Health & Fitness

PROMISING PROTOCOL I ON THE COVER

Gail Zimmerman
Arts Editor

A

Kim Higginbottom of
Farmington Hills undergoes
low level laser therapy, or
LLLT, at Renew Hair & Skin
Center in Bingham Farms.

ctress Jamie Lee Curtis knew what she was talking
about when she said: "People get real comfortable with
their features. Nobody gets comfortable with their hair.
Hair trauma. It's the universal thing."
For individuals experiencing hair loss — both men and
women — that trauma of looking in the mirror every morning is
multiplied tenfold. There just are no good hair days.
Just ask Suzie Meklir and Robin Pluto. Meklir, 46, of Bloomfield
Township, and Pluto, 50, of Bloomfield Hills, are best friends and
co-founders of Renew Hair & Skin Center in Bingham Farms.
They opened their business in March 2010 — and have since
tripled their space — after Meklir's own harrowing experience
with hair loss.
'About eight years ago, I began to experience constant shed-
ding of my hair, with huge clumps in the shower and in the bath-
room after blowouts," explains Meklir, who is married with two
daughters and a member of Temple Israel in West Bloomfield.
"It was everywhere — on the table at restaurants and all over
me — to the point strangers would constantly be picking hair off
my clothing. I became hair obsessed — and depressed.
"I'm a very social person, but the hair loss started affecting
me when I'd go out. I didn't feel good about myself, and I wore a
baseball cap whenever I could."
Pluto, also the mother of two daughters and engaged to be
married in May, was right beside Meklir as the two women
searched for a solution to Meklir's increasingly thinning hair.
"Suzie had tried every product out there that promised hair
volume and hair growth — including fermented horse urine —
she was that desperate says Pluto, a member of Congregation
Shaarey Zedek in Southfield who previously worked in finance
and real estate.
Oft-prescribed topical solutions like minoxidil (Rogaine) and
Propecia were out of the question because Meklir, who has a
background in nutrition counseling, has a heart murmur and
was afraid of the drugs and their well-documented side effects.
She also didn't relish being beholden to a product she would have
to use every day for the rest of her life.
Meklir is the daughter of a pharmacist, and Pluto the daughter
of a physician — "so we have medical treatment in our blood,"
says Pluto. The friends embarked on a global search to find a
treatment to stem Meklir's hair loss and restore her previously
thick mane of healthy hair.
Then, about three years ago, they came upon a treatment
that has been popular in Europe for more than two decades
and recently has been touted by a number of medical profes-
sionals and in the media —a segment recently aired on ABC's
The Doctors
as the newest hope for hair loss: low level laser
therapy, or LLLT.

—

Renewe

Low Level Laser
Therapy (LLLT) offers
new hope for hair loss.

26

January 27 2011

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Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
According to the American Hair Loss Council, it is normal for
people to shed 50 to 100 hairs a day. About 90 percent of hair on
the scalp grows continually while the other 10 percent is in a rest-
ing phase that lasts two to three months.
At the end of the resting stage, this hair is shed and then
replaced by a new hair from the same follicle. The growing cycle
starts again. Scalp hair grows about one-half inch per month.
But, as estimated by the American Hair Loss Association, by
age 35, two-thirds of American men will experience some degree
of appreciable hair loss. By age 50, approximately 85 percent have
significantly thinning hair.
Furthermore, says the AHLA, "hair loss is mistakenly thought
to be a strictly male disease when women actually make up 40