Calosol Factfinder

Presenting all you need to know about the Calosol hair loss treatment.

4H Solution: For all Alopecians

The Calosol™ 4H Solution contains proteins, amino acids, minerals, essential oils, vitamins and naturally occurring mucopolysaccharides blended in a herbal formula. Each bottle should last between one and three months but this will depend on the extent of existing hair loss.

Calosol Shampoo: Optional depending on amount of scalp hair

As in Calosol solution, Calosol™ W'n'G Shampoo contains proteins, amino acids, minerals, essential oils, vitamins and naturally occuring mucopolysaccharides blended in a herbal formula. It has the same stimulating action as the accellerator, which revitalizes the hair and scalp to prevent further loss and stimulate regrowth. It should be used by those that still have scalp hair as it works together with Calosol 4H solution to give a faster result.

The following extract,taken from the Times Newspaper (London), provides a useful insight into the background of this treatment.

THURSDAY SEPT.19th 2000 Alternative Health

Alopecia - Treatment With Herbs By Anna Bruning

Last November Lisa Ranft noticed two small bald patches on the side of her daughter Lauren's head. By December the patches were spreading and the GP confirmed that Lauren had alopecia. She was almost six.

Lauren was referred to a hospital consultant in Chichester, West Sussex, who suggested steroids. The Ranfts felt uneasy about their daughter taking steroids, but by this stage she was being bullied at school, often being called "Baldy". In February they consulted a herbalist, Elias Bouras, who prescribed a plant-based treatment. By May Lauren's hair loss had been arrested.

"We don't know what triggered her hair loss. All I can think of is that she had a bit of a scare when she went in the sea last summer," says Mrs Ranft. "But she seemed OK and I didn't take it that seriously at first."

Lauren will continue to use the treatment until the end of the year, and the family hopes that all her hair will grow back.

Alopecia is thought to affect up to eight million people in Britain, of whom many are children. Triggers include local injury, physical trauma, stress, bacterial infection, allergies, chemicals and genetic predisposition.

It can start with alopecia areata (AA), in which hair falls out in clumps but can regrow spontaneously. More serious is alopecia totalis (AT), a completely bald head, and the most severe cases can develop alopecia universals (AU), in which people lose all their body hair. Alopecia is now widely regarded as an auto-immune response, and Bouras's formula seems to work by inhibiting the enzyme thought to be responsible for hair loss.

Bouras, whose father, grandfather and brothers all suffered from baldness, originally acted out of self-interest, determined to save the follicles that he could see were already wilting. Now, after nearly 20 years of mixing lotions and potions and testing them on himself and willing volunteers in a study based in his Bognor Regis laboratory, he has developed a product called Calosol, from a common plant family that he will not publicly name.

This secrecy stems partly from a confidentiality agreement with Phytopharm, the British plant-based medicines manufacturer that has been laboratory-testing Calosol for more than two years, and which claims that there have been no side effects associated with its use. Bouras is also concerned that because the plant is an irritant in its unprocessed state, people might hurt themselves if they rubbed the raw leaves on their heads. (In case you are wondering, the product is not nettle-based.)

A new set of clinical trials begins this month at the renowned St John's Institute of Dermatology, attached to Guy's and St Thomas' hospital in London. Using Calosol, Bouras has achieved some impressive results over the past 15 years, particularly with young women, for whom becoming bald is not only emotionally devastating but socially damaging. Some were suffering from AA, while others had AU, which, to date, has never been successfully treated using conventional medical procedures.

What is fascinating doctors, too, is the classic pattern of hair regrowth shown. First comes a mohican across the top of the skull, then circular areas of baldness start to shrink - which suggests that hair is growing according to a genetic programme.

Phytopharin, which calls Bouras's formula P45, has not yet decided whether it will develop it as a prescription medicine or as a special shampoo or cream. If and when the time comes, Bouras will supply the firm with his formula.

Until the trials produce a strong clinical signal and Phytopharm goes ahead with any development of a regulated product, Bouras is free to continue supplying the original Calosol to his own patients.

To this end, Bouras has joined forces with Lucinda Ellery Sharp, a medical hair designer, who treats conditions ranging from alopecia and hair loss through chemotherapy, accident or surgery, to trichotillomania, an illness that compels people to pull out their hair. Many of her clients are pre-teen children. They have opened an Alopecia Centre in West London.

"We see hundreds of women of all ages suffering from loss of self-esteem and emotional devastation, as hair loss is socially unacceptable for women," says Ellery Sharp. "Many of them receive less than compassionate treatment from their doctors, as it is not considered a serious illness, and so they have the added burden of feeling that they are wasting medical time for what is not a life-threatening condition, even though it threatens their way of life and wellbeing.

"Female baldness often leads to a loss of sexuality, and in some cases a complete shutdown for the woman involved because of the shame and fear.

"Everyone knows of the dangers of steroids and other medications that affect an already compromised immune system. I have never before come across a product that really helps alopecia sufferer - particularly children. I have seen so many devastated people and this new treatment could save many younger ones from trauma."

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