Minoxidil is a treatment indicated to delay and stabilize androgenic alopecia or common baldness, favoring and stimulating hair growth. It stops hair loss but does not increase the number of hair follicles, as many people believe. It is a lifelong treatment and the first results are seen after 3 or 4 months. Let’s explain the details in more detail.
What is minoxidil?
Let’s throw a bit of history to say that minoxidil is a drug from the 50’s for the treatment of ulcers in the duodenum. After the first applications in patients, it was found to be a powerful vasodilator that caused the growth of body hair and strengthened hair. Therefore, it can be said that its effects were achieved by rebound and without knowing it.
Thirty years later, in the 1980s, it was already being used primarily to stop hair loss. This effectiveness means that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved it as the only effective medication to treat androgenic alopecia (of genetic causes) in both men and women.
Does minoxidil help stop hair loss?
Yes. Despite being a medicine with 70 years of history, it is not 100% known how it works. It has been tested on many people to lengthen the hair growth phase and shorten the resting phase, which is the same as saying that hair loss stops. It is very effective and it is estimated that 66 percent of men who try it have positive results. It also works with women in similar percentages.
However, as we said before, the big problem with minoxidil is that, if it works, it must be applied every day. To know if it is effective in each specific case, you must wait around four months.
How does minoxidil work to stop hair loss?
It belongs to the family of vasodilator drugs and works according to a very basic and simple principle: it opens the blood vessels. Specifically, it intervenes on the muscles in the walls of your arteries and veins, preventing the muscles from contracting and the walls from closing. Consequently, blood flows more easily through your vessels, including those that reach the hair follicles.