The baldness treatment industry is estimated to be around a 1$ billion industry in the US. Almost fifty percent of the male population is struck by baldness the world over. Drug therapy has emerged as an effective management technique for hair regrowth since the 1980s for both men and women.
Research and exploration has led to an understanding of the effect of dihydrotestosreone (DHT) in male and female pattern baldness. Intervention is now being done to stop DHT from acting on scalp receptors. The research on hair regrowth treatments receives a huge amount of funds from all over.
Regrowing hair in dead follicles is more difficult than the attempt to preserve falling and ageing hair. Finasteride (Propecia) and minoxidil (Rogaine in the US and Regaine outside) are two products which have met with immense success for this purpose. Another technique with prospects for success for hair regrowth is hair cloning or hair multiplication. This is done by extracting self- growing follicle stem cells and multiplying them numerous times in the laboratory. These are then micro injected into the scalp. However research is still on and successful experiments have been done on mice. Results are expected to be available between the current year and 2015.
Hair growth treatments are time consuming because of the nature of hair cycles and need lot of patience. In fact new hair grows very gradually in three to four years. Therefore, it takes a year or more to gauge if the treatment is working at all. Dutasteride (Avodart) and ketoconazole are also found to be useful for the purpose of hair growth. Black Cohosh – a non-synthetic treatment for menopausal women all over the world has been patented by Germany as an appropriate treatment for baldness.
Some natural products like green tea and Caffeine have also been declared as stimulators for hair growth. It is interesting to know that if caffeine is mixed with a shampoo formula it works very well in terms of giving caffeine to the scalp. Copper peptides are also used for application on the scalp for shortening the resting period of hair. This translates into more hair follicles emerging on the scalp in the growing period.
