Erniep Method(?): Plucking body hair to regrow scalp hair

The member, erniep, has claimed that from plucking your body/face hair, you will regrow your hair on your scalp. Apparently waxing every 2 weeks doesn't work, but a normal tweezer does. He swears by an electric tweezer for under $50 and is not looking for anything in return.

I want a discussion on how this is even feasible from a scientific standpoint.

One theory: body hair requires nutrition and other resources to grow. This deprives the head hair of needed nutrition. Most white and Indian men (of Caucasian face) get hairier and hairier as they age and seem to lose hair on their head at the same rate. If you've spent time in the locker room with other guys, you'll notice that the hairy fucks are always bald or balding and the guys who are relatively hairless have thick hair. It's rare to see a balding guy that doesn't also have a lot of body hair unless he shaves it and then you just can't tell.

Second theory: Some sort of feedback loop with the body.

Maybe some hair growth factors released to the blood stream from the stress to the body.

Growdamnit wrote:
I want a discussion on how this is even feasible from a scientific standpoint.

It really is not.

The talk I've seen about this seems to always posit the same underlying assumption, which sounds something like: "Body hair depletes the body of nutrients that would otherwise be used for head hair." This makes it sound as though there's a certain fraction of the nutrients you ingest that are "meant for" or sequestered for hair. There is not some special packet of what you eat that is shunted to the hair and used only by the hair, such that more body hair would steal this packet away from head hair.

There is just food. You break it all down into its constituent macromolecules, and every cell in the body is in the business of breaking down and building up those molecules. Granted, based on the way a cell specializes, its genetic expression will be different. It will produce more of certain proteins, less of others. It may use more of certain fatty acids or carbohydrates. It may use more energy to sustain a certain voltage across its membrane and have a different concentration of ions. But the building blocks are all still the same. Could you imagine if you had to eat a diet where certain food fed certain parts of the body? "Oh today I'm trying to eat some more of this because my liver is failing. I just haven't been eating enough of it so my liver is shutting down."

You could make the argument for an impeded supply of essential nutrients to the cells of the hair in the scalp. The blood flow theories and hypoxia arguments do exactly that. But this really doesn't have anything to do with a nutrient "steal" like is being suggested.

There is a paradox when it comes to the growth patterns of body hair and head hair in male pattern baldness. But this has a lot more to do with the cellular response to hormones and the inflammatory reaction to them than to a cellular famine . And just because it can't be explained why this paradox exists (the same hormonal pattern having different effects on hair growth between head/body), does not mean a semantically confused argument should be accepted.

Many of the cells in the cutis and subcutis rely on the same nutrients. So if we start removing our nails, and our eyelashes, and skinning our inner thighs will we also grow more hair?

This would be my perspective. From the standpoint of core sciences, this theory should not hold up. BUT, that doesn't mean he's wrong either. If he can demonstrate what he's saying does what he says it does, well there's not much to argue about. But that would require a certain amount of integrity on his part in ensuring he's keeping his methods pure, i.e. not telling us its the plucking while he's also on a hair drug.

He is stating that 6-8 weeks would result in minor regrowth. That is not a lot of time at all and would be worth looking into.

It is funny. People claim all sorts of things. Unexpectedly, they never provide evidence...

Alright, I think Gates makes good arguments for it not being of increase nutritions to the scalp.

I am going to argue for erniep's method, but this is gonna be highly speculative, and imagnitive.
I also don't have a deep understanding for hair growth phases and cycles, but using them freely.
I'm gonna be building it on assumptions I have picked on my day to day hairloss crazying. That way, it may be easier where to spot an inconsistincy.

Assumption 1: Balding men have higher percentage of hairs in resting phase
I've read non-balding people have 90% of their follicles in anagen phase, that is growth phase. Anagen is 2-7 years long, and the rest phase called telogen which is three months time~
So balding men may have higher percentage of hair follicules in resting phase. Also some follicules have just gone fuck it and called themselves dormant(doormat lol).
Maybe a desynchronization is happening at balding people, so there is a constant volume of hair, but several follicules are maintaining that. As in the anagen phase is shorter, and the follicules need more time in telogen to get started again.

Assumption 2: The hair follicules have an selfregulational feedback mechanism(Not that I understand a lot of this..) that inhibits going into anagen, or keeps telogon going.

Assumption 3: Body hair has a higher resting phase, and shorter growth phase. These follicules selfregulation is spilling to the blood, and delaying anagen phase in the scalp. Removing these decreases the inhibitory molecules.

Assumption 4: Plucking hair makes the hair follicules express anagen phase promoting molecules, that again via blood reaches the scalp and acts there too.

Assumption 5: If there is any desynchronization going on at the scalp. Washing the whole body with anagen promoting molecules from body hair removal can synchronize them together again(Like a water wave hitting the sand). May also make doormat follicules more capable.

inflammation, poor blood flow, lack of important nutritions, long time stress may have restricted just how many hairs can be in anagen at the scalp, so improving these increases ratio.

EDIT: I guess it's not convincing to alot, as it might be trace amounts produced per follicule, but I can tell you I have hair from neck to palms to feet, 2 mm spaced from each other, that is a lot of follicules (NSFW search hairy back)

SMV,

Awesome thinking. This is exactly what we need.

We encounter something which we don't understand, like the body/head hair paradox in balding. And you are making a hypothesis as to why this paradox exists. And although it might be a stretch, its at least solid thinking and its testable.

This highlights the difference (in my opinion) between what represents good scientific processes for thinking and the

caveman: (grunts) "No hair on head, arm n legs steal head hair!"

In total honesty, I don't think what you are proposing is likely to be the case. But the thing is we don't know. Know one does. And you are at least talking about things that display you are THINKING it out.

Gates wrote:SMV,

Awesome thinking. This is exactly what we need.

We encounter something which we don't understand, like the body/head hair paradox in balding. And you are making a hypothesis as to why this paradox exists. And although it might be a stretch, its at least solid thinking and its testable.

This highlights the difference (in my opinion) between what represents good scientific processes for thinking and the

caveman: (grunts) "No hair on head, arm n legs steal head hair!"

In total honesty, I don't think what you are proposing is likely to be the case. But the thing is we don't know. Know one does. And you are at least talking about things that display you are THINKING it out.

Honestly I'm not here to write a thesis on hairloss, so scientific  thinking and processes is appriciated, but not something I would expect from everyone here, and I think it would be appriciated that you don't look down on the other people's argument. They might not have the same paradigm thinking as you have. They probably have a life and spend time enjoying other things, not completely obsessing about how to write an amateurish scientific thesis on hairloss, as I am right now. But they might still have something important to say.
It would be more worthwhile to help them reach your level, instead of grunting like you are right now.

How is this for science, My assumptions were put up to be discussed by either supporting them or rejecting them with articles supporting or contradicting them. I don't see how you "not thinking it might be the case" is adding any thing beneficial, unless you can explain yourself.

No we don't know, that's why we are discussing it.

Having a logical and reasonable approach to thought = no life? Not the case whatsoever.

And I don't think I'm grunting. My first post was a response to the OP question of whether it was a feasible theory. I said no. That's not grunting.

If you've got the time to post to the forum and claim you've got a method, then you also have the time to give evidence for that. No one asked for a thesis on the cause of hair loss. Not me. I simply said I appreciated the fact you took some time to actually think it out. And I don't think I have talked down to anyone.

As for the challenge you gave me, well that's going to be tough to prove or disprove you either way. The length of anagen in scalp hair follicles is genetically determined and whatever cellular signal is released to induce catagen, it is unknown. And being that I don't have the money or the tools or the knowledge to do that kind of research, I guess I'm at a loss. But the burden of proof would lay with you to prove your thesis, not for me to prove it wrong.

But even if there were a signalling molecule released, it would be a paracrine signal. Meaning that the signals hair follicles are synthesizing/targeted by for growth are produced by the cells themselves or very nearby ones - not by cells far away. The hair follicle does not uniquely produce any molecules with endocrine function, i.e. produced by the hair to enter the blood and act on cells elsewhere in the body. At least to my knowledge. About the only things I can think of produced by the skin in general that act systemically are vitamin D, and converting androstenedione & DHEA to testosterone and DHT. But you're saying body hair is releasing endocrine signals that effect head hair. I just don't think so.

The contribution of the skin to estrogen and androgen synthesis/conversion is an interesting avenue to look down.

As for the Gates posts, To quote Abe Lincoln

"that man can pack the most words into the least ideas of any man I know " .

Gates wrote:

As for the challenge you gave me, well that's going to be tough to prove or disprove you either way. The length of anagen in scalp hair follicles is genetically determined and whatever cellular signal is released to induce catagen, it is unknown. And being that I don't have the money or the tools or the knowledge to do that kind of research, I guess I'm at a loss. But the burden of proof would lay with you to prove your thesis, not for me to prove it wrong.

But even if there were a signalling molecule released, it would be a paracrine signal. Meaning that the signals hair follicles are synthesizing/targeted by for growth are produced by the cells themselves or very nearby ones - not by cells far away. The hair follicle does not uniquely produce any molecules with endocrine function, i.e. produced by the hair to enter the blood and act on cells elsewhere in the body. At least to my knowledge. About the only things I can think of produced by the skin in general that act systemically are vitamin D, and converting androstenedione & DHEA to testosterone and DHT. But you're saying body hair is releasing endocrine signals that effect head hair. I just don't think so.

genetically determined just means there is a bunch of random proteins being transcripted from the DNA, it is the ratio of these proteins to each other that determine the length of the anagen phase, so chalking it up to genetics is not taking the further step necessary.

I think this is a problem of language use. Autocrine/Paracrine/Endocrine is a langauge system to understand the effect of whatever molecule some cell may be producing, and where the effects are likely to be seen. But when this categorization was designed, nobody thought "hey you know what, maybe these autocrine molecules when produced in a large amount, can create an effect elsewhere"

I've read some articles on hair cycle regulation. FGF-18 keeps the HF in telogen / inhibits anagen I guess we would have to label it autocrine and paracrine, as it is within the cells in HF and surrounding tissue realted to the HF. The article concludes that the loss of FGF-18 that causes onset of anagen phase. Plucking removes 92% of the cells producing FGF-18

BMP-2 is also very high in telogen, and may prevent anagen phase And knocking BMP-2 in mice resulted in lower telogen period.

Appearently, it seems accepted that there is a probability that a HF might go to anagen phase, the probability is dependent on the sum of inhibiting factor(BMP-2, FGF-18 as I know of right now) and initiating (Noggin, FGF7/10, Wnt signaling).

Let's not view a single HF, let's look at millions of the scalp. Let's not talk about a direct effect on a single HF, let's view it as probability system. You decrease all around inhibiting factors and increase initiating factors, and you have a better suited enviornment for hair growth. As in 100 out of 100.000 are now able to go to anagen, because you just made it slightly more probable by decreasing some factor that may have been blocking that from happening.

The first article states that 92% of FGF-18 producing cells were removed in plucking. That is quite a decrease in FGF-18 micro-enviornmentally.
Now Let's say I have millions of Hair follicules around my body all in telogen(and therefore high in FGF-18 and BMP-2). I say it is possible these factors can diffuse to the local environment they are in, and from there diffuse to the lymph/blood flow and cause a systematic effect. Again not somthing direct or major, but let's say having a concentration of 1000 µg FGF-18 circulating constantly is harmful compared to maybe 100µg, because you are decreasing the probability that by any given time XXXXX hairs on the scalp can be found in anagen phase.
Hair loss is multifactorial, so it might be better for future talk to view it as probabilty of hair growth, because a bunch of factors are actually favoring growth.

SMV,

Very interesting idea. I've not heard anything on the subject and don't know enough to discuss the possibility of that. But I think its good thinking again, and would be worth researching more. I agree with what your saying, however, about the possibliity for a cumulative endocrine effect of relatively small blood levels of what would be considered paracrine factors locally. I'd like to look into it more.

Your thought about the summation of effects from the growth factors versus anti-growth factors was something I'd thought a lot about before. It seems this was theory given more merit in decades past. The tug of war notion seems to weight the strengths of the signals as being equal, and whichever "team" has more wins the war. But more modern views on the genetic component of hair loss seems to show a direct pathway for loss that's happening independently of the presence of other growth factors or other anti-growth factors. I"m still not totally against the idea of the summation of effects, and sort of looking at the "milieu" of whats promoting growth versus not and trying to swing the overall concentrations - as a potential to make the growth signal stronger. There just seems to me to be more of a hormonally mediated genetic cell death program happening at these sites specifically, again independent of what we'd consider positive or negative growth factors for hair follicles elsewhere on the body.

Ernie P,

Semantics my friend. Zero substance. But unfortunately its difficult to say my words have no merit if you can't address the points at all. Short enough for ya? At this point, I think your credibility has been all but killed anyway. So quote away. Its the sign of a weak mind to deride the critic's intelligence before even dealing with what he/she is saying.

Gates wrote:SMV,

Very interesting idea. I've not heard anything on the subject and don't know enough to discuss the possibility of that. But I think its good thinking again, and would be worth researching more. I agree with what your saying, however, about the possibliity for a cumulative endocrine effect of relatively small blood levels of what would be considered paracrine factors locally. I'd like to look into it more.

Your thought about the summation of effects from the growth factors versus anti-growth factors was something I'd thought a lot about before. It seems this was theory given more merit in decades past. The tug of war notion seems to weight the strengths of the signals as being equal, and whichever "team" has more wins the war. But more modern views on the genetic component of hair loss seems to show a direct pathway for loss that's happening independently of the presence of other growth factors or other anti-growth factors. I"m still not totally against the idea of the summation of effects, and sort of looking at the "milieu" of whats promoting growth versus not and trying to swing the overall concentrations - as a potential to make the growth signal stronger. There just seems to me to be more of a hormonally mediated genetic cell death program happening at these sites specifically, again independent of what we'd consider positive or negative growth factors for hair follicles elsewhere on the body.

Sounds good! I would much rather discuss this with you, instead of against you.
You talked quite some about why you don't buy completely into it though, so I think I will adress that first.
1. The theory being around for decades doesn't make it any less reasonable. The approach might have been wrong about it

2. It's not a tug of war of equal strengths, The HF in telogen express FGF-18 in high amounts to keep itself in a refractory telogen(Refractory meaning no promoting factor can make it go anagen. Competent telogen means they might pick up on the promotion). So some of these inhibiting factors are "having none of it".

3. What modern views are you talking about? You mention genetics, I can't really argue with that, it's just too vague, you'll have to be more specific.

4. But is the cells actually dying though? you will have to prove that. I'm certain they were studys proving HF in balding men is dormant and mini-sized, but still there.

5. Hormones, yes I love hormones. "Genetics" is useless without an understanding of what gene(coding for a protein, or a "factor" here) is being transcribed at a given time. Hormones have a huge influence on what the cell nucleous ends up transcribing from your DNA(thus genetics). Every cell has internal receptors called "Nuclear Receptors" include VitD, DHT, Estrogen, Thyroid, Cortisol and some others. Steroid hormones cross in to the cell(! they don't act on a receptor on the outside, these fuckers just go in and get the job done) binds to a nuclear receptor and then go to the nucleous in where they can bind to a specific place in your DNA and alter transcribtion of a whole bunch of genes. Like promoting 3000 genes, and inhibiting 2000 others, why not.
When you go fasting, it takes cortisol two day~ to downregulate enzymes of glycogenesis and lipogenesis(storage promotion) and upregulate enzymes of gluconeogenisis and lipolysis, that is the stress effect.
Meaning I agree hormones have a very strong effect, but if they go haywire, they influnece the very factors we are trying to correct. Hormones are tightly regulated and bound to albumin, Thyroid binding protein, SHBG, VitDBP and a whole others so they don't exert wrong influence.
As in not independent of the growth factors, but the growth factors are dependent on them.
Androgen receptor activation increases Wnt, we want that.

I might just start a thread on the cummulation theory, so as to keep this one about hair pulling.


I think we have reached a point where proving these two assumptions might further help ernie P's case.
Assumption 1: FGF has as far as I'm understanding this, high concentrations INSIDE the cells of the HF. Can it be proven that they are exerted to local tissue for them to function? If not I would argue cell destruction(inflammation or else) is just spilling FGF-18 everywhere.

Assumption 2: FGF and related telogen factors are small enough to pass in and out through the bloodcapillaries. This would requirte checking their molecular size, and comparing it to the molecule size permitted to enter through capillaries.
Note: NO, serotonin and other substances increase capillary permabillity, so if it happens that these molecules are JUST big enough to enter, they might enter when there is an inflammation only.

erniep wrote:As for the  Gates posts, To quote Abe Lincoln

"that man can pack the most words into the least ideas of any man I know " .

Why aren't you showing us your full head of hair? After all, you have been doing this method since the 90s.

Yeaah, old thread, but I'm a bump anyways.

I have yet yet yet again corrected my posture and breathing. 

Today I noticed - as I did last time I had proper posture - that my skin is quite pink allover. 

At my worst, I had very light purplish nailbeds and yellow(like empty of blood) skin all over hands.

At my best, that is right now. My skin everywhere has a pinkish hue to it(and that is visible even in suntanned area). Also I can lightly stroke my arm, and the skin immidiately becomes visibly more pink. All in all, blood is flowing.

So this got me thinking of the ernie-P's method. 

Maybe, when blood flow to the skin is poor, there is local hypoxia, and (I've been trying to search for it, but can't quite put the right search terms) hair folliclies all over increase production of hypoxic factors, that might negatively affect hair growth on scalp.

And this constricted blood flow to the skin might be something all people experience from time to time. But people with millions extra hair folliclies on the body produce "lethal" amounts to the scalp.

it's simply a redirection of hair resources

why waste the resources on useless body hair ?

post 2 summed it up

iuyyighghghgkh wrote:it's simply a redirection of hair resources

why waste the resources on useless body hair ?

post 2 summed it up

I created a thread on this topic in the past...it might have a level of merit concerning progenitor cell migration / protein synthesis, but if we take a chimpanzee, for example, the animal is hirsute all over. So if a chimp has no probs growing terminals from head to toe, then why should we? Also, take a starved anorexic as a further example... they develop a condition called Lanugo, which causes body / facial hair to thicken as to prevent core temperature dropping dangerously low.

First of all, this post is going to look like it belongs at a different forum   . Try to ignore that. I'm just making a point in opposition to some of the things I've seen on this thread. Yes, some men who are very hairy also go bald. Some men who are hairy DON'T go bald either.

Sean Connery
http://media1.break.com/breakstudios/2012/1/13/sean%20connery.jpg

Ryan Giggs
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/04/28/article-1174254-04B4DDB6000005DC-156_306x434.jpg

Alec Baldwin
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQdSqrkNhWs_B70GfDCbXIiFRcGoXSgX2OG7optCxTmgx85cA5xfA

Tom Selleck
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5mIXlGD8JY4/UmlIEDmbfUI/AAAAAAAAgFI/bscKy9B2zSc/s1600/Chest01.JPG

Hugh Jackman
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/12/19/article-1097851-02D938FF000005DC-539_306x423.jpg

Pierce Brosnan
https://hashtagus.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/wordpresspierce.jpg?w=287

Random Dude I Don't Know
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/5f/0e/36/5f0e369bab92db329283f1a0be115a41.jpg