January 2, 2007A WHOLE NEW BALD GAME
GQ Magazine
By Kyla Jones
Losing your hair? Thanks to major scientific advances, you no longer have to resort to desperate measures. Here are fifteen things you need to know. 
13. If I can afford to wait a few years, will I have much better options for hair surgery? Hair cloning is the next generation of hair restoration treatment, but it’s still ten years from being a reality, according to Dr. Robert Leonard, founder and chief surgeon of Rhode Island’s Leonard Hair Transplant Associates. “Hair cloning involves taking some harvest hair from the donor region and sending it to the lab to have it broken into stem cells, which will then get replicated and injected into the thinning or bald area,” says Leonard. These stem cells will then create follicles from which hair will grow. Cloning will probably first be available somewhere outside the United States. In the meantime, one experimental noninvasive treatment currently being used is infrared light therapy. A machine called Luce LDS 100 drenches the patient’s head in infrared light to accomplish three important things: “The device increases blood flow in the dermis, where the follicles live; it increases cellular activity and oxygen to the dermal papilla, which is the manufacturing center of the follicle; and it converts about 70 percent of hair from resting phase to growing phase,” Leonard explains. Generally treatment costs $1,750 to $3,500 and lasts about a year, beginning with sessions twice a week for the first couple of months and ending with once-a-month treatments the last six months. Bottom line: According to Leonard, 90 percent of people who go under the light can halt the progression of their balding with this treatment.
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