Every winter is the hardest hit area for health care, and this year is no exception. The "legend" that ginger can cure hair loss is like snowflakes, which come back as soon as the cold wind blows.

Most of the stories are similar. I used to lose my hair a lot, but then I insisted on rubbing ginger on my scalp. Or, I boiled ginger juice and applied it to my hair. The results were very gratifying. Ginger improved the local blood. Cycle, my hair has never fallen out since then, and I can’t even comb it out?

Is that really the case?

According to different shapes, human skin can be divided into two types, one is thin skin with hair, and the other is thick skin without hair. The former covers most areas of the body, while the latter is mainly distributed in places that need to endure mechanical friction, such as the palms and soles and the flexor sides of the fingers (toes).

Skin structure

Our focus is naturally on the former.

The reason why hair can grow in areas such as the scalp is because it has hair follicles.

Friends who like to read science and technology news should know that stem cells have been the darling of researchers in the past two years. Generally speaking, ordinary cells have a set of internal instructions and can only divide a limited number of times. Stem cells are not subject to this restriction.

There is also a type of stem cell on the hair follicle, called hair follicle stem cell. Under the moistening, nutrition and regulation of capillaries, it produces hair in a certain cycle. Specifically, the hair growth cycle can be divided into three stages:

The first stage is called the growth phase, which lasts about 3 years. At this time, the hair continues to grow, growing 0.27-0.4 mm per day. , and can eventually grow to about 50 cm;

The second stage is called the catagen period, which lasts about 3 weeks. At this stage, the hair no longer grows and enters a more stable state;

The third stage, called the telogen period, lasts for about 3 months, and the hair undergoes apoptosis and falls off.

Clinical hair loss can be divided into three types according to its causes.

The first type is caused by chemotherapy and other reasons. This is the price that one has to bear to receive relevant treatment and is beyond the scope of this article;

The second type is caused by other diseases. For example, discoid lupus erythematosus (DLE) causes hair alopecia areata. Discoid lupus erythematosus (DLE) is a type of lupus erythematosus and is an autoimmune conjunctivitis. The patient's immune system "rebells" and is normal. Tissue internal strife. In this case, even if ginger is effective for local hair defects, hair loss will continue to occur as long as the primary disease still exists. Therefore, it is the best principle to seek medical treatment as soon as possible and follow the doctor's advice to treat the primary disease.

The third type is the problem of the hair follicles themselves. Androgenic alopecia is a very typical one with a high incidence rate. When many people hear this name, they may think that this is a disease that only men suffer from. In fact, this is not the case. Although there are fewer female patients, it is not uncommon.

Androgenetic alopecia is characterized by a prolongation of the hair telogen phase, which objectively significantly reduces the anagen/telogen ratio. At the same time, the density and volume of hair follicles gradually decrease, eventually leading to shorter and thinner hair. Easy to fall off.

The cause of androgenic alopecia is currently unclear, but a large number of studies have shown that androgenic alopecia is inseparable from abnormal metabolism of androgens. Androgens include testosterone (T), dihydrotestosterone (DHT), dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), etc. No matter which one it is, it must bind to the corresponding receptor in order to work, and the human hair follicles are rich in androgen receptors. After this receptor binds to androgen, it can form a hormone-receptor complex, interact with specific DNA sequences, regulate gene transcription, and express new proteins, thereby improving cell function. Studies have shown that the expression of androgen receptors in hair loss areas is more concentrated compared with non-hair loss patients or non-hair loss areas in patients with hair loss, which may be one of the important reasons for androgenetic alopecia.

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The main components of ginger are gingerol and gingerol. Tests on cats have shown that gingerol does have the effect of dilating blood vessels; related experiments on isolated hearts of guinea pigs also show that a certain concentration of gingerol (1?10-6~3?10-5 mol) It has the effect of increasing the contractility of both the left atrium and the right atrium. 2 However, first of all, these data are based on the infusion of ginger extract. Is it useful to rub ginger on the scalp and apply ginger juice to the hair? Doubtful. Secondly, as mentioned above, androgenic alopecia is a problem of hormone levels and local receptors. If these are not improved, simply improving blood circulation will have the opposite effect.

Further research has pointed out that gingerol, gingerol and other substances can prolong the resting period of hair, inhibit cell proliferation and promote cell apoptosis. In other words, ginger not only cannot treat hair loss, but may also aggravate the condition. 3

Everyone has a love for beauty. Who doesn’t want to have thick and beautiful hair? Although the cause of hair loss has not been completely understood, clinically, there are relatively low-cost and effective solutions for common diseases such as androgenic alopecia. Reverse ginger?

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References:

1. Ye Meng, Xin Lining, Cheng Baowen, et al. Research progress related to androgenetic alopecia [J]. International Journal of Genetics ISTIC, 2015, 38(3).

2. Jiang Chengxi, Lin Liangyi, Song Jiao, et al. Gingerol in ginger Research progress on gingerol [J]. Chinese Herbal Medicine, 2015, 46(16): 2499-2504.

3. Miao Y, Sun Y, Wang W, et al. 6-Gingerol inhibits hair shaft growth in cultured human hair follicles and modulates hair growth in mice[J]. PloS one, 2013, 8(2).

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Author: Tuoba Hei