Jane’s hairy dilemma: My husband and I have seen the commercials for Scalpmed, and are wondering if it really works….he’s just beginning to lose his hair, and is interested in a preventative measure. Is Scalpmed worth it?
The Left Brain’s response:
First of all, if there really was a product that worked better than the approved drugs that are on the market, don’t you think the major Pharm companies would be all over it? The fact that Scalpmed comes from “GR Hair Solutions, LLC ,” a small company we’ve never even heard of is enough to start my BS alarm bells ringing.
I see from their website that Scalpmed actually consists of several products. Two of those products, their Vitadil-5A and Vitadil-2A formulas, “contain FDA-approved formulas for hair growth” and they state that the active ingredient in both of these products is minoxidil. Ok, so far so, good. Minoxidil (aka Rogaine) is an FDA approved drug to treat hair loss. So what’s the problem?
The devil, as they say, is in the details. Apparently you can’t just buy the minoxidil treatment, you have to buy three products that come in a kit: Vitadil 5A, Nutrisol-RM, and Cortex Enlarger. Only the Vitadil 5A contain the active drug. The kit costs $160 plus about $20 for shipping for a 2 month supply. Let me crunch some numbers and see if that’s a good deal.
Scalpmed: smart shopping?
I’ll assume that all three of the products in the kit are of equal value, even though I’d expect the drug product to be more expensive. With that assumption, the Vitadil product costs a third of that $180, or about $60 out of your hard earned cash for a two months supply. That’s about $30 per month. You can buy a 6 month supply of Minoxidil
Scalpmed: superior science?
Ok, clearly this is NOT a good deal. But is it possible that Scalpmed is selling some kind of special version of Minoxidil that works better? While there’s no information on their website to indicate that’s the case, the rumor on the ‘net is that Scalpmed may be combining minoxidil with tretinoin (aka Retin-A). We have no way of knowing if this is true or not, but there is some research on the combination. According to some studies, this combination can increase penetration of the minoxidil and result in even greater hair growth than minoxidil alone. But even the best studies (like this one from Seoul National University College of Medicine) indicate that the only benefit of this combination is that a single dose of the minoxidil-tretinoin mixture works the same as a double does of minoxidil alone. So let’s say that this research works out, you could cut your minoxidil cost in half. But remember, Scalpmed is already charging you 5 times more plus the additional $120, so you’re still losing money with this product.
Finally, the other issue with the minoxidil-tretinoin combo, according to studies like this one, is that it causes scalp eruptions and irritation. So given the marginal benefit and the potential side effects, using the combination hardly seems worth it. Maybe that’s why none of the drug companies have pursued this approach.
The Beauty Brains bottom line
IF (and that’s a HUGE if) Scalpmed can produce clinical data that indicates their product is safe and that it works better than Minoxidil, then they might be worth considering. But I say skip Scalpmed, buy some Minoxidil, and tell your husband to take you to dinner with all the money you saved. (You could always try Toppik Hair Building Fibers!)
Click here to see how Scalp Med compares to another male hair loss treatment, Procerin.
Click here to get Men’s Rogaine Extra Strength 5% Minoxidil Topical Foam Hair Regrowth Treatment
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My Grandma used to rub salmon on her head/scalp for hair loss. She believed that the omega 3 oils would penetrate those clogged and dead hair shafts.
It did leave her hair shiny, but I never noticed if her hair was thinker or more lush…
I have always been skeptical of Rogaine – does it really work for hair growth?
I have the inherited gene of alopecia in women from my mother’s side of the family. All the women as far back as anyone can remember began losing their hair at about age 40 (some sooner). As soon as I noticed this same “curse” happening to me at around 39, I immediately ran to the drug store to buy Rogaine when it was still marketed just to them and very expensive. Now I use the store brands which are so much cheaper (same minoxidil as Rogaine in the same dosage). I’m happy and relieved that it totally stopped the scary handfuls of hair I was losing when I washed my hair. Now, I am 57, still using minoxidil daily and I have a full head of healthy, unbalding hair which continues to grow and stay in!!! I also have no side effects, despite about 18 years of use. YES, ROGAINE DOES WORK — for hair loss prevention and hair growth (at least for me)!!! Please, don’t wait — the key is to start it at the first signs of unusually large amounts of hair loss.
BTW, the GR in “GR Hair Solutions” stands for Guthy Renker. There is a company that you have definitely heard of and they have an excellent reputation in the direct-to-consumer market (they also own ProActiv, among others). They bought Scalpmed recently.
I get your number-crunching. You are paying $6/mo for the minoxidil and $24/mo for the other two products. I have used Kinerase styling products from the salon, and just one regular (non-hair-loss-treating) styling product costs around $30. So if they products work for you, or if they make your hair feel good, go nuts and use all you want. There’s nothing scary or scammy about that.
BTW, they can’t be putting tretinoin in their products because it is regulated as a prescription drug by the FDA. Retinol is the non-Rx version. It could be in there, if it is listed on the label (could also be called Vitamin A).
There is nothing new and exciting about using minoxidil to treat hair. What they have is some great marketing to sell their products that go with, show how well minoxidil can work, and make it into a fairly simple hair-care regimen that even balding guys with more important things to think about can use.
Sure, you could buy plain minoxidil and use other hair care items. You could also spread peanut butter and jelly separately on your sandwich instead of buying Goober Grape. You could buy fabric and sew your own clothes. But in this world of convenience, it is up to the consumer to determine how much they are willing to pay for a ready-made system.
@ Gen Eric:
Nice bait-and-switch, loser. If you were paying attention, the stipulated $6/m for minoxidil was from Amazon.com, not GR Hair Solutions. Their version costs $30/m for minoxidil and another 60/m for the other two products. Paying $6/m instead of $90/m, for essentially the same product (minoxidil), is a winner, no matter how well you “market” the higher priced product.
You fail, you moronic shill.
The name of the parent company btw is GRC Hair Solutions-GRC is the abbreviation for Guthy-Renker Contiunity. A trusted company for many years.
I used to use Avacor, until they were forced by law to disclose the actual ingredient in their product (Minoxidil). Since then, I’ve been buying Minoxidil at COSTCO and paying just a fraction of what I used to pay Avacor. Don’t waste your money with these scams. Do some research and you’ll find out for yourself that these companies are there for the money!
All companies are motivated by profit. If they weren’t they would be non-profit organizations.
Fortunately, not all companies are trying to hoodwink you.
On my site I show people how to make a Scalp Med equivalent for about $12 a month.
I have an aunt who has tried both rogaine for women and the scalp med. She saw no improvement from the rogaine. She saw amazing improvement with the scalp med. She actually stopped taking it after 6 months I believe and she still has a full head of hair now when she used to have really thin hair you could see right through it. My hair is thinning, runs in the family, so I am more likely to get scalp med to try because I’ve seen it work on a real person. But I had already bought a box of rogaine for four months so we’ll try that and see how it works. Scalp med now does have a $14.95 60 day trial. The problem I think is that you don’t see a ton of improvement in 60 days usually so it must be good for them to be willing to take a loss on it if there were tons of returns.
Believe me….you can make this stuff yourself. There are only two additional ingredients in the product that actually helps with both male and female pattern loss. These are saw palmetto and beta sitosterol. In my opinion the rest of the stuff does nothing but make your hair look a bit thicker cosmetically. Saw Palmetto has already been shown in studies to grow some hair back when used topically. It is believed that the active ingredient in saw palmetto is beta sitosterol. If you simply buy these two things in liquid form and add them to a fresh bottle of minoxidil (Rogaine) you will be good to go.
In addition to this however people should get themselves on a shampoo known as Nizoral. You can find it in any pharmacy in the medicated shampoo section. There have been several studies that demonstrate this too is helpful. The routine to do all these things takes only a few minutes a day. If you do all of these things (use Rogaine with saw palmetto and beta sitosterol added and use Nizoral shampoo) you will probably see even better results than using Scalp Med and the cost will be only a fraction of what you will pay for Scalp Med.
But you must stick with the routine for a long time before you will see any results. I go into this in more detail on my site.
Understand something however. There are no miracle cures for hair loss. Regrowth takes a long time and results are never as good as we would like. It is far easier to prevent further hair loss than it is to regrow lost hair. Fortunately the same things you do to regrow hair are the same things you do to keep what hair you have left.
I agree with Joe regarding the saw palmetto. I have read about it on a site called http://www.trustedhairloss.com/
Trusted Hairloss, The Ramblings of a Bald Man.
This guy breaks down all of the products he has used over the years. He claims scalp med does work but a product called Provillus which contains Azelaic Acid and uses a tablet containing saw palmetto. He uses this in conjunction with the Nizoral shampoo and claims to have better results than Scalp Med for half the cost. A 6month supply is about $200.
I like his study and I think I am going to follow his advice and try the Provillus and Nizoral.
Thanks for helping to confirm my choice Joe.
Anecdotal evidence doesn’t really prove anything.
IVE BEEN USING SCALP FOR 2 MONTHS AND MY HAIR IS GROWING BACK I TRIED SEVERAL OTHER PRODUCTS ON THE MARKET WITH NO RESULT
i have been using the so called best product on the market called provillus for close to 6 months now
I don’t really see any improvement at all. So I think provillus is just s scam and they have good sales people scalp med has got to eb good sinec I ahve seen it on commercials and even on talk shows
Just because a product is on talk shows and commercials doesn’t mean it works.
Hey I have been using scalp med since just after last xmas and I am growing my hair back and my big hairs stoped falling out and new smaller ones grow in and grow bigger. now if I do notice a cupple hairs falling out they are very small! this is great because not only did it stop my long hair from falling out it regrew my hair. Now the problem is it works for me slow. I have all my hair back its just some are small and need to have time to grow. Scalp med worked for me and I will use it till my hair is well grown in then I will use the reg minoxidil to maintain it. If you are thinning use minoxidil now before you lose a lot, if you lost a lot and need to grow your hair try scalp med. the nutisol gives good oils to scalp and vitadil grows hair and then cortex thing makes hair shaft and cuticles bigger so the new hair you grow gets thick fast. this is not a scam but it would be nice if it worked faster. but I am very happy.
minoxidil5% is the same as Regaine Extra Strength. There are no differences in composition or quality because Kirkland Minoxidil 5% is actually manufactured by Pfizer, the same company that makes Regaine.
Regain works for my extremly well,she saw results after one month.So i thought i should give it a try but unfortunatly it didn’t work for me.Maybe i gave up too early.But i do believe with any product it may not work or have the same effect for everyone.
I am one week into using Scalpmed. So far its really easy to use, and leaves my hair feeling soft and nice and full. Obviously, not much else to report at this juncture, but will keep you all posted.
GR Hair Solutions LLC is actually a very large company; Guthy-Renker, a 1.5 billion dollar company behind Proactiv and other infomercial products. The ingredients list of Scalp Med show that it contains minoxidil, they just use the name “Vitadil” to distinguish it, but its the same minoxidil ingredient you can buy at any drugstore for much less.
Rogaine works for some people, but it also causes RAPID weight gain in some people, and rapid heart beat, blisters on scalp etc… its a bad scene.
Scalpmed works. I have been using it for last 3 years on and off again. Your hair grows back for sure. But once you stop it falls out again. But good thing about it once you start up again, it grows again. Btw..I did have a hair transplant on top. They started me on propeica after surgery but didnt really see as much growth as I thought I would have. So I found and tried scalpmed to supplement. And for sure 100% no BS or being paid to write this, scalpmed grew my hair as well as my transplant hair much more. I have tried propecia and rogaine and neither one has grown my hair as it has with scalpmed. If you want you can check my wedding dance that I posted on youtube and you can see that I have some scalp showing but less that 3 months prior before wedding. Around this time I started up again with Scalpmed. Here is my youtube wedding dance. Better if you click HD below in red to see in clearer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQbuoEN1HDY
I’m 59 this month. Have tried several products mentioned above over the years. Scalp med works for me. The others did not. Its oily, so I only use it once a day (not twice) and its been almost 8 months now, but I’m pleased with the results. Its not real thick, but it is hair, where there was none.
I just have to say this:
i used for 3 months roggaine and i just lost hair (results must see after 6 months apparently)
but i use scalpmed and it works in the first 6 weeks.
is expensive, yes but it works
i use 2 months supply for 3 months because i only used 66% of the dosis.
For me works great.
Wilfredo
Puerto Rico
scalpmed works 4real ium 19 and been losing my hair sice i was 16 and in one use for 3 months i already saw i change u see that picture at the top of the web that was me and then scalp gave me hope i grew just about half of my hair and growing new hair routes now thats somthing that works i tryed 3 products that gave me nothing but this did try it it works
Braidwood says Rogaine causes rapid weight gain and rapid heart beat. Could this be true? All products cause this? What are other side effects.
Damn MOOSE, it not that serious did u have to be so harsh on Eric LMAO
I have read all the pros/cons about the hair growth products used. Minoxidil (Rogaine) was first used on my now deceased husband back in 1984 because he had lupus and primary pulmonary hypertension that wasn’t controlled. This medicine was in the test stage and had never been used on a human – but it keep him here for 6 years after being told he would die within one month. We noticed that within a couple of months the fine hair on his body had grown longer and thicker – side effect of taking the med. My question for people that use hair growth products (rogaine and others) do you realize that your blood pressure can be impacted negatively?
Get a hair piece!
If scalpmed had retin-a, wouldn’t it need a r/x to be sold? I do know that Dr. Lewenberg’s Formula combines the two together and for that you need a prescription that only he can write… I think because he’s patented the formula.
And like some people said, the high levels of rogaine can cause rapid weight gain and it increases your heart rate which can be very bad. So maybe the retin-a with minoxidil is the right way to go because it only increases the effects on your hair and not your heart… I read a pretty interesting description of the how and why on the guys site… hairformula.com So I think I’m gonna give it a shot, besides, at least he’s an actual doctor I can talk to and not some big billion $ corp.
All very interesting. I shall keep you all posted on the results of what happens to my Hair.