Caffeine for Hair Growth

I've been looking up hair growth information for quite a while now. When my hair was much longer, growing out my hair became somewhat of an obsession.  Then when I did my BC, I found it was a bit too overwhelming to think about, so I pretty much put it on the back burner, and went about my business of just caring for my hair as best I could.

This last haircut though, has really irritated me, because the loss of sooo much hair was a huge blow to me personally. It seemed as if the wants of someone else (hair stylist) were placed before my wants, and that just doesn't sit right with me. This, in some small way, is my way of taking back some of my power. 

So anyway, I've found a number of interesting articles online about how scientists have discovered that caffeine can actually stimulate the growth of the tiny follicles in the scalp. The research has been done primarily on men who are starting to lose their hair due to male pattern baldness, or Androgenic Alopecia.

A study published in the International Journal of Dermatology, found that caffeine works by blocking the effects of the chemicals known to damage hair follicles.

The interesting aspect of all of this, is that you can't drink your way to fabulous hair growth, as scientists have estimated that it would take up to 60 cups of coffee per day for that significant amount of caffeine to reach the follicles in the scalp.

Instead the caffeine would, in theory, reach the scalp much more readily by rubbing it into the scalp.

To test the idea, a doctor by the name of Tobias Fischer from the University of Jena in Germany,took scalp biopsies from 14 men in the early stages of hair loss.

He extracted hair follicles and placed them in test tubes with solutions containing different levels of caffeine.

The samples where left in the laboratory for up to eight days to monitor growth. Interestingly enough, and at the end of the experiment, caffeine had apparently boosted the length of the hairs by between 33% and 40%!

In contrast to other test tubes, which contained testosterone, which showed the hair grew much slower.

Dr. Fischer was reported to say, " Hair follicles that were treated with caffeine showed a highly significant growth rate at 24 hours, and still further growth at 8 days".

The results of this research  by Dr. Fischer has prompted some manufacturers to add caffeine to their hair loss shampoos.

This in turn prompted more research to determine if topically applied caffeine could be delivered to the hair follicles via shampoo.

According to the results, German researchers determined that after 2 minutes of shampooing, the caffeine in the shampoo was, in fact, able to penetrate the scalp via the hair follicle and the stratum corneum (the outermost layer of the skin).

This apparently proves that shampoo is an effective delivery vehicle for caffeine, provided it's left on the scalp for at least 2 minutes.

Ok, so I'm not a male suffering with male pattern baldness, and fortunately (knock on wood), I am not having any major hair loss problems. But the idea of using caffeine for hair growth is very intriguing to me. It sounds like fun to experiment with, and it does not appear to have any potential side effects.

So here is what I intend to do - of the many other things I'm thinking of doing with my hair, LOL. Since I do not use shampoo, I will use my Trader Joe conditioner mixture(honey and evoo), and to that add about 1/4 cup of organic coffee. I'll try this for about 3 months, starting today.

Here are some picture of my hair as of today:

On October 25, 2009. I'll post new pictures and see if there is any major difference. If any of you would like to joy me and make this into a challenge of sorts, let me know. We can post your starting pictures here as well (if you like), and then on October 25, do a big brew-ha-ha of a celebration:). Let me know.

Ciao!!