Want to know how to prevent hair loss during chemo? Cold capping, or scalp cooling, can help. Cutting Loose is partnering with a national non-profit organization called HairToStay this Breast Cancer Awareness Month to help those in chemo save their hair. Read on to see how it works!
The day you get a cancer diagnosis is a day everything changes. You go from your normal daily routine to a series of tests, procedures, and therapies that you never imagined would be your reality. If you’re told that you have to undergo chemo, it used to mean that you’d definitely be losing your hair, but now there is hope that you don’t have to. Scalp cooling, or cold capping, is a medical technology that is saving the hair of thousands of women across the globe, and giving cancer patients access to a little more control over how they look during and after treatment.
Although cold capping is relatively new to the United States, it’s been successfully saving the hair of people undergoing chemotherapy for solid-tumor cancers across Europe and Canada for decades. It works by bringing the temperature of the scalp down significantly during chemotherapy infusions in order to restrict blood flow to the scalp and prevent the harsh drugs from attacking the hair follicles. In general, 50%+ hair retention is considered to be successful, but a lot of people save much more. Even if your hair looks noticeably thinner after chemo, scalp cooling helps with regrowth, so you’re back to normal quicker than you would have been without it.
For years, the only cold caps available were manual caps or caps made with Elasto-Gel. With manual scalp cooling systems, you rent four to five caps from the company and then manually cool them down in an ice chest with dry ice. You bring that chest to the infusion center with you, and then every 20 minutes your chemo buddy helps you switch out the cap with one that’s just off the ice, so your scalp remains below a certain temperature that’s determined by your specific therapy.
Scalp cooling machines are the new kid in town, so to speak. They’re making the process easier and more precise, and systems like Paxman and Dignicap have even recently earned FDA approval as a therapy for the prevention of hair loss during chemotherapy. With these machines, there is a single cap that you wear throughout your infusion, through which the machine circulates sub-zero fluid to keep your scalp at a constant low temperature. Although more and more cancer centers are investing in the machines, they’re still not as widespread as we’d like to see, in part because it’s a costly machine and a costly process, and is not covered by health insurance providers.
The big downside to cold capping is the cost, which can run into the thousands for either manual or machine scalp cooling. For this reason alone, a lot of people in the past opted out of scalp cooling, as it was another cost they couldn’t afford in an already expensive treatment schedule. Despite the FDA approvals, most health insurance companies treat scalp cooling as an experimental therapy and refuse to pay for it.
This is where HairToStay comes in.
HairToStay is the first and only national nonprofit dedicated to helping cancer patients afford scalp cooling, whether they choose manual cold capping or an automated scalp cooling system. They bring in money through donations and fundraisers that go directly to grants for women who cannot otherwise afford cold-capping. The grants are need-based and cover up to $1,500 per patient, putting cold-cap therapy within reach for those who would otherwise never be able to afford it. They also devote efforts to spreading the word about scalp cooling so more people going through chemotherapy know it’s an option.
As stylists who deal with our guests’ hair every day, we at Cutting Loose know how connected you are to your hair. When it comes to having cancer, retaining as much hair as possible means retaining as much of your old self as possible too.
When we learned about HairToStay we knew we had to get involved, and we’re proud to announce that we’re partnering with HairToStay to raise money so that more women across the country, even right here in University and Lakewood Ranch, can use cold capping to prevent hair loss during chemotherapy. If you would like to give back by helping us support HairToStay, you can make a donation through us. For more information about how we’re honoring Breast Cancer Awareness Month, give us a call at our University location at 941-358-6000 or our Lakewood Ranch location at 941-404-7100.
