Non-Surgical Treatments

Tens of millions of people are currently affected by hair loss around the globe, and while surgical procedures such as hair transplants have been around for decades, many people seeks non-surgical treatments, and believe it or not non-surgical hair loss treatments are not just limited to hair pieces or wigs. Let’s be honest the hair loss treatment market has evolved – a lot! For many years people suffering from hair thinning, excess shedding, scarring, or those longing to replace hair which has been removed for other reasons (such as burns or surgery), have been considering approaches such as hair transplants. However, people are now expanding their knowledgebase to include a non-surgical hair treatment for their hair loss problems. Science behind it has evolved, techniques have changed and in today’s ever growing non-surgical hair loss treatment market there are more ways than ever before to get your hair back, or make it look that way! So what is the incidence of hair loss today, what can hair loss treatment do to help, what technologies are driving improvements in hair loss treatment, and most importantly why are we seeing so many different non-surgical options for hair loss treatment today?

The Scope of Hair Loss: Understanding the Problem
First, we need to be clear about the causes, a lot of which we know of already: male and female got bends (sorry, ‘balding’), but many other forms of alopecia (the medical term for hair loss) are the result of multifactorial causes such as:

Genetics (Androgenetic Alopecia): Hair loss in both men and women is most typically genetically related to hormonal androgens (DHT or dihydrotestosterone) leading to greenhousing of the scalp.

Aging: As individuals age, hair naturally thins.

Hormonal: pregnancy, menopause and possible hormone-producing gland disease such as a thyroid condition, hormonal fluctuations due to birth control pill use and recent discontinuation.

Medical: Autoimmune disorders such as discoid lupus erythematosus, infections, alopecia areata. Sudden Hair Loss: Acrylic the hair, poor nutrition Halves the Hair: In hereditary hair loss disorders, characteristic patterns are common.

Lifestyle Factors: Stress, poor nutrition, and harmful hair treatments can also play a role.

Since there could be many possible contributory causes, it therefore follows that non-surgical treatments will address the most likely cause or etiology for an individual’s hair loss.

Minoxidil (Topical Treatment)
While today’s non-surgical gold standard for the treatment of genetic hair loss is the FDA-approved foam Minoxidil, which first hit the market in 1988, it’s largely similar to those that will be available in 2024 – with essentially the same success rates. But by 2024, they will be delivered in formats that are far smoother and more luxurious.

How it Works: It is thought that minoxidil increases the length of the hair anagen (growth) phase, increasing blood flow to hair follicles, thereby promoting the reactivation of dormant follicles, and causing normal hair shafts to swell and emerge from their follicles. It has also been found to partially block dihydrotestosterone (a hormone that inhibits hair follicle growth). Eventually, it might enhance hair density.

New Nanotechnology Formulae: They will differentiate themselves by using the new nanotechnological science, which facilitates the absorption of the drug, as it penetrates more freely and deeply into the scalp.

Personalized Compounds: Genetic-testing-based forms of minoxidil optimized around an individual’s specific hair loss shape and scalp type.

Efficacy: However, clinical trials performed to this day report that between 40 and 60 per cent of subjects experienced moderate regrowth of hair when using it on a regular basis – but expect a long wait and, should you stop treatment, any hair regrown would return to being lost.

Finasteride (Oral and Topical)
A prototypical oral medication, finasteride, developed and used for decades to treat androgenetic alopecia (also known as male‑pattern hair loss) through the enzyme-inhibiting mechanism that stops the conversion of testosterone to DHT, is also used to remain fertile despite losing one testicle.

What’s New in 2024?
Topical finasteride: Because of the side-effects (at least in some), topical formulations, given right to the scalp and effective in reaching the hair follicles via the scalp, produce minimal systemic hormonal shock.

Micro dosing: Taking oral finasteride at much lower doses – sometimes called micro dosing – has also become increasingly popular. In a recent survey, 41 per cent of respondents defined themselves as taking this new ‘fad’ approach. Although trials have shown that much lower doses of finasteride work, lower doses could also mean a reduced risk of side effects and lower treatment costs, which could make it more interesting for young men or those with very mild hair loss.

Efficacy: Finasteride works (for androgenetic alopecia in men), especially in stopping further loss – and appears to be effective (at least to some degree) in the most hormonal forms of female hair loss. And there are a lot of these; androgens play a role in many different types of female balding. Clearly, most forms of female baldness involve hormones, and there is sparse evidence on the efficacy of finasteride in women (even though there’s much less experience in prescribing to women generally – it’s only marketed in capsule form, and is harder to dose accurately as a liquid such as minoxidil). Finasteride isn’t recommended in pregnancy due to high risk for birth defects.

Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) Therapy
Over the past couple of years, Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) therapy has emerged as one of the most popular non-surgical treatment of hair-loss. PRP is prepared by using the donor’s own blood which is allowed to clot before being centrifugated in order to concentrate the platelets. The platelet concentrate, which contains growth factors, is subsequently injected into the scalp, with the aim of triggering the hair follicles.

Breakthroughs in Platelet Lysate: The lysate is produced by centrifuging each platelet dose, extracting the platelets’ regenerative growth factors and leaving behind the red and white blood cells. Lysate is proposed to be an even more potent form of platelet regenerative therapy.

Combination Therapies: Apart from working to revitalize dead hair follicles to improve hair growth, PRP can also be combined with other modalities of hair restoration (such as micro needling or low-level laser therapy) to enhance the results and hence have an overall impact to solve the problem.

Long term results: Although PRP historically required patients to return for maintenance injections every six to 12 months, protocols introduced in 2024 bring longer term benefits to patients. This hopefully will eliminate or alter the need for follow-up injections.

Efficacy: PRP therapy has been demonstrated to be effective for slowing hair loss in patients, and also for hair regeneration for people with androgenetic alopecia (male pattern baldness), and in people who have suffered loss of hair due to trauma (scarring alopecia – usually non-surgical hair removal) or stress (telogen effluvium).

Low-Level Laser Therapy (LLLT)
LLLT is now being marketed for the treatment of hair loss (a popular substitute for hair transplantation) – easy, pain-free and almost side-effect free. Laser combs, caps and helmets are included in this category of devices that shine red light that penetrates the scalp to stimulate the cell within the hair follicle.

Development sparked in Home devices: Sleek new home use LLLT devices deliver higher energy outputs and greater convenience, possibly even hooking up to apps on smart phones that track progress and note periodical improvements using algorithms with algorithmically-derived advice on optimal periods needing treatment. Development in WavelengthT in year 2024: Uses a wider profile of wavelengths to increase potency and results compared to year 2004 device. It is effective with all hair loss sufferers, even those with thick scalp muscles.

Clinical-Grade Treatments: Unlike over-the-counter devices intended for spot-treating areas of the scalp, in-clinic LLLT treatments are often high-power, customized light treatments aimed at the specificity of your scalp condition and the extent of your hair loss.

Efficacy: The evidence from these new studies has only deepened for LLLT as a viable treatment for mild to moderate hair loss, especially when used in conjunction with minoxidil or finasteride. The treatment is as safe for men as for women and, while a few (if any) side-effects have been reported, consumers and academic researchers are full of praise.

Micro needling
Other non-surgical options include micro needling – a process by which a handheld device fitted with tiny needles makes pricks or micro-cuts in the skin or, in this case, in the scalp, generating the same response by the body as it seeks to heal itself as in the previous method by producing increased amounts of collagen in the scalp and a fresher blood supply for the follicles.

Patents for updated versions of robotic micro needling: numerous ‘waiting’ patents including those for ‘improved’ robotic micro needling devices that ‘control the number of times that a needle assembly penetrates through the epidermis’, ‘controls the depth of penetration’ as well as ‘enabling a more uniform and controlled frequency of penetration of a needle assembly into vernix caseosa’. Combinations with Growth Factors, Peptides or PRP: Micro needling can be further applied in conjunction with growth factors, peptides or PRP in order to deepen the regenerative healing mechanism of the hair to increase hair growth after PRP treatment.

Efficacy: Microneedling might be exceptionally useful as an adjunct to topical or injected therapies, to enhance absorption. Depending upon the cause of hair loss, it might help thinning hair, but will not help with a preceding balding process.

Stem Cell Therapy
This will be the future of hair-loss remedies. In stem-cell therapy – because of the fact that stem cells can be transformed into many different cells – they become a more valuable tool in the hands of the regenerative-medicine physician-scientist, but specifically in the case of how to use them for (hair) regeneration.

Game-changing discoveries: stem cells produce small vesicles called exosomes, packed with powerfully regenerative signals and growth factors that tell the body how to regrow tissue – and the newly discovered exosome-based therapies are becoming the go-to treatments for hair loss because they can promote the follicles and boost the blood supply to the scalp without having the stem cells actually differentiate into the treated tissue. Stem cell banking: Some clinics even bank your stem cells for you ‘just in case’ you require a treatment in the future – and then the cells can be taken from your own body, are completely personalized and far stronger than normal stem cell treatments.

Efficacy: So far, while the stem cell therapy is still quite a bit behind other treatments in its development, the early results are extremely encouraging with some patients showing regrowth of their hair when they have failed on other treatments. Over time, it seems almost certain that stem cell therapy is likely to become the most effective hair loss treatment.

Nutritional Supplements and Dietary Changes
While they are often shown only in a supporting role to other treatments, nutritional supplements can, in fact, take center stage in protecting hair follicles. An improved understanding of the relationship between nutrition and baldness has led to particular supplements and diets.

Key Nutrients for Hair Growth:

• Biotin: Used for the manufacture of hair’s structural protein, keratin Still recommended as a supplement for healthier, less-shed hair.
• Saw Palmetto: The most widely used natural DHT inhibitor and primary ingredient in nearly all supplements sold for the treatment of androgenetic hair loss.
• Collagen: With shelf supplements increasingly marketed for scalp health and hair strength, collagen will soon be de the rage on the beauty table.
• Iron: In my own experience and many of my patients who suffer from hair loss due to diet, iron deficiency is the largest culprit of both sexes. Any supplement you start should contain iron formulations that are better absorbed in the body and less likely to cause stomach upset.

Innovations in treatment: Nutritional treaties: genetically-personalized diet plans: we can now devise highly individual nutritional eating plans with a view and calculated to our respective deficiencies in the compounds responsible for hair loss. Well don’t say there isn’t a gut to this – in hair: the last, and last-but-one, researched hope for preventing hair loss – more probiotics! Healthy hair’s to come – just you see.