Worried about the receding hairline? Eat McDonald’s fries, at least that is what a team of researchers has found out as a cure for baldness.
According to a study carried out at the Japanese Yokohama National University, a chemical used in McDonald’s fries could help cure baldness by synthetically reproducing hair follicles. Dimethylpolysiloxane, the chemical which McDonald’s uses in its fries, was employed for this study by the researchers.
During their research, scientists combined the chemical used in McDonald’s fries with human stem cells before testing the mixture on rodents. Within a few days of being injected with the mixture, rodents had developed furry scalps and backs, allowing the scientists to conclude that humans could benefit in the same way.
In an effort to give their research another layer of credence, the scientists carried out further preliminary experiments to gauge whether or not humans could benefit from the mixture in the same way. Luckily, in line with their original research, the preliminary research indicated the same.
The breakthrough in their efforts came last month when the Japanese team was able to produce, on a mass scale, hair follicle germs (HFGs). Secreted by the human body up to a certain age, these are the cells which fuel hair growth in our scalps. Before this research came out, never before in history were scientists able to synthetically produce the HFG’s.
Spilling out the secret, one of the scientists claimed that the reason for this discovery was the usage of oxygen-permeable dimethylpolysiloxane as the bottom layer of the vessel in which they were trying to synthetically produce HFGs. By allowing Oxygen to pass through the vessel, the chemical prevented the foaming of cooking oil, hence leading to the formation of HFGs on a mass scale.
Regardless of where one might happen to live, hair loss is a worldwide problem, with billions of dollars being spent every year in therapies to implant hair.
Although hair regenerative medicine has already hit the market, the most they could do, so far, is to regenerate hair follicles, the tiny cells that only grow and sustain hair which develop naturally.
Consequently, before this research, one of the most challenging obstacles lying in front of the researchers was to find out a way to synthetically mass produce HFGs.
For, as stated earlier, these are the cells which are responsible for the production of hair follicles. Thankfully, as the current method has demonstrated, the scientists have now been able to produce up to 5,000HFGs simultaneously.
