stop hair loss

When talking about non-surgical hair replacement it is hair systems and hair loss concealers that spring to most peoples’ minds. Various types of hair systems such as full wigs, hairpieces, toupees, hair extensions and weaves can look very authentic and have been used for ages to cover bald spots and typically with good rates of success. However, their traditional weaknesses are high maintenance costs and, in many situations, the discomfort of wearing them. Hair loss concealers on the other hand have been around for a much shorter period of time and have often been looked down upon for being incapable of withstanding adverse external conditions and for appearing unnatural. This no longer appears to be true as many of them have dramatically improved recently, both in terms of their authentic appearance and their resistance.

There three existing types of hair loss concealers include those that simply paint your scalp to reduce the contrast between your hair colour and the colour of your scalp, then there are hair thickeners that thicken your hair by coating and penetrating the hair and trapping moisture and volume-building proteins inside the hair shaft and, lastly, there are concealers that apply microfibers that cling to your hair like branches to the trunk of a tree, increasing the hair density. Some products combine two of the aforementioned approaches and paint your scalp and thicken your hair at the same time. All of these products come in various applications, such as a powder, cream or a spray. Hair loss concealers do not contain any active substance that would fight hair loss but some of them allow you to continue with a topical hair loss treatment such as minoxidil.

Microfiber-based hair loss concealers can be often applied in as little as 30 seconds versus a minimum of five minutes needed for hair thickeners. However, microfibers are less water-resistant and it can be quite tricky to apply them precisely and, therefore, they are not very suitable for creating an authentic-looking frontal hairline. Their greatest benefit is that they are unrecognisable in your hair, even with a very close inspection. Hair thickeners, especially those that also colour your scalp, are extremely water-resistant and excellent for frontal hairlines but they take longer to apply. But they cover your scalp with a layer of colouring substance, which makes it hard to apply any topical hair loss treatment. Their greatest weakness in comparison to microfibers is that in direct sunlight it can become visible to the sharp eye that the scalp has been painted.

The common drawback of all types of products for concealing hair loss is the limited choice of available shades to match everybody’s hair colour. Some hair loss sufferers use a combination of two products simultaneously to overcome the weaknesses of individual products and to achieve the most authentic shade and appearance. Usually a combination of a hair thickener and a micro-fibrous concealer is used. The results of such combinations are often excellent. If you decide to try any such combinations, make sure that you apply the scalp-painting, hair loss thickener first and then use the micro-fibres to mask the remaining imperfections. There are many products in all three categories of hair loss concealers and you may need to test a number of them in order to identify those that best match you hair colour and style of application.

Hair loss can be caused by a variety of factors but heredity is the number one reason why men and women lose their mane. Hereditary hair loss in men and women has the same main cause, which is a metabolite of the male hormone testosterone, called dihydrotestosterone (DHT) attacking and killing our hair follicles. DHT is also present in the female body. Men and women lose their hair not because of increased levels of DHT in their bodies but due to the susceptibility of their hair follicles to DHT attacks, although the exact mechanism and reasons why certain hairs, mostly those on the top of the head, are more vulnerable to such attacks are not yet know.

The principal difference between the male and female form of hereditary baldness is in its shape. The male form has a characteristic horseshoe pattern whereas the female form is usually a diffuse thinning across the entire scalp and is therefore less easily-recognised. The female form of hereditary hair loss is, in its form, practically indistinguishable from hair loss caused by various other factors. The second most common reason for a woman to lose her hair is hormonal imbalances during and after pregnancy or menopause. Such changes are typically of a temporary nature and so also is the hair loss, although post-menopausal hair loss is in most cases permanent.

When it comes to treating hair loss in women there are certain specifics. First, most females do not make very good candidates for hair transplant surgery due to their diffuse thinning pattern, which makes it impossible to identify the hair that will be resistant to future miniaturisation. Secondly, finasteride, which is one of the only two FDA-approved hair loss treatments available today, cannot be used on women and neither can dutasteride, which is its closest and assumedly yet more powerful relative. Rogaine (generic name minoxidil) is the second FDA-approved hair loss treatment and its approved concentration for women is only 2% versus 5% for men. However, many doctors recommend their female patients use male formulations of minoxidil, with a concentration of 5%. Aminexil is a molecule similar to minoxidil and it is usually recommended to women who are pregnant or breastfeeding as a safer option than minoxidil.

Although some anti-androgens such as finasteride or dutasteride cannot be prescribed to women, there are other anti-androgen medications that can be effectively used to treat female baldness. Spironolactone (trade name Aldactone) and cyproterone acetate (used in contraceptives such as Diane 35, Diane 50 and Ginette 35) are antiandrogens most commonly used to treat female pattern hair loss.

Another treatment with satisfactory rates of success is topical estrogen solutions such as Crinohermal, which use a female hormone, estradiol, as their main active ingredient. Estradiol is capable of inhibiting the conversion of testosterone into follicle-harming DHT. Hormone replacement therapy is another hormonal treatment suitable for women at menopause, with estrogens and progesterone pills and creams being the most common forms of treatment. Estrogen levels in the body decline with time. As women enter the menopause, estrogen levels decline and thus more of the male hormone testosterone is then available to be converted into follicle-harming DHT.

The above list of female hair loss treatments is not exhaustive, though. There are a number of other remedies that are often claimed to help promote hair growth in women, such as alfatradiol, ketoconazole, fluridil, flutamide, as well as different substances of natural origin. Despite the fact that there are female patients who will swear by some of these treatments, none of them has ever been sufficiently clinically studied, let alone approved by any major national health supervisory authority as a treatment for female hair loss and the claims of their guaranteed effectiveness should be taken with a grain of salt.

The currently available medical options for regrowing lost hair in people suffering from hereditary forms of baldness are limited to relatively few products which are most effective in the early stages of baldness. Once you have lost a substantial portion of hair due to hereditary factors or an accident, such as a burn, the only remaining option is to replace the missing hair. Your options can be either of a temporary nature, such as the use of various hair systems and hair loss concealers, or a permanent surgical solution. Hair transplantation happens to be the most effective way of surgical hair replacement and the only permanent solution that delivers satisfactory results.

Hair transplantation surgery consists in transplanting your own hair from the back of your scalp to the balding area. The core limiting factor of hair transplantation is the shortage of donor hair and, therefore, many patients do not make a good candidate. The suitable hair transplant candidate should have a high hair density in the back of the scalp, his hair should be wavy and thick, his scalp flexible and the contrast between the colour of his hair and scalp should not be too great, and he must be in good physical condition. Women often suffer from a diffuse form of hair loss and, therefore, do not make very good hair transplant candidates. Hair transplant surgery also cannot be performed on patients suffering from unpredictable forms of hair loss such as alopecia areata.

Given the chronic shortage in the supply of donor hair, the hair transplant surgeon must be able to utilise the little hair he can use to create the optical illusion of a full head of hair. This presents one of the biggest risks in hair transplantation, as it can every so often happen that the patient does not like the final result. Although you can usually arrange for another hair transplant session, some damage can be irreparable. Other risks and side effects occurring during and after hair surgery include excessive bleeding and scarring, the lengthy healing of wounds, the transaction and eventual death of many implanted hair follicles, post transplant shock hair loss, which, though temporary, can affect your newly-implanted hair as well the hair in the donor area, scalp numbness and tension and the further progression of hair loss post surgery, which can lead to unnatural patterns of baldness. In one recent study, which evaluated the experiences of 425 hair transplant patients who had undergone 533 hair transplant procedures in total, it was determined that about 5% of the patients experienced complications either during or after surgery.

Hair transplants can cost around ten thousand dollars, depending on the technique used, the location and reputation of the clinic, the extent of hair loss and the number of hair transplant sessions needed to achieve the desired effect. However, sometimes it is impossible to estimate the final cost, which represents another risk you take when deciding on hair surgery. Given the pain, time and cost involved, it appears necessary to educate oneself prior to signing up for hair transplant surgery. The hair transplant industry is a fast-growing segment and the quality and affordability of hair surgeries are improving, so do not let anybody push you into hasty uninformed decisions.

When it comes to treating your hair loss it pays to have some basic understanding of the existing treatment options in order to better assess your chances and to choose the right remedy for your current condition. In the first place, hair loss treatment options can be divided into surgical and non-surgical therapies. Although there are only a few surgical techniques currently used, the non-surgical spectrum is wide and confusing. There seem to be thousands of non-surgical treatment options available to those who wish to avoid hair surgery. Propecia and Rogaine might be the best known medicinal hair loss treatments, while dried fruits of saw palmetto and a Chinese herb, He Shou Wu, also known as Fo-Ti, are the natural ingredients most frequently used in alternative hair loss remedies.

The non-surgical hair loss therapies can be in principle broken down into medicinal and alternative treatments, whereas when considering methods of application, they can be divided into oral treatments, topical applications and others, such as low level laser therapy. Irrespective of the aforementioned breakdowns, hair growth treatments work either by blocking the activity of dihydrotestosterone, also called anti-androgens, or by stimulating hair growth.

Dihydrotestosterone (DHT) is a biologically-active metabolite of the male hormone testosterone that is thought to be the main cause of both male and female hereditary pattern baldness. DHT causes hair miniaturisation as the hair becomes finer and thinner with every new hair growth cycle until the hair follicles refuse to produce another hair at all and eventually die. The exact mechanism by which DHT acts on hair follicles is not known, though. Finasteride, better known under its trade name Propecia, is the only clinically-proven and FDA-approved anti-androgen used for treating male pattern baldness. It acts by preventing the creation of DHT in the scalp. Since the introduction of Propecia, many other drugs and natural therapies have emerged claiming anti-androgen activity. Some of them are supposed to work by a different mode of action than Propecia, such as preventing DHT from binding to the receptor sites in the follicle or blocking activity in the androgen receptor itself.

Minoxidil, also known as Rogaine, is the best-known hair loss medicine amongst hair growth stimulants. It is assumed that hair growth stimulants work by directly stimulating epithelial growth of hair follicles and some of them may also counteract the hardening of the hair follicles but the exact mechanism of their action has never been described. One thing that all hair growth stimulants have in common is their ability to increase the length of the hair growth cycle, thus improving the ratio of hair in the growth phase and to increase the hair’s diameter.

The natural hair loss treatments are in principle assumed to work by the aforementioned modes of action and are often presented as safe alternatives to medicinal treatments. There are not too many hair loss treatments that have been clinically proven and independently verified to be effective in treating baldness. Of those few existing, all happen to be medicinal drugs. Natural hair loss treatments have still to live up to their manufacturer claims.

When deciding about the most suitable hair loss treatment option, one should always consider approaching the problem from different angles. It is best advised to use a combination of anti-androgen and hair growth stimulant, such as a Propecia/Rogaine combination. Alternative, hair loss treatments, for instance natural remedies, should mainly be considered as a method of fine-tuning this basic regimen in order to achieve additional benefits.

Men have been seeking an ultimate cure for baldness for ages but until quite recently all available remedies were either cosmetic cover-ups or vitamin/mineral pills and herbal lotions, with too many of them just being scams. It was only with the advent of finasteride and minoxidil and improvements made in hair transplantation techniques in recent years that the new era began, enabling hair loss sufferers to halt the further progression of the balding process and replace the missing hair on top of their head using the hair left at the back of their scalp. However, to this day no ultimate cure for baldness exists. Nevertheless, there are presently several promising drugs and new techniques under development but none of these new therapies is expected to hit the market before 2010.

To start with, NEOSH101 is being developed by the US firm Neosil and it is currently undergoing phase IIb clinical testing. NEOSH101 has been proven to be a more powerful and faster-acting hair growth stimulant than minoxidil while it only needs applying once daily. Though significantly improving the current hair loss treatment options, NEOSH101 is not going to become an ultimate cure for baldness. The clinical trials seem to be advancing slower than most hair loss sufferers would like and, therefore, do not hold your breath for it hitting the market anytime soon. NEOSH101 is mainly expected to replace minoxidil and other existing hair growth stimulants.

Another promising line of development seems to be the telomerase research. Telomerase is an enzyme that is said to able to put natural caps on telomeres and thus protect them from shortening. Telomerase thereby maintains the genomic integrity. Shortened telomeres are associated with the premature aging processes. However, the uncontrolled activation of telomerase can cause cancer. Cancer research happens to be the main focus of the telomerase study but scientists are also looking for other applications, such as anti-aging drugs and drugs against hair loss and grey hair. Although still under development, there are already some products available on the market that seek to emulate the mechanism of telomerase action but they have no scientific backing and should better be avoided. Telomerase research could really change the world of medicine but its commercial application might be a good decade away.

Hair multiplication, often called hair cloning or follicular neogenesis, is the next hopeful treatment option being currently developed. This technique involves extracting the hair follicles from the back of the patient’s scalp, culturing and multiplying them and injecting the newly-grown hair cells into the bald scalp. Among several teams of scientists on three continents researching hair multiplication, the UK healthcare firm Intercytex appears to be the frontrunner. However, Intercytex is currently facing financial difficulties and is looking to sign-up a partner, which can delay the development process. This therapy might hit the market in 2013 at the earliest. The main benefit of hair multiplication would be solving the chronic shortage of donor hair that is the main limiting factor in hair transplantation.

Generating hair follicles in hair-free skin wounds is an utterly new approach to regrowing hair. It was discovered accidentally as wounded skin in mice started growing new hair. This technology is currently being developed by the US medical device company, Follica that licensed this technology from the University of Pennsylvania. Though this method may sound weird it only uses common instruments and drugs that have already been medically approved and thus it might not take too long for it to become available to the public.

This is the list of only a few promising treatments for hair loss that are being currently developed but many others seem to be in the pipeline. It appears that becoming bald will soon be by choice rather than destiny.

The first and the most common mistake most hair loss sufferers make is having unrealistic expectations. This will always lead to frustrations, no matter how good or bad the treatment was. Irrespective of what the manufacturers and marketers of any hair loss product say, do not believe that you can recover all of your lost hair. The best available treatments only enable you to slow down the balding process or, in better instances, to keep the existing hair. The ultimate achievement you can expect from any hair loss treatment is to regrow the hair you have lost in the previous three years. But this is only possible if you start treating your condition at an early stage of the balding process. This brings us to the second mistake many hair loss sufferers make - denying their hair loss and starting to treat their condition only once they have already developed a bald patch. The later you start treating the baldness, the less chances you have of regrowing lost hair. In order to regrow hair you should have fine miniaturised hair left in your bald areas. This hair is often called peach fuzz. Once your hair follicles have died and there is no baby hair left, no miracle can rejuvenate them.

Many hair loss sufferers, as they start conducting their research, become scared reading about the potential side effects of proven medicinal treatments such as finasteride or minoxidil and opt for allegedly safer alternative treatments. Marketers of natural, hair loss remedies tend to overexaggerate the negative side effects of medicinal drugs in order to lure you into buying their product. The chances that you will lose your sex drive from finasteride or grow additional facial hair because of minoxidil are typically less than 1%. You should first try the proven medicinal treatments and only if you have experienced negative side effects try some alternative therapy. Starting with unproven products right away deprives you of the opportunity to test some of the best remedies available out there. If you begin treating your condition with an alternative treatment, the likelihood you pick the one that works well for you is close to nothing. Thus, you are almost certainly wasting time while the hair loss continues to advance. And do not believe that all natural, hair loss treatments are safe. That is not true either.

Another common mistake is to use multiple treatments at the same time. If you wish to try different things, do not try them all simultaneously. Any treatment requires a minimum of four months to kick in and you should allow it at least six months to deliver results. Overdosing will not speed up or improve results either.

And lastly, do not overreact to seasonal shedding periods. Shedding is common to almost any hair loss treatment. If you start a new treatment such as Rogaine, you will first have to shed the old hair. Rogaine will stimulate your hair follicles, resulting in increasing the thickness of your miniaturised hair. But this will not happen overnight. First, the old thin fibber must be shed, then the hair follicles rearrange themselves in order to start producing thicker hair. Typically, the first signal that the treatment is working is accelerated hair loss.

Rogaine was the first medication in history approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treating hereditary forms of hair loss. By now it has been approved and is available as a hair loss treatment in many other countries of the world. Its principal active ingredient is minoxidil, a vasodilator that was originally used in the form of the oral drug Loniten to treat high blood pressure. Minoxidil is a hair growth stimulant but its exact mechanism of action is not known. Since Loniten has long come off patent, generic minoxidil is widely available in pharmacies at a very reasonable price and in most countries it does not require a physician’s prescription.

Both Rogaine and generic minoxidil solutions come in concentrations of 2% for women and 5% for men but many experimental, generic hair loss remedies use concentrations of up to 20%. Minoxidil is often blamed for causing negative side effects. Since it has become the most commonly used drug for treating baldness, its side effects are very well documented and they happen to be often largely exaggerated. In less than one percent of patients they include an irregular or fast heart beat, decreased blood pressure, blurred vision, swelling face and ankles, numbness in the hands, etc. These symptoms are directly related to minoxidil being a vasodilator. In addition, minoxidil can cause undesired hair growth on the face and other parts of the body, which is particularly disturbing for female patients. This is due to its ability to stimulate hair growth. But some side effects that minoxidil is often blamed for are not caused by minoxidil itself. They include inflammation, itchiness and redness of the scalp, dandruff and allergic reactions. These side effects can be attributed to the chemical vehicles used in the solution, such as propylene glycol and isopropyl alcohol (propanol). Many hair loss sufferers have discontinued their minoxidil treatment because of scalp problems, although minoxidil seldom causes such reactions.

Furthermore, many generic, minoxidil-based lotions contain supplementary ingredients that are supposed to enhance their overall efficacy, such as azelaic acid, retinoic acid, herbal extracts, etc. These substances, especially the herbal extracts, are known to be allergenic to many people. It is advisable to try various minoxidil-based products, for instance, those that do not contain propylene glycol, in order to test their tolerability for your scalp. A more expensive product, such as the original formulation - Rogaine solution - is not necessarily a better option than a less expensive generic mixture. However, Rogaine foam, though quite expensive, is generally well tolerated. Anti-dandruff shampoos, e.g. Nizoral, can, in the majority of patients, be employed successfully to treat scalp inflammations, itchiness and dandruff caused by the use of hair regrowth topicals.

Halting and reversing hair loss is to many of us a distant dream. However, there are existing options for replacing lost hair and some of them may seem surprisingly effective even to the most sceptical hair loss sufferer. The three main methods of hair restoration include surgical hair restoration, non-surgical hair replacement and therapies for regrowing hair using pills and topicals. The core technique of surgical hair restoration today is hair transplant surgery, whereas wigs, hairpieces, hair thickeners and hair loss concealers are the popular aids used to replace the lost hair by non-surgical means. The non-surgical camouflage is obviously the fastest and the least expensive method of replacing lost hair, though not too popular, as many people believe that wigs and concealers cannot withstand rain and wind and do not look natural enough. In spite of this common prejudice, some of them are extremely resistant to external influences and can appear very authentic. Hairpieces and concealers are often the only option of restoring lost hair for people suffering from non-hereditary forms of hair loss such as unpredictable alopecia areata.

Hair transplantation is the most expensive method of restoring lost hair but also the most satisfactory solution that brings back your youthful appearance quickly and naturaly. It can only be used in people suffering from hereditary baldness and burn patients. Candidates are required to have sufficient hair density at the back of their scalp and many women suffering from female form of hair loss with its typical diffuse balding pattern do not meet this condition. Hair restoration surgery has made great strides in the past twenty years or so with the introduction of the two main techniques used today - follicular unit transplantation and, more recently, follicular unit extraction. These advances in hair transplantation techniques enable the grouping of hairs very close together, which gives today’s hair transplants a completely natural look. The main weakness of hair transplant surgery, besides the cost and the pain involved, is the limited supply of donor hair and the need for multiple surgery sessions to achieve the final change. Furthermore, patients have to commit themselves to the use of finasteride or any other adequate hair loss therapy for the rest of their lives to prevent further loss of hair in areas adjacent to the transplanted area.

Topicals and pills do not, despite significant scientific advances and the discoveries of recent years, provide satisfactory hair restoration results yet. The two most frequently prescribed hair loss drugs, finasteride and topical minoxidil, can be effectively used to reduce hair loss in many patients but their ability to regrow lost hair is insufficient. Their effectiveness generally declines sharply in the later stages of the balding process. There is no existing medicinal or natural hair loss remedy that can deliver adequate visual results comparable to either hair transplant surgery or non-surgical hair replacements such as wigs and concealers. Although there are some promising medicinal hair loss drugs currently under development, mainly in the area of genetic research, the ultimate pill for baldness is not expected to become commercially available within the next fifteen years. Other advances in hair science, such as hair multiplication, often called hair cloning or the generation of new hair follicles in wounds, also hold out some promise but it appears that hair transplant surgery will in the next ten to fifteen years remain the most popular method of hair restoration.

The first hair transplants were performed in Japan back in the 1930s. In the old days of hair transplant surgery relatively large pieces of skin of four millimetres in diameter, the so called punch grafts, were transplanted from the back of the scalp to the frontal balding area. Hair transplantation technology has evolved tremendously since then and today’s hair transplants can give you a completely natural look. This is largely due to the miniaturisation of hair transplants, which now contain only one hair follicle (holding between one and four hairs) and are less than one millimetre in diameter. These tiny, single follicle grafts are then implanted into the needle-made incisions in the bald area. Today’s technology enables dense packing of hair follicles, which gives you a completely natural-looking frontal hairline. Gone are the days of “pluggy” grafts that made you look like a toothbrush.

The two main technologies that are used today are called Follicular Unit Transplantation (FUT) and Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE). The main difference between them is in harvesting hair follicles. The FUT is the older method, using strip harvesting, when a linear strip of skin of up to 20 centimetres long and 1.5 centimetres wide is removed from the back of the scalp and the opening is then sewn closed. This strip is then placed under special dissecting microscopes and cut into small grafts, containing just one follicular unit each. Such follicular grafts are then implanted into the bald area. The advantage of this method is its high yield, measured as a percentage of the follicles that are successfully transplanted into the balding area. This yield is around 98%. The greatest weakness is that it leaves the patient with a linear scar at the back of the head. The FUT is less expensive than the FUE and is used when a large area needs to be filled with transplanted hair in one single session.

The FUE technique uses a micro-extraction technology to harvest individual hair follicles that can be directly implanted into the small needle-made poke holes in the bald area. The FUE technique is the latest technology, introduced in 2002. Its greatest benefit is the fact that it leaves the patient with only tiny scars at the back of the head, which are barely visible with naked eye, and the healing time is significantly shorter than with the FUT, due to the small size of the wounds. However, this method cannot be used to cover large areas in one session and it is more expensive. Additionally, its yield is much lower, due to the transaction of many follicles, and since the supply of donor hair is limited, it cannot be used in patients whose hair loss has progressed above NW4 level.

Potential future surgical hair restoration techniques, such as hair multiplication and the generation of new hairs in wounds of hair-free skin, should help solve the problem with the limited amount of donor hair. It seems that hair transplantation will in the long future only be used for frontal hairlines and, therefore, the follicular harvesting should manage to provide a sufficient supply of hair implants. However, none of the aforementioned potential future techniques is expected to become commercially available before 2012. Therefore, the immediate future probably lies in improving the harvesting methods of the FUE in order to improve its yields and make it financially more affordable. The FUT with its strip harvesting, which started a revolution in the hair transplant industry less than two decades ago, may become history in the not too distant future.

Lead is one of mankind’s oldest used metals. Lead and its compounds have been employed for thousands of yeas in all walks of life, from construction to gastronomy. It was not so long ago that sewage pipes were made from lead. Anyone who has renovated an old house might have seen old leaded pipes as they were replaced. They are easy to recognise by their unusual weight. However, lead and most of its compounds are today known to be highly toxic. Lead is a potent neurotoxin that over time accumulates in soft tissues and bone. Nonetheless, because of its low reactivity and water solubility, lead poisoning usually only occurs in cases when the lead is dispersed and after long term exposure.

Lead acetate is used as a precursor to lead sulphate which acts as a synthetic pigment in progressive hair colorants such as Grecian formula, Youthair and GreyBan. It is valued due to its ability to change the colour of your white hair gradually and discretely. Like lead, it is toxic, although it has been used for centuries as a wine sweetener. Since the beginning of the 1980s, lead has been withdrawn from many products, such as gasoline, paints, pipes, etc., and in the last decade lead compounds such as lead acetate have become the target of increased attention of health authorities. Lead acetate has been banned from hair dyes in some counties of the European Union and in Canada but there is no universal ban within the EU, let alone on a larger scale. However, lead-based hair dyes continue to be available in shops in most countries in the world.

In one study, conducted in the US, people using lead acetate-containing hair colorant were monitored but no absorption of lead into their blood stream was registered. Therefore, it was determined that lead acetate-based hair dyes can remain in use but the concentration of lead acetate may not exceed 0.6%. Most of the currently available hair colorants contain a maximum of 0.4% of lead acetate. In spite of that, these lotions may not be applied on facial hair or cut scalp and if redness or inflammation appear their use must be discontinued. It is obvious that you should wash your hands with soap after applying them.

As the toxicity of lead has become more apparent in recent years and it is even suspected of being carcinogenic, bismuth has become its increasingly popular supplement. Following a ban on sales of lead-containing hair dyes in some countries, the affected products have been reformulated to include bismuth citrate. Bismuth, like lead, is also a heavy metal but it is thought to be less toxic and is not suspected to be carcinogenic. Nonetheless, the same careful handling is required when applying bismuth-based hair colorants as with lead-based products.