Follica - Good News!

[jakeb]

I can't imagine either of those things work as well as the cancer drugs they're using. Otherwise, cancer patients would be drinking coffee and soymilk all day long instead of taking chemo.

BUT, if dermabrasion on its own grows a few hairs, and minoxidil 11 days after demabrasion grows a few more, and maybe these EGF inhibitors help a few more hairs along the way... it might be worth a try while we're sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for Follica.

 

[SoThatsLife]

Do we know how much hair was grown on the mouse?

And will dermabration cause scaring?

Mr. Barry, how much research and knowledge is it in the hair loss research world? It seems on this forums that many people are skeptical in how much expertise the researchers have. And from a personal view from talking to 4 of the top dr derm in my country, I personally is left with the feeling that people on the internet knows more about hair loss then top derms. But then again, doctors often hate to go to detail.

 

[jakeb]

So as I'm looking into this... they're talking about some serious dermabrasion. Not microdermabrasion with some scrub or special cloth... we're talking about taking off the whole epidermis.

Real dermabrasion takes about 10 days to heal :freak: , which makes sense... the patent mentions adding the EGF inhibitor on day 11 to keep things moving along.

But yeah... that level of dermabrasion isn't going to be easy to do safely at home. Anyone have ideas?

 

[jambri]

would say, don't do it... avoid the temptation...

 

[symbolx]

Looks like a home remedy is seriously out of the question. Best to wait until their clinical trials are over anyway. This method possibly may not work at all and a lot of people would end up sawing their scalp in half over nothing.

 

[SoThatsLife]

If people dont know how a dermabrasion will look, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohn6Qhlddag.

Read more about it: http://www.plasticsurgery.org/patients_ ... rasion.cfm and
http://www.aad.org/public/publications/ ... asion.html

Its not something you wanna do on your own, because of the risk of scarring and the risk of infection.

But from the video it dosnt look like it is a huge wound, so you can live your normal live, its just gonna look a little stupid if you havent been shaved before.

 

[Matt27]

If all you need to do is remove the epidermis then that is not that difficult at all (for a trained professional I mean). An Esthetician friend of mine was telling me about her training for this newer technique where you basically remove the epidermis simply by taking a very sharp blade to the skin at a 45 degree angle. It is obviously a very dangerous procedure (taking a blade to someone's face) but I'm sure there are thousands of Estheticians already performing it daily. I told her about this whole Follica procedure and she said removing the epidermis is probably the easiest part and can be done several different ways, either with peels, a dermatological laser or a blade.

 

[jakeb]

I think I'm going to try a follica-lite test on my temples and vertex.

Pluck some hairs
Microdermabrasion (aluminum oxide scrub)... overdo it a little
wait 3 days, add quercitin and lithium (to inhibit wnt)
wait 8 days, add soy isoflavones (egfr inhibitor) and minoxidil

Could very well do nothing at all, but it seems simple enough.

 

[symbolx]

Let us know how it works out, man.

 

[chancer]

JakeB....

If you do... good mate... where alll rootin for you... make a new thread so we can monitor it and chip in...

Kudos

 

[jakeb]

Thanks! Just waiting on my ingredients. I'll take some before photos.

Not expecting much, but considering all the nutty, unsubstantiated things I've put on my head in the past, this seems downright rational.

 

[jakeb]

I wonder how much of the patent is just covering all the bases and how much is disinformation to throw off would-be copycats. There's a lot of "maybe 3 days, maybe 4 days, maybe 11 days..." kind of writing.

So all things considered, I've come up with the following.

Day 1: pluck hairs along hairline
Day 3: overzealous microdermabrasion (looking for pink and shiny)
Day 6: Start applying apple polyphenols, egcg, quercetin, or soy isoflavones (inhibiting egf), lithium (inhibiting wnt) plus minoxidil
Day 14: Return to normal regimen.

Anyone think I'm misreading the patent?

 

[harold]

Its about covering all bases. The whole point of a patent is that you dont have to throw anybody off - only you are legally entitled to profit from the invention and everyone else benefits by the knowledge being in the public domain. The reason its so "maybe this, maybe that" is because they dont know what is going to work best. They have vague ideas and some educted guesses but the protocol is going to come out of the experiments/human trials they are doing now.

You are trying to mimic wnt signalling with the lithium - not inhibit it.
hh

 

[michael barry]

egcg, quercetin both inhibit wnt----you dont want that.


Its probably better to wait for Follica to have a trial first. Im confident this can work where there is already hair in the least.

 

[jakeb]

Yikes. You're right... I've got it all backwards.

 

[jakeb]

So, new plan...

I did my best to abrade my temples last night with microdermabrasion scrub... then used 12.5% TCA everywhere else on my scalp because it was too hard to get in between the diffuse hair with the scrub (and i was concerned about wearing away at the hair I still have). Everything is tingly and a little pink, but not scary.

I'm going to wait until tomorrow and start using a mix of lithium orotate and caffeine... and also minoxidil. I suppose I won't really know if it did anything for awhile, but it was pretty easy to do and didn't have any particularly bad side effects.

 

[Orin]

Good luck with your experiment.

Mine was similar, though I never used caffeine nor minoxidil, so there might be room for comparing results. Could be good.

The hardest part is probably the 6 week wait. Wish I could say anything either way but I can't. Even if my try results in increased hair, then it might take several cycles for it to look alright. New hair will probably be "baby hair" in the full sense of the word.
The needled hair keeps growing though, so that's good I suppose, but it's miles away from making a substantial cosmetic difference to anyone other than myself seeing how sporradic it is.

Anything to keep yourself motivated, I guess

Speaking of which - the new Follica patent for a "kit" seems promising. More signs that doing this procedure can be distributed to fairly low-level professionals, which, should the whole thing work, will greatly democratize the procedure in terms of price and availability.

 

[jakeb]

Checked out the Kit patent... great news in general, but bad news for my experiment.

I was right the first time! They're INHIBITING WNT. Inhibited WNT produces pigmented hair. I've been using Lithium for 2 days, which activates WNT.

 

[harold]

Checked out the Kit patent... great news in general, but bad news for my experiment.

I was right the first time! They're INHIBITING WNT. Inhibited WNT produces pigmented hair. I've been using Lithium for 2 days, which activates WNT.

No they are stimulating the wnt pathway. Or more precisely they seem to be focussing on inhibiting the pathway that leads to the formation of epidermal cells rather than hair follicles. Look at one of the last figures in the document and you will seee how much more hair mice that overexpressed wnt7a in the skin grew.
Personally I would worry about getting any hair to grow in the first place before I started worrying about whether it was pigmented or not. And it is only at a certain time that they inhibit wnt to make the hair pigmented. As a balding man rather than a healthy mouse I dont think inhibiting wnt is something you have to worry about as much. Maybe if you leave the lithium chloride off on the 10thor 11th day or whatever. But otherwise I would say you have more than enough DKF1 floating around killing off hair cells and inhibiting wnt.
hh

 

[Matt27]

Jakeb you need to do a dermabrasion, not a MICROdermabrasion. There is a big difference between the two:

http://www.skinabrasion.net/dermabrasion.html

I don't think a micro will cause enough trauma to the skin for this to work.

I applaud you for trying nonetheless.