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Hair Loss: The Pits · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
0:13
Speaker 1: Cubal Clark. There's Charles W. Mr Clean Bryant and Jerry
0:22
Speaker 1: Shad O'Connor rolling rounds it out for Stuff you Should Know.
0:27
Speaker 1: The hair loss edition. Remember when Sinad O'Connor and wheneveron
0:32
Speaker 1: got mad because she ripped up a picture of the
0:33
Speaker 1: boat to protest Catholic Church. Yeah, we talked about this
0:37
Speaker 1: like a couple of weeks ago, did we Yeah? Did Yeah?
0:43
Speaker 1: You go, You're going up in octave each time. It's
0:46
Speaker 1: pretty much I don't remember that. We talked about a
0:49
Speaker 1: saturatite live sketch where Frank Sinatra had her on and
0:52
Speaker 1: the dis and stuff. Of course the great Phil Hartman
0:56
Speaker 1: as chairman of the board. But Nato O'Connor wasn't losing
1:01
Speaker 1: her hair. She made a conscious decision to basically stick
1:03
Speaker 1: it to the establishment and say, hey, I'm shaving my head. Yeah,
1:08
Speaker 1: and you know, my um, I know that we haven't
1:10
Speaker 1: seen each other, but I'm I'm starting to get a
1:14
Speaker 1: little thin on the crown after my hair being like
1:18
Speaker 1: my only decent defining feature as a as a man
1:22
Speaker 1: for many years. Sure, it's starting to thin out a
1:25
Speaker 1: little on the crown that. I mean, it happens. Mine's
1:28
Speaker 1: been doing that for a little while. It is distressing
1:30
Speaker 1: at first, and then you just get used to it,
1:33
Speaker 1: especially when it's plateaus for a while, like your mind's
1:38
Speaker 1: in a plateau stage and I'm like, Okay, I can live.
1:41
Speaker 1: Let's just let's hold here. Okay, holding here. Um. But yeah,
1:46
Speaker 1: it is. It's a thing, for sure. It's not the
1:48
Speaker 1: funniest thing in the world to realize your hair is thinning. Yeah.
1:51
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not doing anything about it, certainly because
1:54
Speaker 1: I'm I don't know, I just I don't have that
1:56
Speaker 1: kind of vanity of other kinds of vanity. But it's uh,
2:00
Speaker 1: and I don't see it. So I was talking to
2:02
Speaker 1: Null about it a movie crush and he was like,
2:04
Speaker 1: you just gotta back out of every room you walk into.
2:08
Speaker 1: That is good advice. That's like hair club level of advice. Yeah.
2:12
Speaker 1: But I mean, I'll just you know, I've have I've
2:14
Speaker 1: shaved my hair about once a year anyway, so I'm
2:16
Speaker 1: fine to live that life too. Yeah, And I mean,
2:20
Speaker 1: it just it happens. It's one thing that like really
2:23
Speaker 1: kind of came through and researching hair loss is like,
2:27
Speaker 1: there's really nothing wrong with it. It's not medically debilitating.
2:30
Speaker 1: In most cases, we should say, pattern baldness the the
2:34
Speaker 1: far and away the most frequent reason people lose their hair,
2:38
Speaker 1: both men and women. There's nothing wrong with you. There's
2:41
Speaker 1: no disease, there's no there's no problem with your metabolic functioning,
2:46
Speaker 1: nothing like that. It's strictly cultural, like cultural norms and
2:51
Speaker 1: preferences of beauty. That's it. That's the only thing. You're
2:54
Speaker 1: just kind of involuntary violating beauty norms of your culture.
2:59
Speaker 1: And if the rest of the culture can just get
3:01
Speaker 1: over it, which they generally do, um, you can get
3:04
Speaker 1: over it too. And that's that. And I've just dug
3:07
Speaker 1: my own grave because now I'm going to have to
3:09
Speaker 1: take my own medicine and get over it. I'm sure
3:11
Speaker 1: all my hair is going to fall out in the
3:12
Speaker 1: next hour. No it's not. But you know, we're we're
3:16
Speaker 1: going to cover the types of hair loss and also
3:18
Speaker 1: some remedies, and we'll get into the couple of um
3:22
Speaker 1: sort of prescription remedies that they have found over the years,
3:27
Speaker 1: which really hit me today more than ever, sort of
3:30
Speaker 1: how cruelly it's one of them at least is which
3:34
Speaker 1: is like, Hey, if you're a young and single man
3:37
Speaker 1: and you're starting to lose your hair and you're worried about,
3:40
Speaker 1: you know, attracting ladies, we have something for you, and
3:43
Speaker 1: and it might give you a rectile dysfunction and you
3:46
Speaker 1: might not be interested in sex, but you'll have your
3:48
Speaker 1: hair back. You're gonna have some hair, baby, Like, man,
3:51
Speaker 1: what a what a weird cruel trade off? I know,
3:54
Speaker 1: chemistry giveth in, chemistry take it away. So I guess
3:58
Speaker 1: that was a spoiler, but I think most people know
4:01
Speaker 1: that and know what we're talking about. Yeah, we'll get
4:03
Speaker 1: into that in a little while. But first I think
4:05
Speaker 1: we should talk about if we're talking about hair loss,
4:07
Speaker 1: which we are talking about hair loss, we should talk
4:09
Speaker 1: about how hair grows in the first place, because it
4:12
Speaker 1: is just part of the natural order of things that
4:14
Speaker 1: your hair falls out. There's like three stages of hair
4:18
Speaker 1: growth that applies not just to human hair but also
4:22
Speaker 1: to animal for two, because don't forget you are an
4:25
Speaker 1: animal to human um and so we have the same
4:29
Speaker 1: three stages of growth, um, shrinkage, and then resting. Uh.
4:35
Speaker 1: That's basically the broad strokes of them, but it's a
4:38
Speaker 1: little more interesting in the details. Yeah, I mean I
4:40
Speaker 1: kind of linked um. I kind of thought of it
4:43
Speaker 1: as little gremlins under your scalp, little knitting gremlins. And
4:48
Speaker 1: when you're in that anagin phase A N A G
4:51
Speaker 1: E N, that is when your hair is growing and
4:54
Speaker 1: cells are forming a little protein root at the base
4:57
Speaker 1: of every little hair follicle that produces hair, and that's
5:01
Speaker 1: that's when those gremlins are down there knitting the hair.
5:04
Speaker 1: And they're continuously knitting, like you know, when hair is
5:07
Speaker 1: growing growing out of a follicle. They're just they're hard
5:10
Speaker 1: at work, and it just keeps going and keeps going,
5:12
Speaker 1: and you're cutting it and they they keep sending it
5:15
Speaker 1: through that shoot and everything's great. Yeah, And like that,
5:19
Speaker 1: those gremlins basically form an organ. Each of your hair
5:23
Speaker 1: follicles is basically an organ. There's a lot of stuff
5:26
Speaker 1: going on down there's a lot of a lot of
5:29
Speaker 1: growth factors and proteins working, and cells being converted from
5:33
Speaker 1: stem cells into epithelial cells and um. The um follicle
5:39
Speaker 1: is lined with muscles that are pushing the hair up
5:41
Speaker 1: as new new hair cells are formed. It's pretty interesting stuff.
5:45
Speaker 1: And this phase that you're talking about where the gremlins
5:47
Speaker 1: are really working in overdrive is called the Anergin phase
5:50
Speaker 1: and at lasts anywhere from two to six years for
5:54
Speaker 1: your hair, and you get haircut so often we used
5:57
Speaker 1: to before the pandemic that, um, you don't think like
6:01
Speaker 1: a single hair that you're getting cut like every you know,
6:04
Speaker 1: six or eight weeks. However often you go in, um
6:08
Speaker 1: it's trying to grow out for like six straight years,
6:10
Speaker 1: but you keep cutting it. It must be very frustrating
6:13
Speaker 1: for the hair follicle must be. The next phase is
6:19
Speaker 1: basically grimlins go on vacation. This is the I guess
6:23
Speaker 1: the catagin phase, and at some point this little protein
6:28
Speaker 1: cellsis matrix at the root of the hair follicle is
6:30
Speaker 1: gonna run dry. The follicle stops growing new hair cells,
6:35
Speaker 1: and those grimlins are taking some time off and that
6:39
Speaker 1: hair strand though it's not like that hair falls out immediately,
6:42
Speaker 1: it still is getting kind of pushed through and you
6:45
Speaker 1: think it's growing almost said it's growing. It's not. It's
6:47
Speaker 1: not growing anymore, but it's just being kind of pushed
6:50
Speaker 1: through to the very end. And finally it just pop
6:54
Speaker 1: goes through and that's it for that hair and that follicle, right,
6:57
Speaker 1: and so that that happens, I didn't even given points time.
7:00
Speaker 1: I think there's like, oh I saw the percentage. I
7:03
Speaker 1: can't remember right now, but there's like somewhere I think
7:05
Speaker 1: maybe six percent of your hair is in the cattagin
7:10
Speaker 1: phase at any given point in time, and you lose
7:12
Speaker 1: something like fifty to a hundred hairs a day off
7:15
Speaker 1: of your head totally normal. Those are just hairs that
7:18
Speaker 1: have reached that cattage and phase and finally got pushed
7:20
Speaker 1: all the way out. And I guess between the hair
7:24
Speaker 1: we lose and the dead skin cells that we slough
7:27
Speaker 1: off of our our epidermist every day, if you could
7:31
Speaker 1: manage to sweep it all together into a little pile,
7:33
Speaker 1: it way about one point five grams every day, hair
7:37
Speaker 1: and hair and dead skin you're losing. But imagine if
7:40
Speaker 1: you could like you know, collect that and really get
7:43
Speaker 1: a pretty good pile going after a few months. You know, well,
7:46
Speaker 1: I think there are some people you might do stuff
7:48
Speaker 1: like that. Sure, there are, there's there are definitely there's
7:51
Speaker 1: somebody who does everything, and there's probably some there's somebody
7:55
Speaker 1: who's turned on by the idea of that as well.
7:57
Speaker 1: Out there too, it cuts off to you guys, this
8:00
Speaker 1: skin cell collectors and the dead skin cell um kink kinks. Yeah,
8:06
Speaker 1: what about Yeah, for sure, we don't judge. What about
8:10
Speaker 1: the last as long as you're not harming anybody, right,
8:13
Speaker 1: that's right. What is the last phase? Because there's a
8:15
Speaker 1: third phase two that this is really like the resting
8:18
Speaker 1: phase where it's kind of regrouping, Like the gremlins are
8:21
Speaker 1: laying around there, spent, they're exhausted, they're catching their breath basically,
8:25
Speaker 1: that's the I mean, I think their vacation is kind
8:28
Speaker 1: of winding down at this point during the intelligent phase,
8:31
Speaker 1: and that, like you said, that's dormant. The follicle is
8:34
Speaker 1: sort of resting. Those gremlins are resting. Uh, they're forming
8:37
Speaker 1: and they're getting those needles sharp again to those knitting
8:40
Speaker 1: needles sharp, which in the body means they're forming a
8:43
Speaker 1: new protein matrix and they're getting ready to punch the
8:46
Speaker 1: clock and go back to work. And that dormancy is
8:49
Speaker 1: a few weeks. They get a few weeks maybe a
8:51
Speaker 1: few months off before it kicks off in that anagin
8:55
Speaker 1: phase all over again. Yeah, what's interesting, um, is you know,
8:59
Speaker 1: hair loss has been viewed as basically cosmetic. Like you know,
9:03
Speaker 1: almost all cultures. I couldn't find any that seemed to
9:06
Speaker 1: like really have no opinions about it. It seems like
9:08
Speaker 1: all cultures view hair loss as sucking, right, But in
9:13
Speaker 1: the West it's viewed as a cosmetic problem. So there
9:17
Speaker 1: hasn't been like a ton of research into it, certainly
9:20
Speaker 1: very little government funded research into it. Um. I am too,
9:26
Speaker 1: But it was explained in something I read that it's
9:29
Speaker 1: it's just cosmetic. It's like ts that happens, get over it.
9:32
Speaker 1: But in the in um the East, in Asian countries
9:36
Speaker 1: in particular, it's a much less frequent occurrence, but it's
9:41
Speaker 1: picking up UM and they think because of a more hectic,
9:44
Speaker 1: unhealthy lifestyle, more Asian men and like China career in
9:48
Speaker 1: Japan are losing their hair, especially in a younger age,
9:52
Speaker 1: and that is a big deal in those cultures, and
9:55
Speaker 1: so there's a lot more government funding that's being put
9:58
Speaker 1: into it in the last decade or so. But the
10:00
Speaker 1: interesting thing that stuck out to me is that we
10:04
Speaker 1: are learning about how hair grows by doing research on
10:08
Speaker 1: how to prevent hair loss. And we know less about
10:11
Speaker 1: how hair grows than I realized. So basically everything we
10:15
Speaker 1: said is a pretty good understanding, but there's still a
10:18
Speaker 1: lot of different components to the whole thing that science
10:22
Speaker 1: doesn't fully understand that we probably will have a better
10:25
Speaker 1: grasp on than in the next time to twenty years
10:28
Speaker 1: from hair loss research. Yeah, I think it's Asian heritage
10:31
Speaker 1: and African heritage, and uh, it seems like there was
10:34
Speaker 1: one more Native American Native American, right, they think they
10:39
Speaker 1: suffer hair loss less frequently. Yeah, from what I saw,
10:42
Speaker 1: it's Caucasian. White um and African American tend to be
10:46
Speaker 1: the two dominant groups for hair loss, but far and
10:50
Speaker 1: away white men lose their hair more than any other group. Well,
10:55
Speaker 1: that's why I was surprised that wasn't more research, even
10:58
Speaker 1: though it's cosmetic, because it's just largely white man. I
11:01
Speaker 1: was like, well, we need to get on this right now, gentlemen.
11:03
Speaker 1: It's happening to white man. Do I have to repeat myself? Yeah,
11:07
Speaker 1: that's a great point. Should we Uh let's take a
11:11
Speaker 1: break here, and well is that good with you? Yeah? Yeah,
11:13
Speaker 1: I think that's a great idea. Okay, I know that
11:16
Speaker 1: it's funny we get emails where people want us to
11:17
Speaker 1: come to blows over taking breaks. I know, do you
11:21
Speaker 1: guys ever get mad? Not want to take a break?
11:23
Speaker 1: Like not really? Huh? Do you? All? Right? Well, we
11:27
Speaker 1: will take a break then, since Josh agreed, and only
11:30
Speaker 1: because he agreed, and we'll come back and talk about
11:33
Speaker 1: some of the less common causes of hair loss right
11:35
Speaker 1: after this shot. Okay, So um, Chuck, you've heard the
12:04
Speaker 1: word alopecia before, right, yeah, for sure. Anytime I've heard alopecia,
12:10
Speaker 1: it's a it's in reference to the condition that I
12:14
Speaker 1: didn't realize, but it makes sense as an autoimmune disorder
12:17
Speaker 1: where you have no hair whatsoever, no eyebrows, no head hair,
12:21
Speaker 1: no hair on your legs anywhere. Um. But it turns
12:25
Speaker 1: out that all hair loss scientifically speaking of any kind,
12:28
Speaker 1: including you know, thinning of the hair that you and
12:30
Speaker 1: I have, is considered alopecia. And alopecia actually comes from
12:35
Speaker 1: the Greek for um, the Greek word fox, which makes
12:39
Speaker 1: tons of sense. Right, yeah, I thought that was kind
12:41
Speaker 1: of interesting. Um. Supposedly, in ancient Greece there were some
12:44
Speaker 1: foxes that could get a type of mange that caused
12:47
Speaker 1: him to lose hair and big patches, and so they
12:52
Speaker 1: just that's where the word came from. Uh. I'm not
12:54
Speaker 1: sure how it got transferred to humans, but you know,
12:57
Speaker 1: the ancient Greeks marched to the beat of their own drummer.
12:59
Speaker 1: I think somebody was being droll and said, oh, that's
13:03
Speaker 1: that's fox. Like really, that's what I'm getting from. And
13:06
Speaker 1: I know it was it was Hippocrates that popularized it.
13:09
Speaker 1: So that guy, Yeah, that guy, that guy, what are
13:15
Speaker 1: you doing what we do in the shadows? Yeah, but
13:18
Speaker 1: you gotta go that deafing guy. Uh, I know you're
13:22
Speaker 1: rewatching that right. Yes, it's so good. It's a good time,
13:26
Speaker 1: isn't it. Yes, it is. Um. So there are few.
13:29
Speaker 1: Like you said, it means any kind of hair loss,
13:32
Speaker 1: so obviously there are a few different kinds. But alopecia ariata,
13:36
Speaker 1: that is the autoimmune condition specifically that's gonna fool your
13:39
Speaker 1: body into attacking its own healthy cells because it's an
13:42
Speaker 1: autoimmune condition, and especially the hair follicles in this case.
13:47
Speaker 1: And if you have alopecia ariata, you're gonna lose hair
13:50
Speaker 1: and patches. Um. If you lose all the hair on
13:53
Speaker 1: your scalp, that's alopecia total us. And then I think
13:57
Speaker 1: what you were talking about. There is the most of
14:00
Speaker 1: air condition where you know, someone doesn't have any hair
14:03
Speaker 1: on their body at all. I can't remember the actor's name.
14:05
Speaker 1: Who Hank from Barry. I don't know who that is
14:09
Speaker 1: from Barry Barry. Yeah, remember Hank the gangster? You know,
14:15
Speaker 1: I didn't only watched a little bit of the first
14:17
Speaker 1: season of Barry, which one was Hank. Hank was the
14:20
Speaker 1: super lovable, like murderous psychopath who is like the I
14:26
Speaker 1: can't remember if they're Ukrainian. I think they're Ukrainian right there.
14:30
Speaker 1: It doesn't need like work for the Ukrainian mob. I
14:32
Speaker 1: don't know, man, I didn't get far enough into Berry
14:34
Speaker 1: and you met Hank. I promise, all right, Just I
14:37
Speaker 1: don't know if that's the actor I'm talking about, but
14:38
Speaker 1: there is a famous actor who suffers from alopecia, uh universalice.
14:44
Speaker 1: And that's the one where you don't have any hair
14:46
Speaker 1: on your body. Right um. But again, any like any
14:50
Speaker 1: kind of hair loss medically speaking, is referred to as alopecia.
14:54
Speaker 1: That is correct, and so um alopecia, like I was saying,
14:59
Speaker 1: it's a it's a autoimmune disorder and they're working on it,
15:02
Speaker 1: but it's basically they don't really have much of a
15:05
Speaker 1: cure for right now. Um. And the same goes from
15:10
Speaker 1: what I understand for another condition that has to do
15:13
Speaker 1: with hair loss called telligent fluvium um. And fortunately for
15:18
Speaker 1: people who have telligent fluvium that hair loss is kind
15:22
Speaker 1: of temporary. But really interestingly, it can come as the
15:26
Speaker 1: result of like a a profound emotional hardship. Yeah, it
15:32
Speaker 1: could be a life trauma or something. If you're some
15:36
Speaker 1: suffering from any kind of traumatic event, that could be
15:38
Speaker 1: the case. And this is when basically the gremlins are
15:43
Speaker 1: is uh, they're on like Aerosmith, they're on permanent vacation
15:47
Speaker 1: and it is stuck in the dormant phase for basically
15:51
Speaker 1: longer I guess semi permanent vacation because like you said,
15:53
Speaker 1: it is temporary, but it's stuck in that phase for
15:56
Speaker 1: longer than usual. And you know, it could be anything.
16:01
Speaker 1: You could have a big surgery that was stressful, or
16:04
Speaker 1: given birth or any sort of I mean, there could
16:07
Speaker 1: be just a traumatic emotional event in your life that
16:10
Speaker 1: caused that kicks us off. Yeah, and when your hair
16:12
Speaker 1: is in a normal UM cycle of growth like the
16:16
Speaker 1: Like I said, there's constantly hair that's in the the
16:20
Speaker 1: the cattagen phase, that resting phase of the intelligent phase,
16:23
Speaker 1: of the super resting phase of the re regrouping phase
16:26
Speaker 1: I guess UM. And then more most of them are
16:28
Speaker 1: in the engine phase. UM. With telligent effluvium, you've got
16:33
Speaker 1: the same cycle going on. It's just they stay in
16:35
Speaker 1: that cattagen phase longer, so there's less hair coming out
16:39
Speaker 1: at any given point in time or growing out at
16:41
Speaker 1: any given point in time, So it seems thinner, but
16:44
Speaker 1: again it's just temporary. Once you your body kind of
16:48
Speaker 1: goes back to its previous normal or baseline emotional state,
16:53
Speaker 1: it can it can be fine. UM. This can also
16:56
Speaker 1: come about from a thyroid deficiency or iron deficiency, and
17:01
Speaker 1: both of those things are involved UM. Thyroid growth hormone
17:05
Speaker 1: and iron are involved in cell division. Remember you talked
17:09
Speaker 1: about the gremlins working over time. Well, one of the
17:11
Speaker 1: things they're doing is UM growing cells, dividing cells very
17:17
Speaker 1: quickly to turn them into hair that's growing. And so
17:20
Speaker 1: if those two things aren't feeding this hair growth, UM,
17:25
Speaker 1: that can cause this telligent effluvium too. That's right. Uh.
17:29
Speaker 1: And then of course there's chemotherapy. Anyone who's ever had
17:33
Speaker 1: a family member or themselves been through the really powerful
17:37
Speaker 1: medications you have to endure with chemotherapy that can also
17:40
Speaker 1: lead to temporary hair loss UM and you know it's
17:44
Speaker 1: it's targeting cancer cells, but it's also targeting hair cells
17:48
Speaker 1: because what they're trying to do is stop the fast
17:51
Speaker 1: growing cells, and the hair cells are among those. So
17:55
Speaker 1: it is one of the unfortunate side effects of chemotherapy,
17:58
Speaker 1: but again temporary. And you know, our our heart goes
18:01
Speaker 1: out to anyone that's had to go through chemotherapy. It's
18:03
Speaker 1: really rough and most of us have probably seen it
18:06
Speaker 1: through someone that they know pretty closely. And hair loss
18:09
Speaker 1: can be a big, big, big part of it. UM.
18:13
Speaker 1: And then there's u androw genetic alopecia, And this is
18:17
Speaker 1: the one that is far and away the type of
18:21
Speaker 1: hair loss that that most people suffer, both men and women.
18:25
Speaker 1: It's called male pattern baldness is another word for it,
18:28
Speaker 1: but there's also pattern baldness for women as well. Um.
18:33
Speaker 1: It's just that again, if you're a white man, the
18:35
Speaker 1: chances are that you have some form of or some
18:39
Speaker 1: degree i should say of Androw genetic alopecia. Yeah, I
18:44
Speaker 1: think it's about of anyone who suffers from pattern pattern
18:49
Speaker 1: baldness are women. But it's not talked about as much,
18:53
Speaker 1: um I think, And it's it's not like it's only
18:55
Speaker 1: ten percent. I meant is substantial, but it's usually not
18:59
Speaker 1: as severe. So and it happens in a different way
19:02
Speaker 1: which we'll get to. But um, so it's it may
19:05
Speaker 1: not be as noticeable to others. And I think and
19:08
Speaker 1: that just with you know, probably male biases. The reason
19:11
Speaker 1: why you don't hear pattern baldm has talked about for
19:14
Speaker 1: women as much I would. I think you're exactly right
19:16
Speaker 1: for sure. Plus also, I mean the basis of it
19:19
Speaker 1: too seems to have to do with male sex hormones,
19:22
Speaker 1: So it seems like, you know, like it it it's
19:26
Speaker 1: more directed towards males in general as well. Well yeah,
19:30
Speaker 1: so what's what's the deal with that? So androw genetic
19:34
Speaker 1: um refers to the Greek root word ander for man um,
19:38
Speaker 1: and what it's really talking about our androgen's, which are
19:41
Speaker 1: um sex hormones, and in particular, one of the culprits
19:45
Speaker 1: is a form of testosterone called dihydro testosterone, which is
19:50
Speaker 1: like testosterone on testosterone basically, UM, when testosterone comes in
19:56
Speaker 1: contact with something called five alpha reductase, which is uh
20:01
Speaker 1: some sort of enzyme that you can find a muscle tissue,
20:05
Speaker 1: it gets converted into this die hydro testosterone d H TEA.
20:09
Speaker 1: I feel like we talked about this. Was it in
20:11
Speaker 1: the male puberty? Maybe probably I would guess either that
20:15
Speaker 1: or ballpoint pens one of this too. You know, it's
20:20
Speaker 1: funny as you're saying that, I was trying to think
20:22
Speaker 1: of a funny one, and then there you had it
20:24
Speaker 1: under control. Nice. Thanks, one of us always has it
20:27
Speaker 1: under control. And if then we're in big trouble, Yeah,
20:32
Speaker 1: that's when it's time to go away. So this d
20:35
Speaker 1: HT stuff, this is this is the this is the
20:37
Speaker 1: weird thing. Like, there is a general understanding that die
20:42
Speaker 1: hydro testosterone has to do with pattern baldness, whether in
20:46
Speaker 1: males or females, but it um, it's not exactly understood
20:53
Speaker 1: how it produces pattern baldness. We just know and have
20:57
Speaker 1: known since I believe the late nineteen forty. These um
21:01
Speaker 1: that if you have pattern baldness, you have a higher
21:04
Speaker 1: concentration of d HT and your scalp than people who
21:07
Speaker 1: don't have pattern baldness. So that seems like a pretty
21:10
Speaker 1: big clue. Yeah. And the reason it happens to both
21:13
Speaker 1: men and women is because both men and women produce testosterone. Um.
21:18
Speaker 1: I think most people know this, but if you didn't
21:21
Speaker 1: pay attention in biology class, you may not know that
21:24
Speaker 1: women produce testosterone in their ovaries. Uh, and just not
21:28
Speaker 1: as much as men obviously, so they have lower levels
21:30
Speaker 1: of testosterone, lower levels of d HT as a result.
21:35
Speaker 1: And so that's why a there in um, they're in
21:38
Speaker 1: the minority as far as suffering from pattern baldness and
21:41
Speaker 1: why it happens to a lesser degree when it does happen, right, Um,
21:46
Speaker 1: But it's a really weird paradox that die hydro testosterone
21:50
Speaker 1: would um produce pattern baldness because we actually need it
21:55
Speaker 1: to produce pubic hair and armpit hair. Um, So you
22:00
Speaker 1: wouldn't have either of those. If you have a d
22:02
Speaker 1: HT deficiency or a testosterone deficiency, you have less pubic
22:05
Speaker 1: hair armpit hair, and you don't develop those types of
22:09
Speaker 1: hair until you start to develop testosterone and then in
22:11
Speaker 1: turn d HT after you reach puberty. Head hair has
22:15
Speaker 1: nothing to do with d h T, And yet at
22:18
Speaker 1: some point later in life, d HT for some reason
22:21
Speaker 1: starts to accumulate in the in the scalps of a
22:25
Speaker 1: lot of people, and it actually causes hair loss rather
22:28
Speaker 1: than hair growth, which at the very least you'd think,
22:32
Speaker 1: you know, what if what if it converted our hair
22:34
Speaker 1: into pubic hair later in life, that would be hilarious,
22:38
Speaker 1: especially in the areas in the same pattern that you bawl.
22:42
Speaker 1: But if that just got replaced with pubic hair, hey,
22:45
Speaker 1: that would be pretty sweet. It'd be the nineteen seventies
22:48
Speaker 1: all over again. It would be It would be awesome.
22:50
Speaker 1: You wouldn't have to be Mike Brady getting that that
22:53
Speaker 1: tight curl going. I love that, man. I remember that smell. Man.
22:56
Speaker 1: I don't know if I don't know if your mom
22:59
Speaker 1: ever did that, but my mom um would get the perm,
23:01
Speaker 1: the at home perm every now and then for a
23:04
Speaker 1: few years in the seventies, and that smell for some reason,
23:07
Speaker 1: you know how you just tired to tie these things
23:09
Speaker 1: together in your brain. She was doing it one night
23:12
Speaker 1: while the Circus of the Stars was on. So to
23:15
Speaker 1: this day I can't think of the Circus of the
23:17
Speaker 1: Stars without thinking of that smell of Yeah, I guess
23:21
Speaker 1: it's better than elephant poop. Sure, I always I associate, Well,
23:26
Speaker 1: the smell of elephant poop is not pleasant. There's the perm.
23:30
Speaker 1: I know it's I think the perms probably worse than
23:32
Speaker 1: elephant poop. At least elephant poop is like an organic smell.
23:35
Speaker 1: This is just straight chemical nightmare, you know. Um, I
23:39
Speaker 1: always associate Pizza Hut home delivery with solid Gold because
23:45
Speaker 1: my parents would, um, if they were going out on
23:47
Speaker 1: a Saturday night, you know, they'd be getting ready and
23:49
Speaker 1: they just ordered pizza Hut or something for us to eat,
23:52
Speaker 1: and we would sit there and watch Solid Gold and
23:55
Speaker 1: eat pizza Hut. So funny, man, I always thought, even
23:58
Speaker 1: as a kid too, I was funny. They called it
24:00
Speaker 1: a perm because it wasn't permanent, and I learned it
24:04
Speaker 1: stood for permanent. And I remember being like eleven and
24:07
Speaker 1: saying like they should call it a temp and yeah,
24:11
Speaker 1: then getting beat up on the playground while we were
24:15
Speaker 1: all standing around talking about firms or yeah, or being
24:18
Speaker 1: the most popular kid at your experimental middle school high school. Perhaps.
24:23
Speaker 1: Um So back to d h D, we should point
24:26
Speaker 1: out that that was discovered in uh this ananomous named
24:30
Speaker 1: James Hamilton's discovered the role or I guess uncovered the
24:34
Speaker 1: role of d h D in pattern baldness. So that
24:36
Speaker 1: was a big step forward as far as kind of
24:39
Speaker 1: getting a semi understanding. Yeah, so what they think happens,
24:42
Speaker 1: think we still understand it is that um testosterone comes
24:47
Speaker 1: in contact with that five alpha reductees in those muscles
24:52
Speaker 1: that pushed the hair up in the follicles, and that
24:56
Speaker 1: in those follicles it's converted to d h T and
24:59
Speaker 1: then for some reason, somehow, some way, the d HT
25:04
Speaker 1: shrinks the hair follicle, and the hair follicle stays in
25:09
Speaker 1: the anagen. The growth phase far less frequently produces thinner,
25:17
Speaker 1: less robust hair, and then eventually just stops functioning at all.
25:21
Speaker 1: And that's it. Yeah, they say, enough of this d
25:25
Speaker 1: H stuff. I used to enjoy this neighborhood, and now
25:28
Speaker 1: the d h T came along and I don't like it.
25:30
Speaker 1: He always wants to fight and push people around and
25:32
Speaker 1: talk about how much he can lift, and uh, you
25:35
Speaker 1: want to come to his cross fit class because he'll
25:38
Speaker 1: show you what real working out is all about. Yeah,
25:41
Speaker 1: and his dad's an attorney and he'll sue you for
25:43
Speaker 1: all the money you've got. Yeah, exactly. It's just a
25:45
Speaker 1: just a general pain. So if you recognize the name,
25:49
Speaker 1: if you suffer from pattern baldness, you probably have done
25:52
Speaker 1: a lot of research and the name Hamilton's might seem
25:54
Speaker 1: familiar because he is also one of the cats who
25:59
Speaker 1: identify first those stages of the of the pattern balding.
26:03
Speaker 1: And it's called the Hamilton's Norwood scale. So you've probably
26:07
Speaker 1: heard the Hamilton's Norwood scale. That is when huh Yeah,
26:11
Speaker 1: I mean I think if you start to um, if
26:13
Speaker 1: you have an internet connection and you start to lose
26:16
Speaker 1: your hair, you probably find out pretty quickly. But it's
26:19
Speaker 1: not just like something people talk about unless it's you know,
26:23
Speaker 1: people that are all suffering hair loss and they're all
26:26
Speaker 1: talking about where they are on the scale. It's not
26:28
Speaker 1: like the Bristol stool scale, which everybody knows about. Where
26:32
Speaker 1: the was it the Scoville hot pepper thing? Yeah, not
26:37
Speaker 1: commonplace like that, but the common uh pattern that emerged
26:44
Speaker 1: that was recognized by Hamilton's. And I don't even know
26:47
Speaker 1: who was Norwood? Do you know? Uh? Norwood was Mr
26:51
Speaker 1: Glenn Norwould. I can't even make this joke. Anywhere to
26:56
Speaker 1: stop here, all right, and that seria on out yea.
27:01
Speaker 1: So uh. The common h pattern is you get an
27:06
Speaker 1: M sort of at the front of your hairline, at
27:10
Speaker 1: your forehead. The upper corners start to recede, and you
27:14
Speaker 1: might hear it call a receding hairline, and it sort
27:16
Speaker 1: of looks like the letter M because like the little
27:19
Speaker 1: Eddie Monster, it kind of comes to a point and
27:22
Speaker 1: then goes in on the sides. And that's step one.
27:24
Speaker 1: I think it's a very handsome look M hairline. Receding
27:29
Speaker 1: hairline is I think it's sharp. No, I do, and
27:33
Speaker 1: I haven't you know, mine went straight to the crown.
27:34
Speaker 1: I don't really have here much of the receding hairline
27:38
Speaker 1: up front. But that's what's next, is the bald spot
27:41
Speaker 1: on the crown or the vertex of the head. And
27:44
Speaker 1: the idea is, in the cruelest possible form, is the
27:49
Speaker 1: crown is losing it, the forehead is losing it, and
27:53
Speaker 1: they say, hey, why don't we meet in the middle
27:57
Speaker 1: and talk about this and that to what happened? They creep,
28:01
Speaker 1: The crown creeps forward and the hairline creeps backward, and
28:05
Speaker 1: eventually they meet in the middle and they go hey,
28:07
Speaker 1: it's nice to meet you. I'm let's go on vacation forever.
28:11
Speaker 1: And then you have no hair on the top of
28:14
Speaker 1: your head. And if you if you let all your
28:18
Speaker 1: hair grow, that's still there. You're gonna have that hair
28:21
Speaker 1: on the sides and in the back because it's weird,
28:24
Speaker 1: but it just it doesn't affect the sides in the
28:27
Speaker 1: back of the hair in the same way the follicles
28:30
Speaker 1: are are different. You basically you go from Gene Hackman
28:35
Speaker 1: in the French connection to Gene Hackman in Absolute Power,
28:40
Speaker 1: and eventually, if it keeps going, you end up as
28:42
Speaker 1: Gene Hackman in Superman, okay, and then eventually the Royal
28:47
Speaker 1: tannembombs and then you retire. Right but so um, there's
28:53
Speaker 1: also this this possible outcome of the m receding hairline
28:58
Speaker 1: meeting up with the bald spot on the crown in
29:02
Speaker 1: that there's a little island tuft of hair in the
29:05
Speaker 1: forehead that was like the dip or the the lowest
29:10
Speaker 1: point of the M or the downward point of the
29:12
Speaker 1: M that got left behind. So you still have a little,
29:15
Speaker 1: a little cute, little tin tin patch of hair right there.
29:19
Speaker 1: That is a possible outcome of this, but more likely
29:21
Speaker 1: than not, you're gonna end up with just that ring
29:23
Speaker 1: of hair, kind of like Patrick Steward and Star Trek
29:26
Speaker 1: the next generation. Yeah, and and again it's because that
29:30
Speaker 1: the hair on the sides, the follicles on the sides
29:32
Speaker 1: and the back are naturally d HT resistant. Even if
29:35
Speaker 1: you have that pattern baldness, it's you know, it's just
29:39
Speaker 1: a shame it wasn't reverse because maybe it would be different.
29:42
Speaker 1: But you know, people, it is a hairstyle to shave
29:46
Speaker 1: the sides in the back and to have the faux
29:48
Speaker 1: hawk or the mohawk or the sort of military looking cut. Um.
29:53
Speaker 1: There is no hairstyle that is mere male pattern baldness.
29:57
Speaker 1: I mean, you can, you can grow it out and
29:58
Speaker 1: rocket kind of like Phil Colin did for a while
30:00
Speaker 1: in the eighties and that and that's fine, man, we're
30:02
Speaker 1: not yucking anyone's young. But if it were somehow reversed,
30:07
Speaker 1: I don't think it would be as big of a deal,
30:10
Speaker 1: like if you lost your hair on the sides and
30:11
Speaker 1: in the back, you know, or would it be culturally
30:18
Speaker 1: shifted to where that was like, oh boy, yeah, that's
30:21
Speaker 1: that's exactly what happened. Because everybody's always got to have
30:24
Speaker 1: a problem with something on everybody. Yeah, yeah, I think
30:28
Speaker 1: it'd be bad either way. But I think I think
30:30
Speaker 1: you're right. Phil Collins managed to rock it out. I think, um,
30:34
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis did a great job with it as well. Um,
30:38
Speaker 1: and he went he started shaving pretty early on too.
30:40
Speaker 1: He he just went with it eventually, but he still
30:43
Speaker 1: had the stubble. He didn't go like straight up like
30:46
Speaker 1: you know, just like Jeff Bezos or anything like that. Yeah,
30:50
Speaker 1: he eventually did like Travolta now, like props for finally
30:56
Speaker 1: giving in and and getting rid. I mean I think
30:59
Speaker 1: he he probably had hair plugs, which we'll get to
31:02
Speaker 1: or at the very least whatever. You know, we'll talk
31:05
Speaker 1: about the newer treatments. And uh, it's one of those
31:09
Speaker 1: things where they're certain male actors where when you compare
31:12
Speaker 1: photos of them today two photos of them, uh fifteen
31:18
Speaker 1: years ago, and they have more hair now. It's one
31:20
Speaker 1: of those things really all right. Uh, it's the Jeremy
31:24
Speaker 1: Piman effect, Like I think we know what's happening here,
31:27
Speaker 1: and you know, especially if you're an actor, uh, that
31:32
Speaker 1: that is your I mean, it may be harder to
31:36
Speaker 1: just embrace the like, all right, I'll just shave my
31:38
Speaker 1: head thing because you may think you may not work
31:42
Speaker 1: as much or something, or you may not be appropriate
31:44
Speaker 1: for certain kinds of roles you want to get. So
31:47
Speaker 1: you know, I could see them tying it into work somehow.
31:49
Speaker 1: And and certainly actors are not historically short on ego,
31:53
Speaker 1: so that plays a part as well. Sure. I was
31:55
Speaker 1: reading a BBC article and then interviewed an actor named
31:58
Speaker 1: James Nesbit who's fairly well known, and he um credited
32:03
Speaker 1: his hair restoration with basically restoration of his career. He
32:08
Speaker 1: started getting parts again that he was getting passed over for.
32:11
Speaker 1: He said, his confidence went up, and I mean, more
32:14
Speaker 1: power to you. If you want to do something about
32:16
Speaker 1: your hair loss, that's fine. If you want to go
32:18
Speaker 1: to the Travolta way, that's fine too. But yeah, I
32:20
Speaker 1: mean that's um. I think people who who are like, yeah,
32:24
Speaker 1: there's before and after pictures, like there's a very famous
32:27
Speaker 1: one of elaw and musk Um in his PayPal days.
32:31
Speaker 1: He was young, very young when he started to thin
32:34
Speaker 1: pretty dramatically. And then now if you like at Elon
32:37
Speaker 1: Muski has a beautiful, full head of hair, and I
32:40
Speaker 1: think Um, he cares exactly bagel of whether you realize
32:45
Speaker 1: that he got hair plugs or not, because he's got
32:47
Speaker 1: hair again, so he probably invented some treatment that only
32:51
Speaker 1: he is pretty too. That's right, that's right. But then
32:54
Speaker 1: if you look at Jeff Bezos, the he went the
32:58
Speaker 1: other way. He's definitely got a few bucks that he
33:00
Speaker 1: could spend on that, I would guess, and he decided
33:03
Speaker 1: not to, which I'm surprised by. Actually, he seems like
33:07
Speaker 1: the type who would go full like, yeah, maybe Bob Ross,
33:13
Speaker 1: maybe yeah. I mean, he could have a an underground
33:16
Speaker 1: illegal scalp farm for all we know that he's mining, right,
33:22
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with with with hair growth. He's
33:26
Speaker 1: looking at sell that stuff. They'll deliver it to your
33:29
Speaker 1: porch via drone one day, right, something like robot just
33:33
Speaker 1: drops a bloody scalp on your porch and a big thud.
33:36
Speaker 1: There you go put it on. I didn't order to
33:39
Speaker 1: just put it on the drone watching you tremble. So
33:45
Speaker 1: that is male pattern baldness. With women, if they suffer
33:48
Speaker 1: from pattern baldness, it is going to be uh, not
33:51
Speaker 1: as predictable. It's not like male pattern baldness in that
33:55
Speaker 1: the thinning kind of happens more everywhere. It's not like
33:58
Speaker 1: it just happens from front to back and then you
34:00
Speaker 1: lose all your hair in that you shape that kind
34:02
Speaker 1: of horseshoe pattern. It is much slower than male pattern balding.
34:07
Speaker 1: And again it's because they have low testosterone and low
34:11
Speaker 1: d h D as a result. But again it's women. Um,
34:15
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, fort of pattern baldness are women who suffer
34:19
Speaker 1: from it? So uh and it is a thing, you know.
34:22
Speaker 1: You know, a woman's hair is very important to their
34:25
Speaker 1: esteem and and their body image. So when a woman's
34:30
Speaker 1: hair starts thinning and falling out, it is just as traumatic.
34:33
Speaker 1: I would say more, I would argue much more. And
34:36
Speaker 1: yeah maybe so, I mean it is certainly not and
34:38
Speaker 1: maybe more so because there's not as much attention paid
34:42
Speaker 1: and maybe like, hey, is anyone even listening that this
34:44
Speaker 1: is an issue? Well, I think women are unfairly held
34:47
Speaker 1: to even more um beauty standards than men. You know.
34:52
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like guys, really good to shave your head?
34:54
Speaker 1: Who cares? It's fine, that's that's a cool look. Yeah,
34:57
Speaker 1: women also have their own scaled Ludwig scale, or if
35:01
Speaker 1: you want to get fancy the Ludwig scale. They have
35:05
Speaker 1: type one to three, and apparently the thinning um is
35:08
Speaker 1: tracked on the Ludwig scale along the natural part, and
35:13
Speaker 1: you know, type one to three is just different degrees
35:15
Speaker 1: of how thin it is along the natural part of
35:18
Speaker 1: the woman's hair. That's right. Should we take another break. Yeah,
35:22
Speaker 1: let's take a break and then we'll come back and
35:23
Speaker 1: talk about all of the things people have been doing
35:25
Speaker 1: for thousands of years to combat hair loss. Shot. All right,
35:56
Speaker 1: So this is one thing I know for a fact.
36:00
Speaker 1: If you are a young man and you are wondering
36:02
Speaker 1: if this is in your future, just look at your
36:05
Speaker 1: mom's dad, and you've solved the problem. So that is
36:09
Speaker 1: a myth. Allegedly, Yes, oh you will hurt man. You're
36:15
Speaker 1: just an amazing actor. You always say you're not, and
36:18
Speaker 1: you really are. Allegedly, I mean, I don't think they've
36:22
Speaker 1: they've said outright, it has nothing to do with it.
36:24
Speaker 1: Right now, there was a German study from two thousand
36:27
Speaker 1: five that actually found there's a little bit on the
36:30
Speaker 1: X chromosome that baldmin share in common. So it's possible
36:35
Speaker 1: because you get your X chromosome from your mom and
36:38
Speaker 1: there's a fifty chance that the X chromosome came from
36:41
Speaker 1: your grandfather, that's where the basis of that old myths
36:44
Speaker 1: came from. It may be true, but what they seem
36:47
Speaker 1: to be thinking is that there's way more genes involved
36:50
Speaker 1: in saying just one on the X chromosome, Um that
36:54
Speaker 1: that are involved in pattern baldness. But the upshot of
36:59
Speaker 1: it is, um, if you really want to know whether
37:02
Speaker 1: you're going to go bald, are your chances of going bald?
37:05
Speaker 1: How many bald men are there in your in your family?
37:08
Speaker 1: That's really what yeah, like on both sides, just start
37:11
Speaker 1: looking at old family albums and uh, maybe pour yourself
37:16
Speaker 1: a drink sure to steady your nerves. Yeah, I mean
37:19
Speaker 1: we have pretty good hair and my family my you know,
37:21
Speaker 1: my brother he has this legendary thick black wavy hair.
37:26
Speaker 1: It's just infuriating get a trophy. But like my grandfather,
37:32
Speaker 1: my mom's dad, he died with a big thick head
37:36
Speaker 1: of cur curly hair. And my uncle's my mom's brothers
37:40
Speaker 1: both have really robust hair. Still my brother does. My
37:45
Speaker 1: dad's I'm pretty much my dad. I mean, my dad
37:48
Speaker 1: now is eighty ish and um, he started thinning on
37:53
Speaker 1: the crown. You know quite a few years ago, and
37:55
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty thin on top, but it never like
37:58
Speaker 1: it never went away on top. It's just pretty thin.
38:01
Speaker 1: My dad did the same thing. It's like he's got
38:03
Speaker 1: a pretty decent circle. You can calibrate a compass by,
38:08
Speaker 1: but it's it is like, um, it's stayed. He's he's
38:12
Speaker 1: gonna be eighty three this year, and it's just it's stayed.
38:17
Speaker 1: He's still got you know, hair in between his forehead
38:20
Speaker 1: and the crown of his head on the sides. Um,
38:23
Speaker 1: So I anticipate mineill Polly be similar because I'm tracking
38:27
Speaker 1: a very similar pattern that he he tracked as well. Yeah.
38:32
Speaker 1: I even have the same haircut these days as is
38:36
Speaker 1: your dad. Yeah, from the seventies. Is it pretty long
38:39
Speaker 1: right now? Yeah, it's pretty It's pretty long. And think, yeah,
38:43
Speaker 1: which is good. It's good. I'm happy with it. But
38:46
Speaker 1: I definitely have that balts by just like just like
38:48
Speaker 1: dear old dad has well, I had been. I had
38:51
Speaker 1: shaved my head I think more than ever before in
38:54
Speaker 1: lockdown over the past year. I shaved it fully I
38:56
Speaker 1: think three times, and then did a couple of drunk
39:00
Speaker 1: in late night um, completely bald on the sides sort
39:05
Speaker 1: of Hawkeye and the last of Injuris movie look okay, uh,
39:09
Speaker 1: and it was kind of cool. I kind of liked
39:11
Speaker 1: it cool. I have not been doing anything experimental with
39:15
Speaker 1: my hair. Actually, m has been doing a good job
39:17
Speaker 1: of keeping me from looking like totally shaggy. She's she's
39:21
Speaker 1: just clean and coming hair. Yeah, that's good. Um yeah.
39:24
Speaker 1: And and definitely like shaving the neck that gets kind
39:26
Speaker 1: of burly back there, but I haven't. I haven't shaved
39:28
Speaker 1: my head in years and years and years. It's just
39:31
Speaker 1: not a very good look for me. Oh no, no,
39:33
Speaker 1: I like that. I never did. I never liked pictures
39:36
Speaker 1: of me. Yeah, especially the shaved head with glasses. I'm like, boy,
39:41
Speaker 1: I saw an old picture of us the other day
39:43
Speaker 1: that was I'll just say it was pretty funny and
39:45
Speaker 1: I was gonna Instagram and I was like, Josh should
39:47
Speaker 1: be really mad if my Instagram. Oh yeah what I Oh,
39:50
Speaker 1: it just wasn't your best look. You're you. You've come
39:53
Speaker 1: a long way, baby. Oh I'm not. I'm not shy
39:55
Speaker 1: about that kind of thing. I know now. I'm an
39:59
Speaker 1: admis though, so who cares? So again, look at the
40:03
Speaker 1: pictures of all your family I think, uh, it does
40:06
Speaker 1: increase with age. If you're white man, about of us
40:12
Speaker 1: are going to experience, um, some sort of pattern involving
40:16
Speaker 1: in your twenties. Um, and that's you know, that's that
40:20
Speaker 1: can be rough if you're if you're in your twenties
40:22
Speaker 1: and you start to lose your hair um in your
40:25
Speaker 1: thirties and then so on and so on. I think women,
40:28
Speaker 1: I think usually see it later, usually in their forties
40:31
Speaker 1: and fifties, and menopause can actually kick it off for women. Right,
40:37
Speaker 1: Because again, hair growth and sex hormones are very much
40:39
Speaker 1: tied together. So any fluctuation, weirdness, any sudden change, all
40:44
Speaker 1: of that stuff, uh, can can have some sort of
40:48
Speaker 1: effect on your hair growth or hair loss. So that
40:51
Speaker 1: must mean if you have like tons of testosterone and
40:55
Speaker 1: you're that dude, you must be really really bald for
41:00
Speaker 1: early right. You keep getting me. That's another myth, right, Yeah,
41:08
Speaker 1: there's like supposedly people who are bald have no more
41:12
Speaker 1: testosterone levels in their body in general than people who
41:16
Speaker 1: have a full head of hair. So we're busting myths
41:19
Speaker 1: all over the place. Chuck, Well, why don't we talk
41:22
Speaker 1: about some of these? It's always fun. Sawbone style to
41:25
Speaker 1: talk about some antiquated medical practices in the fifteen fifties
41:31
Speaker 1: b C. Egyptians would everyone's always been rubbing stuff on
41:35
Speaker 1: their head to see if they could regrow it. It
41:37
Speaker 1: was hippopotamus fat, porcupine hair they would boil in water.
41:41
Speaker 1: They would grind up donkey hoofs and rub that into
41:44
Speaker 1: their scalp. Yeah. Uh. And then that was on the
41:47
Speaker 1: Ebbers papyrus, which I think we talked about in the
41:49
Speaker 1: Ethnobotany episode. Yeah. Um. And then about a thousand, eleven
41:54
Speaker 1: hundred or so years later, our buddy Hippocrisies shows back up,
41:59
Speaker 1: makes the comparison with Foxes with Mange, which is not
42:02
Speaker 1: very pleasant, and then also says, hey, get your hands
42:05
Speaker 1: on some opium and horseradish, get some pigeon poop and
42:09
Speaker 1: some beats and uh spices, like he's suddenly Colonel Sanders
42:14
Speaker 1: or something. Put it all together, right, yeah, and then
42:17
Speaker 1: there you go. You're fine after that. You don't care
42:20
Speaker 1: about your hair loss any that's right, um. And then
42:23
Speaker 1: put it all together and rub it on your head. Uh.
42:25
Speaker 1: And apparently he also said, you know what, court eunuchs
42:29
Speaker 1: um tend to have really nice hair. Which I've never seen.
42:32
Speaker 1: I've always seen him bald, but he said, if you
42:36
Speaker 1: have really bad hair lost, just go ahead and castrate yourself.
42:39
Speaker 1: And there you go. I'm Hippocrates, go ahead and base
42:42
Speaker 1: all medical science after my teachings. About a thousand a d.
42:47
Speaker 1: There was a Celtic remedy for you had to hunt
42:50
Speaker 1: down a raven, burn it and then mix up those
42:52
Speaker 1: ashes and render it was some sheep fat. Rub that
42:55
Speaker 1: on your head, right, And then of course the Kellogg brothers.
43:00
Speaker 1: I don't think it wouldn't surprise me if they had
43:02
Speaker 1: a machine, but they were very Kellogg like machines by
43:05
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, where I think there was one called
43:08
Speaker 1: the Crossley Servac that if you look a picture of this,
43:11
Speaker 1: it is very Kellogg like. It's a you know, this
43:14
Speaker 1: big machine and you would sit with a like a
43:16
Speaker 1: bowl on your head that was connected to and I
43:20
Speaker 1: think it would supposedly try and literally suck hair from
43:23
Speaker 1: your scalp. Yeah, apparently Fredis Stair had one, and I
43:26
Speaker 1: mean the Cross League Company still to this day has
43:30
Speaker 1: on their blog a little article about it and they
43:34
Speaker 1: say that you know, it worked, it seemed to really work.
43:37
Speaker 1: Something about it worked but they're not exactly sure why. Um.
43:41
Speaker 1: There's another thing called the thermocap that used like um
43:47
Speaker 1: heat and blue light, and I know there's one today
43:50
Speaker 1: called the Capellus which uses some sort of maybe red
43:54
Speaker 1: or infrared light UM. And there's a class action suit
43:57
Speaker 1: against Capellus right now because they have a claim that
44:01
Speaker 1: it's clinically proven to regrow hair. And apparently that clinically
44:05
Speaker 1: proven is based on a single two thousand and fourteen
44:08
Speaker 1: clinical trial that was sponsored by Capellus. So somebody who
44:12
Speaker 1: tried spent seven hundred bucks on a Capellus system is
44:14
Speaker 1: suing them, and that a bunch of other people have joined.
44:18
Speaker 1: As far as real things that work, we mentioned the
44:21
Speaker 1: onset of the show, there are a couple of drugs
44:24
Speaker 1: that have we're sort of accidental and uh in this
44:29
Speaker 1: so far as the side effect they found was that
44:31
Speaker 1: it helped regrow hair and medoxidil active ingredient, and rogain
44:35
Speaker 1: is one of them. In the eighties, it was developed
44:38
Speaker 1: as a blood pressure medication and it's a vasidilator, so
44:42
Speaker 1: it's gonna enlarge blood vessels and they think, um that
44:46
Speaker 1: what it does is in large hair follicles that are
44:48
Speaker 1: shrinking due to that pattern baldness and just slows that
44:51
Speaker 1: process down and it works pretty good. I think UM,
44:54
Speaker 1: supposedly it it. I don't think it's uh. It depends
44:59
Speaker 1: on what you're after. Like I think they say um
45:02
Speaker 1: hair regrowth because that's what you want. You want to
45:06
Speaker 1: you want to start early and stop it in its
45:08
Speaker 1: tracks and try to regrows some. So for hair regrowth
45:12
Speaker 1: was found to be very effective and only sixteen um
45:15
Speaker 1: effective or moderately effective in six which is pretty good
45:19
Speaker 1: of men, you should say, yeah, of men, and then
45:21
Speaker 1: ineffective in sixteen percent. I think for women reported moderate
45:27
Speaker 1: hair regrowth with medocodel, and that's just for a hair
45:30
Speaker 1: on the top of your head. It has apparently zero
45:32
Speaker 1: effect on the hair on the side of your head. Yeah,
45:35
Speaker 1: like that crown. If that's where you're losing it and
45:37
Speaker 1: you get in there early with that road game, that's uh,
45:39
Speaker 1: you might want to give that a shot. Yeah, And
45:41
Speaker 1: they think basically it's just UM opening up the blood
45:44
Speaker 1: supply to those you know, withering hair follicles and gets them,
45:48
Speaker 1: gets those gremlins working again. That's right, makes sense. There's
45:52
Speaker 1: also finasteride um, which was originally under the trade name Propecia.
45:58
Speaker 1: I think the patent ran out on it, and I
46:01
Speaker 1: think by now, uh, if not, monoxide will definitely did
46:04
Speaker 1: because that was ro gain. One of the two is
46:07
Speaker 1: not in the patent phase any longer. But it was
46:11
Speaker 1: originally developed to shrink in large prostates because it's a
46:16
Speaker 1: UM five alpha reductase inhibitor. UM and in large prostates
46:21
Speaker 1: are the result of die hydro testosterone. So um rogain
46:26
Speaker 1: or finasteride basically inhibits five alpha reductations from converting testosterone
46:32
Speaker 1: into die hydro testosterone or d HT. So that would
46:36
Speaker 1: reduce hair loss because there's less DHT in the hair follicles, right,
46:41
Speaker 1: and finasteride is is I think rogains a foam like
46:44
Speaker 1: hair moose or maybe like a gelled a liquid too,
46:49
Speaker 1: and then finasteride like we don't know, and then I'm
46:52
Speaker 1: just kidding. Actually did buy some rogaine. I use it
46:55
Speaker 1: for like two weeks and I was like, I'm not
46:56
Speaker 1: gonna do this for the rest of the Yeah, well
46:58
Speaker 1: that's stopped. You got We should say, like, um, both
47:02
Speaker 1: monoxidet and in finasteride have to be used beforeever for
47:06
Speaker 1: as long as you want to keep trying to work
47:08
Speaker 1: on your hair. Yeah, I ran up and it was
47:10
Speaker 1: just one of those things. I have a hard time
47:12
Speaker 1: doing a thing every day anyway, and I was like,
47:15
Speaker 1: they just did not last. So I've got three or
47:17
Speaker 1: four things of If anyone wants some free rogaine, I'll
47:20
Speaker 1: send it to him. Oh, that's nice of you. I'll
47:22
Speaker 1: just mail you in my leftover things. I'm sure that
47:25
Speaker 1: that's nice. It's if it's over the counter. I think
47:27
Speaker 1: we're okay legally speaking. And one more thing about finasteride,
47:30
Speaker 1: Chuck is is it's like you're saying, it produces a
47:33
Speaker 1: rectile dysfunction and loss of interest in sex and men,
47:37
Speaker 1: and then in animal studies it produced um birth effects
47:41
Speaker 1: in male genitalia for pregnant animals. So it's been that's
47:45
Speaker 1: been kind of um extended to pregnant women human women,
47:50
Speaker 1: saying like, if you don't get anywhere near finasteride because
47:53
Speaker 1: it may produce birth effects in your baby. I did
47:57
Speaker 1: not know that. Well. The one of the reasons you
48:00
Speaker 1: did not know that is because apparently there's lawsuit against
48:04
Speaker 1: Merk and this judge in Brooklyn, Judge Brian Cogan, allowed this.
48:10
Speaker 1: These documents Merk internal documents to be sealed. That basically said, yeah,
48:14
Speaker 1: we're well aware of this and we can't let this
48:16
Speaker 1: get out because people won't want um propitia any longer
48:20
Speaker 1: if they know about the prolonged sexual side effects, which
48:25
Speaker 1: is terrible. That is terrible. So then you get the
48:29
Speaker 1: hair plugs that we talked about. This was from the
48:31
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. Uh, sometimes it looks that way. Um. Dr
48:36
Speaker 1: Norman or in Treaque or or in Treach, I'm not
48:39
Speaker 1: sure which it is, came up with this um sort
48:43
Speaker 1: of crude method where they would punch out little circles
48:46
Speaker 1: of skin from a donor side on the back of
48:49
Speaker 1: your head where you still you know, like we said,
48:52
Speaker 1: the follicles are working great back there, and these were
48:55
Speaker 1: little plugs about four millimeters in diameter, and then they
48:58
Speaker 1: would transplant those to where you were balding and hopefully
49:02
Speaker 1: regrow your hair. And it was it didn't look great
49:06
Speaker 1: at less scars in the back, and it took time
49:09
Speaker 1: for it to grow in upfront, so it would look
49:12
Speaker 1: very sort of planted if you will. Well, yeah, I
49:16
Speaker 1: mean it's like in these neat little rows, these little
49:20
Speaker 1: plugs of hair, you know, like that. It left a
49:22
Speaker 1: lot to be desired for sure. That's it has come
49:25
Speaker 1: a long way since then. Now they use something called
49:28
Speaker 1: f U E follicular unit extraction, and that allows them
49:34
Speaker 1: to extract what they call follicular units three or four
49:38
Speaker 1: follicles and there's no scarring back there, and they can
49:41
Speaker 1: transplant them much more closely and fill in you know,
49:45
Speaker 1: if it's if you were liking it to like a
49:47
Speaker 1: row of corn, uh, filling in those rows in between
49:50
Speaker 1: as well, so it looked better, yeah, where it was thinning.
49:54
Speaker 1: You know. Something interesting I saw is that um doctor
49:58
Speaker 1: or in treach, he followed in the footsteps of some
50:01
Speaker 1: other people that data back to. There was a Turkey
50:05
Speaker 1: believing manach Um Hodara, who apparently was the first one
50:10
Speaker 1: to really do a hair transplant procedure. And then there
50:12
Speaker 1: was a Japanese guy doctors show Jewey Okada, who in
50:16
Speaker 1: the thirties was the one who pioneered that punch technique.
50:19
Speaker 1: But in the West, Dr Orange Treats usually is credited
50:22
Speaker 1: as the pioneer of hair transplants. Now they are starting
50:26
Speaker 1: to look into stem cells and this has a lot
50:29
Speaker 1: of promise because researchers found out I guess figured out
50:33
Speaker 1: through a lot of study is that one of the
50:36
Speaker 1: reasons that why hair follicles are can continue, those gremlins
50:40
Speaker 1: can keep working is because each hair follicle has a
50:43
Speaker 1: little well of stem cells, including those follicular stem cells
50:49
Speaker 1: and dermal papilla cells that you were talking about. I
50:52
Speaker 1: think at the very beginning and in Japan and here
50:56
Speaker 1: in the States, there were scientists who figure out how
50:58
Speaker 1: to extract those stem cells grow these new follicles in
51:02
Speaker 1: a lab. And the thing with anytime you're doing that,
51:06
Speaker 1: you have to you have to shape this thing. Like
51:08
Speaker 1: if you're gonna, uh do something in the shape of
51:12
Speaker 1: an ear, you would three D print out this like
51:14
Speaker 1: a model, this like scaffolding model to allow it to
51:17
Speaker 1: grow into the right shape. Because growing something from stem cells,
51:21
Speaker 1: you know, organs from stem cells, it's you know, you've
51:25
Speaker 1: gotta shape it yourself. It's not you can't just say
51:27
Speaker 1: form of an ear or form of a hair follicle.
51:30
Speaker 1: It just doesn't work that way. Uh yeah, exactly. This
51:33
Speaker 1: woman at Columbia University named Angelo Cristiano, who was threatened
51:39
Speaker 1: by alopecia areata, started basically this three D hair farm,
51:45
Speaker 1: creating these printed molds that mimic the underside the internal
51:49
Speaker 1: structure of a scalp, so she growth these sounds so gross,
51:53
Speaker 1: but grow these little hair fields that I was kind
51:56
Speaker 1: of talking about with Bezos. Yeah, because here's the thing, like,
51:59
Speaker 1: if you are already bald, you don't have any donor
52:03
Speaker 1: sites to get the follicular extraction from, right um. And
52:08
Speaker 1: if you do have some, you know eventually you're gonna
52:11
Speaker 1: start to thin that out when you're harvesting it. This
52:14
Speaker 1: stem cell like hair farm that's grown in vitro solves
52:18
Speaker 1: that problem. You've got all the donor follicles that you
52:21
Speaker 1: need right there without having to take any from the head,
52:24
Speaker 1: which is beautiful, pretty cool, And this is like this
52:28
Speaker 1: could be the future, you know. I think it definitely
52:32
Speaker 1: is there basically at the point where they can grow hair. Um.
52:35
Speaker 1: They just are now trying to figure out how to
52:38
Speaker 1: make it not wiry or pigmented the right way. And
52:41
Speaker 1: all it seems to be is that figuring out in
52:44
Speaker 1: more granular detail what the actual conditions are in your
52:47
Speaker 1: hair follicle in your scalp, and then recreating that in vitra. Yeah,
52:52
Speaker 1: and how to name it something other than a hair farm. Right,
52:55
Speaker 1: So I think we should close with the idea. You know,
52:58
Speaker 1: we like to talk about evolution and whether or not
53:01
Speaker 1: something was an evolutionary adaptation to to stick around. And
53:05
Speaker 1: you might think, if if women are always being surveyed
53:09
Speaker 1: about attractiveness of men, and balding men ranked low on
53:13
Speaker 1: that list, why on earth would it stick around as
53:16
Speaker 1: an evolutionary trait. And I think it took a doctor
53:19
Speaker 1: named Frank Muscarella to come around and say, maybe we
53:23
Speaker 1: should ask women a lot of things attractiveness, but also
53:28
Speaker 1: did does this guy look smart? Does he look trustworthy,
53:30
Speaker 1: does he look approachable? Does he look like he might
53:32
Speaker 1: be a good long term mate? And balding men did
53:36
Speaker 1: rank lower and attractiveness, but they ranked a lot higher
53:38
Speaker 1: in all those other areas. So that might explain why
53:42
Speaker 1: it's stuck around as an evolutionary adaptation, even though not
53:46
Speaker 1: everyone agrees. Yeah, and there was another study from the
53:49
Speaker 1: University of Pennsylvania that basically said, um that, like, I
53:54
Speaker 1: think bald men are viewed as ten percent more masculine,
53:59
Speaker 1: m more calm, vident, stronger even and they were like,
54:02
Speaker 1: this doesn't really jibe with what we what our understanding is,
54:05
Speaker 1: So they got another set of photos, and they showed people,
54:09
Speaker 1: um with a guy with hair and then digitally manipulated
54:13
Speaker 1: without hair, so to make sure it wasn't like there
54:16
Speaker 1: was some difference among the actual guys. That wasn't. They
54:18
Speaker 1: were controlling for hair loss basically, and they still found
54:22
Speaker 1: the same results. But it's like you said, they keep
54:24
Speaker 1: trying to pigeonhole things into like what the evolutionary fitnesses
54:28
Speaker 1: you know, um, and some people are like, just not
54:30
Speaker 1: everything fits that that very in a neat, tidy way.
54:34
Speaker 1: It's possible baldness is just an aberration, like it's not
54:38
Speaker 1: something we're supposed to do. But it had nothing to
54:40
Speaker 1: do with with um helping the species along or holding
54:45
Speaker 1: it back. You know. That's right? You got anything else? No,
54:49
Speaker 1: I hope we've displayed the proper sensitivities here. Uh. If
54:53
Speaker 1: anyone is suffering from hair loss, then it can be
54:56
Speaker 1: a tough thing and and handle it the best way,
54:58
Speaker 1: you know how? Yeah, greed um. And since Chuck said
55:03
Speaker 1: the best way, you know how, I think it's time
55:06
Speaker 1: for a listener mail. It is. This is believe it
55:11
Speaker 1: or not. Sammy Davis Junior enters the picture and this
55:16
Speaker 1: is from Molly. She says, I recently found out at
55:18
Speaker 1: a distant but kind of wild Sammy Davis Junior connection.
55:22
Speaker 1: Turns out, my great great great aunt is the one
55:25
Speaker 1: who caused the car accident that called Sammy Davis Junior
55:28
Speaker 1: to lose his eye. Oh my gosh. Her name was
55:31
Speaker 1: Helen Boss. She was seventy two when she stopped in
55:33
Speaker 1: the middle of the highway in California and started to
55:36
Speaker 1: reverse because she missed her exit and caused the infamous
55:38
Speaker 1: car wreck. She missed her exit and was lost because
55:41
Speaker 1: she was from Akron, Ohio, and had just done a
55:43
Speaker 1: cross country road trip to California. She says to my
55:46
Speaker 1: whole family is from the Cleveland Acron area. Shout out Ohio,
55:50
Speaker 1: Molly Minus, my wife says as well. So there was
55:52
Speaker 1: another woman in the car with her that had been
55:54
Speaker 1: taking turns driving. They both suffered from injuries some injuries
55:58
Speaker 1: as well, and there were some suits flying from all
56:00
Speaker 1: parties supposed to accident. I believe Sammy was cleared of
56:03
Speaker 1: any wrongdoing, even though he rear ended them. Uh. This
56:07
Speaker 1: isn't really a proud family moment, but when my mom
56:10
Speaker 1: told me the story, I thought it was pretty interesting.
56:12
Speaker 1: I love the podcast I'm a tax accountant. I wanted
56:14
Speaker 1: to say there's at least one person that absolutely loves
56:17
Speaker 1: when you cover tax and financial topics. That is from
56:20
Speaker 1: Molly B. Nice work. Molly, appreciate that. That is a
56:24
Speaker 1: Rando family history if I've ever heard one, it's good.
56:29
Speaker 1: I agree, totally interesting. If you've got some weird part
56:33
Speaker 1: of your family history that you want to share with us,
56:35
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear it. You can send it in
56:37
Speaker 1: an email to Stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com.
56:45
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
56:48
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56:51
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56:54
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