I'll post this here since a) most knowledgable people are on this subforum, and b) this question directly relates to understanding the hair loss process.
The observation I want to talk about is the locality of minoxidil effects. What I'm referring to here is that if you apply minoxidil only to your hair line, you will still not loose any hair "further into" your scalp. minoxidil is said to only act locally; still, if you apply it only at your front, you will still not lose any hair behind that. If minoxidil acted only locally, fibrosis and hair loss should actually progress where minoxidil was not applied.
Example: A NW2 with vertex not affected applies minoxidil only to his hair line. If he didn't, he would lose his current hair line (call it "line x", just assuming for a moment there is a distinct strip here where hair loss currently does its workings), and after graudally losing line x, he would now lose line y right behind that. With minoxidil however, though only applied at the current hairline ("line x"), line y is also protected. Otherwise, people would start losing hair behind their hairline when applying minoxidil only in the front. But this is not the case.
Why is that?
Two hypotheses here which I came up until now:
1) minoxidil does not work only locally but spreads to a certain extent (or actually quite far, cause depending on your personal pattern, stopping loss at your hairline will protect quite a lot of hair far behind the hair line)
2) Much like usual hair cycling happens in waves where each follicle influences its neighbours, Androgenetic Alopecia might also be due to neighbor influence, much like a chain reaction.
I consider option 2) rather interesting. If we know what causes this neighbor signalling (theory: it might be PGD2 spreading overspilling from one follicle to its neighbors), this might yield an approach at a) understanding and b) maybe halting hair loss.
Either way, I find it very interesting that a process which progresses over your whole head can be put to a halt by only stopping it locally. This is a topic worth being disucced in my opinion.
Any thoughts here?
The observation I want to talk about is the locality of minoxidil effects. What I'm referring to here is that if you apply minoxidil only to your hair line, you will still not loose any hair "further into" your scalp. minoxidil is said to only act locally; still, if you apply it only at your front, you will still not lose any hair behind that. If minoxidil acted only locally, fibrosis and hair loss should actually progress where minoxidil was not applied.
Example: A NW2 with vertex not affected applies minoxidil only to his hair line. If he didn't, he would lose his current hair line (call it "line x", just assuming for a moment there is a distinct strip here where hair loss currently does its workings), and after graudally losing line x, he would now lose line y right behind that. With minoxidil however, though only applied at the current hairline ("line x"), line y is also protected. Otherwise, people would start losing hair behind their hairline when applying minoxidil only in the front. But this is not the case.
Why is that?
Two hypotheses here which I came up until now:
1) minoxidil does not work only locally but spreads to a certain extent (or actually quite far, cause depending on your personal pattern, stopping loss at your hairline will protect quite a lot of hair far behind the hair line)
2) Much like usual hair cycling happens in waves where each follicle influences its neighbours, Androgenetic Alopecia might also be due to neighbor influence, much like a chain reaction.
I consider option 2) rather interesting. If we know what causes this neighbor signalling (theory: it might be PGD2 spreading overspilling from one follicle to its neighbors), this might yield an approach at a) understanding and b) maybe halting hair loss.
Either way, I find it very interesting that a process which progresses over your whole head can be put to a halt by only stopping it locally. This is a topic worth being disucced in my opinion.
Any thoughts here?