Hair loss, thinning hair, no matter what you call it, for the millions affected by it, is not a cheery topic and it's also not something to be taken lightly.
The psychological effects of losing one's hair are profound and the public's demand for a solution has driven pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies to experiment with all sorts of out of the box thinking in the hopes of landing the big kahuna -- the "cure" for baldness.
Dr. Simon Ourian, a Los Angeles-based cosmetic surgeon, thinks that he's stumbled on to what could be the next big hair loss hope: Botox. Following a series of chemotherapy, his mother began to get terrible headaches. Her dutiful son injected her scalp with the toxin to help alleviate the pain and, what do you know, she began to re-grow hair that she'd lost during her cancer treatments.
In the years since his accidental discovery, Dr. Ourian has incorporated his combination of Botox and special hair-growth vitamins into the menu of services offered at his Beverly Hills clinic. What's generated a lot of excitement over Botox as a baldness treatment is the assertion that it can help actually re-grow hair -- a claim that none of the leading remedies like Rogaine and Propecia, which solely prevent further hair loss, can make.
Details: The doctor assesses (and charges) patients on a case by case basis at his Beverly Hills Epione cosmetic medical center.
Scoop: Despite the positive results thus far, Dr. Ourian's website is quick to point out that, "his findings are anecdotal and that proper clinical trials still need to be done."
Here's the story about how one of today's most revered and popular wrinkle treatments came to be. (And how it's been morphing into something much more.)
Once upon a time in San Francisco, an ophthalmologist named Dr. Alan Scott sought a cure for crossed eyes. By the mid-'60s the good doctor realized that if he could just weaken the muscles that caused the crossing that he'd have the solution. Several attempts with various paralytic potions failed and then, one day, he got lucky. A biochemist who'd been working with a purified strain of botulism (as a potential military biological weapon) sent him some to try and, hooray, it worked. Dr. Scott named the drug Oculinum and got it FDA approved to treat those crossed eyes. In 1991, the miracle med was sold to Allergan for $9 million. They changed the name to Botox, secured some of their own FDA approvals, began marketing it as a wrinkle paralyzer and we all lived happily, furrow-free, ever after.
It's amazing to think how, in less than 20 years that it's been FDA approved for the "treatment of glabellar frown lines," Botox has become a verb used in the vernacular with astonishing regularity, right up there with others like "TiVo" or "Xerox." But, because it's so famous for its wrinkle reducing effects, Botox's (many) other uses have been overshadowed.
With six FDA approvals for wide-ranging uses (and an estimated 90 patent applications pending), thanks to Botox, Allergan rakes in an astounding $1.3 billion worldwide on both medical and cosmetic uses. "The therapeutic [uses] will end up being bigger than the cosmetic [ones] because there are some big unmet medical needs there,� says David E. I. Puyott, Allergan's CEO, of the seemingly limitless future of the product.
So, if it's not just for wrinkles anymore, what else is Botox being used for -- both legitimately with FDA approval and "off label" with doctors experimenting in their own practices? From helping with benign enlarged prostates to working on several pancreatic disorders, Botox, as the "New York Times" says, is a crossed eye medication that can be "serially reincarnated for other applications."
Let's take a look at the most promising ones as well as the ones we'd raise our eyebrows at -- if we could�
