Curbing and Concealing Hair Loss: The Alternative Way

Hair. Our biggest accessory. The one part of our body we can design. Something that many can’t imagine life without. Something that many believe must be preserved at all costs. It is this centuries-old attitude that provides us with a fantastic collection of the extremes to which people are prepared to go to in order to cling on to their prized hair. Just how far people have been prepared to go may surprise you though. Cows, couches and Caesar. The weird and the wonderful. It’s all here!

 

First off, could bats be worth imitating? Believe it or not, they might just be, in some people’s eyes anyway. It has been suggested that hanging ourselves upside down, or perhaps more realistically speaking, just dangling our heads off the edge of a couch can stimulate our hair follicles and therefore hair growth thanks to the increased blood flow to our heads. There is some logic to this apparent madness but as of yet no scientific evidence that it is an effective method.

 

Some may struggle to see why anyone who is worried about going bald would possibly want to remove the little hair that they may have. Yet, that is what scientists from the University of Southern California once advocated. After clinical research on mice, it is their belief that the plucking of hair from the scalp can stimulate the growth of new hair. According to their study, the systematic plucking of hair will inflame the skin surface and surrounding area stimulating it to grow more new hair follicles and therefore more hair than before. It hasn’t been tested on humans but if it works for mice…

 

No Roman-style toga would be complete with a laurel wreath to adorn your head. Maybe the wreath should be seen as the ancient beanie and we have that man, Julius Caesar, to thank for that. It’s not only the modern man who worries about balding as Julius tried a multitude of methods, from combovers to Cleopatra’s concoctions of ground-up horse teeth, mice and bear grease to mask his disappearing. In the end he settled on the wearing of a laurel wreath in much the same way that people of today might become overly dependent on a beanie.

 

A glass of fresh cow urine. Not just any old cow, mind you. It needs to be the urine of a virgin cow. And the urine needs to be taken before sunrise. Whilst perhaps not everyone’s cup of tea, devotees in the northern Indian city of Agra (home of the Taj Mahal) descend upon a certain cow shelter to have their daily dose of cow urine. Reputed to cure a range of ailments including diabetes and tumors, cow urine is also said to be the only cure for baldness.

 

Peel, wash and chop onions and place in a blender. You’d be forgiven for thinking this was an extract from a cookbook but this is what you need to do to create some onion juice…for your scalp! Rich in sulfur (one of the main components of hair) and containing antibacterial properties, onion juice is a natural but stinky, natural hair loss treatment when massaged into a scalp.

 

 

It’s not just quirky techniques that people have used but also quirky contraptions. One such example dating from the 1930s was the vacuum-like device that can trigger hair growth through its suction effect. It could be rented out for home use or found in barber shops and was marketed in various ways. The general idea was that it increased blood flow to the scalp but the vacuum was also said to unclog pores or even suck trapped hair fibers through the scalp! 

 

 

All of these examples and the countless others that are out there just highlight the importance people place on their hair. The price they’d put on their head so to speak. However not all solutions need to be so extreme or so downright weird. Think hair systems. Hair systems are the way forward in today’s world. But then again if wearing a hair system was people’s initial thought, we wouldn’t be able to bring you such a wacky list!