Avacor

This heavily promoted hair restorer comes as pills, lotion, and shampoo and costs $500 to $1,000 a year. Avacor is just one in a long line of baldness "remedies." The Avacor label uses obscure names to hide common herbs, but the Avacor pills contain a hodgepodge that includes ginkgo, horsetail, bilberry, and saw palmetto. Of these, only saw palmetto might help against baldness, since it appears to have some of the same effects in the body as finasteride (brand name Propecia, an approved prescription drug for hair growth). However, even if saw palmetto did help, there is no way to know how much is in Avacor. The Avacor lotion for the scalp may contain minoxidil, though it’s hidden behind its chemical name. Minoxidil is the FDA-approved hair-loss drug (brand name Rogaine), now sold over the counter at about $10 to $20 for a month’s supply. Minoxidil may help some people grow a little hair, but its success rate is far less than the 90% claimed for Avacor.

Claims, purported benefits: Restores hair in nearly all balding men and women, specifically androgenic alopecia, the very common inherited form of balding that affects both men and women.

Bottom line: If you want to try minoxidil and/or saw palmetto, you can buy them for a small fraction of what Avacor costs. Avacor’s other ingredients are all questionable, and some of the herbs may have adverse effects or drug interactions. The Better Business Bureau has alerted the Federal Trade Commission about the unsubstantiated claims made in Avacor’s ads.