Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• Researchers believe that sugar naturally occurring in the human body can help stimulate hair growth.
• Hair regrowth came after the formation of new blood vessels, thanks to a boost in the blood supply to hair follicles.
• Male pattern baldness impacts up to 50 percent of men worldwide with few FDA-licensed treatments.

We’ve all been told that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, but research shows that a it may also help regrow hair. It gets a bit more scientific than that, but a study shows there’s some promise in using a naturally occurring sugar found in the human body to stimulate blood flow to form new blood vessels and encourage hair regrowth.

Testing the method worked in mice, and we all know the best laid schemes of mice and men may coexist, especially in a world where up to 50 percent of all men encounter male pattern baldness.

In a 2024 study publishedin the journal Frontiers in Pharmacology, researchers at the University of Sheffield and COMSATS University Pakistan found that the natural sugar 2-deoxy-D-ribose (2dDR) can stimulate hair regrowth.

“Our research suggests that the answer to treating hair loss might be as simple as using a naturally occurring deoxy ribose sugar to boost the blood supply to the hair follicles to encourage hair growth,” Sheila MacNeil, emeritus professor of tissue engineering at the University of Sheffield, said in a statement. “The research we have done is very much early stage, but the results are promising and warrant further investigation.”

With only two drugs licensed by the FDA to treat male pattern baldness, a naturally occurring condition brought on by genetics, aging, stress, and hormones, MacNeil believes that the researchers are on track for something altogether new.

As researchers spent eight years studying how the sugar can help to heal wounds on mice by promoting the formation of new blood vessels, they saw that the hair around those healing wounds appeared to grow more quickly compared to those that hadn’t been treated.

In came more mice. To study the hair regrowth side of the blood vessel research, the scientists created a model of testosterone-driven hair loss in mice to mimic human-style male pattern baldness and found that applying a small dose of the naturally occurring sugar helped to form new blood vessels. New blood vessels directly led to hair regrowth within weeks.

The mice “demonstrated an increase in length, diameter, hair follicle density, anagen/telogen ratio, diameter of hair follicles, area of the hair bulb covered in melanin, and an increase in the number of blood vessels,” the authors wrote.

“This pro-angiogenic deoxy ribose sugar is naturally occurring, inexpensive, and stable, and we have shown it can be delivered from a variety of carrier gels or dressings,” Muhammed Yar, associate professor at COMSATS University Pakistan, said in a statement. “This makes it an attractive candidate to explore further for treatment of hair loss in men.”

Of the two drugs licensed to treat hair loss, minoxidil (brand name Rogaine) is topical and approved for men and women, and finasteride (brand name Propecia) is taken orally, has been linked to side effects, and is not considered suitable for women.

The study claims the deoxy ribose sugar proved as successful as minoxidil at regrowing hair, with both between 80 and 90 percent effective. That’s a lot of new blood vessels, and a fair bit of new hair.

“This could offer another approach,” MacNeil said, “to treating this condition.”