HAIR'S HELP!

Janez Vermeiren is the latest celeb to get a hair transplant. We take a look at what it involves.

- ROBYN LUCAS

YOU'D think with a face and body like his, he'd never have to waste a single second worrying about his looks. Yet for years there's been one aspect of his appearance that has been a constant source of anxiety for Janez Vermeiren.

The former Top Billing presenter had just turned 36 when he first noticed it. Looking in the mirror one day, he realised his hairline was receding.

Although hair loss is a condition that affects 80% of men to varying degrees, Janez was mortified.

"In my line of work when you start getting a receding hairline, you get a complex about it," he says.

But the father of three felt powerless to do anything about it, so for eight years he simply had to grin and bear it.

"If you look at my Instagram, I wore caps whenever I played sport or went to the beach or every time I was on camera outside," says Janez (44), who these days runs his own film production company in Cape Town.

But recently when he complained to his wife, Juliana Vasconcelos (37), about how tired he was about having to cover up, she pointed out that there was something he could do.

"She just said to me, 'Listen here, there are solutions these days. You can actually get a hair transplant".

Janez started researching all the options and even sought advice from a good friend, former Proteas captain Faf du Plessis, who has had a hair transplant too.

"I think if you do something like this it's important to do your homework," he says.

After weighing up all the options, Janez decided to take the plunge last month and have a follicular unit extraction (FUE) transplant done at a hair restoration clinic in Sandton.

The procedure involved doctors making tiny incisions in the front of Janez's head, where he was losing hair, then plugging these gaps with hair follicles extracted from the back of his head.