in 2023 a class action lawsuit was filed against nutriful claiming it falsely promotes its hair growth products as quote clinically proven to reduce shedding the lawsuit argues that these statements are untrue because the studies that the company relies on are seriously flawed now this already doesn't look good for neutri however legal problems don't necessarely mean that the product doesn't work and neutral actually has been studied in a few clinical Tri trials but what do these trials reveal and how reliable are they and what results can you realistically expect from using neutraal for hair growth let's
dive into the lawsuit and examine the clinical studies on neutral more closely neutral references four studies on their website one focusing on women two on menopausal women and one on both men and women with ethnic hair the lawsuit claims that all four studies were financed by nutrifol and conducted by its own employees indeed this is accurate neutral funded all these studies not only that all these studies are co-authored by Sophia kogan MD who also acts as their research investigator interestingly Dr kogan is also the co-founder of neutr fall this is like having a referee playing
for one of the teams and then trying to call a fair game next the lawsuit contends that although neutral sells over a dozen products on its website only one of them neutral women's balanced has undergone testing in a randomized control trial or RCT I presume they mean a double blind RCT rcts are scientific studies where participants are randomly assigned to receive either the supplement being tested or a placebo which is a fake product to compare and gauge the supplements Effectiveness there are two relevant types here single blind and double blind rcts in a single blind
RCT only the participants are not aware of whether they're taking the supplement or Placebo while in a double blind RCT neither the participants nor researchers know who is taking what single blind trials are much weaker because even though participants don't know what they're taking the researchers do this knowledge could introduce biases particularly if the researchers co-founded the supplement that they're trying to sell nutrifol appears to have two double blind rcts and two single blind rcts however only neutr Falls women's and neutral women's balance were examined in double blind rcts the lawsuit argues that just because
one or two of their products were examined in a double blind RCT and could be reasonably considered maybe not clinically proven but at least clinically studied it doesn't mean that the other related products being sold on their website which were not tested at all in these trials can be deemed clinically studied as well this is also true you can't extrapolate study results from one product then go and make derivatives of it and imply that the other derivatives have also been studied by proxy it's kind of like claiming your whole family are expert chefs just because
you're related to Gordon Ramsay or something moving on the lawsuit dives into the actual studies themselves alleging that they suffer from improper and insufficient sampling sampling involves selecting groups for testing the supplement versus the placebo ideally the sampled population should be diverse and both groups should start as similar as possible at the start of the trial in one study from 2018 out of 40 individual studied 32 were Caucasian six were Hispanic and two were Asian another study in 2021 looked at 60 individuals with 40 being Caucasian 12 Hispanic five Asian two Pacific Islanders and one
mixed yet another study in 2022 which ironically was intended to assess neutr Fall's Effectiveness across diverse ethnicities included 87 patients with more than half being Caucasian 24 Asian and 16 African ameran this study wasn't even one of the double blinded trials the lawsuit goes on to point out that although nutriful prominently markets itself to black men and women none were included in either of of its double blinded rcts and only a grand total of seven black men and nine black women were ever studied taking nutrifol and in one of the weaker studies clearly there are
sampling and representation issues here proper sampling in rcts ensures that participants represent the population you're actually trying to benefit based on nutriful sampling the results are mostly representative of Caucasian women that's it additionally the small sample sizes of nutrifil studies ranging from 30 to 87 individuals further undermine their validity apart from sampling issues the lawsuit alleges the studies have improper exclusion criteria exclusion criteria are specific characteristics conditions or factors that disqualify individuals from participating in a clinical trial typically these criteria are set up by researchers to ensure participants safety and study Integrity however all of
nutrifil studies EX include many individuals with various hair growth related problems which seems odd considering the supplement is marketed to support hair growth and those most likely to seek hair growth supplements are usually those experiencing these hair growth related issues participants that were excluded from the studies included those with common hair loss conditions like alopecia Arata or androgenic alopecia those using other hair regrowth treatments and even those with severe hair loss even individuals with recent stressful events were excluded in one study despite stress being a known cause for temporary hair loss yeah it sounds like
they're excluding a lot of the types of people that would look for or need a hair growth supplement in the first place in the 2021 study the exclusion criteria also included quote other health conditions which in the opinion of the investigator might place the subject at greater risk or interfere with clinical eval valuations in other words what they're saying is our investigator who by the way co-founded the supplement we are testing right now can basically decide to choose whomever they want to exclude from this study in fact all of nutrifil studies only examine hair growth
in healthy adults with quote self-perceived hair thinning not in people with actual hair loss so what you're telling me here is that you guys tested a supplement meant for hair loss but not in people with actual hair loss rather you've chosen to test it in healthy people with no hair loss but felt like they had thinning hair what this is like testing a new acne treatment cream but instead of testing it on people who actually have acne you're only testing it on individuals with healthy skin who just think they might have pimples self-perceived hair thinning
involves an individual's own subjective assessment of their hair density and can be influenced by how they style their hair environmental conditions or even just how they felt that day actual hair loss on the other hand entails a measurable reduction in hair density due to various underlying factors such as genetics hormonal conditions medical conditions or medication side effects unlike self-perceived thinning actual hair loss May progress over time and result in noticeable bald patches or receding hairlines self- perceived thinning can get better over time time naturally while self-perceived thinning can often be addressed with cosmetic adjustments or
Lifestyle Changes treating actual hair loss typically requires medical intervention or therapeutic treatments aimed at halting or reversing the loss so what are my thoughts on all of this it's clear that the studies are flawed and carry an extremely high risk of bias it also seems that all these studies mostly indicate that neutri fall might slightly improve self self perceived thinning mainly in Caucasian women and has not shown any Effectiveness in treating actual hair loss ultimately it's important to recognize that nutrifol is a nutritional supplement not a treatment for hair loss of any kind however nutrifol
fails to acknowledge this and continues to Market itself as a solution for all types of hair loss the situation worsens when these weak and biased trials on branded supplements like nutrifol are included in system atic reviews leading to reviewers mistakenly believing there's high quality evidence supporting these Brands this is simply untrue and when the Baseline data isn't properly examined these reviews end up perpetuating the misconception that these supplements are highly effective based on flawed and biased trials it becomes even more concerning when media Outlets report on these trials because let's face it these Outlets aren't
going to be critically analyzing the dat from these literature reviews one of the dangers lies in physician owned supplement companies Dr Sophia kogan is a board certified dermatologist and she has more than enough knowledge and skill as a physician to design and present a research study to favor the results she's looking for I'm not suggesting she did so but when someone with that expertise has a $150 million incentive to do so well that's what we call a conflict of interest hi I'm Dr Brian Young what do you think about neutr fall and what are your
experiences let me know in the comments down below and if you found this video helpful please subscribe to the channel and leave me a like hit the notification Bell if you want to stay up to date and share this video with some you know use the [Music] info
