Scientists have found that certain fats could be the answer to curing baldness following a study in the U.S.
However the study looked at injecting specific fats, not consuming them, so sorry if you were thinking you could Big Mac your way to thicker hair!
Yet it could be possible to lipo-suction areas of the body and take the fat cells to use in the scalp. This could mean removing the beer belly and gaining a full head of hair. What more could a middle-aged man want?
The research has come from tests carried out on mice where a type of fat cell stimulated the hair to grow, leading to the suggestion by the study that hair stem cells are controlled by fat.
It is hoped the treatment will put a spring in the step of those with male pattern baldness, which affects two-thirds of men as they age, as well as men and women with alopecia, in which small bald patches appear on the scalp.
Before you get too excited, it is not known yet whether the procedure will give the same effect to humans but Prof Valerie Horsley, from Yale University, said: “If we can get these fat cells in the skin to talk to the dormant stem cells at the base of hair follicles, we might be able to get hair to grow again.”
Scientists injected fat cells from healthy mice into the defective mice. Two weeks later, hair follicles had started to grow. Injecting the growth factor into the skin of defective mice could kick-start growth in 86% of follicles. The study suggested the fat cells could have other functions involving stem cells such as tumour formation or healing wounds.