Sorry for being so negative

Stem cell; cell based hair therapy
1

I just wanted to tell everyone here I’m sorry for being so negative about Swisstemple’s reporting on Setipiprant. Maybe I overreacted and was too harsh on the guy.

When Dr. Cotsarelis first came out with his paper on PGD2 and PGD2 Synthase expression, if you remember, I was very excited about the idea. In fact, that was the last “pharmaceutical” answer (as opposed to a fully cell-based answer) I was enthusiastic about.

Since I saw nothing happen with PGD2 for at least 2 years, I had just assumed that it was dead in the water, and nothing would come out of it.

One thing I think is interesting, which people are actually overlooking, is that Seti is not being used as a topical here, but as a pill taken systemically. I find this very interesting because it seems to me that the best way, by far, to deliver a prostaglandin antagonist would be to target it directly at the skin, not to take it orally. I have many reasons for this, and a while back I explained my thinking on this on another site (I rarely visit hair loss sites other than HairSite, but some people had convinced me to join that one). I actually got a good amount of responses from that post, and if I can find it, I’ll try to repost it here.

Swisstemple relates that one of the online vendors (Kane, I think) said that without some kind of buffer, the Setipiprant that he would be selling would be largely destroyed by gastric acids when swallowed, so little of the drug would actually reach the peripheral tissues like the scalp. Thus its efficacy would be greatly reduced. (Presumably, the pharma company developing Seti as a hair loss treatment have figured out a way to fix this problem by adding a buffer or something).

Problem is, when Swisstemple reported this, he said that he simply dismissed the statement by Kane, and that Kane went ahead and sold the product anyway, without ever mentioning the stomach acid issue again. So, looks like Kane went for the money, and the buyers conveniently decided to ignore the issue or just deny it in hopes that it wouldn’t matter.

I find it a bit ironic, then, that Swisstemple has on the navigation bar of his blog, a header titled “On Sc@mmers”. Nothing is on that link yet, but presumably he’s planning to put up a page exposing sc@mmers.

But here we have a vendor (Kane) who blatantly admitted a problem with stomach acid, and then after his buyers ignored what he said or dismissed it, he went ahead and sold the product to them anyway.

Does this count as a sc@m? A near-sc@m? A self-inflicted sc@m?

And how much has this stomach absorption issue impacted the actual results we’ve seen from Swisstemple?

And, if this was “group buy”, where the heck are the photo results from the other people in the group? Did they not get good results? Or maybe they’ve all grown all of their hair back, and no longer have an interest in posting? :wink:

Like I said, there are many more questions than answers. But it’s great that Swiss has tried, and I’m not saying he got no results. His pics definitely show results.

Is it as good as Kevin Nguyen’s results from using Rogaine and a few other things – and remember Kevin tried a lot of things before getting the tremendous results he did.

Answer: Swiss’ results don’t even compare to Kevin’s, and shame on you if you want to imply they do compare.

Just sayin’… A LOT more questions than answers, at this point.

2

Roger, it’s my understanding that Swiss got his great results BEFORE he started using Setipiprant. Please keep that in mind.

3

[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by jarjarbinx[/postedby]
Roger, it’s my understanding that Swiss got his great results BEFORE he started using Setipiprant. Please keep that in mind.[/quote]

Well, if that’s true, what is he claiming caused his results then? I understand he was on the “big 3” (or some of them) before the Seti. So if it’s all just due to the big 3, then why is that news, at this point?

4

IIRC he was using a couple of existing things at once to go after both the PGD2 and E2 angles. He also did regular needling and there was a single sunburn.

5

[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by cal[/postedby]
IIRC he was using a couple of existing things at once to go after both the PGD2 and E2 angles. He also did regular needling and there was a single sunburn.[/quote]

Right, that’s my understanding. It seems the whole point of his blog is to show that his success came primarily from attacking the prostaglandin angle (PGD2 and PGE2). He mentions some sun or light exposure, but he says it was a one-off occurrence, it shows up in one of the photos, but he does NOT attribute the hair growth to the sun/light exposure.

6

He got much more growth immediately following the sunburn than before it. I consider that relevant. Skin damage alone is nothing to write home about but it contributed a lot more when the other planets were lined up.

Skin damage + his regimen = greater than the sum of the parts.

7

I’m not saying it’s right but in my mind the redness contributed to there being less contrast in the balding area, like a skin tattoo.

Personally I wouldn’t be risking the mystery amount of scarring damage for those negligible results. Do no harm seems like a good personal mantra when it comes to hair loss (borrowed that from certain hairsite doctors because they’re not using it :wink: )

8

When someone can figure out a way of leveraging this wounding thing into a consistent, reliable, reproducible way of growing more hair than an occasional single strand, then I’ll be interested. So far, not even Cotsarelis has done that, and he’s the one with the paper and the patent. Until then, as far as I’m concerned it’s at least as far away as some people say the stem cell stuff is.

9

IMO the only thing we know for sure is that Cotsarelis hasn’t found a way to produce commercially sellable growth using patentable and commercially sellable drugs & methods. That doesn’t necessarily mean he hasn’t found a way to do it at all. Guys around here are willing to go through a lot of unpleasant stuff that Joe Average Receding Guy at the supermarket is not.

I agree it’s not worth repeatedly wounding one spot for the small gain we’ve seen so far. But it’s too early in the learning process to be making decisions about the worth of this.

What if this one (or two or three) wounds is all it really takes, and the PGD2/E2 manipulation is enough to keep fueling the growth from there?

What if a better method of PG manipulation can make a single wound more effective? Or maybe a severe (temporary, unsustainable) androgen reduction?

What if the wound can be even less than we think?

What if plucking vellus hairs a certain number of days before the wound makes a dramatic difference (there is a backstory of Follica studying this)?

What if we can simulate the wound benefit with some other way?

What if this method offers only moderate regrowth but it has much larger effect on long term loss prevention?

We don’t understand enough to be writing off anything yet.

10

I was using Bimatoprost for weeks and had no hyperpigmentation on my temple, as soon as I induced a sunburn hyperpigmentation developed immediately. The sunburn amplified the effects of Bima, dint ask me how, it just did.