Immune System Involvement

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  • chewytorch
    Member
    • Oct 2010
    • 66

    Immune System Involvement

    Anybody that's knowledgeable on this topic care to put in their 2 cents??

    A relatively rare type of hair loss, alopecia areata, is suspected of being caused by a person's own antibodies "attacking" the hair follicles. In other words alopecia areata is considered by many dermatologists as an autoimmune disease.

    Recently there has been speculation that male pattern baldness may have a autoimmune component. Skin biopsies have shown that some micro-inflammation is present around shrunken (miniaturized) follicles. Whenever there is inflammation, the lymphatic system and therefore the immune system is involved. It's hard to establish a cause and effect relationship between inflammation, immune system involvement, and hair loss though.

    Thymuskin says in an overly simplified statement: "The human body regards the hair follicles as something growing too fast, so it alerts white blood cells, leukocytes, to attack your hair follicles (which it considers to be foreign invaders). The hair follicles are so damaged by the attack of the leukocytes that they release the hair strands faster than you can replace them."

    This is comic book, pseudoscientific writing - or rather advertising copy. Thymuskin also says that their product has proven effective for 67% of men and 95% of women. Do you believe this?

    On thing is almost certain though: scalp inflammation (micro-inflammation around the hair follicles) leads to a greater vulnerability of the follicles to DHT.

    "So I guess my question is, if you strengthen your immune system would this help?"

    It's always good to have a strong immune system, but I don't know if this has much of an impact on hair loss. There are so many biochemical variables involved in hair loss that it's hard to focus on a single silver bullet to solve the problem.
  • Follicle Death Row
    Senior Member
    • May 2011
    • 1058

    #2
    No. The opposite is true. Health and fitness guru Will Brink wrote an article a number of years ago and about different hair loss treatments and he postulated that a hypothetical treatment of DHT inhibitors and immuno suppressant drugs would keep hair longer. Of course it's a completely unrealistic idea and needless to say he was using the example simply to highlight what factors are at play in hair loss.

    Hell someone probably tried cortisone injections back in the day to tackle the inflammation part of the hair loss equation. Cortisone was thrown at every problem and ailment back in the 1950s.

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