everything but the kitchen sink approach

What do you think about making a topical with everything you can think of that showed promise of growing hair...

saw palmetto
caffeine
resveratrol
safflower oil
ecklonia cava
blah
blah
blah

Maybe even the kitchen sink. Could all these ingredients have a cumulative effect? Or maybe some might work synergistically better with others? It's worth a try. But what kind of vehicle would be the best? Alcohol? Oil? I was thinking about emu oil. There's a product called emuaidmax that is quite expensive...at least here in canada. About $80 for a fairly small jar (2 oz or 60 ml). It's supposed to have a nano transdermal delivery system so it might be able to deliver the goods to our follicles. Any thoughts?

shaftless wrote:What do you think about making a topical with everything you can think of that showed promise of growing hair...

saw palmetto
caffeine
resveratrol
safflower oil
ecklonia cava
blah
blah
blah

Maybe even the kitchen sink. Could all these ingredients have a cumulative effect? Or maybe some might work synergistically better with others? It's worth a try. But what kind of vehicle would be the best? Alcohol? Oil? I was thinking about emu oil. There's a product called emuaidmax that is quite expensive...at least here in canada. About $80 for a fairly small jar (2 oz or 60 ml). It's supposed to have a nano transdermal delivery system so it might be able to deliver the goods to our follicles. Any thoughts?

Never been a proponent of topical approaches, because it ignores the system-wide inflammation.

However, this topical seem inexpensive.

https://www.iherb.com/pr/dr-forhair-folligen-tonic-original-4-06-fl-oz-120-ml/99312?=hil335

CausticSymmetry wrote:

Never been a proponent of topical approaches, because it ignores the system-wide inflammation.

It doesn't need to be one or the other though does it? We can do both systematic and direct approaches ("direct" includes topicals, massage, needling etc).

Systematic approach is clearly necessary and best for health. But purely in terms of hair - a problem seems to be that the body places a low importance on hair loss and scalp. Even when general health & systematic health markers are improved greatly hair does not easily regrow. Many other benefits yes but not hair regrowth. Problems with the scalp environment do not seem to easily reverse. (I will use the word "calcification" for the problem although not sure it's 100% accurate. But it is clear as daylight that the scalp of bald men is not the same as scalp of those with good hair.)

This problem is where I feel including some kind of topical or direct approach might be useful. Otherwise it feels like we may improve health markers but still have hard "calcified" scalp and thus hair can not regrow.

There are some promising looking topicals these days. I for one am a bad example, because it's hard to stick with that approach.

CausticSymmetry wrote:There are some promising looking topicals these days. I for one am a bad example, because it's hard to stick with that approach.

Yes I can understand that.  Not just because of the effort but many suggested topicals are socially inconvenient much of the time.  For example perhaps you recall one old study where men kept a fatty/oily substance on their head for long periods and grew some hair.  But who wants to try that method?  Maybe only people who work from home could do that.  Or perhaps in winter cold when a hat can reasonably be worn.  But most won't do it.  Not many want to try suggestions like topical onion juice or garlic either, for obvious reasons.

Despite this I believe many people still want to try direct actions because of the problems I described - that it is difficult to seriously improve the scalp environment with internal regimen only.  Would you agree with my theory that the human body usually places a low priority on "decalcifying" the scalp?  It would be interesting to know exactly what conditions would need to be achieved before the body would decide to do this.  But I'm not sure this information is available.