Sep 24, 2019 06:00:00

'Wearable hair growth device' that can cure baldness just by putting it on your head finally appears

by

tommyandone

The market for men's hair care, such as hair growth and hair growth agents, is said to be 443 billion yen in Japan alone, and it seems that baldness is a problem that plagues many people. Meanwhile, the “Wearable Hair Growth Device” developed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is a thin and flexible material that can be worn under the hat, and requires no battery or charging.

Self-Activated Electrical Stimulation for Effective Hair Regeneration via a Wearable Omnidirectional Pulse Generator | ACS Nano
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.9b03912

Electric tech could help reverse baldness
https://news.wisc.edu/electric-tech-could-help-reverse-baldness/

The following image is a prototype of a wearable hair growth device developed by Professor Xudong Wang, who studies engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It is about a few centimeters long and is made of a material that is flexible enough to bend, so you can put it on your scalp and wear a hat on top of it.

This is how a device and a hat are actually put on a man's head. The person on the left is the developer, Professor Xudong Wang.

This device consists of two parts. One is an electrode that stimulates the skin with electrical pulses. When the electrode emits electrical pulses of the low frequency to the skin, is related to the formation of new blood

vascular endothelial cell growth factor and a major cells constituting the skin keratinocytes affects the growth of (keratinocyte) keratinocyte growth Factor secretion is promoted. As a result, the number of hair follicles increases and the hair is regenerated.

Professor Wang has succeeded in hair growth in mice that have been made hairless by genetic manipulation. Of the following mouse images, the top row is fitted with square electrodes, and the bottom row is fitted with W-shaped electrodes. Looking at the mouse in the rightmost row after 2 weeks of wearing, the upper mouse has hair evenly between the ears with electrodes attached, and the lower mouse is a w-shaped hair tress From the fact that the hair grows, you can see that the hair actually grows due to the effect of the electrode.

The electrical pulse emitted from this electrode is very low energy and only affects the very thin surface of the skin, so there are few side effects unlike drugs such as “ Finasteride (trade name: Propecia) ” that have side effects such as decreased libido. In addition, experiments have confirmed that it is more effective than two types of over-the-counter drugs. To re-activate the dormant hair follicle to the last, if you have already become completely bald, you can not expect an effect, but if hair loss is in progress, you can expect a big effect.

Another part of the device is a nano-generator that supplies power to the electrodes. This nano-generator collects electricity from the 'body movement of the wearer' and supplies energy to the electrodes, resulting in a 'wearable hair growth device' that does not require a battery or cable.

Prof. Wang said, “Electric stimulation has many effects, but until we developed this device, there was no solution that led to the realization of a thin device that could provide effective stimulation.” He showed that wearable devices that can be used simply by pasting can be expected to be used for various purposes.