Hair Loss Products Are the Next Frontier in Wellness. Do They Live Up to Their Promises?

Stress of any kind, including childbirth, emotional trauma, and surgery, can lead to telogen effluvium, which is the medical name for stress-induced hair shedding. The 2020s have been hard and uniquely challenging for women. “Women take on so much these days, juggling careers, families, relationships, and more—this stress takes a toll,” Hardik Doshi, MD, lead surgeon at Ample, a New York City hair restoration clinic, tells SELF.

And while SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, doesn’t specifically cause hair loss, infections are a well-established trigger of telogen effluvium. “Every time you put stress on the body, physiologic or otherwise, it can affect the hair growth—from counts, thickness, and quality to grain,” explains Natasha Atanaskova Mesinkovska, MD, the vice chair for clinical research, dermatology, at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine.

Naturally, the hair industry responded. Today drugstore shelves are bursting with bottles and gadgets promising improved hair density, reduced hair loss, and other Rapunzel-like aspirations. Sephora has an entire section dedicated to thinning hair solutions, and the hashtag #HairLoss boasts millions of views on TikTok. Even J.Lo has gotten in on the trend: The singer partnered with telehealth company Hers in 2019 to launch a hair treatment kit.

This abundance of choice is relatively recent. Unlike the skin care market, which spans prescription products, injectables, and in-office treatments (on top of what’s long existed in the beauty aisle), there wasn’t much available to improve hair as you age—until now. “Hair is the next frontier,” Dr. Mesinkovska tells SELF.

So far, the FDA has approved only one topical hair loss solution for androgenetic alopecia, the most common type of hair loss, in women: minoxidil (made popular by the brand Rogaine). But now our Instagram feeds are being flooded by competitors—many of which might feel a bit more sus. “It’s a very emotional issue, and that’s why it’s easy to market products that are going to supposedly help you recover that hair loss,” Kelly Dobos, a cosmetic chemist and adjunct professor of cosmetic science at the University of Cincinnati, tells SELF. Further complicating this issue is the fact that there are lots of potential causes of hair loss, ranging from nutrient deficiency to genetics, making effective treatment more challenging.

Beware of “science-washing”

Many of the products being heavily promoted right now have impressive-sounding terminology like “based in science,” “clinically proven,” or “scientifically formulated” in their marketing copy. But any brand can conduct a study and make impressive-sounding claims regardless of what it says, according to Romanowski: “Whether it was positive or negative results, it doesn’t really matter. You can just say it was ‘clinically tested.’” Other terms like “research-backed” could simply mean that a product was formulated by cosmetic chemists with a research background, Romanowski says.

OTC supplements are a marked example of these misleading tactics. As SELF previously reported, it’s shockingly easy for manufacturers to slap these buzzwords onto their bottles because the FDA doesn’t regulate dietary supplements for efficacy, meaning brands don’t have to prove their products actually do what they say they’ll do before they start selling them. Some popular hair growth supplements that can run you close to $100 a month are advertised as “clinically proven”—but there’s no standard definition for making that kind of claim, meaning it’s up to the brands’ interpretation. And that’s why it’s so important to keep this big caveat in mind: Supplements (which also include things like biotin gummies) are “not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent a disease,” per the FDA. In other words, whatever grand promises they make or imply, they cannot promise to treat a serious hair loss condition because they haven’t gone through the rigorous study and extensive approval process that the FDA requires of pharmaceutical treatments.