Ginger for hair removal?

Controversial & Unproven Methods Restricted: Genetic Therapy, X-Ray, Photodynamic
#1

6-Gingerol Inhibits Hair Shaft Growth in Cultured Human Hair Follicles and Modulates Hair Grown in Mice

In summary, we report for the first time that 6-gingerol has no effect on promoting hair growth, on the contrary, can suppress human hair growth via its inhibitory and pro-apoptotic effects on DPCs in vitro, and cause prolongation of telogen phase in vivo. Thus, 6-gingerol rather than being a hair growth stimulating drug, it is a potential hair growth suppressive drug, i.e. for hair removal. The inadequacies of this study are that this research has slightly fewer cases, the unknown effect of 6-gingerol on follicular epithelial cells and genetic changes of 6-gingerol on dermal papilla cells in vivo. Therefore, in future experiments, besides increasing the sample size, we should do further experiments to address the above-mentioned problems.

The paper was published in Feb, 2013 and so it’s pretty recent. Not sure I buy this study, but it at least seems interesting.

#2

I found this experiment to be pretty interesting, and from reading the paper it seems as though it would be pretty easy to recreate. Now I don’t have any formal scientific training aside from a couple of college classes, but I’ve been thinking about how easy it would be to recreate this experiment on myself. Now I’m not just going to go ahead and do that because that wouldn’t necessarily be smart or safe. but I was hoping someone with some more knowledge of chemistry could maybe weigh in with their own thoughts…

#3

any study on hair growth lasting as little as 20 days is suspect. they even ‘sacrificed’ the test subjects, thus making follow up study on long term effect impossible. even waxing can appear to be permanent hair removal in a 20 day test.

#4

that’s a great point… but even if it’s a method of lengthening the time between shaving that would be pretty great… Still, they did mention that it was able to induce apoptosis in hair cells and that a smaller concentration of hair cells was seen when the treated area was stained with H&E. Can a hair cell recover once it has already undergone apoptosis?