Potential new cure found for baldness

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-44038756

Top story on the BBC News website this morning.

All I can say is, thank God, and I hope they'll plough as much funding into solving this blight on the lives of millions as is necessary. For too long baldness has been assumed to be a mental health issue where sufferers may initially lose some hair but then become trapped in an unhealthy cycle of delusional depilation. Now that those clever chaps in Manchester have thought to try out the effects of existing drugs on the condition (who'd have thought? Brilliant!) there may be some biological treatments too.

Who knows, maybe they'll look at ME in Manchester next? Oh, I see they already are:

http://www.cmft.nhs.uk/childrens-ho...arrington-building-specialist-services/cfs-me

Well never mind, now that they've got the important stuff out of the way they might have a look at drug treatments for "CFS/ME" (wonder why they call it that?) in due course.

 

Always with the multidisciplinary teams! It's about job creation, not treating patients.

 

Seriously, haven't these bald people tried CBT. It's certainly obvious to me that their introspective thought processes has inevitably affected the outward growth of their hair, as soon as they adopt an outro-spective thought process, their uninhibited hair growth will leave them with full, luxurious heads of hair.

(Results not guaranteed, if it doesn't work then you aren't thinking outwardly enough. If you are already thinking outwardly then you have obviously thought outwardly too much and your hair is being flung away from your head - we can't help with that.)

 

Oh bugger...they didn’t give me CBT at the CFS clinic and then my hair started falling out ...if only they had brainwashed me as well as giving me GET I would still have a beautiful head of hair now...who knows with the confidence this would bring I could have jumped up and been cured of my M.E. too...wonder if it works on grey?

 

Did they contact some opposing leading experts in baldness to incognito say it wasn't true?

 

If this research helps those who aren't able to grow hair, like Matt Lucas and Duncan Goodhew, that's great as I can imagine that for many in that situation it can be very difficult to live with; society having a tendency not to be kind to those who are different. If it helps with things like alopecia - also great because that can be very distressing too.

But ...

give US some money!!

Discalimer - didn't read the link

 

I'm not sure we should make light of this. Many of those afflicted by the stigma of baldness haven't been able to leave their house for years. And it's not as if this problem hasn't been known about for decades - Hound Dog Taylor was trying to raise awareness in 1971, as have such brave campaigners as Magic Slim, George Thorogood, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Ike Turner, Walter Trout and Luther Allison since then:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3kKZM8Shv4

This seminal work was one year after the condition had been classified as a mental illness by McEvedy and Beard (what else could he do with a name like that?) in 1970, in a double-blinded (neither of them actually saw any patients) trial which proved that homeopathic chanting was more effective than standard medical care. In a freshly painted room, patients sat in a circle repeating "the less hair I have, the more hair I have". Those who answered a questionnaire saying that they felt they had more hair by the time the paint had dried were classified as "recovered", as they believed their heads had been re-covered with hair, whilst those who didn't were excluded from the results as they obviously hadn't been trying hard enough (as approved by the ethics committee).

I think we should also congratulate the BBC on the integrity of their reporting. Too often such articles are accompanied by a picture of a good-looking model scratching her head, but this time they have had the courage to use a picture of a real bald person. They have also avoided making bold claims about this lab trial of scalp samples of 40 patients by including the word "potential" in their headline.

According to the Sun, there's a new shampoo coming:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6238853/baldness-cure-shampoo/

 

It's not too late. Obviously grey is viewed by your mind as the least onerous colour to think of, which is why your hair has gone that colour. All you need to do is change your false colour beliefs and you'll be able to have hair any colour that you desire!

 

Wasn't this followed with by a trial where you could start with two strands of hair, over the course of the trial grow two more, and then be considered to have a full head of hair?

 

Depressingly I remember seeing a graphic showing that male pattern baldness already gets orders of magnitude more funding than ME/CFS....sigh.

 

So there's now a drug that could remove/reduce the, quite severe and messy, side effects of my current baldness treatment? The cat will probably be happy not to be permanently taped to my head any more.

But......do I take it, or does the cat?

 

Actually 15% of participants entered that trial with three strands of hair and left with only two, but because those two strands had grown and participants felt more hairy, they were deemed recovered.

 

I suspect that a combover would fall under the 60% recovered?

 

I keep seeing ads for 'invigorating', strengthening shampoos.........and gluten free ones(?) any one tried them?

 

Yeah but they still taste soapy?

 

Get the caffeine shampoo then, it tastes of coffee.

 

I hope men/women with baldness are not reading this thread. Let's not make fun of people with baldness just because have gotten more funding. They must suffer a lot of anguish when losing their hair. Its so easy to laugh and not realise the psychological harm that can be done. We are not all biologically made of thick skin.

I have cousins who went bald at a young age. Living in another city I had not seen them for over 20 year and when I saw a photo of them I was shocked. I remembered them as children with beautiful thick hair and I felt upset when I saw how bald they were. It must have been very difficult for them losing their hair and I felt distressed for them.

It isn't right regarding the lack of funding for ME and male pattern baldness get more. But let's not mock baldness please and the legit suffering it can cause.

 

In the interests of, well, something.....I am bald, not completely, receded monk level bald, being completely bald, that would be better, but, basically, why should I care? Even if the amount of dead stuff not on my head was an issue I have other things to worry about, but I don't.

I don't particularly appreciate being told I should take it seriously, and that I am not allowed to joke about it, if the occasion suits me.

All the best.

 

Some do suffer psychologically. I just don't think we need to have a laugh at them as people with ME. I'm glad for you that it doesn't bother you @Wonko

 

I don't believe we are laughing at people with hair loss. What we are doing is attempting to use humour to laugh at/ridicule the situation where losing hair, which may well cause some people psychological distress but in the main is something that has little impact on the average person affected, is treated as more important/newsworthy than many conditions that have an impact on the average person affected in much more serious ways, such as ME.