Hair-‘E’ Discovery

The follicly-challenged resort to all sorts of tricks and tactics to replace their luscious locks.

In the estimated $1 billion-a-year hair replacement industry, they turn to Minoxidil, surgery, hair pieces, hair plugs, shampoos, hair-dyes, aerosol sprays (remember Ron Popeil’s “GLH”?), or special ointments that proclaim to have the “secret ingredient” proven to re-grow hair.

With the exception of surgery and some spotty reports on the efficacy of Minoxidil, most men’s attempts to recapture their hirsute heads come up, well, bald – empty. Thus, they either live with their baldness or concoct some way of making the most with what they have (e.g. comb-overs, growing out hair and combing from the back to the front).

But these hair-brained tactics may wind up obsolete in a few years’ time. Why? Because according to a new study from the University of Science Malaysia, supplementing with vitamin E reverses male pattern baldness by nearly 50 percent!

The scientists recruited approximately 30 men, ages 18 to 59, all of whom were in the throes of varying stages of male pattern baldness. Some of the men were given a placebo, which contained about 600 mg of soybean oil. The other men received a supplement that contained palm tocotrienol. Tocotrienol is one of two forms of vitamin E. The most abundant form of vitamin E in foods, particularly in America, is tocopherol. More on these later.

To assess just how much – or if any – hair was grown over the course of the eight week period in which the men took these supplements, the scientists “cordoned off,” if you will, a 2x2 cm section of hair on the men’s heads, regularly checking up on the average rate of hair growth in this squared-off section.

The end of the eight months elicited some pretty amazing findings. Because the portion of men who took the vitamin E-based supplement increased their rate of hair re-growth by 42 percent, eight of them by more than 50 percent! The portion of men who took the soybean oil supplement saw no measurable difference (one man saw some hair re-growth, but at a fairly paltry 20 percent).

Now, you might be thinking, “What a minute, Frank. I supplement with vitamin E regularly, eat lots of foods high in vitamin E, yet I don’t have any new found follicles!”

Here’s where I go back to the difference between tocopherol and tocotrienol. As I mentioned, tocopherol is much more abundant in the foods we eat, and is the most common form of supplement found in American vitamin E supplements. There’s good reason for this, though, as tocoherol is digested by the body much more readily than tocotrienol is; tocotrienol’s high level of antioxidants are eliminated from the body almost as quickly as they’re swallowed.

But it seems as though the nutrients in tocotrienol that are beneficial to hair re-growth are absorbed by the body. What explains this is anyone’s guess, as in all of the analysis done vitamin E, tocotrienol analysis makes up about one percent of that.

It bears mentioning that the study’s conclusions are in the, shall we say, “stubble” stages, as it has yet to be published in a scientific journal or peer-reviewed for accuracy. But if the research is confirmed as accurate and reliable, it has hugely positive ramifications for the natural supplement industry, the hair replacement industry and the industry of men’s self-confidence.

Sources
nutraingredients.com
fda.gov
benbest.com