michael barry
Senior Member
- Reaction score
- 12
Alright Stephen,
I'll put my oars in the water and explain why at this time I believe the direct theory of baldness to be true, and why.
First, look at these (some are NEW!) pictures of Revivogen's success,
http://www.revivogen.com/pictures/
I tested Revivogen on my arm way back, and it produced a veritable "hole" in my wrist hair growth. All I had were some vellus-type hairs in the middle of the arm, surrounded by big thick arm hairs where I wasn't applying it. Pine oil did something similar on the back of my right hand at about 3 months, but to a lesser extent. Cedarwood (or pine) oil appears in many old essential oil remedies for baldness.
Look at these fluridil photos: http://www.menspharma.com/results.htm
We know that fluridil is designed to degrade in water, and thus many of us are aftraid that it cant really reach the scalp's follicles because of having to pass through a water layer in the scalp before getting to the papilla with good efficacy. We KNOW that there are no sides with fluridil, but yet it obviously has "some" efficacy. There are problems however, like not being able to shampoo with it but a couple of times a week without really compromising its effectiveness and the inability to use other topicals with it because they will degrade it also. I think its probably helpful, but not as good as topical spironolactone applied twice a day.
Google results for topical spironolactone and hirsuitism: Via Bryan's site,
http://www.geocities.com/bryan50001/spironolactone.html
We see that even with a cream vehicle that makes hirsutism WORSE, spironolactone, the receptor blocker, still can overcome it and reduce hairweight by some 49 percent in one patient.
..................and we know spironolactone is used in male pattern baldness for the perfectly opposite reason. Dr. Proctor puts it in proxiphen, Dr. Lee sells it, genhair.com sells it. They believe it helps scalp hair for the precisely opposite reason that it REDUCES body hair growth, namely it keeps androgens from acting on hair.
Byryan has one very blurry spironolactone regrowth photo, but other than that, nobody seems to have taken a before and after of hair growing better on the head as a resullt of spironolactone usage. However, we can assert that it should because we do have some photos of fluridil and revivogen working up there on the scalp.
WARNING, PERSONAL OPINION AHEAD. I re-read something Bryan wrote about GLA applied to a flank organ, and how much it inhibited its growth. Revivogen's instructs tell you that after a good while, you can start using it every other day or so after stabilization is achieved. In other words, Khadhavi thinks it hangs around a good while. Well, we KNOW that spironolactone's half-life is 85 minutes, and canrenone's half-life is about 10 hours. So spironolactone really is probably only effective for 12-14 hours. In the flank organ study, spironolactone reduced the organs growth by 39.-something-percent, and GLA reduced it by 66 percent. I think that it would be safe to assume that if you used sprio twice a day, every 12 hours, your anti-androgenic activity would be roughly twice what the once a day application would be. That works out to 78-79 percent or so.
In other words, while it lasts, spironolactone is damned effective in my opinion.
Now, all three of the things Ive mentioned are good for baldness. Ive supplied some pics showing that they help. We know fluridil in particular in NO WAY can make it down to the lymphatics and probably isn't as effective as spironolactone twice a day because of it breaking down some before it gets to the follicle proper. Yet the pic says it works. I GUARANTEE you that all three of these things put on your arm or chest or face will reduce hair growth there. That fits right along with the standard theory of baldness. Namely head hair hates androgens and does not need them for growth at all (as people with androgen-insensitivity syndrome conclusively prove) and body hair loves androgens and if denied them will not grow.
Here is further proof that head hair can only stand so much androgen stimuli OR ANY OF IT WILL BALD,
: Skin Pharmacol Physiol. 2006;19(6):311-21. Epub 2006 Aug 23. Links
Effect of 5alpha-dihydrotestosterone and testosterone on apoptosis in human dermal papilla cells.Winiarska A, Mandt N, Kamp H, Hossini A, Seltmann H, Zouboulis CC, Blume-Peytavi U.
Department of Dermatology and Allergy, Charite-Universitatsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Pathogenetic mechanisms in androgenetic alopecia are not yet fully understood; however, it is commonly accepted that androgens like testosterone (T) and 5alpha-dihydrotestosterone (5alpha-DHT) inhibit hair follicle activity with early induction of the catagen. Thus, we investigated the influence of T and 5alpha-DHT on proliferation, cell death and bcl-2/bax expression in cultured dermal papilla cells (DPC) from nonbalding scalp regions of healthy volunteers. T and 5alpha-DHT induced apoptosis in DPC in a dose-dependent and time-related manner; in addition a necrotic effect due to T at 10(-5) M was found. Interestingly, bcl-2 protein expression was decreased in T- and 5alpha-DHT-treated cells, leading to an increase in the bax/bcl-2 ratio. In addition, T and 5alpha-DHT induced proteolytic cleavage of caspase 8 and inhibited proliferation of DPC at 10(-5) M. High concentrations of T and 5alpha-DHT were needed to induce apoptotic effects in DPC. These data suggest that DPC from nonbalding scalp regions do have the capacity to undergo apoptosis, but need a high androgen stimulus. The present study provides an interesting new pathogenetic approach in androgenetic alopecia.
PMID: 16931898 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE
All they did in that experiment was make enough testosterone available to head hair EVEN FROM THE WREATH AREA to make it miniaturize. And it did. So we know, as Doctor has pointed out, that T and DHT unlock the same genetic instructs from the DNA of the follicles to make hairs become sensitive to testosterone.
SO now we get to ol' Michael Barry's "theory" of baldness, and why there is more of it now amongst certain populations.
I think human head hair is different from human body hair. I think body hair (with the exception of eyebrow and armpit and pubic hair) has to have some androgens to grow. We know that because women have armpit, pubic, and eyebrow hair that they either dont need androgens or need very very very small amounts of them. Transexuals who take flutamide still have eyebrow hair, and pubic hair, and have to shave their underams. Ive read up on transexuals because they are the perfect people to study as far as baldness is concerned and what happens when androgens are chemically taken away. Ive yet to read of any transexual who is a male living as a woman taking flutamide reporting that further hairloss is a problem. Taking flutamide (and many apparently taking estrogen with it) seems to stop further hairloss in its tracks. Some of these "women" get transplant surgery in order to create a "female" looking hairline because they have lost some hair before they decided to try and be a female.
Ive been able to post three pictures of women who took testosterone who gained body hair, thick beards that are just like men's beards, and went Male Pattern Bald. Ive posted a study that showed women who do this were going bald at a 50 percent clip in various states of Norwood after 13 years, going steadily bald just like men do. However, one of them in particular lost all her hair rather quickly and went NW5 very fast.
I think the DNA in head hair is simply different that what it is in body hair. Period. And if you spray enough DHT topically to Brad Pitt, even he, a guy with his full hairline at 43 years of age, will go bald.
I think there are differences in receptor expression, numbers of receptors, how effective the receptors work based on mutations of the androgen receptor genes just like Doctor describes. Dammitletmein has posted that increased IGF-1 seems to increase receptor expression and had studies to back it up. He also was able to show that increased IGF-1 is associated in studies with higher alpha five reductase activity. If alpha five reductase is more acitve or there are more of em' in the root sheath, of course there will be more androgens binding with the receptor sites.
I think men who go very bald very fast with inflammed scalps will in the future be found to have an upregulated receptor genetic expression, their alpha five reductase activity in their skin and hair ONLY Might be elevated a tad also. But their individual hair's threshold for DHT and T will be found to be lower also than men who dont have baldness. I believe just like the majority of scientists looking into baldness that some people are just born with hair that is extremely sensitive to male hormone for whatever reason, and they will have to protect that hair from male hormone if they want to keep it. Thats the biggie. I simply believe there is a difference in the hairs. I also believe that it will be found that certain men who exhibit alot of inflammation will be found to have very active immune systems that perhaps "over-react" to the hair a bit, thus sending some excessive amounts of inflammatory enzymes at their hairs that other balding men who dont have much inflammation dont have. This is much like some men get sick more than others. Some guys immune systems simply work more actively than other guys.
We know that body hair transplants grow on the scalp, BUT NOT ALL MEN who get them have good growth, or even longer growth. Dr. Poswal has reported that many of the men who he has transplanted body hair to the scalp for find that the hair will only grow about twice as long as it does on the body. It doesn't grow long like head hair in MOST cases. In a few men though, it does. Regular hair transplants ALWAYS result in hairs that grow as long as it grows in the back of the head. Topical anti-androgens will suppress the body hair thats moved to the scalp also, and they are not recommended. Internal finasteride is the strongest anti-androgen Ive seen that worked with a body hair transplant. The hair you still have after getting on finasteride is about what will still grow. Ive seen many posts of men who claimed a little lessening of hair growth on the body with dutasteride. Finas, as we both know, doesn't "get" all the DHT, so the body hairs still have enough stimuli to grow pretty well. I simply stopped getting hairier on my body after getting on finas, but I seen a little lessening of body hair while I was piddling with dutasteride after about one year. Im back on finas, as I dont feel like my cranky-old self on dutasteride.
Why the immune response? Ive seen two very plausible theories. Doctor has stated that overexpression of TGFbeta is associated with autoimmune disorders all over the body, and then there is the old one whereby when negative growth factors being released by the dermal papilla outnumber positive growth factors, you have a mini-organ with more negative growth factors than positive ones, and the immune system naturally sees it as a foreign body and begins to attack. Ive seen a "line" of inflammation in my own head by a microscopic camera that blew up the image very large at a clinic. I use treatments to try and fight it, but a receptor blocker should make it stop also after time. Ive seen one other theory, but I dont think it fits the facts, but it is as the hairs begin to miniaturize, they are too small to use all the sebum that lubricates them and excessive sebum is hanging around the opening in the dermis where the hair emerges from the skin, and it has mircobials and other fugni etc, and they elicit an immuno response after a time. It is interesting to not that the first inflammation seen in baldness is right at the opening of the skin where the follicle emerges according to one long medical article I read, but I'd still be suprised if this was the case.
Thats pretty much what I think based on everything Ive read over the past few years.
I think cloning, anaderm, and a great receptor blocker like RU, will be the answers long term in stopping male pattern baldness and making men's head hair like women's head hair. I htink a hair healthy diet can also help lessen inflammation and excessive androgenic actions in the skin to a smaller extent also. I FEAR things like Curis, and beta catenin pathways becuse they really might be able to cause cancer.
I'll put my oars in the water and explain why at this time I believe the direct theory of baldness to be true, and why.
First, look at these (some are NEW!) pictures of Revivogen's success,
http://www.revivogen.com/pictures/
I tested Revivogen on my arm way back, and it produced a veritable "hole" in my wrist hair growth. All I had were some vellus-type hairs in the middle of the arm, surrounded by big thick arm hairs where I wasn't applying it. Pine oil did something similar on the back of my right hand at about 3 months, but to a lesser extent. Cedarwood (or pine) oil appears in many old essential oil remedies for baldness.
Look at these fluridil photos: http://www.menspharma.com/results.htm
We know that fluridil is designed to degrade in water, and thus many of us are aftraid that it cant really reach the scalp's follicles because of having to pass through a water layer in the scalp before getting to the papilla with good efficacy. We KNOW that there are no sides with fluridil, but yet it obviously has "some" efficacy. There are problems however, like not being able to shampoo with it but a couple of times a week without really compromising its effectiveness and the inability to use other topicals with it because they will degrade it also. I think its probably helpful, but not as good as topical spironolactone applied twice a day.
Google results for topical spironolactone and hirsuitism: Via Bryan's site,
http://www.geocities.com/bryan50001/spironolactone.html
We see that even with a cream vehicle that makes hirsutism WORSE, spironolactone, the receptor blocker, still can overcome it and reduce hairweight by some 49 percent in one patient.
..................and we know spironolactone is used in male pattern baldness for the perfectly opposite reason. Dr. Proctor puts it in proxiphen, Dr. Lee sells it, genhair.com sells it. They believe it helps scalp hair for the precisely opposite reason that it REDUCES body hair growth, namely it keeps androgens from acting on hair.
Byryan has one very blurry spironolactone regrowth photo, but other than that, nobody seems to have taken a before and after of hair growing better on the head as a resullt of spironolactone usage. However, we can assert that it should because we do have some photos of fluridil and revivogen working up there on the scalp.
WARNING, PERSONAL OPINION AHEAD. I re-read something Bryan wrote about GLA applied to a flank organ, and how much it inhibited its growth. Revivogen's instructs tell you that after a good while, you can start using it every other day or so after stabilization is achieved. In other words, Khadhavi thinks it hangs around a good while. Well, we KNOW that spironolactone's half-life is 85 minutes, and canrenone's half-life is about 10 hours. So spironolactone really is probably only effective for 12-14 hours. In the flank organ study, spironolactone reduced the organs growth by 39.-something-percent, and GLA reduced it by 66 percent. I think that it would be safe to assume that if you used sprio twice a day, every 12 hours, your anti-androgenic activity would be roughly twice what the once a day application would be. That works out to 78-79 percent or so.
In other words, while it lasts, spironolactone is damned effective in my opinion.
Now, all three of the things Ive mentioned are good for baldness. Ive supplied some pics showing that they help. We know fluridil in particular in NO WAY can make it down to the lymphatics and probably isn't as effective as spironolactone twice a day because of it breaking down some before it gets to the follicle proper. Yet the pic says it works. I GUARANTEE you that all three of these things put on your arm or chest or face will reduce hair growth there. That fits right along with the standard theory of baldness. Namely head hair hates androgens and does not need them for growth at all (as people with androgen-insensitivity syndrome conclusively prove) and body hair loves androgens and if denied them will not grow.
Here is further proof that head hair can only stand so much androgen stimuli OR ANY OF IT WILL BALD,
: Skin Pharmacol Physiol. 2006;19(6):311-21. Epub 2006 Aug 23. Links
Effect of 5alpha-dihydrotestosterone and testosterone on apoptosis in human dermal papilla cells.Winiarska A, Mandt N, Kamp H, Hossini A, Seltmann H, Zouboulis CC, Blume-Peytavi U.
Department of Dermatology and Allergy, Charite-Universitatsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Pathogenetic mechanisms in androgenetic alopecia are not yet fully understood; however, it is commonly accepted that androgens like testosterone (T) and 5alpha-dihydrotestosterone (5alpha-DHT) inhibit hair follicle activity with early induction of the catagen. Thus, we investigated the influence of T and 5alpha-DHT on proliferation, cell death and bcl-2/bax expression in cultured dermal papilla cells (DPC) from nonbalding scalp regions of healthy volunteers. T and 5alpha-DHT induced apoptosis in DPC in a dose-dependent and time-related manner; in addition a necrotic effect due to T at 10(-5) M was found. Interestingly, bcl-2 protein expression was decreased in T- and 5alpha-DHT-treated cells, leading to an increase in the bax/bcl-2 ratio. In addition, T and 5alpha-DHT induced proteolytic cleavage of caspase 8 and inhibited proliferation of DPC at 10(-5) M. High concentrations of T and 5alpha-DHT were needed to induce apoptotic effects in DPC. These data suggest that DPC from nonbalding scalp regions do have the capacity to undergo apoptosis, but need a high androgen stimulus. The present study provides an interesting new pathogenetic approach in androgenetic alopecia.
PMID: 16931898 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE
All they did in that experiment was make enough testosterone available to head hair EVEN FROM THE WREATH AREA to make it miniaturize. And it did. So we know, as Doctor has pointed out, that T and DHT unlock the same genetic instructs from the DNA of the follicles to make hairs become sensitive to testosterone.
SO now we get to ol' Michael Barry's "theory" of baldness, and why there is more of it now amongst certain populations.
I think human head hair is different from human body hair. I think body hair (with the exception of eyebrow and armpit and pubic hair) has to have some androgens to grow. We know that because women have armpit, pubic, and eyebrow hair that they either dont need androgens or need very very very small amounts of them. Transexuals who take flutamide still have eyebrow hair, and pubic hair, and have to shave their underams. Ive read up on transexuals because they are the perfect people to study as far as baldness is concerned and what happens when androgens are chemically taken away. Ive yet to read of any transexual who is a male living as a woman taking flutamide reporting that further hairloss is a problem. Taking flutamide (and many apparently taking estrogen with it) seems to stop further hairloss in its tracks. Some of these "women" get transplant surgery in order to create a "female" looking hairline because they have lost some hair before they decided to try and be a female.
Ive been able to post three pictures of women who took testosterone who gained body hair, thick beards that are just like men's beards, and went Male Pattern Bald. Ive posted a study that showed women who do this were going bald at a 50 percent clip in various states of Norwood after 13 years, going steadily bald just like men do. However, one of them in particular lost all her hair rather quickly and went NW5 very fast.
I think the DNA in head hair is simply different that what it is in body hair. Period. And if you spray enough DHT topically to Brad Pitt, even he, a guy with his full hairline at 43 years of age, will go bald.
I think there are differences in receptor expression, numbers of receptors, how effective the receptors work based on mutations of the androgen receptor genes just like Doctor describes. Dammitletmein has posted that increased IGF-1 seems to increase receptor expression and had studies to back it up. He also was able to show that increased IGF-1 is associated in studies with higher alpha five reductase activity. If alpha five reductase is more acitve or there are more of em' in the root sheath, of course there will be more androgens binding with the receptor sites.
I think men who go very bald very fast with inflammed scalps will in the future be found to have an upregulated receptor genetic expression, their alpha five reductase activity in their skin and hair ONLY Might be elevated a tad also. But their individual hair's threshold for DHT and T will be found to be lower also than men who dont have baldness. I believe just like the majority of scientists looking into baldness that some people are just born with hair that is extremely sensitive to male hormone for whatever reason, and they will have to protect that hair from male hormone if they want to keep it. Thats the biggie. I simply believe there is a difference in the hairs. I also believe that it will be found that certain men who exhibit alot of inflammation will be found to have very active immune systems that perhaps "over-react" to the hair a bit, thus sending some excessive amounts of inflammatory enzymes at their hairs that other balding men who dont have much inflammation dont have. This is much like some men get sick more than others. Some guys immune systems simply work more actively than other guys.
We know that body hair transplants grow on the scalp, BUT NOT ALL MEN who get them have good growth, or even longer growth. Dr. Poswal has reported that many of the men who he has transplanted body hair to the scalp for find that the hair will only grow about twice as long as it does on the body. It doesn't grow long like head hair in MOST cases. In a few men though, it does. Regular hair transplants ALWAYS result in hairs that grow as long as it grows in the back of the head. Topical anti-androgens will suppress the body hair thats moved to the scalp also, and they are not recommended. Internal finasteride is the strongest anti-androgen Ive seen that worked with a body hair transplant. The hair you still have after getting on finasteride is about what will still grow. Ive seen many posts of men who claimed a little lessening of hair growth on the body with dutasteride. Finas, as we both know, doesn't "get" all the DHT, so the body hairs still have enough stimuli to grow pretty well. I simply stopped getting hairier on my body after getting on finas, but I seen a little lessening of body hair while I was piddling with dutasteride after about one year. Im back on finas, as I dont feel like my cranky-old self on dutasteride.
Why the immune response? Ive seen two very plausible theories. Doctor has stated that overexpression of TGFbeta is associated with autoimmune disorders all over the body, and then there is the old one whereby when negative growth factors being released by the dermal papilla outnumber positive growth factors, you have a mini-organ with more negative growth factors than positive ones, and the immune system naturally sees it as a foreign body and begins to attack. Ive seen a "line" of inflammation in my own head by a microscopic camera that blew up the image very large at a clinic. I use treatments to try and fight it, but a receptor blocker should make it stop also after time. Ive seen one other theory, but I dont think it fits the facts, but it is as the hairs begin to miniaturize, they are too small to use all the sebum that lubricates them and excessive sebum is hanging around the opening in the dermis where the hair emerges from the skin, and it has mircobials and other fugni etc, and they elicit an immuno response after a time. It is interesting to not that the first inflammation seen in baldness is right at the opening of the skin where the follicle emerges according to one long medical article I read, but I'd still be suprised if this was the case.
Thats pretty much what I think based on everything Ive read over the past few years.
I think cloning, anaderm, and a great receptor blocker like RU, will be the answers long term in stopping male pattern baldness and making men's head hair like women's head hair. I htink a hair healthy diet can also help lessen inflammation and excessive androgenic actions in the skin to a smaller extent also. I FEAR things like Curis, and beta catenin pathways becuse they really might be able to cause cancer.
