What's an Easy Way to Cure Baldness? Start Plucking Your Hair, Researchers Suggest

If you are one of the many people that suffer from baldness, scientists have discovered a new way of growing hair.

Researchers at the University of Southern California have found that when they pluck 200 hairs, up to six times as many grow back.

"It is a good example of how basic research can lead to a work with potential translational value," Cheng-Ming Chuong, first author of the study, said in a news release. "The work leads to potential new targets for treating alopecia, a form of hair loss."

As part of their study, the researchers plucked 200 hairs from a 6mm space on the back of a mouse and none of the hairs grew back. When the researchers plucked 200 hairs from a 5mm space, about 1300 grew back. The researchers believed that the small space allowed the distress follicle call to reach the immune system, triggering an immune response. The researchers noticed that the hairs that grew back were too close to one another as well.

However, researchers say the growth occurred only when many hairs were pulled in an area slightly smaller than the diameter of a pencil eraser.

"By varying the spacing, arrangement, and shapes of plucked regions, we unexpectedly found that plucking 200 hairs, with a proper distribution can cause up to 1,200 hairs to regenerate," authors wrote in the study.

The hair plucking phenomenon "may just be one of the examples that reveal collective cellular behaviors in response to physiological or pathological stimuli," the authors wrote. "We believe that the quorum sensing behavior principle is likely to be present in the regeneration of tissue and organs beyond the skin."

According to the American Hair Loss Association, two-thirds of men start to lose their hair by the age of 35.