Minoxidil makes hair grow wherever you put it — it was discovered by accident when people on blood pressure pills grew more hair.
Scientific Claim
Topical and systemic minoxidil stimulates hair follicle growth in a dose-dependent manner by enhancing dermal blood flow and nutrient delivery, regardless of the underlying cause of hair loss, and its mechanism of action is independent of androgen pathways.
Original Statement
“So if you have a pathology or a disease, you treat them with the medicine. The medicine fixes the problem. -Right. I think it was... It was even the... ...discovered, right, because it was originally meant for something else. -Blood pressure. -Yeah. And then they noticed like everyone's getting hairy. -Yeah. So they, it was used for like the 50s and 60s. It's not really used now as a blood pressure medication, but oral minoxidil is used as a blood pressure medicine. And then they just they saw, they doctors, whoever it was saw that these patients were also growing a lot of hair. Just like with the, with the, the eyelash treatment we have that it's a glaucoma drug. Patients with glaucoma were found to have really long eyelashes. So now you can use that glaucoma drug as a topical for eyelash growth. Same thing. -And basically it's the minoxidil just increases the hair growth by stimulating blood flow and nutrition? -That's what we think. So it's not been well established. -We just know it makes your hair grow. -Correct, everywhere.”
Context Details
Domain
pharmacology
Population
human
Subject
Minoxidil
Action
stimulates
Target
hair follicle growth via enhanced dermal perfusion
Intervention Details
Evidence from Studies
Supporting (1)
This study used a special cream with minoxidil that works better than regular minoxidil creams and showed that more minoxidil leads to more hair growth, which matches what the claim says.
Contradicting (1)
A Review On Minoxidil a Potent Hair growth Agent
The study talks about minoxidil helping hair grow but doesn't explain how it works, so we can't say if the claim about blood flow and ignoring hormones is true.