USC research team suggests that a new ‘plucking’ procedure will result in more hair.
A recent scientific study offers an interesting new solution for those suffering from hair loss.
The maddening amount of money and time spent on sham shampoos and conditions, prescription pills and creams, hat collections, and hair transplant procedures is enough to make you want to pull your hair out — which is what a team of scientists think just may be the answer.
A research team from the University of Southern California (USC) is claiming that plucking one’s hair can stimulate hair growth of new hairs, according to the findings of a study published in the medical magazine Medical News Today.
This Trojan team reported that they plucked exactly 200 hairs, in a circular pattern designed to stimulate new hair growth, from the backs of lab mice.
The results?
USC’s research team reported that the mice regenerated anywhere from 450 to upwards of 1300 hair follicles…each.
“By plucking hairs in the way we designed in the paper, we can make the population feel stress, then it will enter the regeneration phase all together as a population. If you just pluck one single hair that is not enough of the distress signal,” the paper explained.
Simply put, when the hair is plucked it causes inflammation on the scalp in the surrounding area from which the hair was plucked out. The inflammatory proteins are then activated causing new hair follicles to grow. When done all of the scalp, the suggested result is a lot more hair.
In other words, the plucking of hairs causes inflammation in the area surrounding the ripped out hair follicle. The subject area is then stimulated by inflammatory proteins that regenerate hair follicles. This led to the growth of more hair. The term the USC team is using to describe this process is ‘quorum sensing’.
This type of logic is nothing new to world of hair loss products. Whether it’s a ingredients such as essential oils or certain exotic plants, even scalp massages, the belief is that certain types of stimulation to the scalp will cause the hair follicles to grow.
This “quorum sensing” procudure has yet to be attempted on humans. Some are skeptical, but there are ‘experts’ out there that are optimistic. “That’s the million-dollar question. I’m not sure. As it stands here, you’ve got to have some hair to pluck.” a hair growth expert told Medical News Today. “Could you tap into the pathway with a cream or injection? That could well be possible – or maybe don’t wait until you’re totally bald?”
What do you think? Would you sign up to try this new procedure?