The Science of Hair Loss: How PRP Therapy Can Help

Regenerative medicine is the future of medical science for a very good reason — it works with your body’s own powerful resources to support better health. Think of the lizard that loses a tail and grows another one. Now imagine being able to apply this type of regeneration to our own bodies.

While we may not be able to regrow limbs quite yet, regenerative therapies are being used to address everything from aching joints to hair loss.

At Vivida Dermatology, our extensive team is known for expertly addressing hair restoration. If you’re among the millions of Americans dealing with hair loss — the issue affects more than half of men and one-third of women — we want to introduce you to a highly effective regenerative hair loss treatment called platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy.

What happens when you have progressive hair loss

To understand how PRP therapy works, it’s helpful to understand the science of hair loss. There are many roads to thinning hair, and we’re going to address the most common — androgenetic alopecia, which can affect both men and women.

With androgenetic alopecia, a substance that’s converted from testosterone, dihydrotestosterone (DHT), is the culprit behind thinning hair. DHT binds to receptors in your hair follicles and causes your follicles to shrink. As a result, your active hair growth phase (anagen) becomes shorter, and your hair can become thinner and finer.

This explains why hair loss in men can start much earlier (men have more testosterone), while progressive hair loss in women usually doesn't strike until after menopause. This is because the loss of estrogen allows testosterone and DHT to become more influential. 

The power of platelets

With PRP therapy, our goal is to offset the effects of DHT on your follicle health and hair growth. At the heart of this treatment are — you guessed it — platelets, which are key players in your body’s natural healing and regenerative processes.

Platelets are flat cells in your blood that are first responders whenever there’s damage. These cells flood the scene and kick off the healing cascade by releasing growth factors, which are proteins that support rebuilding and repair.

These growth factors include:

• Fibroblast growth factors
• Vascular endothelial growth factors
• Epidermal growth factors

What these growth factors can accomplish when it comes to hair loss is re-extending the growth phase of your hair. Another benefit is that PRP therapy can also thicken your hair by expanding your hair follicles.

Rejuvenating your follicles and scalp with PRP therapy

With PRP therapy, we harvest platelets from your own blood to create a concentrate that we then inject into your scalp.

In most cases, we perform a series of PRP treatments, which we space apart by a week or two to allow time for the growth factors to work. As you progress through your hair restoration PRP treatments, results will be gradual as your hair follicles respond and grow more hair.

Not only is PRP effective, but it’s a regenerative treatment that uses your body’s own resources — we're just concentrating and redirecting them. What this means is that PRP is considered to be quite safe, and you get natural results.

If you’d like to learn more about how PRP therapy can help you combat thinning hair, contact one of our offices in Las Vegas or Henderson, Nevada, and St. George, Utah, to schedule an appointment.