Category: Other

Snippet from the article:

Bosley Inc, which markets treatments for balding men, has settled charges that it gave sensitive business information about products and prices to a competitor with which it later decided to merge, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said on Monday.

The FTC said Bosley’s chief executive officer traded information with the Hair Club CEO about new products, price floors for surgical hair transplants and planned expansions.

Read the full story — Hair Club, Bosley hair company settle FTC charges

Snippet from the article:

Capitalism means that there is much more research into male baldness than there is into diseases such as malaria, which mostly affect poor people, said Bill Gates, speaking at the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Global Grand Challenges Summit.

“Our priorities are tilted by marketplace imperatives,” he said. “The malaria vaccine in humanist terms is the biggest need. But it gets virtually no funding. But if you are working on male baldness or other things you get an order of magnitude more research funding because of the voice in the marketplace than something like malaria.”

Read the rest at Wired — Bill Gates: capitalism means male baldness research gets more funding than malaria

Mr. Gates has said basically the same thing in years past… and it remains true. You can find the previous times he’s said it in 2012 and in 2009.

Snippet from the article:

The group aimed to see how energy drinks affect heart health, given that these drinks, along with dietary supplements, are not regulated as stringently as new drugs that must meet Food and Drug Administration (FDA) safety requirements, Shah said.

In a literature search, they identified seven observational and interventional trials that evaluated the impact of energy drinks on QT interval, blood pressure, and heart rate.

Three studies with a pooled sample of 93 subjects had QT/QTc data. Six studies with a pooled sample of 132 subjects had blood-pressure data, and seven studies investigated heart rate.

The patients, who were all young (aged 18 to 45) and healthy, underwent ECG and blood-pressure testing before and just after drinking one to three cans of energy drink—most commonly Red Bull, but also others such as Full Throttle and Meltdown RTD. An 8.4-oz can of Red Bull contains 80 mg of caffeine, compared with 35 mg of caffeine in a 12-oz Coke or about 100 mg of caffeine in an average cup of coffee, Shah said.

Read the rest — Energy drinks may prolong QT interval, raise BP

It’s not hair loss related, but it’s worth a post…

This is a study by Dr Sachin Shah, presented at the American Heart Association Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism / Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention (AHA EPI-NPAM) 2013 Scientific Sessions.

According to the report, the increase buzz may be the result of caffeine alone, but the changes in the EKG has not been explained and the relevance of it is not clear.

Hi,

Have you seen this article on Stem Cells for hair growth? Wouldn’t the FDA of had to approve this kind of treatment?

Link: Doctor has high hopes for new hair-loss treatment

Doctors have been doing this for a number of years. In fact, we tried the use of ACell with plucked hairs that were supposed to supply stem cells to grow new hair. We did this according to a protocol, had it approved by an institutional review board (IRB) and then took human volunteers to see if it worked. There was no growth with this technique despite it being promoted by other doctors who claimed success. Although we did not add platelet rich plasma (PRP) to the mix, the stem cells could be seen on the plucked hair. No response.

Using ACell and PRP is not something that the FDA must rule on. This falls within the confines of the practice of medicine. If something other than ACell was sold for this purpose and claims were made that could not be proven, then doctors who made unproven claims can be prosecuted by various state and federal agencies. The FDA uses terms like “safe and effective” and this has become impeded in the law of the land.

I would love to see this work, so I will keep a keen eye on those who are doing this and wait to see results. Seeing is believing, and so far, no evidence has been presented that this approach really works.

Dr. Rassman!

Thought I’d ask an off topic question.

How do you feel about men with long hair in a professional setting? Would you allow someone to work in your office with long hair if it were neatly kept and groomed?

The reason I ask is I am a 21 year old male with long, well shoulder length hair. And I have been told to get a professional job or career, the common consensus is that i will have to cut it off. I was just wondering as to what your feelings were on the matter considering you are in the hair restoration business it would seem hypocritical in some ways to not let someone capable of growing long hair actually have it in your office, then again you are a professional in a very professional setting I presume so maybe you would have reservations against it? Any thoughts?

By the way I obviously don’t want to cut my hair off, and am a huge fan of your blog and professional opinion. Thanks 🙂

Prejudice comes in many ways. I am not a bigot. You would be welcome in our office as an employee if we were looking for a hire. Long hair is not a problem for me.

Snippet from the article:

Why a strand of hair bends or falls the way it does may sound like a simple question, but the answer is rather convoluted. On one level, the texture of a person’s hair derives from his or her genes. A 2009 study looked at the genetics of waves and curls and reported a heritability of between 85 and 95 percent. (That means about nine tenths of the variation in hair texture within the sample could be ascribed to DNA.) How does this play out at the level of a single hair? Research shows that the curvature of a strand depends on the nature of its follicle. When a follicle is asymmetrical, the hair that it produces is oval in shape and tends to curl. When it’s symmetrical, the strand that emerges grows round and straight.

Read the rest — FYI: What Makes Hair Curly? (via Neatorama)

I recently suffered from an OCD scalp-picking condition (dermatillomania) from high levels of stress, for about a year. Now, there are no scales on my scalp and it is really sensitive. All the hair is still there, it just sits really strangely on my head (without direction). I wanted to take steps to returning it to its original condition, but I’m not sure where to start. Thank you!

I’m not sure how you would be able to correct the direction of the hairs. You might try topical conditioners and test many of them. You may have caused permanent damage to the skin and thus seeing the directional issues with the hair.

Snippet from the article:

For some men with prostate cancer, hormonal therapy to beat the disease could be safely cut from three years to half that time, a new clinical trial suggests.

When men have cancer that is confined to the prostate gland but at high risk of worsening, one treatment option is radiation therapy plus drugs that cut testosterone levels, because this male hormone feeds the cancer.

Right now, doctors routinely give that hormonal therapy for two to three years, during which time men may suffer unpleasant side effects.

But that routine is based on a clinical trial from the 1990s that found that adding three years of hormonal therapy to radiation could cure certain prostate cancers. That doesn’t necessarily mean three years is ideal.

Read the rest — Could Duration of Prostate Cancer Hormone Therapy Be Halved?

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