Strange Beauty: Monistat Effectively Increases Hair Growth? By Toni Parker of Cush Cosmetics While perusing YouTube, I recently discovered many videos featuring women using miconazole nitrate, to grow their hair. Miconazole nitrate is the active ingredient in the Monistat family of products that are used to treat vaginal yeast infections. My first thought was hmmm…this must be a joke. However, as I continued to explore Youtube, there were a great number of women, both black and white, making the claim that miconazole nitrate really did grow their hair. But the most intriguing aspect of the videos was the fact that all of them kept a straight face-smiling only when they referred to their miracle cream as “coochie or cooty cream.” Yep! They knew it was for that area and they still wanted to put it on their scalp, which really got my attention. So, in keeping with my curious nature, I decided to ask the chemist (my husband Joe) to write an article explaining how miconazole nitrate can make the hair on your head grow. Unfortunately, he decided to become the consummate gentleman, and blushingly declined the offer. He reasoned that he was not a medical doctor and preferred to let those trained in that area of medicine address that delicate topic. So I reasoned that since I was a Certified Holistic Health Coach, it was well within my expertise to dig a little deeper on this subject, and here is what I found. All About Miconazole Nitrate Miconazole Nitrate is an antifungal agent that is used to treat yeast infections, oral thrush in babies, athlete’s foot, ringworms, jock itch, and angular chelitis-basically it is used topically and orally on any moist area where fungus or yeast tends to grow. OK, so I get that it treats fungus that grows in moist areas, but how on earth does that transfer over to increased hair growth on your scalp? The Science of Why it Works Well, I wasn’t the only one curious about the science behind how an anti-fungal agent could actually make your hair grow. The idea of using monistat products for hair growth was so popular that it also peaked the interest of Myfox Houston, a local news station for Houston, Texas. In January of this year, they released their own news clip video to explore the topic. Myfox Houston consulted Dr. Mohsin Mir, a medical dermatologist at Baylor College of Medicine, to weigh in on how miconazole nitrate actually increases hair growth. Dr. Mir says that hormones in the hair follicles actually bond to receptors that cause hair loss in men and women. He theorized that miconazole nitrate might actually reduce the number of those “hair loss” receptors, which would consequently, increase hair growth. Dr. Mir goes on to say that there have not been any clinical trials to date on the use of miconazole nitrate and hair growth. However, there was one small study done on the use of a similar anti-fungal medicine called Ketoconazole, which did in fact result in hair growth in the small number of people who participated in the study. So the million-dollar question is this-If we can put miconazole nitrate on delicate private areas and in a baby’s mouth (yipes-who knew?), is it safe to use on the scalp to grow hair? The Scalp Experiment Well according to Dr. Mir, miconazole nitrate is relatively safe to use and pretty harmless. Hey, if it doesn’t hurt your most delicate area or a baby’s mouth, then it should be safe to try on the your scalp-right? Fortunately, we do have some brave souls that took the plunge for us. Many vloggers were brave enough to give it a try, of course with the disclaimer that they were in-fact applying “cooty” cream to their scalp. Surprisingly, they ranged in race and gender. Um-did I just say gender-as in men are trying it too? Hold up! Are men REALLY that sensitive to being bald that they would put monistat cream on their scalps? I’m afraid the answer is yes. I guess the to quote Machiavelli, “The end justifies the means.” Anyway, most of the vloggers said that miconazole nitrate really does work and that they had extreme hair growth after using it.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 13:17:00 +0000
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