First, one needs to differentiate between medical practice and the pharmaceutical industry on one hand and the cosmetics industry on the other. The medicinal and pharmaceuticals industries are strictly regulated in almost every country in the world, ensuring patient safety. Doctors can only prescribe certain medications for certain conditions and the safety and efficacy of such medications has to be approved by the national health supervisory authority. Such products are considered safe and clinically proven to help treat the given condition. If your doctor recommends you some other, unproven herbal hair-loss remedy, they will be taking the risk of supporting a treatment that has not been subjected to any rigorous clinical testing. Most doctors would not do that since they have no guarantee that such a product would be beneficial to their patients and recommending a bad treatment could hurt their reputation.

Although some of the active ingredients in herbal hair-loss products may pose a health risk, despite the common belief that they are safe, this is not their main controversy. The principal question is whether the herbal hair-loss remedies are effective in treating baldness. They might be effective to a certain degree since many of them also contain generic minoxidil, the only existing, clinically-proven and FDA-approved topical medicine for treating hereditary hair loss. Additional components, besides herbal extracts, usually include minerals, vitamins, essential fatty acids and amino acids. Most of these substances are either essential to ensuring healthy growth of hair and skin or they have been shown to promote hair growth, mostly in small studies conducted on rodents. They have never been clinically tested for treating hereditary baldness and thus their effectiveness and mechanism of action are unknown. They may or may not help promote new hair growth but since no clinical proof of their efficacy exists, the only way to find out is to buy them and try for yourself. And should they fail to work as promised, you may find out that the generous money-back guarantee, after deducting their incurred costs, only applies to a small portion of the original price. This is the way some herbal hair-loss product manufacturers make their money.

In summary, no herbal hair-loss remedy has ever been clinically proven and independently verified to treat hereditary baldness. This does not necessarily mean that all herbal hair-loss remedies are ineffective as they might work for some of us. However, they are usually overpriced and should at best be expected to maintain your existing hair rather than grow new hair from a bald spot.

The author of this article is the editor of GreyHairLoss, the platform dedicated to fighting greying and receding hair and evaluating the potency of commercial therapies for grey hair and hair loss.