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Hello everybody and welcome back to the Alopecia Angel Podcast: Awaken to Hair

Growth. I am your host, Johanna Dalman, and I'm so excited to be with you here today.

I just got back from the salon and I'm feeling like a million dollars. I absolutely love going

to a salon, trying somebody new. Thank you Autumn, shout out to Autumn. Getting my

hair done and then leaving and then seeing that the work was done correctly and that I

don't have to go back for any touch-ups. That's huge. That's really huge, for me that's

very important, especially now that I get more and more grays. It's more and more

important to be able to blend them in efficiently and effectively. So I'm really happy with

my new hairstylist and I'm really happy with how it all came out.

But today we are gonna be talking about medical tourism and hair transplants. But

before we get into that, I also wanted to let you know that we have a free training

coming up and it starts very soon. You can go to my website, alopecia angel.com. At the

top, there's a yellow button, it says, free training click on that. Enter your info and you

will be set up with all the Zoom links and all the information that you need to know for

this upcoming training. I'm very excited to host it. This is a specialty training on hair loss

and it's called. Say Goodbye to Hair Loss: Your Guaranteed Path to Hair Growth

Naturally and Holistically. This is a free video training for people with alopecia and other

types of hair loss. This is a 3 part video series on my proven method for children and

adults used worldwide and 67 countries and counting. I've been doing this for over 7

years, and you do not want to miss this free training. Go ahead, grab your seat, go to

the registration link up on top of my website homepage, and you can get it there

alopecia angel.com and you'll see it right there on the button where it says Free training.

So today we're gonna be talking about medical tourism. And so let's go ahead and

define first, what is medical tourism. Medical tourism is where you travel from your

country to another country for medical procedures. This can be anything from IVF, to

dental, to hair transplants, to surgeries of any sorts. But you're doing it abroad primarily

because it's cheaper. Potentially, the doctors abroad and other countries are doing it

better, have better techniques, or maybe perhaps because it's not allowed or covered in

your own native country. So for example, stem cells are not something that you can do

100% percent out in the open, within the US there are caveats to it, but you cannot, let's

say implant a pig's kidney into your own self, into, in the US you would have to go

abroad for that or stem cells from let's say, other people or even animals into you. You

have to go abroad. And so, you can get these things cheaper and even, have that open

door policy of doing them available and available to you abroad.I mention this because the high cost of healthcare around the world is enormous. I also

mentioned this because in many countries, some that I've actually lived in, you're gate

kept, meaning you are halted and blocked from seeing specialists or from seeing

doctors or from seeing X, Y, Z specialist because you may want to, and because of the

insurance or because of the way things are run in that country, you are not able to. Even

if you want to pay out of pocket, it's just not available to you. And so this is why the

allure of medical tourism happens. A lot of times it's for, liposuction, eyelid surgery, butt

surgery, butt implants, breast implants, these types of things. But there's other things

too cosmetically that are a lot cheaper. For example, the veneers abroad than in your

own native country. And so these are things to be aware about. It's also good to have a

good grasp of what to do, how to start researching, so on and so forth.

Because again, healthcare issues, healthcare testing, healthcare in general is

something that affects everybody. In the US alone, the majority of people who go into

bankruptcy, the majority of people who have financial issues is because they can't pay

their medical bills, is because the exorbitant amount of bills from healthcare, which, if

you go through insurance for many things, let's say you just had a baby, you can still

see bills a year later from that birth that happened a year ago. That's actually quite

common. And so, these are situations that I want to have this open discussion with you

about, but then also let you know that you have options. You are not stuck.

So for example, alopecia Angel offers testing worldwide to all my clients and their family

members, and I only offer grade A functional standard testing. This is something that

I've really wanted to focus on and hone in on because when I was living in the

Netherlands, when I was back and forth to the us, it was just very complicated. I didn't

have access to it, and it would've made life easier had I had access. So now I offer that

because, I think it's just easier, more streamlined, and it's a one stop shop for everything

that you need in terms of alopecia. Now going back to veneers, IVF, hip surgery, knee

surgeries, and all these other things that potentially are covered or not covered for your

health insurance. There are definitely other places abroad that can help you.

Now, first things first, research is necessary. Also, language barriers, right? We wanna

make sure that they speak either the same language as you, or that you have a better

grasp of English and they have English too, so that they can facilitate these things for

you. The other flip side to this is that there's always a ranking of best countries for X, Y,

Z, whether it's for dental cleanings or whether it's for root canals or whether it's for hip

surgery or knee surgery, or even hair transplants. I wanted to also give you some

statistics around it because it's not always so black and white. It's not always so rosy

just by going abroad just because of the price difference, right?

There's some things that you need to consider. Maybe the downtime, right? The

recovery of the surgery may be a follow up, the flight times, how long is the flight to your

destination? Let's say if you're doing a hair transplant and you're coming in from Los

Angeles to Istanbul? Yes, there's direct flights, but that's at least 12 hour flight, if not

more. And then on top of it, you have the actual surgery. The downtime before you canget back on a flight back to LA or to Auckland or to anywhere else. And so this is always

something to consider 'cause you also have some downtime post recovery that you

would need to be at a hotel.

A lot of these places actually offer everything, they offer the pick up the drop off. The

nurses they offer to get you the airport, transfers, the hotel, etcetera. And so depending

on where you go and what you're looking for, they have all these different options for

you. And so that's all also very nice to know because if you have extra time on your

hands instead of just the proverbial 2 weeks vacation like most Americans get, then you

have bigger options to do these surgeries, have your downtime recover every so

slightly, just a little bit enough to go on that flight. Because think about it, when you go

on a flight, even if it's for a couple hours, you are still creating inflammation in the body,

you are still having to move the body when potentially you should be resting and going

up into, the airspace right over 10,000 feet, normally it's over 35,000 feet in the air, this

also compresses everything, right?

This is why we have restrictions to fly when you're pregnant, because if you're too close,

this could induce labor or could cause more situations and so that you would potentially

want to avoid like blood clots or anything else that potentially could go wrong post-

surgery of whatever it is that you're looking to do. And so first and foremost is your

research. The second thing to really look at and consider is what you're doing, what the

price, cost savings is, because if the cost savings isn't more than 40 to 50%, then

potentially it's not worth doing it. For example, going back to hair transplants, I met a

doctor who, he was at the same conference that I was and he and I, we were just

discussing some things and he told me that his hair transplants at his clinic start around

$40,000 US. That's a down payment on a house, that's actually a full car price. $40,000.

And so when you start comparing price and cost, you know the cost of a hair transplant

in Istanbul. Is around $2,000, maybe up to $5,000 max.

And granted that doesn't include hotel, that doesn't include your flight, but potentially

there's other ways to get a cheaper flight or other ways to use miles or points to get that

flight or to get that hotel stay covered for. And so there are ways to mitigate that. Also,

you also have Airbnbs and you could also make it into a vacation and have family come

in and help support you. And I just wanted to really open this up a little bit, ever so

slightly, because many people abroad are suffering. They're suffering because they

don't have the healthcare they need. And it's not just abroad, it's actually in the US as

well. But I'm just gonna go ahead and just say it for everybody.

There's a lot of people out there in general who are suffering because their healthcare

doesn't cover it or the testing, let's say it's a colonoscopy or an MRI or a CT scan or

whatever. Is not being given to them or not being offered. And I use this as my own

situation as well. Because when I was pregnant at the age of 40, when I was living in

the Netherlands, I never saw once a doctor, I was never allowed to see a doctor. The

only time according to policy and regulation that I would be able to see a doctor while

pregnant is because I was having twins. That would be the only aspect of me being able

to see a doctor, if not everything went through the midwife. Everything went through themidwife, she was the gatekeeper for everything, for what tests I needed, for what things

I didn't need or could do or couldn't do or couldn't see.

And that even went for doctors in Germany, or let's say clinics in Switzerland. I was

rejected to see doctors in Germany or clinics in Switzerland. Because again, I needed a

note from my midwife. I needed a gatekeeper to give me approval and this really upset

me. It really upset me to the bone where I actually think it's an injustice. I think it's very

unfair that healthcare institutions do this, countries do this, and this is seen all over the

world. You're denied for healthcare. Or guess what? Not only are you denied, but then

on top of it, let's say the procedure has been done in the US they're quick to do the

procedure and whether or not you had pre-approval or whether or not you have, the

green light. Either way you're paying for it one way or another, and so that's unfair. But

the other on other side too, is just not being, having access to any of it.

And so I wanted to give you this podcast episode, not necessarily for the hair aspect,

even though potentially if you're a male listener, you might be interested in a hair

transplant. But there are caveats to the hair transplant. So let's, let me go ahead and

pull up these hair transplant stats that I have for you. So when it comes to hair loss in

general, the sooner the better. That is the number #1 rule of thumb. The sooner you

attack it, the sooner you are proactive, the sooner you take action, the sooner the better.

Whether your option is to do the Hair N' Heal program, whether your option is to do a

natural and holistic way of healing, whether your option is to do a hair transplant or

anything else, the sooner the better. It's just like that check engine light on your car,

right? How long are you gonna wait to take it to the mechanic so that you can see if

something's gone wrong? The sooner the better when it comes to checking and making

sure that your car is running well, right?

You already know the medications, the gimmicks, the bandaids, the neutrophils, the

viviscal, the serums, the shampoos, the supplements, the one size fits all, doesn't work.

And that even goes for hair transplants. The majority of people who look into hair

transplants, they do so at the age in between 41 and 60 years of age. Now, again, the

opportunity recuperate from a hair transplant at 41 is a lot better than 60, and if you

decide to do it earlier, let's say 25 versus 45, your results will also be a lot better. Now,

in hindsight with your healing your hair naturally. You can actually do this at any point, at

any time because it's about rejuvenating you from the inside out. It's about healing you

from the inside out, it's not dependent on a surgery. It's not dependent on the surgeon

or the people putting in the graft or people, drilling the holes in your mouth or anything

else. Does that make sense?

Because when we look at medical tourism, we also wanna look at qualifications, skillset,

where did they graduate from? Do they speak English? How much experience do they

have? All these questions come up and these are all valid questions for you to be

asking. Should you go down this path of wanting to do, let's say, eyelid surgery or,

veneers or fix your root canal or anything else that may be bothering you, but you would

like to do it abroad? Transplants have a success rate that are higher than 90% on

average, but can range anywhere from 75-100% depending on the procedure, thesurgeon, the complications, right? The other factors that are not necessarily obvious,

right? So for example, if the person was healthy, in general, and this is for any surgery, if

the person was healthy, in general, their recoup time, their opportunity to heal quicker

and faster will happen versus somebody who's unhealthy.

Factors that affect success rate include procedures, the method used such as the

follicular unit extraction or the follicular unit transplantation, the surgeon, their expertise,

the severity of the hair loss, which is also another factor. Actually, my chiropractor just

got a hair transplant and he did it here in the US, it cost him around $20,000 US and

he's in his probably 50s and I would say that his hair transplant was pretty drastic. Like I

noticed it immediately because, I look at everyone's hair, but at the same time, the

opportunity for it to stick and the opportunity for him not to have to go back in will also

depend on him, his health factors. I will say, the amount of hair that you have left is also

an indicator.

So for example, at 25 years old, if you have a good amount of hair left and you still

wanna a hair transplant because you're thinking about the future, that's a better time to

do it than at 55, right? And so it's that type of thing. Of course, the severity of the hair

loss is another factor. Post-op care, I can't stress this enough for any type of surgery,

you're gonna wanna look at the post-op care, and this post-operation care, how well the

patient cares for their hair after surgery, or even your knee surgery or anything else.

Like how well are we getting back into mobility, into being able to do the things that we

wanna do. And then of course, expectations. Some people expect in and out procedure

when sometimes you need to lay around in bed and just rest, rest and recuperate.

And so those are other things to consider. New growth is usually noticeable within, I

would say, 3 to 5 months when it comes to hair transplants in general, and full results

can take up to a full year. And so you wanna also be mindful because when you are

going down this rabbit hole of hair transplant, it's not like you'll be able to cover it up with

a hat, just the opposite, you need to let everything grow. It's like having new seedlings in

a garden. When you have new seedlings, you actually try to protect them in a garden

house or maybe in your kitchen, giving them sunlight, giving them a very specialized

environment where there's no wind, no birds, no squirrels, etcetera. And then once

they're strong enough, then you put them outside in the garden where they can have the

full sunshine, the rain, the wind, and all the elements.

And so that hair, that new baby hair needs to be protected. And so this is a time where

there's no hats where you have to keep it open, maybe use a light bandana across it to,

to give it some airflow. But really you're protecting it like it is new seedlings, 'cause that's

exactly what it is. It's new seedlings. Transplanted hair follicles may fall out before

permanent follicles grow back. The other thing that I'd like to mention is that for women,

this has actually been, a very small percentage of women who go ahead and do hair

transplants. It's not very common for women. It's actually more common for men

needing, or wanting hair transplant surgery earlier than not. Many start to have it

around, age of 30, but at the same time, 41 to 60 is really the average age.The initial shedding is normal and a sign of successful transplant. That's another thing

that many times people don't tell you about the ugly side of any surgery is maybe how

you look for a few weeks. Maybe how you have to maneuver around differently for a few

weeks, how you have to live or maybe even sleep for a few weeks. I know people

who've had to have specialty pillows around their neck in order to prop their head up so

that the new hair graft weren't touching a pillow or weren't touching anything. And so for

the first couple months it may be very uncomfortable. There's swelling involved, there's

a lot of things involved.

And so it's not just, let's get to growing the hair growth. It's a bigger procedure than what

you may think, and I would actually, if you think of doing this abroad. Give yourself a

minimum of 2 weeks, give yourself a minimum of 2 weeks, if not 3, so that you can

rebound, give yourself some downtime, and then fly home to wherever home is.

Transplanted hair will thin over time, like regular hair, and this is the caveat. The thing is,

in many surgeries, including hair transplants, there are no guarantees. There are no

guarantees where you live, there are no guarantees in the US, there are no guarantees

abroad as well, so this is something that whether you realize it or not, there's no refund

policy and there's no guarantee of anything working, whether they're injecting stem

cells, botox, or you know they're giving you a butt implant, or the veneers, like I

mentioned, IVF or anything else, there are no guarantees.

This is something that you're doing at your own risk, yes, with hopefully your own

research. But then also there are medical tourism, travel agents that help you identify

the hospitals, help you identify, the ones that are best rated, the tools and techniques

that they're using, pricing the surgeon's capabilities, etcetera, etcetera.

And so these are also great to know or to even leverage, and they do take a cut off your

surgery. So if you're paying, let's say $10,000 out of pocket, then they will take a cut off

of that towards their services of them helping you. The other thing to, to note about hair

transplant is that there is a percentage, anywhere from 20% of people to 25% that need

to get it done again, that it just didn't take the first time. Doesn't this sound like IVF? It

sounds very similar, right? I'm sure some of you have heard of people who've done IVF

and it didn't take the first time or the second time or the third time. I actually have a

friend who's done it 4 times and she has one baby girl to show for it.

And so that journey is gonna look a little bit different for each person. There's a lot of

things that you need to uncover before you actually decide to move forward. And again,

on average 20-25% of people need to go back and redo this hair transplant. So most

people seek the hair loss surgery between 30 and 39. The average hair transplant

success rate is 97%. That's actually pretty high. And again, there's factors, your health,

the surgeon where you go, which country, like I said, number one country for hair

transplants is Turkey. The number #2, #3 and #4 is Mexico, Thailand, I believe it was

also the Czech Republic, if I'm not mistaken.

So you have options, you have options when it comes to your dental health, you have

options when it comes to your colonoscopies or anything else that you may want to do.And so have this as a toolkit, as a resource in the back of your mind. Because if you're

in a country that, let's say you wanna get something done, whether that's a

colonoscopy, whether that's a mammogram, whether that's an extra check on your

overall health or what have you, there's other ways to go around it, whether it's in your

country. Or in another country or online like it is with me and all the functional medicine

testing that we offer. So it all depends, but there are many routes and you don't need to

feel stuck.

I've had lots of people who I know who've done surgeries abroad because again, it was

either too expensive in the US and just overly priced. And that's another thing is like

when you're considering this cost is the number one thing, cost and expertise really, is

really the number one thing to consider, but many times you can be going to a doctor in

your country, in the US, wherever you live, and those expertise are still not there, and

you're still succumbing to that surgery or to that procedure without fully even having

researched on yourself, whether that doctor is, or that procedure is appropriate for you,

really needed, whether your insurance covers it or not, how much you're gonna be

paying out of pocket.

So going back to my own story of being 40 years old, pregnant in the Netherlands, this

was actually quite frustrating to say the least. I like to have options, I like to have a

buffet of options and not having options really upset me. And so if you don't know now

you know you do have options. You do, you can travel, you can, email, you can

research, you can do so many things to move the needle in terms of your health,

whether it's hair loss, whether it's that bariatric surgery, whether it's anything else. You

know what I mean? You can move the needle and it doesn't have to cost an arm and a

leg.

And so going back to my friends who've done, fertility treatments or even have frozen

their eggs abroad. Yeah, it's a little complicated, but at the same time, sometimes it's

better done abroad because it's cheaper or it's potentially covered. So for example, in

Belgium, I have a friend who was living there for a year and a half, and she got her eggs

frozen. I think she was like 43, 44 at the time. She got her eggs frozen and she got it all

done for free. So she took advantage of that because at the time she was an expat

living in Belgium as a resident. And so the thing is, it's like there are ways to navigate

this. And again, it would be really beneficial to explore should you have more options,

more ailments or more treatments that you want to do without going into bankruptcy,

without finding or being succumbing to huge debt due to this.

And so I was actually reading a book about this and they were talking about cancer

treatments. Cancer treatments are abroad or on the rise because, maybe they align

more in terms of holistically or your values or the process of doing it, or even maybe the

success rates. And the thing is, it's like many times we all have this tunnel vision, we all

have this tunnel vision of like our healthcare, wherever that is, is the best. Our

healthcare comes in, number #1, we're the best. We have the best doctors, we have

this, we have that. Every country can think this, every person in all these differentcountries can think this too, but the reality is there's always gonna be somebody who

does it better somewhere else, right?

Yes, you may have, let's say, the US a lot of fantastic doctors, but what does the wait

time look like? Do you have to wait 2 years to see them? Do you have to wait 9 months

to get a first initial appointment? What does that look like? And then the other

consideration is pricing. What does this price look like?

Going back to IVF and fertility I have friends in Miami who they were doing IVF, they

were egg freezing and doing all these things with Miami doctors and the wait line or the

line to wait and the wait list was enormous. It took them like a year and a half, so 12 to

18 months just to see the doctor and get in. And then after that you have the full

procedure, but by that time, another 18 months have passed and your eggs are lo and

behold getting older and older, right? Depending what age you are. And then on top of

it, then it's the cost, right? You're looking at anywhere from $25,000 plus to get this

done, which is a huge amount of money as well.

And so then when it comes to the IVF, that's another, situation in and of itself. And so

hence more and more people going abroad. Other key factors and findings about hair

transplants that I wanted to go ahead and offer you was that hair transplantation hit a

6.3 billion value in 2023, we'll reach 42.5 billion by 2033. That's just 10 years later. The

hair transplant industry grows at 21% on average. Most people seeking hair loss

surgery are in between the ages of 30 and 39. Most popular method at 66% is the FUE

method, which is the follicular unit extraction. The success rate has an average success

rate of 97%, satisfaction around 90 to 95% of hair restoration patients love the

outcomes. About 60% of hair transplant patients find themselves more attractive than

before.

And of course, we all feel much more attractive, we all feel much more confident, we all

feel much more vibrant, healthy, happy with our hair. And today when I went to the hair

salon, thank you Autumn once again. There was an older lady, she must have been in

her 70s, she was also getting her hair done and she looks at me, she turns, she's you

have amazing hair.

And I told her, thank you. Would you believe I lost over 50% of it to autoimmune

alopecia? And her jaw dropped. The lady Autumn, who was doing my hair also didn't

know my story. So I was happy to share my story with them and really show them that it

doesn't matter at what age, at what point. You have hair loss, that there's always

something to be done. There's always something that you can do for it, whether it's the

holistic route, whether it's the hair loss surgery, if you choose. And really, the thing is, it's

like even for women, hair loss surgery hasn't really been vetted too often. So it's really

men that have benefited the most.

But I would assume that it would work as well for women if that would be your choice.

Again, you have the downtime, so understand that this will look very obvious, and you

would have to find ways to cover up the obvious situation with all the pinpoints on yourscalp and then really wait a year. For this to happen, which again, as a guy, after maybe

like month 5, month 6, you start to see that hair growth. You can wear a hat, like there's

other options. But for women, this actually becomes a little more complicated because

we have so many events, things to attend, work, face value meetings and so much

more. But at any age, at any stage, you can always get your hair back.

And really that's the beauty of the Hair N' Heal program, and that's really what I wanna

drive home, is that you can heal naturally and holistically without having to travel,

without having to have downtime, without having to have any side effects or risks or any,

surgeries abroad. For medical tourism, for your teeth, for your colonoscopies, for your

bariatric surgeries, for your cancer treatments, for all these other things. Absolutely

something to consider, and I guess as we become more and more globally intertwined

and more and more, open to traveling for medical procedures.

Your comfort level, of course, then this would allow more o, more doors to be open. But

to say or think that you are stuck depending where you live, it's not necessarily true. And

I definitely wanna drive that home too, because I did feel stuck, not just with my

alopecia journey many times, but I also felt stuck being pregnant, having gone through a

couple miscarriages in the Netherlands and not being able to have any resources, not

being able to speak to doctors, not being able to get more than a, couple ultrasounds

and a urine test while pregnant at 40 or anything else. And so it, it's really disheartening

to see how americans think that europeans have it so great and vice versa, right? It's

not about who's winning or who's better. It's about what's best for you and what you feel

comfortable with and how you wanna move forward with that.

Because again, I didn't feel comfortable having surgery necessarily after postpartum,

right? When you have to have surgery. I didn't necessarily feel comfortable in the

Netherlands doing it, but it was my only option. We're in the middle of Covid what do

you do? You just have to go and trust the people around you. Sometimes that's that

way, and sometimes when you have more options or even when you want better for

yourself, you keep finding, you keep searching until you find what resonates with you.

So once again, I'm very grateful for all my listeners. I'm grateful for all my clients, all the

people who I get to work with because it's an honor and a privilege. And I know you

want more for yourself, like I've wanted more for me. And so this is what I hope to

deliver with our worldwide testing, with our worldwide programs and serving people in

more than 67 countries. If you love our podcast, if you love this episode, please share it

with somebody.

Please rate and review. I really would appreciate it if you could give us some love, and I

look forward to talking to you next time. Take care.