| Author | Message | ||
     Anonymous |
Could not washing your hair very often help with hairloss? The reason i am asking this is because white people are more commonly bald than black people. Due to their hair type, most black people don't wash their hair very often and their scalps are more greasy. I'm in college, and it was exam week and i was pulling all nighters to study for exams, and i didn't wash my hair or take a bath for like 3 full days(pretty bad i know). My hair was really greasy and smelled kinda like fruit roll-ups, but when i used my hands to brush out the shedded hairs on to my notebook paper as i usually do, i noticed it was nowhere near as much as i usually see. So after this wierd as crap i have just explained, do u think not washing your hair can have a positive effect on hairloss? | ||
| Tom Hagerty (Admin) |
Anonymous: "...wierd as crap" is right. The telogen hairs (hairs in the resting stage of the hair cycle) are going to fall out if you shampoo or not. Many dermatologists think that excessive oil on the scalp may be loaded with DHT. This DHT ultimately has an adverse effect on the hair follicles. My advice is to use a good shampoo at least a few times a week so that you keep your hair and do not smell like a fruit roll-up. But why is it that some homeless people who never wash their hair and smell like a dozen fruit roll-ups could win a best hair contest? | ||
| Anonymous |
Heh, "a dozen fruit roll-ups," i like that. Maybe oil keeps DHT from bonding to the hair. Hell, maybe i could give a homeless person some money for a full scalp transplant. Heh, imagine that! Isn't it true that african american's scalps are pretty oily? According to dermatalogists, wouldn't they experience more baldness than white people, but it's the other way around. Oh yeah, another question. When hair falls out from the areas where i am balding, i often notice white build-up on the hairshaft. What is this, DHT? | ||
| Tom Hagerty (Admin) |
Anonymous: An oily scalp is just a minor factor in hair loss. Is it really true that African-Americans experience less baldness than other groups? I haven't seen any statistics on this. If you know of any, tell me where I can find them. That white bulb at the end of your hairs that fall out is characteristic of telogen hairs - hairs that are going to fall out no matter what you do. This plug is composed of the hard protein keratin plus some inner root sheath material. These hairs are called club hairs because of this little white handle at the end. Nothing to worry about. | ||
| Anonymous |
It's not the bulb at the bottom that i am talking about. The hair has the bulb, then it has a sheath of material about 5mm long wrapped around the bottom of the hair shaft. I've never really read any info on this, do you have any idea on what it is? About the Afican-American thing, I know that i read that somewhere, I'll try to find it and post when i do. | ||
| Anonymous |
I'm not real sure about how legit this site is, but I don't think they would have any reason to lie about this subject. http://www.thickerhair.com/hairloss2.htm | ||
| Tom Hagerty (Admin) |
Anonymous: A 5 mm sheath of material wrapped around the hair shaft - it could be material from the inner root sheath of the follicle. Sometimes when the hair dislodges, the thin film of inner root sheath adheres to the hair shaft. This is unusual though. Most often there is just a keratinized plug of white material 1 or 2 mm in length. I read the page you gave me the link to. The description of hair loss in different racial types seems accurate. The Chinese and Japanese men who still live in their country of origin don't have much hair loss. But when they come to the United States they have a lot. Maybe it's the western diet. I'm around Oriental people a lot. The Chinese men (at least in Chicago) are going bald at a ferocious rate. | ||
| Rafael |
Tom, I wash my hair only once a week. In the begining its was awfull, because my hair felt very greasy. Is not greasy anymore, and has stabilized. My father has all his hair, and told me, that using products for hair loss, will not work. So I stopped using those called "miracle shampoos" or products. My hair its fine, I´m doing the exercises, and I´m really happy. No new hair has grown in the top, butit has kept my hair that I have very healthy. Thank You AGAIN Tom, Cordial, Rafael Delmar | ||
| Anonymous |
So did you experience less hair-loss after you reduced how much you wash your hair? | ||
| Peter Jason |
We seem to have a bit of a paradox going as regards hairloss. People who are more likely to be malnourished: EG homeless people and those who are starving in places such as Ethiopia do not suffer from excessive hairloss (at least in relation to a lack of food as we might imagien if food was a component in hairloss) . I remember live aid/band aid and I don't remember the Ethiopians as beign largely bald. From thsi it would be easy to suggest that food has nothing to do with hairloss. Yet: immigrants to western nations such as the UK or U.S do suffer from increased hairloss. Whilst many will no doubt adopt western eating patterns to an extent, I cannot believe a whole group would abandon their culture on mass for burgers and fries. Could it be that even a small amount of western diet is terrible for hair? If that were the case wouldn't nearly all Europeans be bald as a coot ? Comparing the cases of the starving with cultural / dietary changes it seems its not how much we leave out but what we put into our diets. Japeneses people have suffered greater hairloss since the Second World War and therefore the arrival of Uncle Sam. Some dietery changes must have occured at this time. From my own observation the long term homeless and mental impaired either lose their hair very young or keep most of it. My university days were spent living in an area with two mental health homes in an ecnomically deprived area. Most of the patients spent their days drinking in the pub and it was quite obvious that most either lost their hair when they very young or not at all. Mental illness can sometimes be related to an imbalance of copper - a key component in hair growth. Could it be that those who lost early were copper defficient and those who kept permenantly suffered from too much copper ? This leads to a horrible conclusion, and one I am reluctant to accept: That homeless people also have an imbalance of copper. However this is like saying that all homeless people (longterm) have always been mentally ill, or the lifestyle has somehow caused mental illness through copper imbalance.I find this a very uncomfortable conclusion and am unwilling to consider it. Apart from the massive alchol consumption of the mentally imapired/ homeless I knew (beer has high calorific value) I would suggest that the higher calorie diets of the west are the only common link between all these phenomemon. By this logic New Orleans should be the most bald place on Earth ! I doubt there is any evidence to support this. | ||
| Tom Hagerty (Admin) |
Peter Jason: You're all over the map with this one - Ethiopia, the UK, Japan, even one of my favorite cities, New Orleans. Let me bring in China too. This is from the Encarta Encyclopedia: "Dietary differences are believed to explain why the incidence of prostate cancer in the United States is 120 times greater than in China. In China fatty foods [red meat] are not part of the general diet." I'm sure you know of the link between prostate problems and male pattern baldness. Proscar (Propecia) was developed as a drug to combat benign prostatic hyperplasia. (Thanks Kilimanjaro for the correction.) | ||
| Anonymous |
So what do chinese people eat besides rice, noodles, and seseme chicken? In other words, how can I change my diet to be more like their's? Also, is it true that foods high in iron are bad for your hairloss because iron causes an increase in testosterone? | ||
| Tom Hagerty (Admin) |
Anonymous: I'm not an expert on what the Chinese eat. I do know, though, that in China and Japan people do not eat much red meat. Too much iron in your body in not a good thing for many reasons. This excess iron is stored in the liver and may cause problems - perhaps an increase in testosterone is one problem. For men 10 milligrams a day is sufficient. The iron you get from meat (organic) is highly absorbed. The iron you get from plant sources (inorganic) is not absorbed as readily. | ||
| Anonymous |
not washing your hair makes it look gud if u leave it for say a month kinda goes like dreds haha class still was your body tho of course of course | ||
| hammad ahmed |
my hairs been falling out and my doctor did a blood test. He goes it was because of lack of iron. Not in the blood but iron stores. So he prescribed me iron talets. :s so shouldnt iron be good??? | ||
| Tom Hagerty |
Hammad Ahmed: You had low serum ferritin. I would suggest eating lean meat because the iron in meat is quickly absorbed. The iron in tablets is not so adequately absorbed, but if you don't eat meat the tablets are OK. It sometimes takes months to get your serum ferritin up to 70 ng/ml or higher. Be patient. | ||
| hammad ahmed |
thanks for that because i have been taking the tablets for long. But will my hair grow back from where it fell out. Is my hair falling out because of this lack of iron? | ||
| cometoid |
I don't know what guilt started this Chinese diet crap. I watched a PBS special in which fat, white people traveled around outer Mongolia by steam locomotive. Outside of the third-world cities, it was all dirty desert and shacks. In the deserts, I saw sodas, chocolate bars, and meat-stuffed dumplings made of some kind of white flour. I didn't notice any of the Mongolians balding or eating any vegetables at all. However, the whites were eating fruit and vegetable dishes on the train. If polished white rice is the staple of Asia, and they say it contains everything your body needs, how is that substantially better than the refined flour in twinkies? Of those Asians which dwell in jungles too far away from agribusiness to support them with big sacks of rice, what are they subsisting on if not wild game? | ||
| jeffbarnes |
ive done alot of research lately on www.longhaircareforum.com there is a wealth of info there by a HUGE community of women obsessed with growing LONG hair....Most of them advocate not washing hair but maybe every 2 weeks...they do however use alot of leave in conditioners and oils/moisturizers....not sure if they wash with water or not....most of them say there hairs grows much thicker and grows faster when they dont wash....they are also raving about a topical called SURGE as far as extreme thickening and New hair growth and regrowth....its only like $5 for 12 oz of this leav=in so im gonna try it | ||
| cherry green |
I'm an African American/black woman and I wash my hair once a week, but I message my scalp almost everyday and my hair still grows slow compared to the caucasion women that I've seen who can grow short hair to or past their shoulders in about six months but why does it take me a couple of years to achieve the same length . I'm healthy and eat a good diet and shower and work everyday like anyone else. Can anyone help me with the answer to this question? | ||
| Tom Hagerty |
Cherry Green: African hair is almost always fragile and super delicate. It breaks easily and is damaged by certain styling procedures. But instead of my going on here, let me suggest an excellent book that you'll find at the public library: Don't Go Shopping for Hair-Care Product Without Me by Paula Begoun. Look for the 3rd edition. Chapter eight - "For Women of Color" starting on page 161 will give you a fantastic amount of honest, useful information. And I think you'll need this information because there is so much false information about the care of African hair - information that can hurt your hair. There is also an array of products for African hair that are absolute disasters. Please read Paula's book. She's a no-nonsense gal. | ||
| Colm F |
One thing i have observed is that my hair looks better after 2 or 3 days without washing it. For this reason, i hate washing it as it seems to sit much better when it's a bit greasy/flaky. I usually wash it about twice a week but if i was going out for a night,i would prefer to wash it the night before as i don't really use gel or anything before i go out. Rather ironic, n'est ce pas? | ||
| Anonymous |
I'M A GIRL AND I HAVE VERY LONG HAIR what will happend to my hair i'm devasvated becasue iheard i can losse alot and get bald spots because i havent washed it in 2 weeks IS THIS TRUE I THOUGHT THE OILS WILL MAKE IT STRONGER???? |
