Could We See A New Dawn For Hair Loss Treatments
There hasnt been a new hair loss drug approved in twenty years. But a number of European companies are hot on the case and are getting tantalizingly close to the breakthrough that many patients hope for.
With body dysmorphia magnified by the omnipresent digital world, psychiatrists have increasingly linked the onset of male and female pattern baldness to mental health conditions ranging from anxiety to even depression.
Over the past decade, cosmetic surgery has looked to ease the burden. There is a scarcity of preventative treatments the only drugs approved by regulators are Minoxidil and Propecia, both of which are only marginally effective at halting hair loss, and the former is the only treatment available to women. The market value of the global hair transplant industry is therefore predicted to exceed 24B by 2027.
However, hair transplants are no panacea as they can be costly and sometimes painful. As a consequence, there is a huge market for any new product that can effectively halt pattern baldness in its tracks, and a series of European biotechs view this as an opportunity.
Buoyed by a number of research breakthroughs regarding the science behind hair growth, several biotechs have products in late-stage clinical trials, some of which may go on to become the first novel drug treatments for baldness in 20 years.
Caring For Hair That Grows Back
When your hair begins to grow back, it will be much thinner and more easily damaged than your original hair. It may also be a different texture or color. The following tips may help you take care of the hair that grows back.
-
Limit washing your hair to twice a week.
-
Massage your scalp gently to remove dry skin and flakes.
-
Use a wide-tooth comb instead of a brush for your hair. When styling your hair, limit the amount of pinning, curling, or blow-drying with high heat.
-
Avoid permanent or semi-permanent hair color for at least 3 months after treatment ends.
-
Avoid curling or straightening your hair with chemical products such as permanent wave solutions until it all grows back. You may need to wait up to a year before you can chemically curl or straighten their hair. Before trying chemical products again, test a small patch of hair to see how it reacts. You can also ask your hairdresser for suggestions.
How Is Hereditary Hair Loss Treated
Losing your hair slowly is a normal part of the ageing process for most men and some women. Treatment is not usually necessary. However, hair loss that occurs rapidly or early in life can be distressing. If you wish to slow or stop the progression of hair loss, there are treatments available.
Treatments for hair loss include:
- medicines, both local and oral
- wigs, hairpieces or hair transplantation.
Hair loss that is caused by a temporary situation such as illness, medication, stress or insufficient iron will stop when the cause is resolved. Read more about abnormal hair loss.
Also Check: Does Premarin Cause Hair Loss
What Are The Cycles Of Hair Growth
Hair goes through three cycles:
- The anagen phase can last from two years to eight years. This phase generally refers to about 85% to 90% of the hair on your head.
- The catagen phase is the time that hair follicles shrink and takes about two to three weeks.
- The telogen phase takes about two to four months. At the end of this phase, the hair falls out.
Your shorter hairs like eyelashes, arm and leg hair and eyebrows have a short anagen phase about one month. Your scalp hair can last up to six years or even longer.
What Will It Look Like
Its easy to assume that a permanent hair loss cure would come in the form of a pill, much like Propecia is now. However, one of the most promising avenues of hair loss research is hair cloning. Hair cloning is being researched in many different labs around the world as I write this. In fact some people are so invested in this research that theyre convinced that soon it will be the most
Read Also: Can Estrogen Supplements Help With Hair Loss
The Truth About Pattern Hair Loss
Hair loss is becoming more common and is occurring for many men at a younger age.
Its also clear that male pattern baldness is a lot more common in Western countries such as the US, UK, Europe, Canada and Australia. It is less common in Asia, Africa and Central and South America.
What is also interesting is that pattern baldness is practically non-existent in stable indigenous populations.
Even more interesting is, when people from these areas move to countries like the US their likelihood of going bald also increases up to the national average.
This would suggest that, far from being entirely determined by your genes, your environment plays a crucial role in whether lose your hair.
Yes, genes are involved. But what is important here is that it is a genetic predisposition.
This mean that you have genes that under a certain environment are more susceptible to hair loss.
And that is GREAT NEWS
Because it means that your environment triggers baldness, and as humans we have a unique advantage in that we can always change our environment.
In fact, even small changes to your diet and lifestyle can have a BIG effect on whether or not you continue to lose hair.
This is about as close as you can get to a real cure.
However there are some unnatural ways you can deal with baldness. Maybe you already know about them and Im going to discuss them too in this article.
Common Hair Loss Problems: Androgenetic Alopecia
Most of us, when we think of hair loss, think about aging men. Nearly all men eventually get that receding M-shaped hairline and thinning hair on the top of the head, also known as male pattern baldness. It’s called androgenetic alopecia, and it’s caused by a by-product of testosterone called DHT. Learn more about the latest DHT-blocking treatments.
Aging women have a similar problem. Their hair gets thin, although it’s not clear that this is necessarily caused by sex hormones.
What is clear is that the same thing happens in aging men and women. Hair follicles get smaller. The anagen stage of hair growth gets shorter, and the resting stage gets longer. The result: Thin, very short hairs — and many follicles empty of hair shafts.
Why is this pattern of hair loss only in the front and on top? That’s where hormone-sensitive follicles live. The follicles on the sides and back of the head aren’t affected by DHT and usually stay healthy.
Also Check: Does Eliquis Cause Hair Loss
Boost Your Practice Roi 15x With Our Pepfactor Kit Code 20off Takes 20% Off Your First Order
PepFactor is a groundbreaking peptide and PRP alternate, that does not require a blood draw or any expensive equipment . It can be combined with microneedling by Aestheticians in most states for both skin rejuvenation and hair restoration.
The coupon code is active for logged-in users only. You can create an account here.
Hair Cycle Of Growth And Rest
Like your skin and nails, your hair goes through a finely tuned cycle of growth and rest. Hair loss can occur at any time in the cycle. There are 3 phases in a hair cycle:
- In the first stage, your scalp hair is continually growing. This is called the anagen phase. In this phase, your hair grows about 12cm per month. About 90% of your hair is in this stage at any one time. It lasts between 25 years.
- The second stage is call the catagen phase, which is when growth stops. About 13% of your scalp hair is in this phase at any one time. It lasts for 23 weeks.
- The third stage is called the telogen phase. This is a resting phase and it lasts between 14 months. About 10% of your scalp hair is in this phase at any one time.
At the end of its resting stage, a hair goes through a shedding phase, which normally results in the growth of a new hair. When a hair is shed, it’s replaced by a new hair from the same hair follicle, located just beneath your skin surface.
Male or female hereditary hair loss is caused by genetic or hormonal influences. It is also called androgenic alopecia because it is affected by the hormones called androgens. These are present in both men and women, but in different quantities.
Your risk of hereditary hair loss increases if you have relatives who have experienced hair loss. Your genetic blueprint for hair loss will affect things like:
- how old you are when hair loss begins
- how fast you lose hair
- the pattern and extent of your hair loss/ baldness.
Read Also: Can The Iud Cause Hair Loss
Hair Loss: Diagnosis And Treatment
Dermatologist examining a patient with hair loss
To find out what’s causing your hair loss, a dermatologist may use a tool called a dermascope to get a closer look.
Effective treatment for hair loss begins with finding the cause. To get an accurate diagnosis, it helps to see a board-certified dermatologist. These doctors have in-depth knowledge about the many causes of hair loss and experience treating the diverse causes.
On Whom Does Prp Treatment Work
PRP or platelet-rich plasma treatment for hair loss works best on people who have started experiencing hair fall recently. There are many studies on people with androgenic alopecia or male pattern baldness showing promising results. Androgenic alopecia is a genetic condition that is affected by hormones. Two studies were done on people with alopecia areata an auto-immune disorder that causes hair thinning and balding also showed that PRP therapy may be an effective treatment for the same , . However, more research is required to prove the same. Also, remember that PRP treatment does not cure balding.
If a part of your scalp has started thinning out recently, talk to your dermatologist to see if PRP treatment is the best option.
PRP therapy is a budding and effective hair loss treatment. But, is it a permanent solution for hair loss and balding? Find out in the next section.
Also Check: How To Deal With Pcos Hair Loss
Why Does Hair Loss Happen
Before we can get into the finer details of treating hair loss, its important to cover the basics of how and why male hair loss happens in the first place.
Luckily, the biological mechanism behind male pattern baldness isnt too complex. In fact, it all comes down to two factors: your genetics and the effects of an androgen hormone referred to as dihydrotestosterone, or DHT.
DHT is a hormone thats produced by your body as a of testosterone. Before youre born, DHT plays a vital role in forming the male genitals. During puberty, its one of several key hormones responsible for the development of male secondary sexual characteristics.
In short, you can thank DHT for a variety of things that make you, well, a man — from your voice to things like body hair and your Adams apple.
Unfortunately, DHT can also affect your hair. If youre genetically sensitive to DHT, it can target the hair follicles around the hairline and the crown of your scalp, causing them to shrink.
Over time, the hair follicles affected by DHT gradually stop producing new hairs, resulting in a receding hairline or thinning hair. For women, the equivalent type of hair loss — female pattern hair loss — usually causes diffuse hair loss around the part line.
Not everyone is equally sensitive to DHT. People whose hair is resistant to DHT can maintain a full or nearly full head of hair well into old age. On the other hand, people who are very sensitive to DHT can go completely bald in their 20s or 30s.
Krox20 Protein Scf Gene
Researchers from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas have identified a protein called KROX20, which switches on cells in the skin and tells them to become hair. Furthermore, these hair precursor cells then go on to produce a protein called stem cell factor , which plays a critical role in hair pigmentation.
When the SCF gene was deleted in the hair precursor cells in mice, they grew gray hair that turned white with age. Moreover, when the KROX20-producing cells were removed, the hair ceased growing, and the mice became bald.
With this knowledge, we hope in the future to create a topical compound or to safely deliver the necessary gene to hair follicles to correct these cosmetic problems, said Dr. Lu Le, associate professor of dermatology at UT Southwestern.
Future work by the team will focus on finding out whether KROX20 and the SCF gene stop functioning properly and lead to male pattern baldness.
Read Also: How To Reverse Dht Hair Loss
Is A Permanent Hair Loss Cure Possible
Whether its a receding hairline, noticeable bald patches at the back of the head, or a thinning head of hair youre struggling to cover with a trendy new hairstyle, you might be experiencing one of the many different types of hair loss.
In fact, some level of androgenetic alopecia is inevitable for most men as they get older. MPB is caused by a complex combination of genetic, hormonal, and age-related factors, and scientists still have a long way to go before they fully understand the mechanisms behind new hair growth and hair loss.
Researchers in this field have made progress in recent years, with new drugs, stem cell experimentation, effective hair transplants, clinical trials, and a deeper knowledge of genetics all suggesting that a permanent cure for baldness could be on the horizon. However, as hair loss is still considered more of a cosmetic issue, scientists sometimes struggle to obtain funding for their work.
In this article, weve compiled a survey of recent research into hair loss, along with a summary of the licensed hair loss treatment options that are currently available.
Hair Loss Treatments For Men Prices
With so many options for hair loss treatment for men, it comes as no surprise that pricing varies considerably. Some programs involve long-term commitments, which are typically sold as subscription plans. Others involve high up-front costs and involved procedures.
Inexpensive: If youre on a budget, consider an entry-level program that uses only prescription oral or topical treatments. These cost from $17 to $50 per month.
Mid-range: Programs that include a combination of prescriptions as well as a variety of products often run between $50 and $200 per month.
Expensive: Laser therapy involves several sessions. The cost could amount to between $1,000 and $3,000. Invasive treatments like hair implantation are the most costly options at nearly $3,000 to $15,000 from start to finish. While its not necessarily part of a subscription plan, some facilities and providers offer monthly payment plans to offset the high cost of treatment.
If youre leaning toward oral medication to treat hair loss, be prepared to take the medication for a year in order to see major results.
Also Check: Does Hair Loss From Stress Grow Back