There’s good news for those worried about balding in the future.
In a new study reported in Cell Journal, a team was able to make 1,300 hairs grow back by plucking 200, according to BBC News.
Although it’s not clear whether placing hair would help men and women who are balding, authors of the study reportedly believe that further research would help in determining whether this method can be used to trigger hair regeneration.
“It would be a bit of a leap of faith to expect this to work in bald men without doing more experiments,” stated Phil Murray, of Dundee University and a co-author of the study.
Why does plucking hair result in such surprising growth? The answer is quite simple actually.
If the hairs are plucked in a specific configuration, follicles in the skin will be prompted to send out a “distress” signal that will lead to even more hairs growing back, according to The Guardian.
For the recent study, researchers reportedly plucked 200 hair follicles from a circular patch of skin in mice. When the pluck was low in density, with researchers removing the follicles from a patch 6mm in diameter, it reportedly led to no regeneration at all.
However, if the pluck was medium in density, with 200 hairs removed from a 5mm circle, 1,300 new hairs reportedly grew back.
Finding out when the hairs would need to be plucked to prevent someone from going bald would require further research as well.
“That’s the million-dollar question. I’m not sure. As it stands here, you’ve got to have some hair to pluck,” stated Chris Mason, professor of regenerative medicine at University College London.
“A lot of studies have produced hair, but it’s too fine — it’s baby hair, it’s light colored and it just doesn’t look right. But here we can infer they are adults so that is somethings that is a step change.”
