How Do The Studies Weigh In On Hair Growth Remedy?

How Do Minoxidil Work? 

Do they really work, is always been the big question behind hair loss remedies with prescription and otherwise? 

That assessment was then made by the rather painstaking process of counting hairs in the past. Weighing the hair is a new study that finds there may be a more reliable way to check for regrowth. Researchers have now found one hair loss product that has a significant and possibly long-term effect on hair loss coming as minoxidil by doing that. 

Supported by a grant from Pharmacia & Upjohn, makers of the Rogaine brand of minoxidil were the study appearing in the latest issue of The Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. 

Assigned to use a minoxidil 2% solution, a 5% solution, or placebo were three groups of men aged 18-40. Using no treatment whatsoever was the fourth group. The researchers used a piece of plastic with a hole in the centre laid over the thinning spot, to sort out new growth beginning at week six and continuing every six weeks thereafter. Carefully cut and weighed was the growth. At which point all the men stopped using the treatments, this continued for another 90 weeks. 

Two things about minoxidil were the proven results: the 5% solution works better than the 2% as it regrows hair. In the 5% treatment group in fact the researchers found a 35% gain in hair, as also a 25% gain in the 2% group. 

Within six months the treated men were about on par with those using a placebo or nothing at all as the bad news is as soon as the minoxidil treatments were stopped hair loss accelerated. 

Here is more bad news: apparently dulling over time is the effect of minoxidil. Though they still remained well above what was achieved with placebo or no treatment at all as the researchers found a slight but steady drop-off in hair weight as the minoxidil treatments continued past a year. 

What Do Experts Have To Say?

The importance of volume over a number of hairs comes to be what one clinician says the study brings up a key point often obscured by hair-loss remedy advertising. According to Gary Hitzig, MD, the author of Help and Hope for Hair Loss, that it finally addresses that hair weight is more important than hair content is the most important part of this study. It is like having 130 twigs or 100 trees, as the best way of comparing. Which is going to give you more volume in the forest as they are all trees? 

Jean-Claude Bystryn, MD, professor of dermatology at New York University's School of Medicine, says it only works in the minority of people and it probably doesn’t work forever as the bottom line with minoxidil is, it does work. Further on, it does help as are you going to get a permanent effect, or are you gonna keep the hair forever? The answer is probably not. Are you better off if you are 20% better than you would have been? The answer is yes for some guys. 

They haven’t found a drug yet to keep people from getting older as the problem is suggested by Bystryn. He then says many, many years down the road, the minoxidil may have a benefit. Here comes the aging process. Which is inevitable, these things are retarding a change. You haven’t stopped hair loss if you retard it. Whereas for now, you come to be still ahead of the game. 

Without doing anything about it, of course, there is a way to stay ahead of the hair game. Also known as the gospel according to the Bald Headed Men of America, it's called acceptance. John Capps, a spokesperson for the Morehead City, N.C. group, then says for drugs, plugs, or rugs, they don’t have room. Coming to be an aging process is life. For the aging the good Lord has placed on our bodies, our schools don’t prepare us. 

Specifically targeting an age group that has money to spend, Capps charges drug companies and others with preying on those losing their hair. Capps then explains, however old we are, there’s somebody out there telling us that we ought to be younger as the challenge is. He then adds that making the difference is the attitude inside it. 

Finally, Some Vital Information:

Not only regrows hair but increases the thickness of individual hairs as a new study shows that the hair loss product, minoxidil is. 

Once the medication is stopped, the amount of hair loss returns to its original condition as the effects of minoxidil are mitigated over time. 

Criticising drug companies for taking advantage of people who are losing their hair, one group argues that one way to deal with hair loss is acceptance.