Studies show that caffeine helps prevent male baldness

At present, half of all men in Britain are bald before the age of 50, and it is believed that the new discovery will help scientists find new ways to solve the situation. A recent survey of five European countries found that Britons are more unhappy with premature baldness than most people in other European countries. But the most embarrassing thing for bald people is that they are helpless when faced with this situation. More than half of the respondents said that baldness makes people look older and less attractive to women. Caffeine helps prevent male baldness by blocking a chemical that destroys hair follicles, a new study has found. However, drinking too much coffee may not be the best way to solve the hair loss problem. The results are published in the latest issue of the International Journal of Dermatology.

Scientists estimate that drinking a few cups of coffee a day is enough to get enough caffeine in the hair follicles of the scalp. As a result, baldness can be treated at an early stage with products containing caffeine, such as applying a special solution directly to the scalp. German cosmetics company Alpecin has developed a caffeine-rich product that can be applied to the scalp to treat baldness. Dr Tobias Tobias Fischer, who conducted the study at the University of Jena in Germany, said: "caffeine is a well-known substance, but little is known about its effect on the growth of hair follicles. This study shows that caffeine is a promising candidate to stimulate hair growth. "

Once too many scalp hair follicles are exposed to dihydrotestosterone (dihydrotestosterone), hair loss in most men is inevitable. Dihydrotestosterone is a chemical secreted by the male hormone testosterone. If there is too much dihydrotestosterone in the blood circulation, the hair follicles will shrink, the hair will become thinner and thinner, and the growth time will be lower than normal. Experts believe that men with high testosterone levels are more likely to lose their hair, especially those with genetic factors, who will go bald earlier.

Many men try to use anti-stripping shampoo to promote hair growth, but most of these products have not been scientifically proven. In recent years, anti-desquamation drugs have emerged one after another. These drugs prevent hair loss in men by preventing dihydrotestosterone from coming into contact with hair follicles and hindering their growth. But people with hair loss will have to wait as long as two years before they really work. In order to make up for the deficiency of baldness as soon as possible, some men begin to choose hair transplants, that is, taking hair from the back or sides of the head with more hair and moving it to the top of the head where there is less and less hair.

The problem, however, is that this method relies on transferring individual hair follicles rather than millions of living cells. Intercytex, a British company, is developing an automatic control device that can grow hair follicle cells to solve male baldness. The core of this technique is to cultivate hair follicle cells into a "hair factory": first extract hair follicles from the head, cultivate them, and then re-implant the new hair follicle cells into the missing parts to make the new hair grow. Although great progress has been made in anti-hair loss technology, caffeinated lotions are clearly a cheaper and more effective way to treat hair loss.

To test the idea, Dr Fisher performed scalp biopsies on 14 men with early hair loss. He then extracted the hair follicles and placed them in a test tube containing different concentrations of caffeine. Dr. Fisher kept the samples in the laboratory and observed them for eight days. At the end of the experiment, caffeine increased hair length by 33% to 40%. In contrast, test tubes mixed with hair follicles and testosterone showed that hair grew more slowly.

The scientists involved in the study believe that caffeine can promote the growth of hair cells by inhibiting the destructive effect of dihydrotestosterone on hair follicles. Dr Fisher said: "the growth rate of hair follicles treated with caffeine was very significant after one day, but on the eighth day, the growth trend was still quite obvious."