Every now and again we are confronted by news of a ‘miracle cure’ or an ‘instant solution’, that claims to offer a unique new cure for balding. The baldness treatment industry is worth an estimated $1 billion annually in the United States alone. Considering that 50% of men experience hair loss or baldness to a smaller or greater extent by the time they are 50 years of age, and that a significant proportion of them want to do something about it, this is hardly surprising.
Most recently, British trichologists claimed that they could offer a 30 minute baldness treatment that involves injecting the person with a formulation created from their own platelet rich plasma derived from their blood cells mixed with a pig bladder extract. This is the treatment that is seen to successfully prevent further hair loss by forming a protective barrier around the existing healthy hair. Though this is being touted as a breakthrough claiming to offer the best cure for baldness, it is far from the only such claim made.
The fact is that baldness treatments have limited application and efficacy as of now. Many may work to a limited extent, yet others may work not at all for a given person or a given kind of hair loss. For instance over the counter medications for hair loss such as Minoxidil (Rogaine), Finasteride (Propecia, Proscar) and many others are effective and can reign in hair loss, but have several shortcomings. They can take months to show effect, they don’t work for extensive kinds of baldness and hair loss caused by specific reasons, they can be tiresome to use each day and messy as well – the limitations are several.
In the past few decades, hormone therapy has used Dihydrotestosterone (DHT) to treat the problem. DHT is an androgen or male sex hormone that is known to be responsible for hair problems and targeted therapy has tried to prevent it acting on the androgen receptors present in the scalp to effectively offer baldness treatment to both men and women.
However this again will have limited efficacy in terms of the number of people and the types of hair loss that it can ‘cure’. The truth remains that there is really no definitive solution as such that will restore a full head of hair where there is today a bald pate. Such a dramatic transformation; though promised or hinted at by clever marketing and advertizing, is hardly ever seen to come to fruition.
Even treatments such as hair weaving and hair transplants are not without their limitations and problems. They can offer unsatisfactory or artificial looking results and can cause disfigurement (particularly at the site where the healthy hair follicles are extracted) and so on.
So as of now, treatments that work to a lesser or greater extent may be present and many could derive limited benefit from them. However science and trichology are not yet so advanced as to be able to offer a definitive cure; at least not just yet.
Author bio:
Sarika Periwal advocates natural treatments for common hair and skin conditions. Find simple home remedies for hair growth and other hair treatments on her website. Hair loss can be controlled to a great extent by nourishing them with natural substances that cause no harm in any other way.