[HN Gopher] Microneedle patch digs deep to regenerate hair in ba...
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Microneedle patch digs deep to regenerate hair in bald mice
Author : clouddrover
Score : 54 points
Date : 2022-11-05 21:12 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (newatlas.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newatlas.com)
| jimlongton wrote:
| Have any other HN readers gone through all the standard hair loss
| prevention treatments and just given up?
|
| I was obsessed with saving my hair in my late 20s. In my 30s I
| just accepted it and moved on. Treatments can be expensive with
| dubious results (Minoxidil, different shampoos) or have possible
| serious side effects (Finasteride). This can be really
| disheartening if you are single though.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| I refused to ever go down the chemical path and just lived with
| the ugliness of having splotchy hair on the crown of my head.
| It didn't seem to impact my dating life much but there are so
| many variables in such things that it's hard to know if things
| would have been somehow better if I hadn't started thinning.
| But then I went through a very stressful period of life and the
| hair loss accelerated and I started shaving it completely.
| Though I have since grown my hair out again, the pre-stress
| slotchiness is still there but I in general don't care.
|
| Being Mr. Clean level bald for several years did come with some
| lessons. The biggest was that even with thinning hair, it
| provides far more thermal regulation than you'd expect. Without
| any hair, your head can quickly overheat in direct sunlight and
| you lose tons of heat during cold weather. Get accustomed to
| having hats. For me, the newsie type hat worked best but for
| some reason, there are plenty of people who think if you wear
| that particular type of hat, that you're trying to fool
| everyone into thinking you're not bald. Some people can be very
| assholish about it. But for the bald it is a good hat because
| there's not a lot of empty space for where hair usually would
| go. It does a nice job of replicating the thermal regulation
| hair normally would. Mesh trucker type hats are generally not a
| good choice. There's too much airflow and the bands tend to be
| abrasive.
|
| Another thing you'll have to deal with if you still have
| significant amounts of hair outside of the balding spots is how
| much more time you're now going to spend keeping it shaved
| clean. Stubble might be seen as sexy on your face but it looks
| bad on your head. Any time savings from not needing to shampoo,
| condition, and style your hair can get consumed by needing to
| keep it shaved. There are specialized types of razors made for
| head shaving that use standard shaving cartridges. It's worth
| spending a few bucks on getting one instead of using a razor
| designed for your face.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| I am taking oral minoxidil at the dangerous upper limit I
| barely tolerate (12mg). At the start I once almost drowned in
| wild waters from the unexpected fast heartbeat and low energy.
|
| Finasteride gave me severe depression. Also, I microneedle. My
| min + microneedle regime is extremely effective.
| deanmoriarty wrote:
| I (mid 30s) have been on Finasteride for a couple years. No
| side effects whatsoever (healthy sex life, no depression, etc.)
| and it seems to have significantly slowed down my progression.
| I do not take Minoxidil because it would consume too much of my
| time, and am not comfortable with the oral version.
|
| If Finasteride continues working for a few more years I might
| consider a FUE transplant to restore a bunch of density. I
| consulted with a top hair transplant surgeon (very famous and
| pricey, with a one year-long backlog) and he told me
| Finasteride is by far the most effective, and time-sensitive,
| treatment one can start to mitigate the problem. In his
| experience of 20+ years as surgeon administering Finasteride to
| 1000s of patient, he said the number of people exhibiting side
| effects is consistent with the published research during
| clinical trials, i.e. very very low. That being said, each
| person clearly has a different appetite for "risk".
|
| He said I should not necessarily be in a rush with the
| transplant considering my situation, and that as long as I keep
| using Finasteride and it works it will keep my options open in
| the future for a transplant.
|
| I'm also not single and my partner actually suggested multiple
| times she doesn't care about my hair, I just do like my hair
| and will explore all options this world has to offer before
| giving up :-)
| keepquestioning wrote:
| What dosage?
| binkHN wrote:
| > This can be really disheartening if you are single though.
|
| I started to lose my hair earlier than I cared, so I started
| cutting my hair rather short to deal with it. I met my partner
| around this time, but we were both in other relationships. A
| few months later, I finally decided to shave my head, and only
| after that did my partner think I looked good. Maybe this will
| work for you if you haven't gone down this route already.
| [deleted]
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| If hair treatments don't work, just completely shave your head
| or keep it trimmed _really_ close - that 's a look that can be
| pulled off by a lot of guys. What is generally considered
| unattractive (even if people are no longer allowed to say it
| out loud they still think it) is the male-patterned baldness
| look.
|
| But just look at Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk in the late 90s vs.
| today - they took different but IMO equally successful
| approaches to their hair loss. Musk went the hair plugs route
| while Bezos went the "shave it all off" route (of course I
| don't think the hormone therapy for Bezos hurt either).
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Getting ripped really helps Bezos pull off that look. No hair
| on your head, none on your face, and a dad bod can make one
| look like a giant baby or like someone under going chemo.
| Neal Stephenson seems to have done well with the facial hair
| route, not ending up looking like a pair of handlebars or
| someone with an upside down head.
| temp24582934 wrote:
| That's something people really need to know: finasteride /
| dutasteride literally modify your endocrine (hormonal) system.
| They block (most) DHT production which is a key hormone for
| male sexual health / mental well-being etc. so it should be
| surprising if you have _don 't_ have side effects. Having said
| that though, the side-effects aren't necessarily bad. You might
| feel different but it depends on the person if that difference
| is considered good or bad (I think most men would feel bad
| though?) Note that since conversion from testosterone to DHT is
| blocked, your DHT decreases but your testosterone increases.
|
| TL;DR: discuss the possible implications (especially fertility-
| related!) of higher T and lower DHT with your doctor before
| taking finasteride / dutasteride
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Many drugs modify your hormonal system - that in and of
| itself isn't the issue.
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3481923/ is a
| really good overview in my opinion that does a thorough, fair
| analysis of many studies of finasteride.
|
| The biggest problem I have when hearing about finasteride
| side effects is that anecdotal reports are completely useless
| when determining the true risks of finasteride, but they are
| played up a ton by the press. The reason being that
| finasteride is a long term medication. If you look at a large
| group of men from, say, age 30, _tons_ of them will develop
| fertility issues, sexual issues, depression, etc. in the next
| 5 years regardless of any medications they are taking. But it
| 's very easy to get someone on the news that says "I started
| taking finasteride last year and now I have no libido" and
| blame it on finasteride. The press rarely interviews people
| like me who have been taking finasteride for nearly 20 years
| with no ill effects.
|
| And, to be clear, my anecdotal report is useless, too - only
| broad meta-analyses and your personal risk threshold should
| weigh into your decision of whether or not to take it.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Tried microneedling and all I got was oddly smooth skin that
| seemed to be accumulating scar tissue (hard to explain). This was
| with a Dr Pen and the 16 needle tip at 1.5mm. Hair seems thinner
| now.
| gigasus wrote:
| How long did you try it for?
| 01100011 wrote:
| Probably 6 sessions over two months. I stopped pretty early
| but given what it was doing to my skin and hair I didn't feel
| safe continuing. Also it hurts like hell.
| [deleted]
| dottedmag wrote:
| That's +20 Trust for AI, right? Hypnodrones release is imminent.
| drakonka wrote:
| I wonder how they confirm that the "nanozyme" compound is the
| thing that helped here and not the presence of the needles
| themselves, considering microneedling is already commonly used to
| stimulate hair growth, sometimes in combination with
| Minoxidil[0][1]
|
| [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29028377/ [1]
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3746236/
| amelius wrote:
| > Hair regrew thicker in mice treated with a novel microneedle
| patch (seen on right) compared to mice treated with testosterone
| as a control
|
| They treated the control group with testosterone? I.e., the
| hormone most linked to baldness?
| csours wrote:
| DHT != T
| Scoundreller wrote:
| T---->DHT tho
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Makes me wonder if some people are prone to converting a
| greater percentage of testosterone into DHT than others.
| curioussavage wrote:
| I'm pretty sure I read something about research into gut
| health affecting dht levels recently
| jorvi wrote:
| Or they just have a higher base level of testosterone.
| 15% of 300 bits of testosterone is a whole lot more DHT
| than from 150 bits of testosterone.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| This is definitely a thing, and diet/sleep/activities can
| influence it as well.
|
| Different people have variable ratios, and genetics
| certainly play a role in the variability.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| Testosterone as a hair loss theory is based entirely on
| correlation.
|
| What it fails to explain is why, if testosterone is the
| culprit, hair grows in other places later in life.
|
| A much more compelling theory is that hair loss is due to the
| stretching of the scalp as the muscles and bones in the face
| grow in aging. It also explains why men have more hair loss
| then women. The force diagrams match male pattern baldness
| perfectly. (yes, also correlation)
| synu wrote:
| Would people who got male pattern baldness in their early
| twenties just have particularly stretched heads relative to
| younger age?
| Dig1t wrote:
| There are examples online of FTM trans people who start
| balding after taking testosterone for a while, those
| anecdotes seem pretty compelling to me.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Yes, exactly, we can (and do) mess with hormones and see
| what happens. This causal link is extremely well
| established and rubicon33 does not know what they are
| talking about.
| voisin wrote:
| > rubicon33 does not know what they are talking about.
|
| He simply says it the theory is based on correlation
| which you agree to in your first sentence.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Quite the opposite. Using control to establish causality
| is study design 101.
| aghostincarrot wrote:
| deanmoriarty wrote:
| How would you then explain all the double-blind clinical
| trials that demonstrated the majority of patients on
| Finasteride (a popular DHT inhibitor) slowed down, or
| slightly reversed, their hair loss, compared with the
| patients who were on placebo?
|
| (please Google for the studies and data, I don't have links
| ready but have reviewed them in the past, there are tons by
| different groups of researchers across many countries)
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| If it is not DHTs fault (and by proxy Ts, as more T = more
| DHT) then why do finasteride and dutasteride work so very
| well?
|
| At this point, rejecting as main culprit for AGA either too
| much DHT or a DHT sensitivity that is to high or, worst case,
| both at once in one man, is nothing but crazy fringe science.
|
| To stress this out, the vast majority of men will keep their
| hair forever with oral minoxodil and oral finasteride and
| someone not keeping it on oral dutasteride instead of
| finasteride is a freak of nature.
| [deleted]
| stormbrew wrote:
| I believe there have been studies where they've transplanted
| hair from and to different parts of the body and found that
| they largely continue to grow the way they did at their
| original site, implying that follicles from different parts
| of the body just respond to hormonal environment differently.
|
| Also the current understanding is that it's specifically DHT
| (a second order type of testosterone) that causes head hair
| follicles, and hormone treatments that modulate conversion of
| T into DHT one way or the other have fairly predictable
| effects on hair loss patterns.
|
| There probably isn't just one single cause here, but hormones
| are definitely a big part of it.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| You're underselling modern medicine and giving rubicon33
| way too much credit. This isn't merely academic, it isn't
| merely correlations, it isn't speculative, and it isn't a
| mess of competing explanations. Hair transplants are a
| common and reliable intervention for male pattern baldness.
|
| If MPB were due to a tension mechanism, transplants
| wouldn't work. But they do. If MPB were due to a tension
| mechanism, surgical intervention would be simpler than
| transplanting thousands of follicles. But it isn't. If MPB
| is due to an endocrine mechanism, which it is, transplanted
| hair would behave differently than adjacent "native" hair
| against the progression of balding. It does.
|
| Billions of transplanted follicles on millions of balding
| heads testify to the fact that rubicon33 is way off base.
| voldacar wrote:
| To me it's probably a combination of stress from dht
| exposure and mechanical stress that causes thinning and
| baldness once the _total_ stress level around the
| follicle surpasses some threshold. You can 't just
| dismiss mechanical stress that easily, it would be an
| insane coincidence for scalp tightness to correlate so
| closely with dht sensitivity in the absence of any
| causality.
| stormbrew wrote:
| I really don't know what in my post made you feel like I
| was giving the GP any credit at all. This is a weirdly
| combative reply for a vehement agreement?
| [deleted]
| _gmax0 wrote:
| I've perused some literature and the noise from online forums
| resulting in a plausible theory of the mechanism of male
| pattern baldness that I've seen proposed:
|
| 1 - Higher testosterone, generally correlated with higher
| amounts of DHT as testosterone is metabolized into DHT. This
| obviously depends on some intermediary metabolic process and
| all of the dependencies involved there.
|
| 2 - Certain hair follicles are DHT resistant. Why does MPB
| follow a M-shaped pattern and devolve into common patterns
| across those afflicted?
|
| 3 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26622151/ Mechanical stress
| points on the scalp seems to map injectively to the areas that
| see hair recede.
|
| Takeaway: mechanical stress induces chronic inflammation on the
| scalp, localized in areas that correspond to MPB hairloss
| areas. Chronic inflammation begets androgen binding and those
| with high amounts of systemic DHT/vulnerable follicles develop
| MPB.
| echelon wrote:
| > mechanical stress induces chronic inflammation on the scalp
|
| This seems measurable (inflammation markers in titers),
| testable (A/B test with NSAIDs), and amenable to preexisting
| population studies without tracking patients over time (eg.
| find patients with long hair, that wear hats, etc.)
| amelius wrote:
| Makes me wonder why obese men don't get inflammation in
| their belly hair follicles from the stretched skin.
| klipt wrote:
| I thought if skin stretches slowly it just grows to cover
| the larger surface? I.e. stretch marks are only when skin
| is stretched too rapidly.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| The article described it very poorly, but the actual study at
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3481923/ explains
| it well:
|
| > Nine mice were randomly assigned to one of three groups:
| negative control (testosterone), experimental (testosterone +
| MnMNP), and positive control (testosterone + minoxidil).
| [deleted]
| linuxdude314 wrote:
| MK-677 at 25mg/day worked well for me (male 30s) to regrow my
| receding hairline. You can get it from doctors in US.
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