Pig Bladder to Cure Baldness?

We’ve all heard about cures for fixing hair loss but few ever pan out the way we hope. If anything, you end up losing more hair over the amount you spend on plugs, foams, oral medications, shampoos, etc. But what if there was a way to stop baldness—in 30 minutes.

Even more unexpected—the ingredient used to do so can probably be found in your butcher’s waste bin. I’m talking about pig bladders, people. That forgotten organ has those suffering from hair loss a buzz, thanks to a new trial. The process doesn’t sound too difficult; doctors take a mixture of platelet-rich plasma from the patient’s own blood and mix it with a powder extracted from pig bladders. The only downside that I can think of is that you’ll have a pig bladder mixture being injected into your scalp which is just mildly digesting. Even if one was able to get past the gross-out factor, this treatment might be at odds with religious beliefs. Some religions don’t want you to eat pork; I doubt being injected with it will be any different.

The trials for the said cure are performed by Raghu Reddy at the Private Clinic in Harley Street with the help of Gary Hitzig who developed the powder pig bladder extract in the United States. 20 British men have been selected to try it out. The purpose of the pig bladder is to trick the body into thinking the scalp cells are in a pre-birth state, which reactivates them.

Now before you start strapping pig bladders to your head or begin a ‘three pig bladders a day’ meal plan, let me explain how the pig bladder extract is produced:

1. A pig bladder is cut open and spread out.

2. You scrape off the muscle and leave the collagen-rich tissue.

3. You then clean out the tissue in an acid bath.

4. Finally, leave the bladder out to dry and grind the dried organ into a powder.

Once again, do NOT try this at home. I’m no health inspector but I imagine that the pig bladder could make for an unsafe work environment.

The pig bladder is no stranger to the limelight. Back in 2008, a man cut the tip of his finger off; not wanting to deal with a stump for the rest of his life, he took matters into his own hands. He used a powder of pig’s bladder and doctors claimed that it was able to grow back his flesh, tendon, skin, fingernail, fingerprints—all within a month.

Still, there are those skeptical of that story and of the pig bladder as a whole. But should this pig bladder thing prove to be successful, and you needed a quick hair loss cure, would you be willing to get the pig bladder injection?