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Stay Cool Megan: 'Cold Cap' Therapy Prevented Hair Loss for Pro Snowboarder
by Alexandra Kilpatrick
Former British Columbia pro-snowboarder Megan Pischke didn't mess around when it came to dealing with chemotherapy-induced hair loss after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012.
Instead, the star athlete regularly used cold cap therapy, which prevented alopecia during her chemotherapy by freezing her scalp and hair follicles.
What is Cold Cap Therapy?
In the process of killing cancer cells, chemotherapy drugs tend to also harm normal cells, including those found in the hair follicles, which leads to hair loss. Many dread this side effect, if only because it reveals their illness which they would prefer to keep private.
Pischke reached out to a United States-based company called Penguin Cold Caps, after researching the cold cap therapy's clinical trials and receiving approval from her physicians.
The cold cap therapy is quite a success, as Pischke informed Canada AM. After receiving 16 chemotherapy treatments, the married mother of two has not experienced any hair loss.
"I really felt like I wanted to keep this story really close to home and really personal, especially in the beginning," Pischke told Canada AM. "I wanted to keep a sense of normalcy for myself and also for my children."
Pischke's husband helped her place one of the eight cold caps, rotated in and out of coolers for seven hours. She changed the cold caps every half hour and kept them at a frosty temperature of about -26 degree Fahrenheit, either on dry ice or placed in a special freezer.
How much are Cold Caps?
The cold caps came at no small cost. Between buying dry ice coolers and storage and renting the pricy caps, Pischke paid about 4,000 dollars for the cold cap therapy.
Luckily, much of Pischke's therapy was paid for by the snowboarding community and Boarding for Breast Cancer, a non-profit organization Pischke has been involved with for 15 years that provides support programs for breast cancer patients.
"The first few minutes of the first few caps definitely is a pretty intense, (like an) ice-cream headache," Pischke told Canada AM. "But you get pretty numb and then it doesn't seem to bother you toward the end. That's something for all women to decide with their doctors, with their partners."
Stay tuned to HairLossSpecialists.com for more news on Megan’s progress and the widespread circulation of Cold Cap therapy. Hair restoration breakthroughs are truly amazing, aren’t they? If you would like to learn more about your own hair restoration goals, please contact our team of representatives today. They will help you schedule a consultation with a hair loss specialist in an area near you!
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