HAIR LOSS AND AUTOPHAGY

[duchaine]

I was reading some papers about type II diabetes and metformin when I read some interesting researches about autopaghy and hair loss.
Autophagy is the natural, regulated mechanism of the cell that removes unnecessary or dysfunctional components, allowing  the orderly degradation and recycling of cellular component.
during the last decades, we have had several researches on AF and the benefits correlated to AF (on this topic, I suggest to read the book written by David Sinclair where he explain the results of his decennial research on this topic at Harvard University).

In 2016, Matsumura et al. demonstrated that  "that hair follicle stem cell aging causes the stepwise miniaturization of hair follicles and eventual hair loss in a process that that depended on the proteolysis of type XVII collagen.
The cyclic growth and shedding of hair requires a complex communication between epithelial and mesenchymal cells. While autophagy is active in hair keratinocytes and mesenchymal cells surrounding hair follicles.
A 2018 research (Parodi et Al.) showed that "genetic inhibition of follicular autophagy induces premature catagen and enhances hair matrix keratinocyte apoptosis, suggesting that autophagic flux in the anagen hair matrix is important for the maintenance of this stage. Indeed, we find that the principal ingredients of a product used to treat hair loss induces autophagy in organ-cultured human scalp HFs and promotes anagen. We conclude that organ-cultured human HFs are a suitable (mini-)organ system to study both the role of autophagy in human physiology ex vivo and to test candidate agents that modulate autophagy under clinically relevant conditions".
So, the interesting question was, "if we do activate autophagy, can we stimulate anagen?"
In 2019, Chin et al answered to this question "quiescent (telogen) hair follicles can be stimulated to initiate anagen and hair growth by small molecules that activate autophagy, including the metabolites α-ketoglutarate (α-KG) and α-ketobutyrate (α-KB), and the prescription drugs rapamycin and metformin, which impinge on mTOR and AMPK signaling. Stimulation of hair growth by these agents is blocked by specific autophagy inhibitors, suggesting a mechanistic link between autophagy and hair regeneration. Consistently, increased autophagy is detected upon anagen entry during the natural hair follicle cycle, and oral α-KB prevents hair loss in aged mice".

Unluckily,  the last research was conducted on aged mice.
Can we stimulate hair growth taking metformin?
Or, considering that fasting stimulates AF, can it be a weapon to fight hair loss?

[dokke]

Purely anecdotal, but many people on e.g. reddit seem to report metformin accelerating hair loss. 

[duchaine]

56 minutes ago, dokke said:

Purely anecdotal, but many people on e.g. reddit seem to report metformin accelerating hair loss. 

yes, I read that posts.
It is a very complex puzzles: consider that MET reduces b12 absorption and it could decrease estrogen levels if I'm not wrong. 
this is why I'm not taking met at the moment.
 

[bismarck]

Resveratrol, NMN, metformin, even rapamycin. There are a number of potential targets in terms of slowing aging. Their relationship, if any, to hair loss has not been studied to any degree that I know about.

 

On which subreddit did you see that post?

[dokke]

There is not one post. There are loads of them. Just google it.

Edited January 19, 2020 by dokke

[duchaine]

4 hours ago, bismarck said:

Resveratrol, NMN, metformin, even rapamycin. There are a number of potential targets in terms of slowing aging. Their relationship, if any, to hair loss has not been studied to any degree that I know about.

 

 

I quoted the research. If you google metformin hair loss pubmed autophagy you will find several sere aches.
Anyway, the statement that autophagy increases hair growth makes senso if you only consider that autophagy id the key for a young skin.