Reverse Gray Hair, Hair Repigmentation

[RapAdmin]

@Radiata

Has anyone talked about a minimum dollar amount when ordering from Indiamart? Perhaps you’d have to by something like $20 or $50 of tacrolimus to make it worth their time

Just order all the medications you need at once and the online pharmacies always ignore any “minimum order quantities” that they claim to have when you first start discussions. They always start discussions saying “minimum order quantity” of some number , eg. 20 packets, but then they don’t push back when you say you want to order fewer, as part of an overall order.

This is true at all the online pharmacies we have listed here: Anti-aging Benefits of Rapamycin, Personal Experiences (part 2)

Just contact them with a request for a price quote, eg. something like this:

Cyclosporine (Panimun Bioral 50mg Capsules, 1 pack of 30 tablets): USD 45x1 = USD 45
Minoxidil (Lonitab 5mg Tablets, 10 strips of 10 tablets): USD 12x10 = USD 120
Tacrolimus (.5 mg Capsules or .25mg Capsules, 2 packs of 10 tablets): USD ? x 2 = USD ?

Shipping charges : USD 30

[Uppereast69]

The paper was corrected. It should be 24 micrograms.

https://sci-hub.se/10.1111/pcmr.13011

[RapAdmin]

This post is a work in progress - I’m too busy to day to complete the calculations I’m now realizing, but will finish it later and update the post with a spreadsheet of the calculations that everyone can check and verify. Right now the numbers below are not entirely accurate.

So - a .5 milligram tablet of Tacrolimus has 500 micrograms in it.

So to recalculate the formulation per the new data from the corrected paper, looks like this:

For a 100 gram (3.5 oz) batch of the formulation I think I’ll use something like the following:

The unit for RT175 (Tacrolimus for us) is in micrograms (mcg) rather than milligrams (mg), so this would correspond to 0.000024 g mg/ml, or a total of 0.024 mg in a 100 gram or 3.5 oz mix.

Note, just for reference purposes, there seems to be a wide range of percent tacrolimus used in topical formulations, and we don’t yet know what dose is best in terms of stimulating hair growth and repigmentation, so it would seem reasonable to try a range of dosings and test to find out what is optimal (perhaps on an individual level?): Regular Tacrolimus cream (that is commercially available) is typically in two dose levels: tacrolimus 0.03 % and tacrolimus 0.1 % ointment

Also, for reference purposes, in the Patent, it notes (where the first compound is the tacrolimus derivative:

A composition for use in a method of treating alopecia comprising from 0.000001% to 0.0001% w / v of a compound of formula (II) ** (See formula) ** or a pharmaceutically acceptable salt or ester thereof, from 1% to 10% w / v of minoxidil and from 0.01% to 1% w / v of cyclosporin A, where w / v denotes weight by volume.

• 500 mg of minoxidil (approx. 50 of the 10mg tablets, powdered)
• 120 mg cyclosporin (approx. 5 of the 25mg tablets, powdered)
• WorkInProgress… mg of tacrolimus (approx. of the 2mg tablets, powdered)

I was about to order the pills for this and took a look at the paper. It looks like the quantities in the paper were:

*5 mg/ml minoxidil
*1.2 mg/ml cyclosporin
*240 mcg/ml RT175/Tacrolimus

The unit for RT175 is in micrograms rather than milligrams, so this would correspond to 0.00024 mg/ml, or a total of 0.024 mg in your 100 gram or 3.5 oz mix.

[Uppereast69]

I’m no math genius but I think this calculation is wrong.
24 micrograms/ml = 0.024 milligrams/ml
for 100 ml solution need to multiply by 100 = 2.4 milligrams/100 ml

[RapAdmin]

I posted that as a placeholder - I’m still creating a spreadsheet with all the dose calculations and will post that when I’m finished. Yes - the math is wrong in the current iteration - I’ll delete our messages on this after I’ve completed the spreadsheet and posted it for everyone to review and comment on.

[Radiata]

Yes this would be the correct amount reflecting the change to the paper. I only looked at the “accepted paper” print rather than the online version. Thanks for finding the correction. The quantity of ~2.5 mg for a 100 g solution seems way more reasonable compared to the original 0.012 mg based on the 124 ng/ml number. Now it seems we should be able to order the 0.5 mg tablets and be able to accurately mix to the paper quantities.

[HawksFan]

I second reaching out it Melissa Harris on this. I’ve corresponded with her before and while I don’t know how much she can disclose, she’s usually always happy to answer and chat

[Radiata]

I was only able to find a couple of places on Indiamart that had all three drugs, Kachhela (Globestar was the other). I ordered the following:

Cyclosporine 25 mg, 7 strips of 10 for $21
Tacrolimus 0.5 mg, 7 strips of 10 for $14
Minoxidil 10 mg, 300 total pills (I think it was also 30 strips of 10) for $32
Shipping was about $37,
Total of about $110 sent through Wise.com.

Overall, this seems like a good price. This should be a year’s supply of solution assuming I’ll use 100 g per month. A 2 oz bottle of 2% minoxidil solution on Amazon is around $25, so it would cost quite a bit more if using a pre-mixed solution and adding the cyclosporine and tacrolimus. The downside there is that you don’t know the ratio of ethanol, PEG, and water are in it. My plan is to make and use a 2% minoxidil solution for the first few months rather than the 5% in the paper because my hair is already very thick. If someone were to make a year’s supply of 5% solution, 60 strips of the minoxidil would be needed.

One potential issue is that the cyclosporine pills may not be crushable. Most all the cyclosporine I found were labeled as “soft gelatin capsules” including the Biocon Cyclophil ME that Kachhela sells. So, TBD on whether it will be easy to either dissolve the pills in the hair solution or if there’s some other way to get the cyclosporine out such as cutting the capsules open.

[Aman_Arora]

Cyclosporine will be in liquid form inside the gelatin capsule. It will dissolve easily.
Problem is to dissolve tacrolimus as every brand uses magnesium stearate as filler. It doesn’t dissolve in any solvent.

[Arhu]

You can get tacrolimus ointment, though it is very greasy almost like vaselin

[RapAdmin]

@Aman_Arora

as every brand uses magnesium stearate as filler.

I have not seen this as a significant issue. In my DIY toothpaste it was not a noticeable problem. There may be some residue, but its not significant. @Agetron and others have already been using rapamycin tablets in their hair formulation without significant issues noticed or reported. See discussion here: Rapamycin for Hair Growth, Hair Pigmentation, Skin Anti-aging

[Radiata]

Based on this info, magnesium stearate is soluble in hot ethanol. The boiling point of ethanol is about 78 C, and the melting point of tacrolimus is 126 C. If dissolving the crushed tacrolimus pills ends up being an issue when mixing the formula, then it stands to reason that we should be able to heat the ethanol to near boiling, mix the tacrolimus (and magnesium stearate) in to dissolve, and not risk harming the tacrolimus. The tacrolimus should dissolve in the ethanol.

[Arhu]

Small update after 2 months of using generic tacrolimus ointment on half my face.

I’m not going to say which is which and on which half of my face I used the tacrolimus. Can anyone see a difference. I made 2 collages one unfiltered 1 with a slight enhancing filter

[RapAdmin]

The right side of the image (left side of your face) seems to have a large patch of darker hair.

[Arhu]

Right side on pic, lower pic is post treatment. I wasn’t very careful applying on my chin as I was more focused on the sideburn area which didn’t show any change (yet)

[John_Hemming]

Hair is a real challenge, I think that is because you need such a range of different cells to function and also often the blood supply is not that good. As you may know my thoughts are that Interleukin-10 is the driver for senescence and it would appear that it does not travel far (it is part of SASP) which is probably why minoxidil, JAK inhibitors and Rapa all make some progress on this issue.

That is also why when hair receeds and also when reinstated it tends to progress. I have found it a lot easier to make progress on a range of biomarkers than hair where I am making some progress, but very slowly. Yesterday’s blood test gave me an MCV of 93 which was over 100 earlier in the year. It was a slightly unusual lab, however, and I am never that certain as to comparability.

What I have found, however, is by improving my metabolism which makes hair more likely to grow the areas with better blood supply (eyebrows, beard, moustache) also grow more productively.

[Gambi]

tacrolimus

What do you say to that?

tacrolimus has a limited cutaneous side effect profile. In one study, 29% of patients taking tacrolimus developed a telogen effluvium, a nonscarring, diffuse alopecia. Telogen effluvium involves a large proportion of hair follicles prematurely shifting into the telogen phase, leading to widespread thinning and shedding of hair

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajt.14337

[RapAdmin]

@Gambi

29% of patients taking tacrolimus

Hi Gambi - welcome to the site and thanks for posting.

This paper you’ve quoted and linked to is focused on medication use in transplant patients (typically very sick people, who have been sick for a very long time, and who are on many medications) taking ORAL Tacrolimus.

This entire thread on gray hair reversal is focused on low dose TOPICAL (on the surface of the skin) tacrolimus. These are very different use cases and patient populations. The two are not comparable.

In the topical rapamycin skin cream experiment they did (using transcutol as the exipient / base) there was no entry of the drug into the bloodstream. I suspect the same would be true if using a tacrolimus (with Transcutol base) formula for your scalp.

We have seen, however, that if you are using a DSMO base it may penetrate the skin more fully and get into the blood system, as mentioned in this thread here: Side Effects of Rapamycin (part 2) - #283 by RapAdmin

[Arhu]

I might try oral tacrolimus though if the topical results are good in a few months though I do not know which dose and which schedule yet. My topical schedule for now has been twice per week…

[RapAdmin]

@Arhu

My topical schedule for now has been twice per week…

So, you’re only using the topical tacroliomus, and not the other two components of the RiverTown formulation: minoxidil and cyclosporin

Why only the single drug?