybe 1200 trees. Granted, the examples in this set of pictures shows pretty small seedlings compared to the threads I posted last year (please see “proof that Dr. Lindsey plants more than just hair” by searching on this site’s archives if you are interested), but planting hair is almost exactly like planting trees. And I enjoy both.
For example, if you have very fine hairs, just like skinny trees, it takes a lot more to cover a backyard. If you have big bushy middle eastern hair, like bushy trees, you need far fewer trees to cover the same yard. Planting hair and trees takes time, patience, and attention to detail so as to not break the root bulbs (of the hair or the tree). Lastly, patients often ask how the techs placing grafts get the hair to aim the correct direction. Its just like with trees: if the hole is straight up and down the tree will grow vertically, but if you aim the hole at an angle and say off to the north west…the tree can only be placed in the hole so as to grow that direction. Similarly with hair, the row of singles we place around the frontal hairline or in the crown as a swirl, dictates the growth angle of the hairs, regardless of who places the grafts. And the doctor makes the hole dictating directionality of the hairs that will grow.
Dr. Lindsey McLean VA
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