- [Zach] Have you ever done a little hidden picture?
- [Rodney] I haven't.
- I'm not suggesting you draw a dick on my head,
but you could and it would look like hair.
- I mean, you just put that idea in my head, so, you know.
(upbeat music)
- Today, I'm changing the thing I hate most about myself.
Today, I am, how do I start this video? (laughs)
I'm losing my hair.
Yeah.
It's taken me a long time to accept that I'm losing my hair,
and then after that, to figure out
what do I wanna do about it?
If doing something about it is
somehow admitting weakness or defeat.
I kind of first realized that my hair
was thinning and receding four years ago.
Maybe five.
Unsurprisingly, it coincided with
when I started being in videos.
Seeing myself on camera more, and more, and more,
and I started going, wait a second.
That's not what I look like, right?
Wait, is that what I look like?
Over the last couple years,
once I realized that it was going, I tried a lot of things.
I tried creams, I tried supplements,
I tried different haircuts.
- Let's start with the hair, skin, nail vitamins.
Let's do the minoxidil.
- I had first had this swell of enthusiasm.
I'm like, I'm gonna take this head-on,
I'm gonna figure out how to style my hair,
I'm gonna fix this, I'm gonna save it,
and over time I found that even my best efforts
weren't enough to hide it.
So then I tried being like, you know what, screw it.
I don't care, I don't care.
I'm not gonna let this affect me.
And that was even worse. (laughs)
Turns out not giving a shit about how you look
means that you're going to look like you don't give a shit.
Maggie doesn't care about it,
my friends don't care about it,
the world is like, yeah, you're losing your hair, so what?
But it's something that I care about.
Every single day, I think about it multiple times a day,
and it just is so distracting,
it's so destructive, and it's painful.
It's all I can think about sometimes.
I just can't stand it anymore.
So I've decided that it's time to do something about it.
(energetic music)
- This is Barber Surgeons Guild.
I like to define it as a medical men's grooming lounge
where we specialize in high-end haircuts,
straight razor hot towel shaves,
and then we have a full-on medical speakeasy
where we do hair restoration.
- Hair treatments, hair regeneration therapy,
and then various laser services as well.
- Medical speakeasy?
So this is like an underground.
- Well, when you walk in,
it looks just like barber shop.
- Men just didn't feel comfortable
going to a hair loss center.
There's nothing cool about it.
It's always like admitting defeat
if you go somewhere like that.
We want to create this concept
that is just somewhere that men want to be.
- You mentioned restoration surgery pretty early on,
and I was like, no.
- So when I was looking at Barber Surgeons Guild,
because of the robotic technology that they had,
that's when I knew that that would
put his hair concerns at rest,
because your concern was surgery,
and your other concern was scarring.
- A lot of people, they just don't know
all the things that are out there.
See those plugs, you know, no one does that anymore.
There are these amazing new services and treatments.
- We're hoping that someone could
help make some content about it,
and educate the world.
- All righty, so here we go.
I'm gonna do a follicle analysis.
- [Zach] Follicle analysis?
- Yeah, we're gonna take a microscopic
image of your follicles to determine
the stage in which they're essentially dying.
Or shrinking. - (laughs) Oh fuck.
(laughing)
- So what areas kinda bother you the most?
- (sighs) The two thing that bother me
are just the thinness of the scalp
and then the receding in the front.
It just is not the shape that I want it to be more.
It's gone back.
It's like the ocean is taken the sand back with it.
- So let's start here in the front like you were mentioning.
Oh, beautiful, so hit capture there.
So hit capture, capture.
- Ooh, that looks thick, look at all that hair.
- Here, this is what we would call the donor hair.
Just for comparison.
- Oh, oh wow, that's so much hair.
- There is hair in different stages.
So you have some thicker, kinda healthier hair,
so you see the thickness and
the diameter of these hairs, right?
And then you look at around the hair.
So this one's a little thinner,
for example. - Yeah.
And then there are these little wispies.
- These little fine, wisped, even thinner.
So you have hair that is kinda,
for lack of a better word, dying in differing stages.
So you're getting thinner, and thinner,
and thinner, and thinner.
- Hair loss, what happens is the hairs become miniaturized.
The hairs start as thick hairs,
and then they become thinner, and thinner, and thinner,
finer, miniaturized hairs.
- As the hair is miniaturizing,
that's when you can still
do something about it and bring it back.
Once it's gone, it's gone.
- Yes. - Right.
- About a month ago, I started on finasteride,
which is supposed to take the really thin hairs
and make them thick and lively again.
I actually, I think I have more hairs that I thought I did.
I thought they were all gone.
They're there, they're just thin and dying.
Over these videos, I'm gonna be
doing a round of two procedures.
First, I'm gonna be doing what they call a camouflage,
where they're basically gonna
tattoo my scalp in between my hair,
and that's gonna make it so that it doesn't look so thin,
so that when you look down at my hair you go,
oh, that's some thick hair.
- And then we'll be doing robotic hair restoration
for the hairline to create more
density and fullness up front.
All this area where you can sorta see scalp through here
kinda in the mid-scalp through the crown,
we're gonna pigment this,
and this is just gonna immediately
you won't see anything back here.
- So I always thought that I
needed restoration in the middle,
but the hairs are there, we just need to
bring 'em back. - We need to bring 'em back,
make them healthier, throw a little bit
of that scalp camo in there, call it a day.
It's gonna look perfect.
(energetic music)
(Zach exhales)
- So we are getting ready to do the first procedure.
This is kind of surreal and weird feeling.
I've been so in video production mode
that I kinda forgot that this is
a real medical procedure we're doing.
Oh man.
- Come on in, how's it going, man?
- [Zach] Good.
- You ready?
- Yeah. - [Man] Let's do this.
(Zach sighs)
- Get you comfortable in this chair.
- Okay, oh, oh it's like I'm
going to sleep on a fancy airplane.
So you're gonna be numbing my head?
- [Justin] Yes, I'm gonna be numbing your head.
Which we don't always do for this, but...
- I told them off camera that I'm a little bitch
and that I would like the numbing, please.
This is-- - [Justin] This is
medical grade laughing gas. - Laughing gas.
Nitrous oxide.
We call it the Hookah because that's what everyone calls it.
- Cheers.
- [Justin] Take five or six deep breaths,
so all the way in, deep breath,
fill your lungs up and exhale back into the tube.
(trippy music)
- Yeah.
- [Justin] There you go, you feel a little bit?
- Oh, fuck.
- So it doesn't-- - Oh, wow.
- Hold on to that feeling.
- Oh my god, whoa, that one really got me.
(laughing)
Oh my god. - The sound of buzzing.
- Oh, I feel that it kinda painful
but it's not really that painful because the laughing.
Whoa.
I haven't been this high this early since college.
(laughing)
I definitely felt a little bliss.
Am I nuts, or my voice sound crazy?
Whoa.
I'm not crazy, right?
This looks like R.O.B. from Super Smash Bros.
Oh, now I can feel that it's numb.
Have you ever gotten a procedure on your gums?
That numb feeling, you're like,
oh, I'm aware of the presence of numbness.
It feels like you're wearing a hat
or something, like a helmet.
- Yeah.
Do you remember basically the
first thing I ever said to you?
- You came in and then you showed me
a picture of yourself in college,
and you said, "I have hair,
"I just don't know what happened to it."
And then you showed me that picture,
and then I said, "Oh, this is when you were losing hair."
- Yeah, that blew my mind.
I'm like, "Look how robust my hair was," and he was like,
"No, it had -- - [David] Look how
high your hair was. - [Zach] Already started
- When you notice hair thinning,
when you can start seeing between the hairs,
that means you've already lost 50% of those hairs.
So when we're talking about male-pattern hair loss,
it's called androgenetic alopecia.
- As I understand it, it's you have so much testosterone
that it blocks the hair from growing.
- You're basically more manly than other men.
- Okay, that's what I thought.
- And your hair just can't handle it.
- I can feel you pulling my head,
but I can't feel anything on my head.
- That's a good thing.
- I'm just gonna pretend I'm wearing a hat.
- If you've had the nitrous there,
even though you don't feel anything,
you can play with it as much as you want.
Pretend like you're back in college.
- All right, Rodney. (laughs)
- We're doing little bit of skin dye,
so it's sort of similar to a tattoo but not quite
because it's very surface level.
- [Zach] It's like when girls get
microblading in their eyebrows.
It's not permanent, but it fills it in.
Same idea.
- [Greg] It'll give you the appearance of more hair
without having to use some more of your donor hair.
(needle buzzes)
- [Zach] Oh that doesn't hurt at all.
It kinda just feels like a bumblebee
is trying to give me kisses.
- [Rodney] A bumblebee.
- Yeah, 'cause of the buzzing.
My hair is thin and if it's
brushed the wrong way, you can see the scalp.
- [Justin] The camouflage is something that
will just get rid of that shine
anywhere throughout here if the hair
is parted or it gets wet.
- [Zach] So you're intentionally doing
something of a random--
- [Rodney] A random pattern.
- [Zach] Yeah, well, how come?
- [Rodney] 'Cause if you do try to make it too perfect,
it just looks unperfect.
- We use a different ink that's not normal tattoo ink.
This is a vegan-based, biocompatible ink,
which means eventually your body breaks it down.
So eventually it'll kinda fade over time,
which is good 'cause you might decide
to change your hair cut style,
your hair color, who knows.
- [Keith] Whoa.
- [Zach] Just like that, already?
- [Eugene] That's amazing.
- [Keith] That's really cool.
As he combs it over, it just looks
like you got a full head of hair.
That part is just so much more thick.
- Hey, here's a question for ya.
You said that you do random dots up there, right?
Have you ever done a little hidden picture?
- I haven't.
- I'm not suggesting you draw a dick on my head,
but you could and it would look like hair.
- I mean, you just put that idea in my head, so, you know.
(upbeat music)
- So we're more than halfway through?
- Yes.
- I've just been here, I've been crushing emails.
I just finished a phone call with Eugene.
This is a totally non-intrusive thing.
It's not painful at all.
Once you comb it over, there's no dots.
- [Ned] Whoa.
- [Rodney] It's the camo portion of it.
That's why it's scalp camouflage.
- And then right now these dots are darker,
but in a day or two they're gonna
get a little more faded. - Yes.
I don't want you to wash your hair just for two days.
- To be honest, this morning, I kinda got nervous again,
and I'm like, do I really wanna do this?
This is happening?
And now I'm like, fuck yeah, this is awesome.
- [Justin] Takes on average about three sessions
over the course of a month.
- [Greg] We do it a little bit at a time
to kinda gradually create that volume and coverage.
- After the procedure, what's the recovery look like?
- No recovery with that.
- No recovery.
- Literally, you can't wash your hair for 48 hours.
That's the recovery.
- So I could be on camera after that--
- You could do this on a lunch break.
- Wow.
- Actually, your hair would look better when you go back.
- Yeah. (laughs)
- All done.
- All done?
- Yes, sir.
- Eh, how's it look?
(upbeat music)
Whoa.
Whoa-ho-ho-oh.
Wow.
That's cool.
I'm not even high anymore.
That's just normal reaction.
Wow, you did such a good job over here
that now I'm like, we gotta take care of this.
- [Keith] It looks so much thicker.
- That's crazy, just one session.
So much of what we've been doing together
has been working with my fears.
I wanna get to a place where I'm
excited about my hair instead of anxious.
My hair can be a part of my expression.
It can be something that I have fun with,
or something I can decide I don't give a fuck about.
So now this is huge because I can
style my hair the way that I do,
but I don't have to worry about the transparency.
I haven't been excited by my hair in ever.
I'm excited right now.
And this is just the beginning.
We're gonna do one more of this,
and then (snaps fingers) I'm going to meet Chappie.
Hello, Zachary.
I am waiting for you.
(energetic music)
When you think of hair restoration,
you think of the horrible plugs or toupees from the '70s.
Oh my wow.
Now the robot stuff begins.
Whoa.
Give me your worst, Chappie.
(upbeat music)
But can you tag tryguys.com so people know
where they can get the hottest merch in the be-game?
That's not even laughing gas.
That's just me being an asshole.