Since she was a teenager, former Miss England Dr Bhasha Mukherjee has been hiding a secret about her appearance – she has female pattern baldness. This means that her hair is thinning, especially around her hairline and on the top of her scalp, becoming more visible along her parting.
And it got so bad that in January this year Bhasha, who is 28, flew to Turkey to have a hair transplant. “There is so much embarrassment about female hair loss,” she says. “For many women our self worth is attached to our hair and femininity and I experienced that myself.”
Bhasha, who was born in India and moved to Derby at the age of nine, says she first became self conscious about her looks as a teenager, and even though she was excelling academically (she is now an NHS medic and media doctor ), became a model at the age of 16 to gain a sense of “validation” about her looks.
But as she modelled and started dancing (Bollywood and belly dancing) she became acutely aware that her medium-texture hair wasn’t as thick as beauty standards dictated. “It’s so normalised in the modelling world to wear hair extensions and inserts to create fuller buns. I don’t remember an instance when I didn’t wear something to improve the appearance of my hair,” she says. “But the products, extensions and intense hair styles just made my hair worse.”
Bhasha managed to use clever styling such as straightening and curling her locks to disguise her hair loss, and in August 2019 she was crowned Miss England. She also began working as a junior doctor in hospital – just as covid started to spread. “My entire career has been shaped by covid,” she says.
“I was on the Covid front lines and that’s when my hair loss journey really started. I look back at pictures of myself and at how unhealthy I looked then. I felt like I aged five years during the pandemic. My hair started to thin at the front in November 2020. I was experiencing a lot of stress at work, and I was being bullied for being Miss England, and that’s when it started.”
The most common cause of hair loss in women is androgenetic alopecia – known as female pattern baldness. It can occur at any age after puberty but is most common in post-menopausal women when the fall in female hormones is thought to be linked to hair follicles shrinking. It also has a genetic component. “It’s very different to male hair loss,” says Bhasha. “It’s not like I had complete hair loss, it wasn’t like I was bald, it was a lot of thinning at the scalp, and the parting areas.”
But severe stress can also cause hair shedding, which is called telogen effluvium, where hair typically grows back within three to six months. “Hair loss can be quite quick,” says Bhasha. Yet after Covid eased and society returned to normality, her hair didn’t bounce back. And the past two years, in which she’s bought a house in London started training to be a GP, have been hard on her hair.
“I was seeing so much hair coming off in the shower that I had to cut it short. I was using so many different types of topical products – the main medication for women is minoxidil, but I came out in an allergic rash that lasted for a week. I tried everything. I saw a trichologist, had four PRP injections of my own platelets to boost the health of my scalp and I had LED light therapy. wasted so much money on different things to salvage what there was,” she says.
“I finally made the decision to get the transplant because I was told that if you get it done earlier you can see better results. The transplant will last for 10 years, so I thought, ‘If I have 10 years of good hair, that’s okay’.” So at the end of January, with the support of her partner of a decade, she flew to Turkey to attend the Visit & Medcare clinic in Istanbul.
Bhasha isn’t alone. Surgeons report rising numbers of women seeking hair transplants but they are still very much in the minority – according to 2022 figures from the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery, only 12.7% of global hair transplant procedures were performed on women.
And as Bhasha describes it, a hair transplant is not for the faint-hearted. “I had long shoulder length hair and the first thing they did was shave the entire back of my head. They then took individual follicles, picking every third or second follicle to implant it in my scalp and hairline.
“During the surgery, which took five hours, I was given local anaesthetic in my scalp but it started to accumulate, which caused swelling. So my scalp ballooned, giving me a horrible headache. Even though I had IV paracetamol, the last two hours were excruciating. And then after the procedure I vomited in my hotel after the anaesthetic wore off.”
Three days later, with her face still swollen, Bhasha flew home. The first few weeks were difficult – as her scalp healed, scabs formed, which had to be gently removed. She had to sleep at a 45-degree angle for the first two weeks and her partner had to wash her hair for her without using a shower head, which is too forceful for newly transplanted follicles.
Bhasha was told to leave her hair uncovered for four weeks following surgery, yet she had to go back to work after a week, with the back of her head and her hairline looking raw, shaved and scabby. “I was trying to cover it with the remaining hair,” she says. “I also had TV appearance jobs and I didn’t know how I’d face the cameras. I resorted to wearing a hair topper which was okay for a few months. But I felt really worried about covering my scalp as it wouldn’t be able to breathe. There are several aftereffects of the procedure – it’s intensely itchy in the front and the back as the skin is healing. Also a lot of your hair falls out from the shock.”
On top of that is managing the regrowth. “It grows back very slowly, which is a difference between men and women,” she says. “For men, within four weeks they have their full head of short hair back. For me, it’s taking an awfully long time to get my hair back to its long length again.
“I’ve still got patches without hair that I’m trying to conceal. To be honest, even now, I’m conscious of the front of my hair, where my hair is growing in a patchy way. I’m still self-conscious about my hairline too. The way it’s growing at the front isn’t nice and smooth, it is almost growing upwards.
“Nothing is the same as natural – even the best doctors are not going to make it exactly natural,” she says. “But this whole journey for me has been about crafting a conversation around women’s hair loss. There should be less shame about it, and about wearing wigs and weaves,” she says. And Bhasha, who had always dreamed of being a doctor, says the experience has given her a new perspective on her patients. “I have real empathy for my patients going through hair loss and I can really advise them on the options that are open to them.”
Now nine months after her hair transplant, Bhasha is philosophical about her locks. “You don’t see the true effect of a hair transplant for one to two years, so the true test is when my whole head of hair has grown. But, do I think the hair has grown where it was put in? Yes. Has it solved my problem? That’s difficult to say.
“I’m getting used to this new hairline, which isn’t as natural looking as I would have liked. Interestingly, I find I’m now less focused on my hair overall. During this whole process I’ve learned to be more patient. I’m learning to be more comfortable with whatever my hair is doing and – it’s slow – but I’m gaining acceptance. This whole thing has tested me but I’m less worried about the future.”
For more information about media doctor Dr Bhasha Mukherjee, follow her on Instagram at @bhashamukherjee