Mice, Men and Evolving The Story of Topical Rosemary For Hair Loss

Topical Rosemary Helps Males and Mice with Hair Loss: Anything Else is Simply A Guess

There is a lot of excitement around the use of topical products containing Rosemary oil for hair loss. The reality is that we’re still not really sure how to use rosemary and we’re still not sure it truly helps all that much. A new study created some “buzz” as it showed rosemary helped grow hair in mice. This study is yet another study in the growing list of studies pointing to a favourable role for rosemary. Let’s take a look at the 2015 study that created quite a bit of interest in rosemary oil and then the new study in mice. We’ll come to see that we still don’t really know if rosemary helps that much.

Panahi et al 2015

This was a randomized controlled study of 100 male patients with androgenetic alopecia. (No females were included in the study - this is strictly a study of males). 50 males applied minoxidil 2 % (not 5 %) twice daily and 50 males applied rosemary oil twice daily. They did this for 6 months.

At the end of the 6 months, hair density increased very slightly from 138.4 hairs per cm2 to 140.7 hairs per cm2 in the minoxidil group and 122.8 to 129.6 in the rosemary group. 24 % of males in the minoxidil group felt they had mild improvement and 38 % in the rosemary group felt they had mild improvement. Nobody in either group felt they had moderate improvement. There were no changes in the perception of greasy hair or dandruff but both groups reported more scalp itching. The itching was greater for minoxidil users than rosemary users.

All in all, the conclusion was if you are male and willing to use rosemary oil twice daily, it may help your hair a little bit. Improvements will be very mild and not any better than 2% minoxidil. Likely 5 % minoxidil is better than rosemary oil given than we know 5 % minoxidil is better than 2 % minoxidil We can’t comment on the effectiveness in females as that was not studied here.

Begum A et al. 2023

A new study in mice showed that a 1 % rosemary lotion was just as helpful as 2 % minoxidil in promoting hair growth in mice. Hair was removed from a 3 cm2 hair from mice using a depilatory cream. Then mice were divided into 3 groups. One group received rosemary lotion on the hairless area twice daily. One group received 2 % minoxidil lotion twice daily and one group receive water (control) twice daily for 30 days. After 30 days, hair regrowth was studied. All in all, hair regrowth was pretty similar in mice treated with 2 % minoxidil and 1% rosemary - and far superior to water

Conclusion

All in all, rosemary is proving itself to have some use in hair regrowth. It’s a pretty mild growth stimulator at best and needs to be applied twice daily. It’s probably not as good as 5 % minoxidil. Just all all treatments, this will need to be done forever in the setting of androgenetic alopecia. We know that rosemary helps males and mice - but we have zero evidence it does anything for females. So, you and I are just guessing if we think it helps women with hair loss. I imagine that it does but that’s just a guess. Rosemary oil can irritate so we’ll need to warn patients about this.

REFERENCES

Panahi Y, Taghizadeh M, Marzony ET, Sahebkar A. Rosemary oil vs minoxidil 2% for the treatment of androgenetic alopecia: a randomized comparative trial.Skinmed. 2015 Jan-Feb;13(1):15-21.

Begum A et al. Evaluation of Herbal Hair Lotion loaded with Rosemary for Possible Hair Growth in C57BL/6 Mice. Adv Biomed Res. 2023 Mar 21:12:60.