Medication for hair loss that has been around for years and only costs less than 50p per dose is receiving support from doctors.
How much Again???
Since the 1980s, minoxidil, which goes by the brand name Rogaine, has been available on pharmacy shelves. However, due to the fact that it needs to be rubbed into the scalp in order to function, patients weren’t especially fond of it.
Now, doctors are prescribing it as a tablet, claiming that doing so will increase its effectiveness.
According to MailOnline, minoxidil, when prescribed as a low-dose tablet, can cost as little as 57 cents (48p) each day and deliver remarkable benefits.
Be Careful Using It!
Although the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not yet approved minoxidil for hair loss, the drug’s “growing success stories” have led more and more doctors to recommend it.
Minoxidil lotion was initially licensed in 1988 to aid with men’s hair growth, and women began using it as well in 1992.
The lotion wasn’t especially well-liked, though, because patients had to leave it on their heads for at least four hours each day for it to penetrate past any remaining hairs and reach the scalp.
Enzymes in hair follicles convert minoxidil to an active form, which subsequently promotes the creation of new hair.
Minoxidil is still broken down in the same way when taken as a tablet, leading to hair re-growth.
When one of his patients had to discontinue using Rogaine lotion owing to an adverse reaction, Dr. Rodney Sinclair, a dermatologist at the University of Melbourne, learned that minoxidil can be prescribed in pill form.
Dr. Sinclair got around the issue by prescribing quartered minoxidil pills as an alternative.
When Dr. Sinclair reduced the amount to one-fourth of the dosage in the initial pill he sliced, the patient’s rash subsided, and he discovered the medication was still effective.
Dr. Sinclair’s research was published in 2015, more than a decade after he first gave the pill to more than 100 women and more than 10,000 people overall.
In May, American researchers made another medication discovery that might help alopecia patients stop losing hair.
American pharmaceutical company Concert Pharmaceuticals developed a twice-daily drug that can counteract and reverse rapid hair loss for the illness, which has no treatment.
By the end of May, the study had revealed that four out of every ten people could recover at least 80% of their hair within a year.