It’s most men’s worst nightmare.
To some men, your hair can define your whole look. Whether you shave a nice fresh fade into the sides for a GAA championship game or leave it long and curly in an ode to Slash, it can be a vital part of a person’s appearance.
Throughout your life, you have that fear. The fear that some day you will lose your luscious locks and end up as bald as an egg.
This is of course not something to be awfully ashamed of, some of the most famous, good looking and influential men in the world are bald. Zinedine Zidane rocked that look for years and still is…
Shockingly, at least one in two men will experience some form of baldness in their lifetime but scientists may have just answered every man’s prayers.
Researchers at the University of California claim to have discovered a new way to make hair grow after conducting studies on mice.
The study which has been published by Nature, found that increasing the production of lactate in hair cells brings follicles that were redundant back to life.
Before this study, no one knew that increasing or decreasing the lactate would have an effect on hair follicle stem cells.
These cells subsequently produce pyruvate which is a glucose that when sent to the mitochondria, can actually help hair grow.
One set of mice had been engineered not to produce lactate and vice versa and the researchers found that the group that was lacking lactate struggled to grow hair while the other group saw an increase in hair growth.
One of the authors of the study, Heather Christofk, said:
“Our observations about hair follicle stem cell metabolism prompted us to examine whether genetically diminishing the entry of pyruvate into the mitochondria would force hair follicle stem cells to make more lactate, and if that would activate the cells and grow hair more quickly.”
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