Cinnamic acid promotes hair growth

#1

I thought this was an interesting study that came out last month:

Cinnamic acid promotes elongation of hair peg-like sprouting in hair follicle organoids via oxytocin receptor activation | Scientific Reports (nature.com)

we tested the hair growth-promoting effects of cinnamic acid using hair follicle organoids in vitro and observed that cinnamic acid significantly promoted the growth of hair peg-like sprouting. These promising results may be useful for developing hair growth-promoting products targeting oxytocin.

Considering that oxytocin is an oligopeptide and a relatively large molecule (Mw = 1007), smaller molecular weight alternatives to oxytocin are necessary to activate the oxytocin signal pathway by topical administration to the skin.

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#2

Uses

Cinnamic acid is used in flavorings, synthetic indigo, and certain pharmaceuticals. A major use is as a precursor to produce methyl cinnamate, ethyl cinnamate, and benzyl cinnamate for the perfume industry.[4]Cinnamic acid is a precursor to the sweetener aspartame via enzyme-catalysed amination to give phenylalanine.[5] Cinnamic acid can dimerize in non-polar solvents resulting in different linear free energy relationships.[12]

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#3

Does cinnamic acid smell like cinnamon?

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#4
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#5

Good point. Do you really want to go around smelling like a cinnamon stick? I love cinnamon, but not sure I want to radiate the aroma everywhere I go…

#6

An alternative may be to smell of rosemary (rosmarinic acid).

Both are HDACi s

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#7

They do make cinnamon shampoo

#8

I ordered this and just arrived; the package only has a discrete and nice perfume and I put the amount of the study ( maybe too little ) in a simple mixture in a 250 ml bottle and no smell at all …

(* mixture of Rapamycin 4 tablets of 1 mg , Transcutol , some drops of tea tree oil , the acid and Gr 7 as the latter doesn’t work for me ; I only had rosemary alcohol so wasn’t sure this would work as rosemary oil )

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#9

AIUI Rosemary alcohol is ethanol with a bit of rosemary flavouring. The ethanol is not AFAIK an HDAC inhibitor whereas Rosmarinic Acid is. There may be a small effect from Rosemary alcohol, but it may be so small as to be irrelevant.

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#10

Or you can just drink Rosemary tea, we have huge Rosemary bush growing like a weed in the back yard, we started making daily tea with it (and fresh ginger) inspired after watching the Blue Zone Netflix special episode on Centenarians’ habits in Ikaria.

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