Cold Therapy

[HairIsPossible]

Though many of you are completely stuck on genetic DHT sensitivity theory, the open minded have already realized this theory cannot possibly be complete. The most advanced of these individuals have come to understand that it is the loss of subcutaneous fat on the top of the scalp and the hypoxic environments this creates which is the mechanism responsible for the miniaturization of follicles. These individuals also understand that the conversion of testosterone to DHT is favored in hypoxic environments and that DHT has a negative effect on these critical layers of fat surrounding hair follicles. This is why higher DHT counts are found in the scalps of balding individuals and this is also why blocking the enzyme which converts testosterone to DHT can aid the prevention of more hair loss. There is no special androgenic sensitivity in the scalp follicles, DHT acts to stimulate the growth of these follicles just as it does anywhere else on the body, but how can a follicle grow if it is receiving no oxygen rich blood flow? It cannot, so without adequate subcutaneous fat protecting a follicle allowing for adequate blood flow, no amount of DHT can help a follicle to a grow and that follicle will miniaturize.

Now that the mechanism behind male pattern baldness has explained, let us consider some treatments.

Often, when individuals find out that hair loss is caused by the loss of fat in the scalp they consider the following ideas as treatment:

1. Increase the amount of omega fatty acids in their diet
2. Rub a fatty substance like butter on the top of their scalp
3. Find a doctor and tell them to inject fat into their scalp (like a lip injection)

Now I can't say for sure that none of these would work, but I wish to propose another idea that I have not seen anyone ever mention.

Cold Therapy

How can we communicate to the body our need to rebuild the layer of subcutaneous fat on top of the scalp?

What will signal to the body that it needs to produce fat?

The cold.

The body increases fat production in response to cold and specifically it increases the amount of brown adipose fat.

The difficulty here is developing a method that will signal to the body to produce fat only on top of the scalp, because if the entire body is exposed to the cold it will adapt by improving circulation and increasing brown adipose fat across the whole body until it can adequately cope with the cold. Though this will has tremendous beneficially effects for a person's health and it is recommended (see Wim Hof Cold Showers), it will not help us much in restoring the layer of fat on the scalp.

I am experimenting with putting only the top of my scalp under cold water for 5 minutes several times per day as a way to signal to my body that my scalp in particular needs its fat layer to be enhanced, but refining this method may take some time. In the meantime, I wish to hear your thoughts on these ideas.

 

[Afro_Vacancy]

 

[HairIsPossible]

Let me make this simpler for the idiots out there:

Hair follicle need fat to grow
DHT make fat disappear
but me need DHT to be a man
maybe me can restore fat in hair using other method

 

[Hairloss23]

You don't need DHT to be a man, you do need it to become a man during puberty. But after that to be a man you need a basic level of common sense, something you, and a fair few others on this forum lack. And no amount of hair will make give you the joy of common sense.

 

[HairIsPossible]

You don't need DHT to be a man, you do need it to become a man during puberty. But after that to be a man you need a basic level of common sense, something you, and a fair few others on this forum lack. And no amount of hair will make give you the joy of common sense.

Can you elaborate on this "lack of common sense" you speak of?

 

[Afro_Vacancy]

Can you elaborate on this "lack of common sense" you speak of?

Are you actually emotionally prepared for a robust scientifically-motivated deconstruction of your post?

 

[HairIsPossible]

Are you actually emotionally prepared for a robust scientifically-motivated deconstruction of your post?

More than just emotionally prepared

 

[Afro_Vacancy]

More than just emotionally prepared

OK.

First of all, if you want to experiment, please do so. The cold may not solve your male pattern baldness, but it's probably good for you anyway.

Now, as for your actual argument. You're assuming that the problem with male pattern baldness is not enough fat on top of the head. You're going on about how this is known. In all due respect, you have not demonstrated it, and it's not known. Where are your links? You have none. Your model does make the prediction that fat people are less likely to be bald, but that's never been reported. If being obese was the cure for baldness don't you think we'd know? Someone would have noticed by now.

You then say that cold showers are the solution. You want more brown fat, because you think brown fat reduces DHT. There's a whole lot of speculaton there, but I remind you that nobody has ever succeeded in spot reduction. It's something a lot of n00bs at the gym want: to keep the fat in one area and lose it in another. Nobody's ever figured out how, and people have been looking for it for decades ... and you think you're going to figure out now? All right.

BTW your theory makes a prediction: people living in cold countries like Norway or Canada should be less likely to grow bald. Is that the case?

 

[HairIsPossible]

Now, as for your actual argument. You're assuming that the problem with male pattern baldness is not enough fat on top of the head. You're going on about how this is known. In all due respect, you have not demonstrated it, and it's not known. Where are your links? You have none. Your model does make the prediction that fat people are less likely to be bald, but that's never been reported. If being obese was the cure for baldness don't you think we'd know? Someone would have noticed by now.

This is highly localized fat. These fat deposits are literally right up against the hair follicle. Here is a diagram for reference.

Let me state for the record that becoming obese will NOT fight androgenic alopecia. Most likely, weight gain will only accelerate androgenic alopecia.

The fat I am talking about is not the same type of fat that an obese person stores in their stomach. The fat I am referring to is often called "baby fat" and one of the specific secondary sex characteristics of men is that they lose baby fat. This is why one of the most fundamental physiological differences between men and women is the respective proportion of fat in their bodies.

Notice women do not lose their hair except in circumstances I am about to discuss.

Notice the scalps of bald men look "tight" as though it is only skin on bone. This is because there is no layer of fat there.

Notice that when women do lose their hair it is almost always after menopause when their estrogen levels have significantly decreased and with it their resilience to store the necessary protective fatty tissue in their scalps.

I am not making any of this up. All of this comes from peer reviewed literature. The main hero of this truth is a man named Emin Tuncay Ustuner who has been marginalized and laughed at for proposing the "Gravity Theory." Yet, his publications demonstrate real thinking about this issue and not mindless reporting of double-blind study results where every anomaly is written off as "genetic sensitivity."

Here are his published papers on this topic:

Cause of Androgenic Alopecia: Crux of the Matter - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4174066/
Baldness may be caused by the weight of the scalp - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18667278

The problem with this truth is that it threatens to cut out the baldness industry out of the equation entirely.

You then say that cold showers are the solution. You want more brown fat, because you think brown fat reduces DHT. There's a whole lot of speculaton there, but I remind you that nobody has ever succeeded in spot reduction. It's something a lot of n00bs at the gym want: to keep the fat in one area and lose it in another. Nobody's ever figured out how, and people have been looking for it for decades ... and you think you're going to figure out now? All right.

There is definitely evidence that cold exposure can increase brown fat. [1]

I do not believe it is possible to "shift the fat deposits" to the scalp. That is not what I am saying. I am talking about stimulating the rebuilding of fatty tissue which was present in the scalp before the conditions that caused male pattern baldness onset (age, hormonal changes, stress, etc...). Your body would have fat there except for the DHT feedback cycle which I described early and which Emin Tuncay Ustuner describes in his peer reviewed studies.

BTW your theory makes a prediction: people living in cold countries like Norway or Canada should be less likely to grow bald. Is that the case?

That is not what I am predicting. I said specifically that general cold exposure would make no difference. In all likelihood, localized cold exposure alone will not make a difference either, however I believe it is a step in the right direction because it is addressing the underlying mechanism of androgenic alopecia without the use of severe alteration of body chemistry.

 

[Peykin]

Eskimos are never bald,
But addressing the question of cold only is not the answer (though it's a good, very good point)
It's not the whole body that needs to be colder/fresher , but the testicles

 

[Armando Jose]

HairIsPossible, Nice idea.... it is good think about the real cause of common baldness

I have two questions,
how do you explain the special pattern of hairloss in the zone of the crown and the front line where star the degenerative process? and what happen with women that also suffer with common hairloss, but in a diffuse pattern?

TIA

 

[HairIsPossible]

Eskimos are never bald,
But addressing the question of cold only is not the answer (though it's a good, very good point)
It's not the whole body that needs to be colder/fresher , but the testicles

I agree it probably isn't the answer, but its a start in the right direction.

I don't believe that to cure hair loss testosterone levels need to be reduced. In fact, as older men demonstrate decreasing testosterone levels have an averse effect on androgenic alopecia. Even post-menopausal women who have almost no testosterone still experience androgenic alopecia if they cannot produce sufficient fat to protect their follicles and the capillaries that feed them.

That is why I am specifically mentioning the cold because people will say "well what's the reasoning behind that." It forces one to focus on the true mechanism behind androgenic alopecia and the moment the human race becomes aware of the real mechanism we will be but a few years from a permanent universal cure.

- - - Updated - - -

HairIsPossible, Nice idea.... it is good think about the real cause of common baldness

I have two questions,
how do you explain the special pattern of hairloss in the zone of the crown and the front line where star the degenerative process? and what happen with women that also suffer with common hairloss, but in a diffuse pattern?

TIA

I have already explained the phenomenon with women:

Notice that when women do lose their hair it is almost always after menopause when their estrogen levels have significantly decreased and with it their resilience to store the necessary protective fatty tissue in their scalps.

The diffuse pattern that is commonly seen in men and women only serves to demonstrate how the necessary fat is localized to each individual hair follicle. The fatty tissue in one hair follicle can erode leaving it to miniaturize while the follicle next to it can have its fatty tissue remain intact and it will grow at full terminal length.

This also explains why hair transplants are possible, as they are using follicles from the back of the head with completely undamaged fatty tissue. This also explains why hair transplants are not alway permanent which doctors have tried to claim is due to those hair being taken from areas that have a "genetic sensitivity to DHT." Ignoring that completely bull**** reasoning it becomes clear that these transplanted follicles diminish because of the exact same mechanism that miniaturized the original follicle which is progressive erosion of the fatty tissue protecting the follicle.

 

[Armando Jose]

Excuse me, but I have more questions.
Native americans, among other people, dont suffer alopecia, why? have they all fatty tissue?

 

[HairIsPossible]

Excuse me, but I have more questions.
Native americans, among other people, dont suffer alopecia, why? have they all fatty tissue?

Please ask all the questions you can think of!

I do not have enough knowledge of Native American culture and physiology to give a definitive explanation here.

I have also found in my research that there is no good data on these ethnic claims. In the case of this Native American claim, it seems that whenever a Native American person has hair loss it is assumed they have ancestry which is not Native American. I am not denying the claim, but I also don't see why it is claimed they never experience androgenic alopecia.

I have found data about the relationship between ethnicity and androgenic alopecia, but it is never free from the confounding variables of lifestyle, occupation, social class, etc...

Nobody is denying that miniaturized follicles have diminished fatty tissue. The "sensitive genetics" camp has decided that the fatty tissue is diminished as the result of an impossibly complex signaling process of DHT to the hair follicle. The people who actually think about this problem have come to realize that idea makes no sense and instead assert that compromised fatty tissue is the chief cause of miniaturization and that DHT has no function as a special signal for gradual miniturization.

 

[br1]

South american "indians" (from the amazon) never go bald. And believe me, that place is hot as hell..

 

[HairIsPossible]

South american "indians" (from the amazon) never go bald. And believe me, that place is hot as hell..

What is your point? Did I say baldness is caused by the body shedding baby fat in response to warm climates?

No I did not say that. I am saying the body sheds baby fat as a response to hormonal changes and I am suggesting the possibility that perhaps some of that fat could be regenerated with the use of localized cold on the affected regions.

 

[Myth]

Loads of bald guys in Norway. Wow, must mean that baldness is a complicated issue stemming from multiple factors, environment included, though not to the extent you think.

Theory=dead.

I want you to hold you theory now, and watch the live escape its eyes, like a child you birthed, and know that you caused its death.

 

[HairIsPossible]

Loads of bald guys in Norway. Wow, must mean that baldness is a complicated issue stemming from multiple factors, environment included, though not to the extent you think.

Theory=dead.

I want you to hold you theory now, and watch the live escape its eyes, like a child you birthed, and know that you caused its death.

Did you even read anything that was posted? I specifically said several times that climate has nothing to do with male pattern baldness.

The only theory I proposed is that the mechanism driving the miniaturization of follicles is the erosion of subcutaneous fatty tissue protecting the follicle and the capillaries that feed it. I also specifically stated that the reason this erosion of subcutaneous fat begins is because of hormonal changes in males the occur after puberty and in females after menopause. The follicles on the top of the head then become most vulnerable to enter into hypoxic states which drive a feedback cycle causing further erosion of the fatty tissue and thus further miniaturization.

The proposal of a localized cold treatment rests on the basis that it may be possible to stimulate the regeneration of the fatty tissue because cold exposure has been known to stimulate the production of brown fat.

Are you trying to say that because people live in cold climates where their entire body is exposed to cold that therefore no conceivable application of cold exposure that could result in the regeneration of adipose tissue in the hair follicles on top of the scalp?

 

[djhair]

I've never head of a cold treatment for hair loss, sounds a bit dangerous putting your head in cold water for 5 minutes ? Have you notice any difference and is their any evidence to back this up.

 

[Armando Jose]

The only theory I proposed is that the mechanism driving the miniaturization of follicles is the erosion of subcutaneous fatty tissue protecting the follicle and the capillaries that feed it. I also specifically stated that the reason this erosion of subcutaneous fat begins is because of hormonal changes in males the occur after puberty and in females after menopause.

But then, why common baldness only affect certains males? genetic issue perhaps?