Check your chemo drug regimen with Penguin Cold Caps

Taking control of your hair loss

To get through this stressful time, it’s important to find coping mechanisms that help you control the fear, anxiety, and panic. When faced with something frightening, our bodies naturally release adrenalin, which prepares us to run or take flight to escape our situation. But the ancient response that protects us from a predator or intruder can become a problem when it manifests itself in the wrong situations. The more you worry or stress, the more your symptoms are likely to increase, leaving you feeling like you have no control over the cancer.

Hair loss is one of the most common side effects of receiving cancer treatment, which can be challenging for your physical appearance and emotional well-being. But, depending on your drug regimen, this is one side-effect you can do something about and take back control.

Chemotherapy drugs are designed to kill cells with a ‘fast division rate’, such as cancer cells. The cells in our hair bulbs divide every 23 to 72 hours, remarkably faster than any other cell in the body. Unfortunately, chemo drugs can’t tell the difference between hair and cancer cells and inadvertently kill the cells in our hair bulbs too, resulting in hair loss.

A cancer diagnosis is difficult to cope with and feeling anxious and scared about what will happen to you is normal. Your primary fear is likely to be about your chance of survival, which will very much depend on your type of cancer, how advanced your cancer is, and the treatment you have. You might also be worrying about the side effects of your treatment, including hair loss.

With medical advancements and early screening, cancer survival rates have doubled in the last 40 years . At the same time, palliative care and hair loss technologies, such as cold capping, have developed to such an extent that patients have far more choice and greater control than they ever had before.

What is Penguin Cold Cap therapy?

Cold Cap therapy is a non-invasive treatment that is proven to help patients save up to 90% of their hair on chemo. And it really works – see Penguin Cold Cap user stories

A cold cap filled with a specially formulated Crylon Gel reaches super cold temperatures yet remains soft and pliable. This enables the cold cap to fit snugly to the patient’s head and cool their scalp to the optimal temperature. The hair capillaries (blood vessels) around the hair bulbs are cooled into a hibernated state, which stops the hair bulb from absorbing the damaging chemotherapy drugs.

Penguin Cold Caps is a manual system, which means the caps can be fitted very snugly to the head to ensure the whole scalp reaches the right temperature. Machine cooling systems struggle to mould as tightly to the head as a manual system, which is why machine cooling can lead to bald patches. Although some hair loss is expected, with all cold capping systems, users of Penguin Cold Caps do not experience patchy hair loss. Any shedding is evenly spread across the scalp and, therefore, less noticeable.