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Don’t look now but it sounds like Japan thinks they have found a cure to baldness: and yep, the cure may be in a greasy batch of McDonald’s fries. And that’s because there’s actually a chemical used in McDonald’s fries that could help hair regrowth.
Scientists in Japan were able to regrow hair on mice using human stem cells, which generated fresh follicles capable of growing new hairs.
The Japanese team first had a breakthrough after they managed to produce ‘hair follicle germs’ in their lab for the first time. These are the cells that fuel follicle development, and because they’ve never been regenerated before are considered the ‘Holy Grail’ of hair loss research. Turns out the secret was to use Dimethylpolysiloxane, the same chemical that’s found in McDonald’s fries – which is added for safety reasons to prevent cooking oil from foaming.
Professor Junji Fukuda of Yokohama National University, said: “The key for the mass production of HFGs was a choice of substrate materials for the culture vessel. We used oxygen-permeable Dimethylpolysiloxane (PDMS) at the bottom of culture vessel, and it worked very well.”
So all you bald dudes now have an excuse to skip the salad and dive into french fries. Hey, it’s science. Here’s more of what Fukuda had to say:
“We hope this technique will improve human hair regenerative therapy to treat hair loss such as androgenic alopecia (male pattern baldness). In fact, we have preliminary data that suggests human HFG formation using human keratinocytes and dermal papilla cells.
We demonstrated that the integrity of the oxygen supply through the bottom of the silicone chip was crucial to enabling both ssHFG formation and subsequent hair shaft generation. This simple ssHFG preparation approach is a promising strategy for improving current hair-regenerative medicine techniques.”
So since chances are you have no idea what Fukuda is talking about, he is pretty much saying that the key chemical these scientists believe will cure baldness is in fries. So yes, I think it’s time you walk to your nearest McDonald’s during your lunch break and get five orders of fries.
