Blog

Hair loss—a problem traditionally associated with men is increasingly becoming an issue that women can’t just brush aside. From robots to cloning, we examine the future of healthy hair.

The Manhattan office of Bob Bernstein, just steps from Park Avenue, is the kind of space that makes successful men feel at home—a good thing for one of the country’s foremost specialists in hair restoration (and the co-author of Hair Loss for Dummies). The layout is part design statement, part science lab, slick with granite, slate, and glass and full of microscopes and high tech gizmos. Among the space’s most noteworthy gadgets is one of only twelve robots in the world programmed to help perform hair transplants, which has a home in Dr. Bernstein’s office.

Bernstein’s field has traditionally catered to males, but the patient in his waiting room on this sunny afternoon before Thanksgiving is Laurie Martin, a legal assistant with perky features and green eyes. Her brown hair is enlivened by blonde highlights and styled with a sweep of bangs.

In 1987, when Martin was 37, she noticed her part was widening. “I went to NYU’s dermatology department and, like all naïve women, I thought they would say I had a vitamin deficiency,” she recalls. “But they diagnosed me with hair loss based on my maternal grandfather, and said they would take out plugs from my scalp the size of pencil erasers. In my mind’s eye, that was just too big, so I went on Rogaine until my insurance stopped paying.”

“You should see it when it’s blown out,” she smiles.

Martin is one of a growing number of women suffering from hair loss, and taking action. According to the 2006 study by the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery, 28 percent of patients seeking treatment were women. By 2010, the number grew to 35 percent. Fortunately, technological advances are keeping pace with the demand.

Once considered solely an aesthetic procedure, liposuction may have important health benefits.

If you’re trying to lose weight, you are certainly not alone. Forty percent of women and 24 percent of men are trying to lose weight at any given time in the United States, according to Y.L. Wright, author of Fat Loss Secrets That Really Work. In response to this demand, we have seen a host of products, systems, and diets all promising the holy grail: an easy way to get slim. Studies have shown that traditional diets are not effective in the long run, since 90 to 95 percent of dieters regain their lost weight. Many give up and even resort to extreme measures such as lap bands or gastric bypass surgeries.

Studies on the aforementioned procedures show a failure rate (meaning subjects regained lost weight) of 20 percent for lap band surgery and 35 percent for gastric bypass surgery. These failure rates don’t speak to health risks associated with these procedures.

The best, most logical approach to weight loss includes a healthy diet, hormone balance, and a regular exercise regimen. However, one of the more innovative thoughts in obesity treatment is to simply remove the fat via liposuction. Medical research now shows that the excess fat itself may be one source of this frustrating problem.

LESS IS MORE

So, how does simply removing fat take weight off and actually keep it off? Here’s the concept: Adipose tissue functions as an important endocrine organ in your body, meaning that it produces cellular messengers that are responsible for metabolism and appetite, known as adipokines. The more fat cells you have, the more adipokines you produce. If you produce too many, this can create a harmful imbalance in your body.

Excess abdominal fat is strongly associated with high blood sugar and insulin levels, harmful cholesterol levels, and inflammation—conditions that can increase the risk of heart disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and even some forms of cancer. What’s worse: Excess adipokines can actually make you gain more weight through their effects on important hormones like leptin, cortisol, and insulin.

Another way that fat begets fat is through environmental toxins stored within the fat cells. Dr. Paula Baillie-Hamilton was the first researcher to suggest that low-level exposure to environmental toxins has pound-promoting effects. Coined obesogens, these chemicals interfere with fat metabolism in a way that promotes obesity. Substances that we are exposed to everyday like plastics, pesticides, metals, and fire retardants can mimic or interfere with the function of hormones in our body. They can increase the number or size of fat cells, and they also affect the hormones responsible for controlling appetite.

Environmental toxins are just that—toxins—that can cause many health problems in addition to obesity. Your body stores these substances in fat but they are released in small quantities over time. Your body doesn’t have the ability to readily breakdown these chemicals to rid them from your body.

The theory is if the subcutaneous fat is removed, then these weight-gaining chemicals will be removed with it. This may help with weight loss as well as overall health. The idea of liposuction offering health benefits is still a new and somewhat controversial idea because liposuction was developed to improve body image, and not health. The plastic surgery literature states that liposuction is not a weight-loss procedure and that it should be reserved for patients with a BMI less than 25. But, why?

Then, of course there is the social bias that overweight people should simply eat less and exercise more, and that this would solve their weight problems. However, this ignores the emerging science supporting that having excess fat is a self-propagating condition.

There are numerous studies citing the many beneficial effects of subcutaneous fat removal. In the British Journal of Plastic Surgery, researchers evaluated insulin sensitivity and inflammatory blood markers in 30 obese women before and after liposuction procedures. When compared to baseline values, liposuction was associated with reductions in body weight, insulin sensitivity, and inflammatory blood values associated with cardiovascular and metabolic conditions.