Scientists May Have Accidentally Found a Way to Reverse Hair Loss Without Drugs

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

New research suggests the cure to male pattern baldness might be sugar.
The team simulated testosterone-based balding in mice and treated them with deoxyribose sugar, which stimulated blood vessel formation and ultimately caused hair regrowth.
Researchers say that the sugar treatment is just as effective as minoxidil (the active ingredient in Rogaine), a hair loss treatment currently on the market.

Hereditary-patterned baldness affects roughly 40 percent of people—and no, it’s not exclusive to men, despite the fact that the condition is more commonly referred to as male pattern baldness.

While the average person loses about 100 hairs a day, individuals suffering from hereditary-patterned baldness lose even more (sometimes entire chunks at a time), and that hair loss typically begins in someone’s 20s or 30s, though the condition often expresses itself after menopause in women.

Perhaps most shockingly, the idea that the baldness gene comes from the mother’s side is actually false—hereditary-patterned baldness is dependent on genetic factors from both parents.

Infomercial channels are riddled with the next-best hair-loss solution, but those toupees, ointments, and hair plugs might soon be unnecessary. According to a new study published in Frontiers in Pharmacology, the cure for hereditary-patterned baldness might be… sugar?

Well, one specific type of sugar, known as deoxyribose sugar.

Our bodies naturally produce the substance, and it plays a key role in DNA stability and replication. Along with phosphate groups, deoxyribose makes up the backbone of DNA (deoxyribose nucleic acid). When the double helix unwinds during replication, deoxyribose provides the structure for our biological machinery to copy the genetic code. And on top of being a building block of life, the sugar could apparently be the cure for hair loss.

“Male pattern baldness is such a common condition, affecting men all over the world, but at the moment there are only two FDA licensed drugs to treat it,” Sheila MacNeil, an author of the paper, said in a press release. “Our research suggests that the answer to treating hair loss might be as simple as using a naturally occurring [deoxyribose] sugar to boost the blood supply to the hair follicles to encourage hair growth.”

Interestingly, the 8-year-long study didn’t start as an attempt to cure hair loss. The team was originally studying mice to understand if and how sugar could help heal wounds by encouraging new blood vessels to form. But in the process, the researchers noticed that the hair around the wounds was growing back faster in mice that had been treated with the sugar than those who hadn’t.

To further investigate, the team simulated testosterone-based hair loss—a common cause of hair loss in men—on unwounded mice, and found that small doses of the sugar again encouraged blood vessel formation that stimulated hair growth.

According to the press release, the sugar treatment is just as effective as minoxidil, which is one of the most well-known topical hair loss treatments on the market (it’s the active ingredient in Rogaine). Currently, minoxidil products retail for around $30 to $40—a price that begins to feel steep when you’re applying the product twice daily for months.

Muhammed Yar, another author of the paper, said in the press release that the naturally occurring sugar is inexpensive and stable. Even better, Yar explained that the sugar is deliverable in several forms, making it an “attractive candidate” for further research.

MacNeil states that despite the excitement surrounding this discovery, there’s still much more work to be completed. “The research we have done is very much early stage, but the results are promising and warrant further investigation,” MacNeil said in the release. “This could offer another approach to treating this condition, which can affect men’s self-image and confidence.”