If you were looking for a sign to go through the McDonald’s drive-thru on your way home from work today, this is it. New research found that an ingredient in McDonald’s French fries may help reverse baldness.
Researchers from Yokohama National University in Japan found that one of the chemicals used in the oil McDonald’s cooks their fries in can mass produce hair follicle germs. Dimethylpolysiloxane, the chemical used by McDonald’s to prevent its fry oil from frothing, helped create new hair growth in mice.
“The key for the mass production of HFGs was a choice of substrate materials for culture vessel,” says Junji Fukuda, the corresponding author and professor, Yokohama National University in an interview with kctv5.com. “We used oxygen-permeable dimethylpolysiloxane (PDMS) at the bottom of a culture vessel, and it worked very well.”
This could be big news considering how many adults suffer from hair loss. A study published in Dermatologic Surgery reported that male pattern baldness is much more common than we realize. Overall, 42 percent of men experience moderate to extensive hair loss, with that number only increasing with age.
So if you are feeling a little thinner up top, don’t feel bad. You’re in good company.
"Chemical in McDonald's fries could cure baldness"
So far, the experiment has only been conducted on mice, but due to their success, researchers expect to be moving to human subjects soon. We will definitely have our eyes on their progress while snacking on some McDonald’s fries.
