It seems like we’ve been waiting for a hair loss breakthrough for a very long time. Every year, sufferers of male pattern baldness are told that a cure is just 5 years away.
Hair multiplication and cloning was expected to revolutionize the way that hair could be restored.
The basic premise was that you can take a hair from the back of the head and simply clone it, making multiple hundreds or thousands of similar hairs.
These hairs, when taken from the back of the head are not affected by DHT and don’t suffer from miniaturization, meaning they’re there for good.
Unfortunately, this hasn’t happened yet, or at least it isn’t available to the public, and scientists and researchers are still saying it’s 5 years away before this kind of procedure will be possible.
On the other side of the spectrum, the large pharmaceutical companies have been working to improve on the currently most effective drug, propecia.
Unfortunately, as many men who have tried it know, propecia (also known as finasteride) can have some very undesirable side effects, such as loss of libido, erectile dysfunction, and reduced ejaculatory volume, (plus many more.)
Propecia can also cause shedding to begin with.
I personally experienced these side-effects when I tried the drug and it’s clear to me now that the small reward just isn’t worth the risk.
Many men don’t even experience hair re-growth at all, and some continue to see a decline in hair coverage anyway.
Even further than improved development of Propecia, researchers have been making strides to discover new hair loss treatment drugs.
One such drug – currently in the beginning stages of testing – is SM04554.
Believed by many – researchers and hair loss sufferers alike – to be the “cure of the future”, this drug is known as the “miracle molecule”. Instead of blocking DHT (like Propecia), SM04554 works to enable a pathway known to cause hair growth (the Wnt pathway).
This is a natural process that takes place in the body, but one that’s blocked by a protein known as DKK1.
Researchers believe that SM04554 can inhibit DKK1 from stopping the Wnt pathway, and this will actually regenerate hair follicles and improve hair growth. That’s because the Wnt pathway plays a role in fetal development, and it can even induce dermal progenitor cells (similar to stem cells) to form a hair bulge.
Aside from the generation of new hair follicles, the Wnt pathway is also believed to initiate and maintain the anagen phase of hair growth. This is an essential step in the hair growth process, as anagen is the active phase of growth. With anagen initiated and prolonged, hair can grow (even from follicles that may have been previously miniaturized).
While this drug is still a long way from FDA approval, preliminary studies have already taken place.
The first study showed that SM04554 was overall safe for use, and it had very little in the way of side effects. The side effects that were present were mild and localized to the application site.
The second study focused on results, and they certainly look promising:
As seen above, follicle counts increased even after treatment had ceased (on Day 90), and both doses (0.15% and 0.25%) worked better than vehicle.
In addition, while the 0.25% solution seemed to be more effective, the 0.15% solution caught up in the end.
Finally, a larger-scale study was performed that contained over 300 male subjects.
Hair count and density increased in participants who received SM04554:
Interestingly, the treatment group who received the lower dose (0.15%) saw better results than the treatment group who received the higher dose (0.25%). According to researchers, this is known as the “Goldilocks effect”, but it may put a damper on further testing and development.
This is because scientists like to see results improve as dosage increases. Without this effect, it can make it difficult to know when to use which dosage, or even to understand when the drug would become lethal.
Luckily there are much more effective ways to beat hair loss without using drugs. And the only side effects are glowing health, increased libido and plentiful energy.
Side effects that come about through balancing your body and providing it with what it needs to grow hair, whilst removing the toxins and waste that causes hair loss in the first place. But more on that later.
The truth is, if you’re waiting for a hair loss breakthrough to come in the form of the drug you will be sorely disappointed.
Hair loss is, on a fundamental biological level, an imbalance in the body that causes hair to shed. Just look at how rates of male pattern baldness have increased over time, and correlate strongly with modern sedentary lifestyles and poor diets.
Where ever industrialization goes, over time, male pattern baldness follows.
The good news about this is, it means there is a lot you can do to slow down the process, and even reverse it. Back to the point though.
As pattern baldness is caused by biological imbalance, trying to make this right with a pharmaceutical is only covering things up. Yes it may work in the short term, but ultimately your body will pay the price down the road.
We all need to listen to what our body is telling us so that we can learn how to heal it for ourselves, naturally. In the long term, any drug will do more harm than good.
Why take the risk of interfering with your body and fighting the symptoms when you could easily correct hair loss naturally anyway.
Whether it’s a drug that inhibits 5-alpha-reductase to stop the production of DHT, or if it’s a new drug that inhibits Janus Kinase (JAK) (which puts hair follicles into a dormant phase) the result will be the same.
Learn more about JAK inhibitors here.
Tampering with the body in an unnatural way.
For me personally, and for most of the readers of this hair loss blog, we don’t want to wait, and we don’t want to interfere with our body in an unnatural way.
We’ve decided to try and cure our hair loss naturally. And for those who have already lost a significant amount of hair that is unrecoverable (the scalp heals over preventing any new hair from possibly growing) hair cloning may offer an acceptable solution.
In the mean time, the quickest way to combat hair loss is to remove the DHT from the scalp directly and then follow the lifestyle and dietary changes that I write about at the Hair Loss Revolution.
Update: I’ve just written an article about WAY 316606 which has recently been in the news as a potential fix for hair loss.
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