The labeling of this product as a cosmetic, and the fact that it appears to be able to grow no more than peach fuzz, indicates to me it won’t be useful except for maybe people in the very earliest stages of hair loss.
I wish they would include more test data such as how many test subjects were in the trial , hair count etc.
The growth factor, known as insulin-like growth factor-1, or IGF- 1, is necessary for proper growth in children, but studies of men and women more than 40 years old raise the possibility that it contributes to the growth of tumors.
The company claims, “the wait is finally over.” Does this mean it’s available now? Of course not. Even if it is safe and works, it’s not currently available. More false claims?
If the peach fuzz photos are the best that they could come up with, then I am not impressed at all.
[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by James Bond[/postedby]
The growth factor, known as insulin-like growth factor-1, or IGF- 1, is necessary for proper growth in children, but studies of men and women more than 40 years old raise the possibility that it contributes to the growth of tumors.
The company claims, “the wait is finally over.” Does this mean it’s available now? Of course not. Even if it is safe and works, it’s not currently available. More false claims?[/quote]
Apparently they were testing igf-1 patches for something else, and they noticed that it made bald mice grow hair (significant amounts and fast?)
They have a vehicle (gel based) that can get the relatively large igf-1 molecule through the skin. As a result, they don’t use much igf-1 because the vehicle is so efficient in getting it to DP cells. They use so little, that it’s apparently negligible enough to be labeled a supplement.
The big thing (allegedly) is the vehicle. This has been tested before via syringe, but that uses a lot of igf and doesn’t do a great job of getting it into the DPs (allegedly).
There is more conversation about this (with a rep from the company) on another forum
Are they nuts? Are those before and after photos the best they can do?
Reminds me of the good old hair dots days (You say this stuff is great, but is it growing hair? Well, not exactly, but I see a lot of new hair dots.)
[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by Ahab[/postedby]
Are they nuts? Are those before and after photos the best they can do?
Reminds me of the good old hair dots days (You say this stuff is great, but is it growing hair? Well, not exactly, but I see a lot of new hair dots.)[/quote]
Follicept is a complete joke. The photos are results on a mouse that, for some un-explainable reason, they decided to show after withdrawing treatment. And they compared it to rogaine after 26 days of application, as if rogaine works that quickly. And they obviously manipulated the exposure on the photos to try and highlight the pathetic peach fuzz this supposedly grew.
The thread in the forum where this is being discussed is laugh out loud funny. The company rep is on there getting those poor gullible baldies worked up into a froth about a treatment that has exactly zero evidence of working. And, with the exception of a couple posters, they’re lapping it up.
Whenever a company needs to come and pump their product on discussion forums, it’s almost always a skam.
[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by Ahab[/postedby]
Are they nuts? Are those before and after photos the best they can do?
Reminds me of the good old hair dots days (You say this stuff is great, but is it growing hair? Well, not exactly, but I see a lot of new hair dots.)
[postedby]Originally Posted by Mr. Z[/postedby]
Follicept is a complete joke. The photos are results on a mouse that, for some un-explainable reason, they decided to show after withdrawing treatment. And they compared it to rogaine after 26 days of application, as if rogaine works that quickly. And they obviously manipulated the exposure on the photos to try and highlight the pathetic peach fuzz this supposedly grew.
The thread in the forum where this is being discussed is laugh out loud funny. The company rep is on there getting those poor gullible baldies worked up into a froth about a treatment that has exactly zero evidence of working. And, with the exception of a couple posters, they’re lapping it up.
Whenever a company needs to come and pump their product on discussion forums, it’s almost always a skam.[/quote]
I’m posting in that thread. I am not aware of even one poster there who says that he believes that the treatment will definitely work.
A minority of posters are saying it will NOT work while a majority of posters are saying they don’t think it will work but they want to wait to see study results before they come to a final conclusion. So your interpretation of what the posters are saying is dead wrong. And this goes to show that you can’t even discern what is happening right in front of you.
You go to a thread where:
-
80% of posters say they doubt the treatment will work but they will reserve judgement until study results are determined.
-
The other 20% of posters are saying they have already made up their minds that the treatment will NOT work.
And somehow you determine 1 and 2 above to mean that most posters are “lapping it up” that the treatment will work. You deductive reasoning is clearly inferior as you can not comprehend what you are reading right in front of your face. Hence, I have no respect for your opinion.
I myself have posted in that thread. I have said that I do not believe the treatment will work but I will wait for study results before I come to a final conclusion. I’m sure you have interpreted that to mean that I am “lapping” up the claims made by the Follicept representative but that is indicative of your inferior deductive reasoning skills.
Additionally you partly mocked the thread because the Follicept representative posts in the thread. It’s obvious that your point is that a respectable hair research team would never post in hair website threads But Dr. Gardner from Jahoda’s team used to post quite a bit in a thread at the same website and everybody knows this. So your point that Follicept can’t be legit since their company personnel posts in a thread at a hair website is obviously another profound miscalculation on your part.
I’m not saying Follicept will work. I strongly doubt that it will work. But you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about, your deductive reasoning capabilities are inferior, and your intellect is not respect-worthy.
You are by far, the single dumbest human being i’ve ever had the displeasure of dealing with. Seriously, you’ve been wrong so consistently and so persistantly, it’s actually amazing you haven’t learned to keep your mouth shut. I’m talking to you, Jartard, you brain dead Nigam pumping twit. You who cheered on Nigam to the disfiguring misfortune of others.
It’s very obvious to anyone with reading comprehension that there is a lot of unjustified excitement over follicept. And it’s also very obvious that Jahoda and Gardner are NOT pumping their company on the forums, because (if it’s not clear to you) they don’t have companies and aren’t attempting to take money from gullible posters or run ridiculous “clinical trials” on themselves to prove their treatment works. And it’s also very obvious that they don’t post there anymore so your point is, as usual, pointless. And, on a side note, it’s only a little ironic that they (those credible scientists) don’t come around there anymore because of simpleton idiots like you who ran them off with your nonsensical questions and unrelenting garbage posts and stupid suggestions on where to take their science.
There are posters over there who already stated that they’re willing to open their wallets. And worse, the majority in there are shouting down the posters who are making legitimate critiques of the company. When what they should be doing is putting the questions to follicept instead of sucking up and emboldening them.
Now shut your mouth, i’ve no interest in entertaining the dreck that spills out of your crippled little mind and will not respond to you again.
[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by Mr. Z[/postedby]
You are by far, the single dumbest human being i’ve ever had the displeasure of dealing with. Seriously, you’ve been wrong so consistently and so persistantly, it’s actually amazing you haven’t learned to keep your mouth shut. I’m talking to you, Jartard, you brain dead Nigam pumping twit. You who cheered on Nigam to the disfiguring misfortune of others.
It’s very obvious to anyone with reading comprehension that there is a lot of unjustified excitement over follicept. And it’s also very obvious that Jahoda and Gardner are NOT pumping their company on the forums, because (if it’s not clear to you) they don’t have companies and aren’t attempting to take money from gullible posters or run ridiculous “clinical trials” on themselves to prove their treatment works. And it’s also very obvious that they don’t post there anymore so your point is, as usual, pointless. And, on a side note, it’s only a little ironic that they (those credible scientists) don’t come around there anymore because of simpleton idiots like you who ran them off with your nonsensical questions and unrelenting garbage posts and stupid suggestions on where to take their science.
There are posters over there who already stated that they’re willing to open their wallets. And worse, the majority in there are shouting down the posters who are making legitimate critiques of the company. When what they should be doing is putting the questions to follicept instead of sucking up and emboldening them.
Now shut your mouth, i’ve no interest in entertaining the dreck that spills out of your crippled little mind and will not respond to you again.[/quote]
Burp!
I read about 2 lines of your defensive rant. I know my previous post hurt your feelings but I had to tell it like it is. You don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re wrong about everything, and I have no respect for your intellect. The smart thing for you to do regarding Follicept is to view it with a lot of skepticism but reserve judgment until more facts are available. Take my advice and do what I am telling you to do.
This argument is ridiculous. It is painfully obvious that this stuff is worthless SNAKE OIL, and this is yet another effort by slick entrepreneurs to dive in, make a quick bundle of profits from gullible hair loss sufferers, and then bail.
Uhhhh, look at those photos… photos of LIGHT PEACH FUZZ ON MICE… (At first no one could tell what that skin was… some thought it was human skin, but couldn’t place the body part. That’s because this company is so desperate they had to photograph the MICE from the side, because the colorless “hair” they’re growing is so fine it wouldn’t even show up if photographed from the top.)
Now, tell me, how many other marginal hair loss “cures” have done that? The answer is in the hundreds. Quite simply I don’t need to see the results of any tests or trials. We all know what they’re up to, because we’ve seen this game played out so many times before.
Insulin-like growth factor is NOT the answer to hair loss, period. Sure, it may sometimes grow mediocre, minimal peach fuzz and still you’ll have a significant number of idiots getting worked into a lather because they think somehow some company with pictures of peach fuzz is going to bring all their hair back. This is just another effort by slick entrepreneurs to slog a very marginal snake oil and bilk thousands of people of their money.
Do people know WHY IGF-1 is growing that minimal peach fuzz? Because it helps ALL cells do their metabolic work. It is a NON-SPECIFIC STIMULATOR OF CELL GROWTH AND PROLIFERATION. So it makes all cells do more of what they were normally doing, but only up to a point. It is not targeted at follicles and doesn’t stop any of the bad stuff DHT, PGD2, etc. are doing to your follicles. It is even less “targeted” at hair follicles than Rogaine – so why would it work any better?
Repeat after me…
FOLLICEPT IS BUNK
FOLLICEPT IS BUNK
FOLLICEPT IS BUNK
end of story.
I have strong doubts about the research by Follicept but there does appear to be some very good science supporting the concept of IGF-1 in the treatment of hair loss. Let me know what you think after you read the studies below. Most of these articles are supported by the NIH. I don’t think that these studies should be completely rejected out of hand without a good reason.
Here are some more studies of interest:
http://www.nature.com/jid/journal/v102/n6/pdf/5611232a.pdf?origin=publication_detail
it’s pretty clear that his focus is not about treating hair loss.
OK. Penicillin was discovered by accident. So?
Again, I’m not praising this experimental treatment. I’m just saying I’m not going to denounce it yet. I think there’s a slim, very slim, chance that it might be more beneficial than minoxidil.
So don’t listen to “Z” when he rags on guys like me who say, “Let’s wait and see.” I’m not aware of even 1 poster at that other site who is already convinced that the treatment will actually work. Due to his poor comprehension “Z” misread what the guys at the other site are saying about Follicept. About 20 - 30 percent of posters are firmly denouncing it already while about 70 to 80 percent of us are saying “Let’s wait and see.”
Nobody should get their hopes up over Follicept at this point in time. I’m certainly not counting on it at this point in time. I did not even mention Follicept over here until “Z” made his false and mistaken claims. I wasn’t going to mention Follicept unless and until I see credible results that are interesting.
My problem with this stuff is that it’s just another in a long, long, long line of products which will grow a trivial amount of hair. Follicept is Insulin-Like Growth Factor 1 (IGF-1), a compound that has a very generalized effect of causing cells to take up more sugar (food) from the blood. It works equally on ALL CELLS in the human body, so it’s not especially targeted at hair follicle cells. They do mention that they’re going to target the hair using some kind of transdermal patch, or delivery system, but so what? It’s just a way of getting around the problem that if you put too much of this stuff into your blood, it will mimic insulin throughout your body, and could seriously f*ck up your hormonal balance and sugar metabolism… it might even trick the pancreas into shutting itself down and stopping its own vital insulin production.
By the way, when they say that the lab rats grew full-body coats of hair, I say, “Where is the proof?” Show me the proof, otherwise you look like a bunch of liars. All we’ve seen is a few mediocre pictures of the finest peach fuzz. I’ve literally seen fuzz on the skin of a peach that is more impressive than that.
Here’s what I think of Follicept: IT IS THE DRUG EQUIVALENT OF THE LASER COMB.
Why? The laser comb also can produce a trivial amount of hair. Basically what the laser comb does is shine light energy (photons) at your follicle cells, adding energy to chemical reactions and making the normal chemical reactions speed up. This can have a TEMPORARY effect of growing a little more hair, but does nothing about the underlying problems (DHT, PGD2, etc.) that are miniaturizing and destroying your follicles.
In fact, with the laser comb it’s probably even worse, because while it is pumping photons into your follicular cells, it’s also damaging their DNA (any kind of radiation, including that used by the laser comb, will have this effect if used too much.) Damaging the DNA from point mutations (caused by photons) means aging the DNA, and aging the DNA means, eventually, crippling hair growth. So, while the laser-comb might have a very temporary, fleeting effect of stimulating some hair growth, its long-term effects on the DNA of your scalp cells is terrible.
Likewise, IGF-1 works by temporarily stimulating the cells in your follicles. It gives their metabolism an artificial, transient “boost”. Probably good enough to cause minimal peach fuzz to grow on some bald scalps. Yawn… But it’s just a generalized effect. All you’re doing is artificially making the cells’ metabolism work faster. If the cells are hair-growing cells, then they work faster at growing hair. If you were targeting heart muscle cells, then the heart would pump faster and stronger… for a while. But the effect is minimal. It’s just a very marginal effect – understand this.
So, the mechanisms of IGF-1 and the laser comb are actually pretty similar, although IGF-1 does it by chemically speeding up the metabolism (by causing the cells to take up and use their fuel – blood sugar – faster), while the laser comb boosts cellular metabolism by sending in electromagnetic radiation, which elevates energy levels of the molecules in the mitochondria causing something called “oxidative phosphorylation”.
As far as whether IGF-1 can also cause cell damage in the longer term by increasing the metabolic rate and overstressing the cells, I don’t know… but it wouldn’t surprise me.
If there were NO OTHER promising potential cures on the horizon, maybe I’d be interested in this stuff, but it turns out there ARE (can anyone say, “Sanford-Burnham”???) … so in fact this Follicept stuff is extremely boring to me.
Next…
Sanford Burnham definitely looks more promising but Sanford Burnham did not share its’ secrets.
You could be looking at years and years until something comes of it unless perhaps you can find a way to get Sanford Burnham to release technical info NOW to some doctor someplace in the world. If you find a way to get them to release technical info now to some doctor somewhere then let me know. If you can’t get them to release that info now then there’s no point in talking about them for a few years.
I readily admit that it’s VERY doubtful that Follicept will work at all. And even if it does work it will probably grow just a little hair in only some people. I’m not convinced yet that it will grow even 1 hair on even one person’s head. That having been said, I also have to admit that there are some highly respected and credible sources indicating that that IGF-1 may be beneficial for hair growth. Because credible respected sources are saying that IGF-1 might be beneficial I will reserve final judgment.
But if you can get Sanford Burnham to release tech info to a doctor who will start the SB technique now then I would be much more interested in that than Follicept.
You know the sciences very well…maybe you should talk with the Sanford Burnham lead scientists and see if you can get him to work with some doctor in some country to bring the Sanford Burnham technique to market NOW.
If you were able to accomplish that then that would definitely stop all of the discussion about these less hopeful treatments, such as Follicept. It’s on you Rog. Go get us Sanford Burnham Cells or we’re going to talk your ear off about Follicept and other doubtful treatments.
You’ve been warned.
I can’t completely ignore these studies so I have to wait for the results of Follicept to make a final conclusion.