Archive for the 'science' Category

Hair care seems like it should be simple. B ut as you age, so does your hair.  Over time, your hair becomes less dense. Individual strands get thinner and break more easily. Sunlight, climate, and pollution also exact a toll on your hair.  And the way you style your hair – blow drying, colouring, overusing gels – can all damage your hair. Sometimes, the only way to repair the damage is to cut the hair off and wait for healthy hair to grow back.  But if the damage hasn’t progressed too far, there are new hair care products that manufacturers claim will restore glossy, full-bodied hair.  Many of these products, according to dermatologists, work at least for a short time… read more

Cures for baldness: hair-raising science with thanks to Tim Lott from the Observer,  Sunday 17 April 2011 With radical transplant techniques and revolutionary formulae for regrowth, men – and the women who love them – may be looking forward to a luxuriantly hirsute future. It is some time now since I started to worry about baldness – somewhere between the retreat of the already fine hair at my temples in my early 30s and the final failing of the last growth of hair at my crown a few years back. I had been trying to convince myself that things might not be too bad for the past 20 years. But at the beginning of this year, at the age of… read more

Biologically Engineered Hair Growth Researcher Kevin McElwee  is one of a select group of people who have a PhD in hair biology and Dr McElwee believes that a cure for baldness that uses the technique of hair cloning could potentially be available within 10 years. Hair cloning is a more commonly used term for bio-engineered hair growth.  The process involves isolating a group of cells at the base of the hair follicle, which is the living part of hair which is rooted in the skin.  Once the follicular cells are multiplied in vitro in a laboratory, they can then be implanted back into the donor’s scalp where they divide to create new follicles and generate new hair. It is reported… read more

Experts at the University of Pennsylvania say they have discovered what they believe is one of the main causes of male pattern baldness, discovering a previously undiscovered cause, but a cause they hope will be correctable in the future. When a man is suffering from male pattern baldness, this means that a defect in the way his hair is synthesised by his scalp, means the hair that is produced is so small it appears virtually invisible to the naked eye. The breakthrough is discovering that the fault lies with the stem cells that make new hair, according to Journal of Clinical Investigation.  Experts therefore hope that it may be therefore be possible to ‘cure’ male baldness by restoring the normal… read more

It is well known that Cancer Chemotherapy causes hair loss.  This is a very different type of hair loss to typical male or female pattern baldness. As most people know, Chemotherapy is a cancer treatment which uses very powerful anti-cancer drugs to destroy cancer cells.  These drugs work by attacking the cancer cells and disrupting their growth. Unfortunately, they can also affect the normal cells in the body, including the cells of the hair follicles.  This causes hair loss, also known as alopecia. Unlike cancer cells, however, the normal cells quickly recover, so if you lose your hair due to chemotherapy it will almost always grow back when your treatment is over. Not all chemotherapy drugs make your hair fall… read more

Baldness Stem Aid The following an article taken from The Sun, published on Thursday 16th December 2010 Experts have invented a “cure” for baldness – by growing the world’s first hair follicles using animal stem cells. The researchers say their discovery will give hope to about four in five men with no hair. It is hoped that a procedure to regrow hair could be ready for market within five years.  Professor Roland Lauster of Berlin’s Technical University, Germany said “Preparations are in motion” We add:- This is a very brief article, but mentions growing human hair follicles from animal stem cells, which we have not reported on before.  Bearing in mind this is “The Sun”, do you have anything you… read more

“A cure for baldness is one step closer after scientists found two genes that dramatically increase the chance of hair loss in men,” the Daily Express reported.  It said that tests in over 1,125 men have revealed that men who have two genetic variants are seven times more likely to lose their hair.  The newspaper reports that around 14% of men carry both genetic variants, a third of men suffer from baldness by the age of 45, and 80% of cases are thought to be caused by genetic factors. This genetics study has confirmed the association of the AR gene with male-pattern baldness (it is located on the X chromosome and therefore inherited down the female line). The study also… read more

(With thanks to Pharmacist “Didapper” writing in the Pharmaceutical Journal) Bald Facts about Treating Glabrescence As I child I learned that some men will try anything to combat baldness.  When my father found an amusing old remedy for baldness and sent it to the letters page of a national newspaper, our postman was soon delivering dozens of letters from desperate people wanting to know where to obtain badger grease. Since that early experience I have retained an interest in baldness remedies despite also keeping a full head of hair. It seems that men have always worried about hair loss and been willing to try bizarre remedies.  These have often involved animal dung or urine.  For instance Hippocrates treated his patients… read more

Silver Fox Salt and pepper, silver, pewter, charcoal.  Whatever you call it, grey hair happens to all of us at some point. But why do some people go grey in their 20s, while others don’t see the first sign of silver until age 50? And if you’re going grey early, what should you do about it? What’s ‘Premature’ Hair goes grey when color-producing cells stop producing pigment, says Jeffrey Benabio, MD, a dermatologist at Kaiser Permanente in San Diego. Naturally occurring hydrogen peroxide can also build up in the hair, bleaching the color. Typically, white people start going grey in their mid-30s, Asians in their late 30s, and black people in their mid-40s. Half of all people have a significant… read more

Can your ethnicity or race really affect your hair loss? It is well documented that Inuits (Eskimos) and Native American Indians suffer from very little hair loss.  Generally speaking Asian and African men also suffer a lot less from hair loss than Caucasian people. An an interesting aside, a disproportionate number of sales of ProFusion are made to people of Asian origin.  This may not mean that Asian people have more or less hair loss, but probably indicates a greater desire to be proactive. What is also interesting is that Japanese men suffer from a low level of hair loss, however this has been increasing in recent years. Theories abound as to why this should be, but the obvious theory,… read more