I am male at 24 age. My hair have started whitening since i was 20. Now i have nearly over a hundred white hair. How can i handle this. Is there any proven drug that fix this. Some people say that eating onion twice a day, hair become black. Is there any proof. Additional info i have used finasteride for five years. It stops loosing my hair. thnx for this site.

White hair is a genetic trait. You can dye it if you don’t like it, but there’s no pill for it (yet). Eating two onions a day won’t turn your hair black, but it will make your breath horrible.

Snippet from the article:

Imagine a treatment that could build bones, strengthen the immune system and lower the risks of illnesses like diabetes, heart and kidney disease, high blood pressure and cancer.

Some research suggests that such a wonder treatment already exists. It’s vitamin D, a nutrient that the body makes from sunlight and that is also found in fish and fortified milk.

Yet despite the health potential of vitamin D, as many as half of all adults and children are said to have less than optimum levels and as many as 10 percent of children are highly deficient, according to a 2008 report in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Read the full article at the New York Times

This isn’t related to hair loss, but I like to mix things up from time to time with other health news. The article goes on to question whether vitamin D is the miracle supplement some people are convinced that it is. Recommended reading!

From the study abstract published in the Archives of General Psychiatry:

Results: Subjects with BDD showed relative hyperactivity in the left orbitofrontal cortex and bilateral head of the caudate for the unaltered own-face vs familiar-face condition. They showed relative hypoactivity in the left occipital cortex for the low spatial frequency faces. Differences in activity in frontostriatal systems but not visual cortex covaried with aversiveness ratings of the faces. Severity of BDD symptoms correlated with activity in frontostriatal systems and visual cortex.

Conclusions: These results suggest abnormalities in visual processing and frontostriatal systems in BDD. Hypoactivation in the occipital cortex for low spatial frequency faces may indicate either primary visual system abnormalities for configural face elements or top-down modulation of visual processing. Frontostriatal hyperactivity may be associated both with aversion and with symptoms of obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors.

Read the full abstract — Abnormalities of Visual Processing and Frontostriatal Systems in Body Dysmorphic Disorder

Body dysmorphia is a problem for a few patients that I have seen with balding. At times I make this diagnosis so I found this particular study very interesting. CNN also just published an article based on the same study here, which might be a little easier to digest than the study abstract.

Note: One of my favorite contributors to this site is a reader (that wishes to remain nameless) that has provided wonderful insight into areas like LLLT (hair lasers) and the FDA. I’m admittedly not an expert in everything (no matter how much I wish I was), and he’s corrected my initial thoughts about companies publishing ongoing clinical trial results. His email is as follows:

Dr Rassman,
As someone who has worked in the drug development industry, I try to keep your readers updated with accurate info on how this process works. One of your readers asked whether “Aderans…would send out an update on their Phase 2 trial data……..and whether there are rules requiring such info to be confidential.”

There are no rules to keep trial data confidential. The sole reason why data from an ongoing Phase 2 trial is not released is because it is not available. That is, no data is available to a sponsoring company until a drug study is complete (or in rare cases, when an “interim analysis” is done). When a company begins a trial the data (and identity of the participating patients) is kept secret from the company during the conduct of the trial. This is to ensure that no data is manipulated; extraordinary safeguards are put in place. Intentional violation of such safeguards with hiding of the act is a form of scientific fraud and would result in failure of drug approval and public sanction of the company by regulatory (and other)
authorities.

The FDA (and regulatory agencies, in general) have no jurisdiction of when a company reports data to the public (and do not care). However, public reporting of inaccurate data can result in sanctions from both regulatory agencies and, if the company is public, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The latter relates to how public release of trial data typically affects a public stock (good data raises the stock price, bad data lowers it).

Nearly all public companies release Phase 2 clinical trial data (regardless of positive or negative) on trial completion for 2 reasons: (a) to communicate results to the scientific community, and (b) to communicate the results to shareholders. Withholding such data from shareholders can be perceived as having “inside information” of results that are considered “material” (i.e. important for shareholders to make decisions on purchase or sale of the stock). In cases where a company is private (rare when a company is at the stage of Phase 2), trial data is usually released to encourage future investors (positive data) or explain why a program is not moving forward (negative data).

Bottom line: Aderans can not send out a trial update because the data will not be known until study completion and analysis (the FDA has nothing to do with this). There are no rules to keep trial data confidential when a study is completed and, in fact, there are many reasons why public companies are required by the SEC to divulge these results. In fact, the SEC has brought legal action against some companies that they feel have not released “material” clinical trial data in a prompt fashion.