A popular weight-loss regimen stunts hair growth, data collected from mice and humans suggest. The study’s findings show that intermittent fasting, which involves short bouts of food deprivation, triggers a stress response that can inhibit or even kill hair-follicle stem cells, which give rise to hair.
The results, published in today in Cell, suggest that although short-term fasting can provide health benefits, such as increased lifespan in mice, not all tissue and cell types benefit.
Hair regrowth over roughly 100 days was much quicker in mice allowed to eat whenever they wanted (top row) than in mice allowed to eat for only 8 hours per day (middle) or mice allowed to eat only every other day (bottom row).Credit: H. Chen et al./Cell.