Hair thinning can be a very difficult time in anyone’s life. For many patients, they may begin to experience hair thinning without any warning and may not always know what the cause is. For patients who are suffering from hair thinning, there are various treatments that they can try in order to retain their hair. Some patients might try supplements in order to bolster the proteins in their body that help them grow hair. Others might try changing what hair care products they are using to wash or style their hair. In more severe cases, patients may even resort to surgical means to maintain their hair such as hair transplant surgery.
While all these may be able to help a patient fend off hair thinning for a time, none of them can be a guarantee that the hair thinning will not continue. With such a common and often upsetting problem, it should be no surprise that many aspects of science have worked to try to understand hair growth, and consequently, hair thinning.
What causes hair thinning?
What makes baldness and thinning hair so hard to fight is that you are born with all the hair follicles you will ever have. You are born with about 5 million hair follicles across your body and approximately 500,000 on your scalp. You lose between 50 and 100 hairs per day, so it is vital that your body is able to readily continue producing hair so that these can be replaced and your hair can be up kept. Without the processes that help to return your lost hair to you, your hair thinning will only get much worse and much faster.
Hair thinning will occur in someone when the scalp stops receiving the necessary chemical signals that tell it to grow new hair from existing follicles. After this happens, the follicles will shrink and eventually they can close up, which prevents new hair from growing out of them. After this begins to happen, even if your hair does continue to grow, it is likely to be thinner and coarser, with a less reliable texture and look.
Diseases can also specifically target your hair. For instance, conditions such as androgenic alopecia can cause unnatural hair thinning. This, much like male pattern baldness, is a genetic factor that can affect anyone. Other factors could be changes in medications, lifestyle, or diet, which could react poorly with your already smoothly functioning body and cause some of those functions to stop working as well as they did previously. Also, much like with alopecia or baldness, some patients could just be genetically predisposed to suffer from hair thinning or have more easily damaged hair.
Now, there may be a new way to help patients thicken their hair. Stem cell therapy may be the hot new method of helping patients fight the scourge of hair thinning.
Stem Cell Therapy to Increase Hair Thickness
Stem cells being used to help patients with cosmetic needs is not new. There are numerous stem cell clinics world wide that are partly or wholly devoted to the aesthetic care of its patients. This means that there are a number of ways that stem cells can be used in the beauty world and hair may be one of the most popular. The regrowing of hair can also be linked to a patient’s health, which stem cell therapy can also greatly improve. In many cases, the two are linked. One example of this inherent connection is the case of Kanter Tritsch, who had around 100 million stem cells administered intravenously into her neck.
She received this procedure because she had been experiencing chronic neck pain and severe inflammation. Along with her health problems, she had also been suffering from severe hair thinning. Luckily for her, stem cell therapy is able to help all three of these. According to her account of what happened “In the next three months, she experienced increased mobility in her neck, was able to walk better, and could sleep through the night. She also lost a substantial amount of weight (possibly due to the anti-inflammatory effect of the stem cells), and her skin looked great. Not to mention, her previously thinning hair nearly doubled in volume.”
This is far from the only time that stem cells have helped someone who was suffering from hair thinning. Instead, this shows how vital stem cell therapy can be in the healing of the body. While it can often be hard to pinpoint what is exactly leading to the hair thinning that someone is suffering from, it is important to approach the subject from what can best serve the entire body.
Stem Cell Hair Transplants
Although the prospect of hair thinning can be daunting, the knowledge that there could be a way to solve this means that scientists must keep researching how stem cells are able to affect hair growth and help patients have the head of hair that they desire. Thanks to stem cell hair transplants, patients may no longer have to worry about hair thinning as stem cell therapy could make it a thing of the past. The process of stem cell transplant for hair is similar to the traditional methods of stem cell treatment.
Instead of the procedure being performed like a hair transplant, where new follicles are brought to the affected area, new stem cells are brought to the area instead. These cells are usually derived from the patient’s own body beforehand. This allows for the hair to begin growing again in the area that was suffering the thinning or balding. Evidence on the topic thus far shows that stem cells may be able to affect such change on the scalp by triggering the functions needed to restart production on follicles that were dead or damaged. The stem cells are essentially able to “turn your scalp back on” and they are able to help with the damaged hair follicles that were left behind during the process as well. Although more research will be needed before it can be conclusively declared, stem cell therapy may be able to help make hair thinning a thing of the past.
Reach out to your bioxcellerator patient advocate to learn more about how stem cells can help you fight hair thinning. You can gain confidence that you have not had in years. Your hair will be thicker than ever before!
