In the United States alone, pattern hair loss affects more than forty million men. Few people know that hair loss also occurs in two crore women. Until recently, there were few viable options for women facing this problem. Today, great advances are being made in research and treatment. In this article we’ll focus on the latest and greatest treatments as well as the therapies to come in the future.
But first, a brief discussion to outline the gender-based similarities and differences. This is called “pattern” hair loss in both sexes because the hair inside the area of damage is subject to thinning and falling out. Hair outside the zone is generally considered immune. This fact alone has motivated hair transplant surgery for more than fifty years because hair transplanted into the thinning area retains its genetic immunity and continues to thrive. But there is an important caveat.
In men, the pattern of hair loss leaves a healthy dense area of scalp with hair available for transplant. In women, this does not always happen. Often, women lose hair all over their scalp to such an extent that hair transplant surgery becomes a non-starter because you would be trading one area of sparse hair for another. Another point of difference between the sexes is that women with thinning hair tend to retain their juvenile or feminine hairline while bi-temporal recession is a much more common finding in men. Thus, in essence, in men, the area of hair loss is more severe but physically limited – whereas in women the degree of loss may not be as severe, but the extent of the area affected may be much more extensive.
In this article, we will not delve into the biochemical hallmarks that differentiate male from female pattern hair loss. Suffice to say, the general biochemical characteristics associated with pattern hair loss generally outweigh gender-specific differences.
OK, we’ve set a reasonable foundation for the problem. What to do now? Let’s start by touching on the options that honestly don’t work and then we’ll get into the treatments that do. The first thing that doesn’t work is usually the first thing women try, ie “thickening” the hair. Using thickening sprays, gels, mists, etc. on thin hair is like applying makeup to a corpse. Finally, the jig is up. In women affected by hair loss, eventually the hair thins to the point where no amount of flocking spray will be able to hide what is happening. This is because the visible hairs on top of the scalp are also non-living parts of the system. That’s why you don’t scream bloody murder when your stylist runs the scissors through your hair. That’s why the hair shaft ends up with thickening shampoos and volumizing hair sprays to correct errant ends. It’s the hair follicle, buried several millimeters beneath the surface of the skin, where we need to focus.
Another thing that just doesn’t seem to work is scalp massage, and/or a variety of products designed to increase blood flow to the scalp. Pattern hair loss is not a function of a compromised blood supply. So massaging the scalp or using products purported to “strengthen” the scalp is basically nothing more than shelling out a disreputable hair company’s bank account. Next on our list of “things that don’t work” are hair vitamins. Your hair is not hungry. You are not missing trace elements or vitamin C. Your hair is being shut down by genetic and epigenetic factors that hair vitamins simply can’t fix.
By now, you’re probably saying to yourself, well, if none of this works, I’m basically out of luck, right? Wrong. From a medical perspective, there really has never been a time in human history with better options than today. For starters, just as there are male-indicated hair loss treatment medications that are off limits to women, there are female-indicated hair growth treatment medications that are not suitable for use by men. The first drug on the list is spironolactone.
Spironolactone (marketed under the trade names Aldactone, Novo-Spirotone, Aldactazide, Spiractin, Spirotone, Verospiron or Berlactone) is a diuretic and is used as an antiandrogen.
It is a synthetic 17-lactone drug that is a renal competitive aldosterone antagonist in a class of pharmaceuticals called potassium-sparing diuretics, primarily used to treat heart failure, liver disease, low-renin high Blood pressure, hypokalemia, secondary hyperaldosteronism (such as occurs with liver cirrhosis), and Conn’s syndrome (primary hyperaldosteronism). Because of its antiandrogen effects, it can also be used to treat hirsutism, and is a common component of hormone therapy for male-to-female transsexuals and transgender people. Interestingly, it is also used to treat hair loss and acne in women, and is used as a topical medicine to treat male baldness. Spironolactone is commonly used to treat symptoms of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), such as excess facial hair and acne. It can also cause gynecomastia in men and should never be given with potassium supplements for fear of developing hyperkalemia.
The next medicine for hair loss is Flutamide. Flutamide is an oral nonsteroidal antiandrogen drug primarily used for the treatment of prostate cancer. It competes with testosterone and its potent metabolite, dihydrotestosterone (DHT), for binding to androgen receptors in the prostate gland. By doing so, it prevents them from stimulating prostate cancer cells to grow. Flutamide has largely been replaced as a cancer drug by bicalutamide due to a better side-effect profile. Flutamide can also be used to treat excess androgen levels in women, and this is where the drug is also used to treat hair loss in women. It is marketed by Schering-Plough under the brand name Eulexin, also known as Flutamin. Like spironolactone, flutamide has the potential to cause feminizing side effects such as gynecomastia in men, and is therefore a hair loss treatment drug that is generally only useful for hair-challenged women.
Medicines are great. Thank god for the medicines. Arguably, the greatest achievement of the twentieth century was the creation of such miracle drugs as streptomycin and penicillin. But drugs also come with common but sometimes very significant negative side effects. Interestingly, it is also a fact that more than 50% of the pharmaceutical drugs used worldwide today are of origin either wholly or partially derived from natural substances. For example, one of the earliest TB drugs was extracted from a bacillus found in cranberry bogs. Mother Nature has been busy creating biochemically active molecules for many millions of years. Man has been in it for a short time.
The beauty of natural phytochemicals stuns and ignites the imagination. And while natural medicine has been in use for thousands of years, only recently has evidence-based scientific analysis been applied to validate these ‘nutraceuticals’ as such substances are sometimes called. A new field is emerging where the sophisticated tools of molecular biology and protein chemistry are being used to test, concentrate, and generally improve naturally derived compounds, all without turning them into synthetic drugs. .
In this laboratory, the focus of our work is directed towards the development of formulations to naturally treat hair loss. Here, the goal is to take what we’ve learned and find safe, plant-based substances that may provide testable benefits in the setting of pattern hair loss.
Source by Geno Marcovici
