Is Saw Palmetto Shampoo Good for Treating Baldness?
Are you looking for ingredients that really work to prevent hair loss and increase hair growth?
If your hair has started to thin out and you are noticing bald patches in certain parts of your head, don’t panic. Hair loss is extremely common for both men and women, especially in the latter half of life.
As you get older, genetic and hormonal factors can cause your hair follicles to shrink and constrict, slowing hair growth and making your hair look thinner. Fortunately, there are numerous ingredients that can have a major positive impact on your hair’s growth rate, getting to the root cause of your hair loss and counteracting it.
One of these powerhouse ingredients that you definitely need to know about is saw palmetto. In this post, we’ll fill you in with key information about saw palmetto – what it is, how it works, what to use it with, and more.
If your hair loss is making you feel discouraged and frustrated, have no fear. Using a shampoo that includes saw palmetto as an active ingredient can be a big help – read on to learn about how.
Getting to the Root Cause of Your Hair Loss
Before determining the best treatment for your hair loss, it is important to determine its root cause. There are several different underlying factors that can cause hair loss, but one is by far the most common for male and female adults. The leading cause of hair loss in adults is a condition called androgenic alopecia.
Androgenic alopecia is caused by a male sex hormone, or androgen, called dihydrotestosterone (DHT). Your body converts testosterone into dihydrotestosterone to serve useful purposes in your body. The production of DHT is higher in the male body than the female body, but production of the androgen increases as a person ages, regardless of their gender.
DHT serves an important purpose in both the male and female body. The hormone plays a key role in the development of inherently masculine characteristics like depth of voice, growth of body and facial hair, and even the development of male genitalia in the womb. DHT is not your enemy, but it can have a negative effect on hair growth later in your life.
As DHT levels increase with age, the hormone can start to shrink your hair follicles. This shrinkage slows your hair’s growth rate.
Your hair is always in one of three stages of its growth cycle – the anagen, catagen and telogen stages. In the anagen stage, your hair is growing. In the catagen stage, your hair is transitioning from growth to rest. In the telogen stage, your hair rests from growing.
The primary cause for hair loss is an interruption in your hair’s growth cycle, which can be caused by levels of DHT that are too high.
How To Tell If You Have Androgenic Alopecia
Androgenic alopecia is often referred to as male or female pattern hair loss. The condition does not cause all of your hair to fall out. Instead, it causes thinning in certain parts of your head.
For men, androgenic alopecia typically causes baldness at the crown of the head, as well as causing the hairline to recede.
For women, the most common effect of androgenic alopecia is thinning in the part between the two sections of the hair. If you are noticing thinning in these areas, you are likely dealing with pattern hair loss.
Male and female pattern hair loss are most common past the age of 50. However, androgenic alopecia can show up earlier in life in genetically prone individuals. If your body naturally generates above-average levels of dihydrotestosterone, you may start to notice your hair thinning as early as your 30s. The sooner you start dealing with androgenic alopecia, the better.
If you start experiencing premature hair loss, it is the perfect time to start paying attention to your hair care routine and including growth-promoting ingredients like saw palmetto in your daily regimen.
Why You Need To Use DHT-Blocking Ingredients in Your Daily Hair Care Routine
Certain ingredients, including saw palmetto, have been found to naturally reduce your body’s conversion of testosterone into DHT. The discovery of natural DHT blockers is a major breakthrough in the science of preventing and reversing hair loss.
Since DHT plays a key role in male and female pattern hair loss, hindering its production in your body can be extremely helpful for your hair’s ability to grow faster, fuller and thicker.
Using a shampoo that contains a blend of DHT-blocking ingredients is one of the best habits you can form for the sake of your hair. If you are dealing with thinning hair, standard shampoos are unlikely to have major benefits for your hair’s ability to grow.
In fact, some ingredients that are commonly found in shampoos can even have negative effects on your hair. Parabens and sulfates are two categories of ingredients that you definitely want to avoid, regardless of whether your hair is thinning. These ingredients can negatively impact your hair’s health, and some can even affect the health of your body as a whole.
What is saw palmetto?
Saw palmetto is a fruit-bearing tree. The fruit of the saw palmetto tree has natural DHT-blocking properties, making it an ideal ingredient for hair loss prevention shampoo. Saw palmetto’s natural ability to block the conversion of testosterone into DHT gives it the potential to work against follicle shrinkage, allowing your hair to stick to its natural growth cycle without interruption.
Does saw palmetto shampoo produce results?
When saw palmetto is paired with other DHT-blocking and growth-promoting ingredients in a hair loss prevention shampoo, the results can be truly astounding. As with any other hair loss treatment, a DHT-blocking shampoo takes time to work. However, over time, you can see noticeable changes in the thickness and growth rate of your hair.
Depending on your genes and the severity of your hair loss, certain treatments can be more or less effective. One of the best ways to compound the effectiveness of hair loss preventing shampoo is to use it in tandem with minoxidil.
Minoxidil, also known as Rogaine, is a topical hair loss prevention treatment that is thought to increase blood flow to your scalp, boosting hair growth in the process. If your follicles have shrunk and your hair has thinned out due to increased levels of DHT, minoxidil can be a big help alongside a high-quality hair loss preventing shampoo and conditioner.
GroMD’s Hair Growth Shampoo & Conditioner is packed with DHT-blocking, growth-promoting ingredients, including saw palmetto. When your main goal is to reduce and reverse hair loss, our shampoo and conditioner is the perfect addition to your hair care routine.
We’ve also included saw palmetto in our follicle activator spray, a topical treatment designed to stimulate hair growth, blocking DHT and giving your hair the nutrients it needs to stay healthy. Combining our shampoo and conditioner with our follicle activator spray maximizes the benefits for your hair.
As an ingredient for blocking DHT and promoting hair growth, saw palmetto can be extremely effective.
With its natural ability to work against DHT’s shrinking effect on your follicles, it can quickly become one of your secret weapons in your battle against hair loss. Getting to the root cause of your hair loss and actively targeting it with the right ingredients is the smartest way to take care of your hair, and saw palmetto is an ingredient that you definitely want to include in your daily regimen.
Dr. Amir Yazdan, MD, is an internationally renowned hair transplant surgeon, expert guest on Dr. Phil and The Doctors, creator of the GroMD hair restoration product line, ISHRS member, accredited member of the IAHRS and a visceral advocate for patient care. Learn more about Dr. Yazdan or read rave reviews from his patients.
Sources:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0006291X7090166X
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1600-0625.2009.00939.x
https://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/11/13/4653.short