About 70 percent of men suffer from male pattern baldness (MPB) and hair loss is one of the things men dread most about getting older. (The other great fear is impotence.). To most men a full head of hair is a sign of health, youthfulness and virility, and the first signs of hair loss along the sides of the forehead and on the crown of the head can cause strong reactions like depression, social withdrawal, loss of self-esteem – and in extreme cases even suicide.

These same psychological effects can be seen in women with hair loss too.
There are thousands of home remedies to cure baldness, some of which are quite weird. Many of these involve rubbing the excrement of some kind of animal – like cow or pig dung – on the balding pate. However, these “boererate” have a very limited success rate.

A new discovery may change all of that…
A German researcher has found that caffeine protects hair roots against hereditary and menopausal hair loss in men and women respectively, and facilitates growth. A study by the Institute for Dermatology at Lübeck University which was published in the British Journal of Dermatology found that found that caffeine promotes hair follicle growth by influencing important proteins that regulate cell growth.

How does it work?
The study found that in both men and women the caffeine counteracts the growth inhibitory effect of testosterone (the “male” hormone) on hair roots and stimulates growth.