It’s normal for your scalp to lose as many as 100 hairs a day. Though that may sound like a lot, in most cases, these hairs grow back. But if you’re one of the millions of men and women suffering from male- or female-patterned baldness, the hair you lose each day may not grow back.
Hair loss can have a dramatic effect on your self-confidence and self-esteem. But all is not lost, and you don’t have to spend the rest of your life hiding your hair, or lack thereof, under a hat.
At Regenerative Sport, Spine and Spa in Orlando, Florida, our regenerative medicine specialist, Pallavi Cherukupally, MD, can help you become a better you and restore your lost hair with platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy.
When you’re struggling with hair loss, you may find it hard to believe that your body has everything it needs to help regrow your lost hair. But your body sometimes needs a little extra help to get the regenerative powers from your body to the places that need it the most.
PRP therapy is a form of regenerative medicine created from a sample of your own blood. Though your blood is mostly liquid (plasma), it contains solid components too, including red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets.
You may know that the platelets in your blood are responsible for forming blood clots to stop bleeding, but these tiny blood cells also contain specialized proteins called growth factors that heal the damage too.
For PRP therapy, we take a small sample of your blood and run it through a centrifuge that separates the tiny platelets from the other components in your blood. Then we make the PRP preparation for treatment.
When injected into your body, the high concentration of platelets from your PRP therapy gives your body a powerful regenerative boost that stimulates the natural healing and repairing process.
Your hair, which grows from follicles under your skin, goes through three stages of growth. The reason you can lose as many 100 hairs from your head each day and not go bald is that each hair is at a different stage of growth.
The stages of growth include:
The anagen phase is the growing phase of your hair cycle, which may last anywhere from 2-7 years.
The catagen phase, which lasts about 10 days, is a transitional phase in which your hair follicle shrinks and detaches from your skin.
The telogen phase is the resting phase of your hair follicle, which lasts about three months. After the resting phase, your follicle re-enters the anagen phase and the process resumes.
If your hair enters the telogen phase of your hair growth cycle too early, you may experience hair thinning.
During PRP therapy for hair loss, the high concentration of platelets in PRP may help prolong the anagen phase of your growth cycle and halt your hair loss. Like most hair loss treatments, you get the best results with PRP therapy when you start treatments during the very early stages of your hair loss.
PRP therapy for hair loss is quick and requires no downtime. During therapy, we first prepare your PRP and then inject the regenerative properties directly into your scalp. To get the best results, we recommend monthly PRP injections for three months and then follow-up injections every 3-4 months for up to two years.
The specifics of your PRP therapy may depend on your genetics, age, and pattern of hair loss.
Though results vary, according to a 2014 study published in the Journal of Cutaneous and Aesthetic Surgery, PRP may increase hair growth by as much as 30% in thinning areas after four PRP therapy treatments.
To learn more about PRP therapy and how it can restore your lost hair and self-confidence, contact us by phone or online today.
