Can You Clone Hair?
First off, we’re going to start by saying that cloning human tissue in the overall context of the world is a practice that’s been around for a very long time. But on the other hand, hair cloning is a relatively new entrant into the scene, especially in the context of hair replacement and transplants.
However, even though hair cloning isn’t exactly there yet, it’s certainly a promising tool to tackle hair loss in the future. In this post, we’ll provide helpful insights into precisely what hair cloning is, and it isn’t yet a standard practice you’ll notice in a hair clinic for some time.
What Exactly Is Hair Cloning?
Hair cloning is a procedure that involves taking a small sample of your own hair follicle and using it to create a new one. The idea is to attempt a replication of the texture, color, and length of your hair and create a product that will appear identical to your hair but without the effort that goes into growing it.
Although this procedure may someday be able to fill in or even restore balding areas and help women who are losing their hair due to female pattern baldness, it is currently in its early stages. Therefore, it will take a bit of time before it can become standard practice for hair replacement procedures.
Why Is It Difficult To Clone a Hair?
The best way to understand the challenges with hair cloning is by looking at the hair structure itself. A single hair follicle, for instance, is not just a single cell or structure as it might appear to be to the naked eye.
Instead, it can be better described as a mini-organ or organelle with oil glands, nerves, muscles, and a developing hair shaft of its own. In order to clone the entire hair follicle as a structure in the laboratory, it would require a technology that is still a little bit out of range at present.
However, hair banking is one procedure happening presently and showing promising signs of what we can expect in the future with hair cloning and transplantation. And it’s quite promising when you look at how well it’s in line with what everyone would love to be able to have with their hair in the near future eventually.
This procedure involves extracting your hair follicles and storing them temporarily by sending them off to a company involved in the specific process. What this means is that someday, your hair can be cloned and transplanted back into your scalp as we would with your normal hair.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, when you think about the relatively recent breakthroughs in medicine right now, such as freezing the eggs and sperms as we do for reproductive health, it seems that it may soon become an option for your hair as well. In a sense, therefore, we think it’s only a matter of time before hair cloning becomes standard practice, even though they’re not yet an everyday reality at the moment.
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