An electric hat can help reverse baldness – Computing News

WASHINGTON: Reversing baldness in the future can be as simple as wearing a hat, thanks to a new noninvasive and stimulating technology for hair growth, successfully tested on mice, scientists said.

Based on devices that collect the energy of the body's daily movements, the hair growth technology, described in the ACS Nano journal, stimulates the skin with gentle, low-frequency electrical impulses, which forces the follicles to dormant. to reactivate hair production.

"I think it will be a very practical solution to hair regeneration," said Xudong Wang, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States.

The devices do not push hair follicles back into smooth skin. Instead, they reactivate hair-producing structures that have become dormant, researchers said.

The technology can be used as an intervention for people who are in the early stages of baldness, but it would not cascade hair to a person "as bald as a billiard ball" for several years, have they said.

The researchers noted that since the devices are powered by the wearer's movement, they do not require a bulky battery or complicated electronics.

They are so discreet that they could be worn discreetly under the cap of a baseball cap everyday, according to the researchers.

Small devices, called nanogenerators, passively collect the energy of daily movements and then transmit low-frequency electrical impulses to the skin.

This mild electrical stimulation causes dormant follicles to wake up, the researchers said.

"Electrical stimulation can help many body functions," Wang said.

"But before our work, there was not really a good solution for discreet devices offering gentle but effective stimulation," he said.

Since electrical impulses are incredibly soft and do not penetrate deeper than the outermost layers of the scalp, the devices do not seem to cause unpleasant side effects.

This is a marked advantage over other baldness treatments, like the drug Propecia, which carries risks of sexual dysfunction, depression and anxiety, the researchers said.

In side-by-side tests on hairless mice, these devices stimulated hair growth as effectively as two different compounds found in baldness drugs, they said.

"It's a self-activated system, very simple and easy to use.The energy is very low, so the side effects will be minimal," Wang said.