McDonald’s Fries For Hair Loss? Why Not?:
Hair-loss is a touchy subject.
And short of over-the-counter remedies that have some real shortcomings,
There doesn’t seem to be the perfect solution that people need right now.
And according to HairLossBuddy, the best non-drug solution so far has been freeze-dried saw palmetto berries or Beta-Sitosterol.
So that being said, you can forgive people for trying to latch-on to just about anything they can find.
That includes mistaking a scientific breakthrough for a license to make a hat out of McDonald’s French Fries…
The Next Big Thing: French-Fry Hair:
So a short while ago, a Japanese research team came up with some great science on hair.
And then the internet did what it usually does,
Especially in the hands of people who would otherwise write for Star magazine.
They took the name of one component, looked it up, found out the things it’s used for,
And then promptly drew all the wrong conclusions.
It Must Be A SUPER SECRET Cure For Baldness!:
Ie, the same chemical that McDonald’s uses to prevent foaming and splashing in their frying oil,
… And many french-fry hats ensued…
To no avail.
And in that flurry of deep-fat fried foods,
The real message got lost.
Since we have all these super-crappy or super-ineffective quasi-treatments for hair-loss,
The Real Breakthrough For Hair Transplants:
Transplants are still a thing until the next high-tech solution is found.
So much so, that it’s a big deal when new progress on the transplant front happens.
Especially because it turns out to be Extremely hard to grow new hair-cells in a lab.
And when Angela Christiano’s group found a way to do it,
(that was coincidentally just like the way they make new cells to regenerate the gland that controls metabolism)
It really was a breakthrough in that field of science.
-Which is just what Dr. Junji Fukuda’s team came up with, except even bigger & better.
Where The Misinterpretation Of McDonald’s Fries For Hair Loss Comes From:
And a big part of that process used the same chemical as one in McDonald’s fry oil in the bottom of their lab-dishes,
And for some reason, it allows oxygen to get through to the cells,
Which is one thing Angela’s team may have done accidentally,
And all-of-a-sudden, Boom! 5,000 new hair cells out of nowhere.
That is 100 Times Better than the best labs can do right now!
So now the transplant idea can Really start to work.
The New Future For Transplants, Better Quality:
You don’t even need to relocate someone’s existing hair.
You could one day even take a very fancy type of sewing-machine and repopulate someone’s entire scalp if they really wanted to go that far.
The other consequences of the innovation make restoration prospects even better.
If transplant-facilities can get the density & pattern right, there may no longer be an easily-recognizable “Row of weeds” look to hair-transplants.
-Because now there are so much more seed-cells, that you can really fill things out if you have the technology to operate on such a small-scale.
The other great part of it is of-course, Cost.
Even Better. Lower Cost:
What used to be, and is still a very-expensive procedure could drop dramatically in price.
No relocation, no over-conservative planning of target-locations,
Just come back in a few months and they’ll have tens of thousands of seed-cells ready to install with near reckless-abandon.
And the mouse-trials confirm it. They can be implanted, and they do grow hair.
So now, the future is only 5 years away for complete human-trials.
Less Than 10 Years Away:
And according to Dr. Fukuda, the procedure could be viable inside of 1 decade.
And then, as long as you’re willing to go through the implant-procedure,
No more worrying about hair-loss.
But all that being said, don’t let it stop you from making the occasional french-fry hat.
Because if you’re not having fun, what’s it all worth?
-And technically, if you never actually Try McDonald’s fries for baldness, you’ll never really know for sure…
Photo Credits: “Duck Fat Fries”, by Flickr user esimpraim
Links:
• Source: JapanTimes
• More Coverage: McDonald’s Ingredients List [PDF][Archive.org]
• Source Study: Biomaterials – Spontaneous hair follicle germ (HFG) formation in vitro, enabling the large-scale production of HFGs for regenerative medicine
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