Strong new hair
THE BIBLE’S SAMSON lost his strength when he lost his hair — at Clinique de Paris, perhaps one won’t have to worry about that fate.
At Clinique de Paris’ penthouse clinic in Makati, one can see all the way to the water of Manila Bay, but no one else — the clinic had been designed for utmost privacy, and for all we know, there might have been another patient at the hair restoration clinic with us on the afternoon of Feb. 25 when BusinessWorld dropped by for an interview, but clever architecture prevented us from seeing them.
“For a lot of people, hair loss is not painful, but it’s very emotional. Very personal. You don’t realize it until it starts to thin,” said Dr. Rafael Fortus, medical director for Clinique de Paris.
Mr. Fortus outlined the different ways one can lose hair, and the various ways to fix it. Male pattern baldness, for example, starts as hairline recession; the female version begins from the center and radiates outward. Baldness is usually caused by genetics, caused by the abundance of the dihydrotestosterone hormone, which attacks the hair. There can be other causes — lifestyle and stress, for example; but for women, it could be hormonal changes and other such factors.
They offer several solutions including scalp micropigmentation which is a specialized tattoo method that creates the illusion of real hair follicles. One of their highlight treatments is the use of platelet-rich plasma. They take your blood, centrifuge it to separate the blood cells from the plasma, and treat the scalp with this fluid. This encourages hair growth and is ideally done in six sessions.
Then there are their hair transplants: old-fashioned transplants take grafts of skin from the back of your head, or else use hair plugs (clumps of hair from the same donor region). “Even the baldest person you know will still have hair at the back [of their head],” said Mr. Fortus. But, “To me, a bad hair transplant is worse than no transplant.” These old-fashioned hair replacement treatments sometimes come off as artificial: “In cosmetics, I think natural equals nice, which is our mantra.”
Clinique de Paris offers Direct Hair Implantation (DHI), a procedure invented in the 1970s, and one they share with 75 other clinics in the world. “The surgeon will individually pluck each of the follicles,” said Ludovic Branellec, managing director and the clinic’s co-founder (and son of the Branellec family behind Jewelmer; down the hall from the clinic). “I have two hair transplants. You can’t tell. There’s no scar.” Clinique de Paris has the master franchise in the Philippines, which they have already held for 10 years, and the accreditation from DHI International.
Their clinic used to be near Greenbelt, but they moved to the Alveo Financial Tower penthouse late last year. Mr. Fortus told BusinessWorld, “The Philippines is now considered Top 3 in terms of performance and track record.”
The treatments cost from P18,000 (one session) to P88,000 (the full six) for the plasma treatment; and from P200,000 to P600,000 for direct hair implantation. “It’s like buying a watch, or buying a beautiful bag,” said Mr. Fortus. Mr. Branellec meanwhile, noted that they have cheaper options available, but the direct hair implantation is the best option: “But the results — we have a 97% survival rate of all the follicles that are extracted. We know that 97% will grow.” According to him, up to a third of their patients are “people who went for a cheaper rate, and then after a year, regret their choices.”
The pair proceeded to show pictures and testimonials from previous patients, but what better story to tell than your own?
“I was really happily bald,” said Mr. Branellec. “If you know my dad, he’s bald. All the men in my family… they were all bald. I knew as a kid that I would end up bald. It’s really something I accepted, and I thought I could never change.”
When a peer told him about Direct Hair Implantation, he didn’t see why he should bother: “I know what’s waiting for me, and I’m fine with it.”
But after getting the hair transplant, he said people began to notice a subtle change about him that they couldn’t quite pinpoint. They thought he was younger, switching up his and his younger brother’s birth order. “I’m 47,” he said.
He also noted that after his hair grew back, people he knew started to take off their caps in front of him to show their own hair loss. “So many people I know are suffering in silence — and they don’t know their options.”
Mr. Fortus said, “It’s not so much the hair that changes them: it unlocks their confidence they didn’t realize they had.”
For more information, visit https://cliniquedeparis.com/. — Joseph L. Garcia
