How to Sleep After a Hair Transplant — Q&A with Dr. A
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Q&A with Dr. A: How should you sleep after a hair transplant?
- We provide a U-shaped neck pillow, like the kind you’d use on an airplane, it helps keep your head stable & from rolling around.
- We’ll usually prescribe something like Ambien to help you relax and stay still through the night.
- And the big one: sleep in a reclined, semi-upright position with your head higher than your heart.
Why? Because surgery creates a bit of swelling in the scalp. Sleeping upright helps gravity drain that fluid from the scalp down into the neck.
Leave us your hair transplant questions & we’ll cover them in the next Q&A with Dr. A!
Okay guys, this is Q&A with Dr. A and we’re going to be answering your questions after a hair transplant. How do I sleep? How do I go to bed?
Great question. What we don’t want rolling around in the pillows like a lot of people ordinarily sleep. What we provide one of those U-shaped neck pillows like plain pillows, inflatable neck pillow.
Number two, we’re going to provide the medication ambient that helps the patients to sleep. Okay, so it makes you go to sleep. This helps keep you still during the night.
Number three, the sleeping position. This is important. Ideally, if you had a recliner, you have to sleep sitting upright.
What we want is patients sleeping sort of a reclined semi-upright position with the level of their head above the level of their heart in a vertical gravitational sense. If this was me, I would sleep like like this. Well, you’re you’re pretty upright, but reclined neck pillow.
The neck pillow is going to help your head from rolling around or a couch with an ottoman armrest there. So, after a hair transplant, we are not laying down like head on pillow under the covers. Correct.
The reason for that to help speed away the swelling that’s going to occur. The body’s natural response to injury is to call a little fluid into the area and it swells up a bit. If you ever smack your finger, car door.
In a car door. Yeah. If we’re doing a hair transplant, we’re making, you know, let’s say 2,000 incisions for 2,000 follicles.
Yeah. Especially if it’s in the frontal hairline or in the temporal point area, that fluid that’s is going to be called up into that area to help heal all those 2,000 wounds. So the fluid has to get back into the blood system into the vascular system.
Doesn’t just resorb right where it’s at. The channels to bring that fluid back into the blood vessels are in the neck. Oh.
So that fluid has to travel through the face by keeping your head above the level of your heart in a vertical gravitational sense. It helps gravity constantly pull that fluid down to the neck. So after hair transplant, you sleep in a reclined sort of fashion to make sure that the fluid or to help the fluid go from your head to your neck to help with the drainage.
Just allows gravity to work 24 hours a day. Well, that is the conclusion of this episode. Let us know if you are getting ready for a hair transplant.
Questions you’d like us to answer, drop them in the comments. Thank you so much for tuning in with Q&A with Dr.
