MONTREAL – Researchers at McGill University have released the results of a double-blind study involving the treatment of androgenetic alopecia, the condition commonly known as male pattern baldness. The answer to curing the disorder completely, the research shows, is eating a double helping of early-harvest zucchini at every meal, including breakfast.
“It even works faster if you also put some in a blender and rub the slurry on your head every couple of days,” said Rob Ernewine, the McGill research scientist who headed up the study.
The research study, named Project Billiard Ball, involved twelve hundred male volunteers, men between the ages of nineteen and seventy-nine, who showed symptoms of severe androgenetic alopecia. Half of them were put on a steady diet of zucchini as the principal vegetable supplement to every meal. The other six-hundred were fed a vegetable substitute that looked and tasted like zucchini, but was really a soy-based imitation.
Neither the subjects of the study nor the researchers knew which men received the helpings of bona fide zucchini and which ones ate the ersatz vegetable three times a day. The research was conducted over a period of twelve months, which, Ernewine said, was a major challenge. In order to be effective, the vegetables had to be eaten by the subjects within thirty-six hours of being picked from the field, in order to be effective.
“Do you know how hard it is to find early-growth zucchini in Montreal, in February? Don’t try and answer that,” he said. “Just imagine it. Our FedEx bills were astronomical.”
But in spite of all the logistic hurdles, he explained, the results of the study proved the efficacy of the zucchini as a cure for baldness, “without a doubt”. “When we factored out the placebo effect, more than eighty percent of the men who ate the zucchini had strong hair follicle re-growth within one month.”
Another member of the McGill project team, Joseph Kinsella, confirmed the double-blind protocol, which was put in place to prevent bias. “It was like the blind leading the blind,” he said. “Sorry, that’s a research joke.”
Kinsella explained that the easiest phase of the study was working around the daily meal schedules of the twelve-hundred volunteers. They were, he said, “amazingly flexible.” And the drop-out rate was negligible. He put it down to motivation.
“I think it’s safe to say that this was a very, very motivated group,” he said. “Can you imagine what a chocolate milkshake tastes like when it’s infused with zucchini?” Source: FNT Staff
Photo credit: Original images at Dr. Batra’s
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