It has been a while since I posted on this thread and am due for an update. I have been using ‘the formula’ for many months now. I use all the stated ingredients except Metformin. I have strong reaction or allergy to that molecule, even topically. The only thing I added was Bimatoprost.
The results I would say for me are slightly better than minoxidil alone. My hair loss seems to have decelerated to a crawl.
In the last month or two I added two other things, red light and rosemary oil. I am not sure which is making a difference but my hair seems thicker and more healthy.
Here is my latest batch. I also added Quercitin and peppermint oil. Going nuclear I suppose.
Quercetin I can understand because it is an Histone Deacetylase Inhibitor (HDACi), but why peppermint oil?
There are many essential oils including peppermint that are good at killing off bacterial, but I don’t know of a mechanism to assist with hair loss. (not to say there isn’t one).
That’s interesting. Obviously the Peppermint Oil is not rectifying miniaturised hair follicles, but it is encouraging hair follicles that would function to function more quickly. Given that they shaved the mice the fact that hair grew back is not necessarily surprising. It is more a question of speed of growth. Not an issue to ignore, however.
I thought people might like to see my situation in terms of hair follicles. The first photo from May 2023 is a hair that had just kicked off. The second two are two photos of the same hair today. The depth of focus is pretty rubbish and that has impact on how good the photos can be.
Apart from the single hair growing you can see other hairs around it. Either hairs which have started off I think in a vellus state rather than white. Some of those change to pigmented. Other hairs start in a pigmented state, but are considerably more frail than the strong hair in the centre. I have kept an eye on this as it is a defined area of my scalp that I can photograph to keep track.
I think what I am doing is very gradually reversing the damage done to my cells over time. The effect of this is to cause an improvement in mitochondrial quality, transcription of genes and translation of mRNA into protein. As the hair follicles go through their cycles which I am not trying to interfere with then hair starts off in various states. On a probabilities basis a lot starts white and frail (probably vellus), some starts fine and pigmented and a very small amount start up strong and pigmented. However, the direction of travel however slow is in the direction of improving hair quality. Given that I start out probably as a Norwood 7 or 8 the process is likely to take quite a long time.
There are perhaps three dimensions I am working in. One is increasing acetyl-CoA levels in the cytosol and hence the nucleus, another is inhibiting the Histone Deacetylases and the third is increasing mitochondrial quality.
I have in the recent month or two dialled back on HDACi and acetyl-CoA and concentrated on mitochondrial quality (part of which is interimittent use of Rapamycin). That is because I wish to separate out the effects of mitochondrial quality from the rest. My most recent photos imply that in isolation improving mitochondrial quality causes more hair to grow. It also I think confirms that I am improving mitochondrial quality. Separately I have concluded that increasing HDACi affects where hair grows. I think HDACi was behind me getting additional facial hair. (That is additional beyond what I have had for my life until last year). I already know that the acetyl-CoA response is dose dependent because I learnt that last year. (Acetyl-CoA levels push back against senescence.) Hence it appears that these three dimensions all affect hair growth in subtly different ways. The other people trying my protocol on the basis of coached biohacking are trying less extreme versions, but they do get hair improvements as well. I continue working on this.
Time for an annual update on beard growth and pigmentation.
After 12 months on my ‘mix’ similar to @agetron, I can say that it definitely works for beard growth, honestly more than I thought it would. but it didn’t seem to work on hair pigmentation for me. So for the time being, I’m just using this for coloring: https://www.justformen.com/product/cgx-beard-wash
So, you were not using any of the pharmaceuticals listed in the Rivertown formulation, but you were using topical rapamycin in the formulation, is that correct:
I think if you have a strong white hair (a terminal hair that is white) it will stay white until the hair follicle comes out of the anagen stage and goes into catagen then telogen. It is only at the proanagen part of the process (part of anagen) that a follicle can restart in a pigmented manner.
However, if you are deminiaturising the hair follicles and you have a vellus hair that can become pigmented within the anagen stage as the quality of the mitochondria improve.
I made things simple, and just followed @agetron’s method by using the Rogaine 5% for the solvent/delivery. I just did 1x a day.
Basically I just added 8mg Rapam, 50mg Bitmatoprost, 3g L-Carnatine (only helps for facial hair), 2g Retinol .1%, 1g of Caffeine, 1g of Resveratrol, 1g of EGCG. I did use Transcutol as an initial ‘slurry’.
I also did 5mg oral minox daily.
I’m certain that many of the velas hairs became ‘terminal’. I tried to grow a beard 3 years ago, and it was far more patchy.
I think I’m now going to move onto my hairline, which is trickier, as I have fine hair. I hate putting stuff on my scalp… I just can’t see myself doing that for the long-term. I think I’ll just do a preventative/thickening routine involving oral finasteride and minox. Maybe I’ll try out PRP for 1x a year. My goal will just be to stop potential ‘crowning’ in the future, hopefully till I’m 80.
Here is a great new study/article on hair loss, with processes and molecules that may address.
In this current review, research spanning the last decade (such as transcriptomic studies, phenotypic observations, and confirmed comorbidities) has been synthesized into an updated etiology of hair loss and applied to the new cosmeceutical paradigm of hair rejuvenation. The major etiological components in scalps with hair loss are denoted as the ‘big eight strikes’, which include the following: androgens, prostaglandins, overactive aerobic metabolism of glucose, bacterial or fungal over-colonization, inflammation, fibrosis, metabolism or circulation problems, and malnutrition. The relevance of the ‘big eight’ to nine categories of hair loss is explained. In cases of androgenetic alopecia or female pattern hair loss, both elevated DHT and increased frequency of androgen receptors lead to problems with the metabolism of glucose (sugar), redox imbalance, disruption to the electron transport chain, and PPAR-γ overactivity (the latter is unique to androgenetic alopecia, where the reverse occurs in other types of hair loss). These etiological factors and others from ‘the big eight’ are the focal point of our hypothetical narrative of the attenuative mechanisms of commercial cosmeceutical hair serums. We conclude that cosmeceuticals with the potential to improve all eight strikes (according to published in vitro or clinical data) utilize bioactive peptides and plant compounds that are either flavonoids (isoflavones, procyanidins, flavanols, and flavonols) or sterols/triterpenes. It is noteworthy that many therapeutic interventions are generic to the multiple types of hair loss. Lastly, suggestions are made on how scalp and hair health can be improved by following the cosmeceutical approach.
Open Access Paper:
I may add some of these to ‘the formula’. Like berberine, glycine, horse chestnut. Simply cause I have them in the closet.
Oh, I think he is dyeing it on top of this which kinda defeats the growth process…I would think…
Not being the pot and calling the kettle black - hahaha. My use of Resveratrol and EGCG actually is my natural color. And does not damage the hair or scalp skin.
On his Blueprint website he also lists GR7 and Mayraki Hair Restore as “gray hair reversal”. I haven’t done a deep dive into these products but both claim to restore melanin in the hair follicles from the inside out as opposed to just dyeing the hair. Both companies seem a bit vague on the precise mechanism and have mixed reviews from a quick google search. But could be worth trying. Other companies seem to be working on products like this:
