Category: Other

Snippet from the article:

Overwrought with worry over hair fall, a 47-year-old woman allegedly hanged herself from the ceiling fan at her flat in Bhayander late on Wednesday. The family of the deceased informed the police that the woman had been experiencing excessive hair fall over the past few months, and was worried about it. The Navghar police have registered an accidental death report in the case.

The deceased has been identified as Suparna Das, a resident of Krishna Park in Bhayender (East). Madhusudan, her husband said, “My wife used to look beautiful as she had long hair. A few months ago, she started suffering from excessive hair loss. We got her blood tests done to identify the cause. Since then, she had been very quiet. But I never thought that she would do something like this.”

Read the rest — Mumbai: Fed up of severe hair loss, woman commits suicide

This is a very sad story, but suicide is not uncommon in those with severe depression. When balding occurs in an unstable person who can not manage the added stress on their lives, this could be the end result. I am aware of two other such cases over the past 23 years.

Snippet from the interview with Carl Djerassi, “father” of the The Pill:

Djerassi himself was snipped in his early fifties; his daughter was sterilised at 25, convinced the world didn’t need more babies and she’d adopt if necessary. But will there be a male Pill?

“Never. This has nothing to do with science; we know exactly how to develop them. But there’s not a single pharmaceutical company that will touch this, for economic and socio-political rather than scientific reasons. Their focus is on diseases of a geriatric population: diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular, Alzheimer’s. Male contraception is nothing compared with an anti-obesity drug. Plus, men are preoccupied with the side-effects. Men who start taking it at 18 will ask, ‘Will I still be able to have a child 30 years later?’ How do you answer? To prove that is monstrously difficult and expensive. No one would spend that amount of money.”

Read the rest — Carl Djerassi: ‘We know exactly how to develop the male pill, but there’s not a single pharmaceutical company that will touch it’

Snippet from the article:

The Duchess of Cambridge passed a royal milestone today by cracking a joke at her husband’s expense while on public duty for the first time. She suggested the perfect solution for Prince William’s growing bald patch – a toupee made from alpaca wool. “You need it more then me,” she said, pointing to his head.

William, who has teased her mercilessly about her clothes, telling her she looked like a banana in a yellow dress and complaining that a dazzling green outfit was too bright, laughed and took it in his stride.

Read the rest — Kate teases William over thinning hair at Sydney Royal Easter Show

Over the years, many patients have come to our office to have hair transplants because of such teasing by family. This is not uncommon.

I’ve seen you mention many times that bulk analysis is a good way to determine if someone is balding and that density should be the same everywhere for a non balding patient.

But I’m not convinced by this – I recently saw a well known hair transplant surgeon and he said that people typically have less density around the crown and temple areas anyway. He didn’t believe in bulk analysis for analysing hair loss.

Today I saw a male child who must have been around 8 years old. His saw was shaved short and sure enough, his temple/corner areas were noticeably less dense than the rest of his hair and this went quite a way back (I suppose to the point where someone might have suggested he was between a NW2 and NW3 on a balding scale if he was an adult).

You may not be convinced of the value in measuring hair bulk, but I am not going to try to convince you.

In a non-balding man, the bulk analysis shows that the hair in the 4 areas we measure (down the midline: front, top, crown and donor area) are all within 10% of the measurement of each other. I do not measure the hair at the sides of the head, because that is not where the balding will be. I would therefore possibly agree with you that the side densities are not as high as the midline densities.

Out of curiosity, I will measure a non-balding man’s sides and see if we are both correct.

Snippet from the article:

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, and in 2010, it was responsible for over 28,000 deaths in the US. Now, a new study presented at the European Association of Urology congress in Sweden suggests men with blood type O have a significantly lower chance of the cancer recurring.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), prostate cancer is the second most common cause of death from cancer among white, African American, American Indian/Alaska Native and Hispanic men.

Read the rest — Men with blood type O have lower recurrence of prostate cancer

Tokyo Medical University’s Dr. Yoshio Ohno and his colleagues studied 555 prostate cancer patients that had a radical prostatectomy.

The article goes on to say, “After following the patients for an average of 52 months, Dr. Ohno and his team found that patients with blood group O were 35% less likely to have prostate cancer recurrence, compared with patients with blood group A.”

This is a good pick-up. Most of us know our blood type, so this might be some good reassurance for those with type O blood.

Snippet from the article:

Scientists have moved a step closer to the goal of creating stem cells perfectly matched to a patient’s DNA in order to treat diseases, they announced on Thursday, creating patient-specific cell lines out of the skin cells of two adult men.

The advance, described online in the journal Cell Stem Cell, is the first time researchers have achieved “therapeutic cloning” of adults. Technically called somatic-cell nuclear transfer, therapeutic cloning means producing embryonic cells genetically identical to a donor, usually for the purpose of using those cells to treat disease.

But nuclear transfer is also the first step in reproductive cloning, or producing a genetic duplicate of someone – a technique that has sparked controversy since the 1997 announcement that it was used to create Dolly, the clone of a ewe. In 2005, the United Nations called on countries to ban it, and the United States prohibits the use of federal funds for either reproductive or therapeutic cloning.

Read the rest — In a cloning first, scientists create stem cells from adults

Snippet from the article:

Men are fast catching up women when it comes to worrying about their appearance, according to new research.

A detailed look into the body confidence of 2,000 men and women documented a dramatic rise in appearance-related anxiety for both sexes. Results showed two-thirds of women feel under too much pressure to look good, claiming a rise in ‘perfect-looking’ women in the media has set unrealistic standards.

Men now spend over three hours a week on average stressing over their image and feel the level of expectation placed upon them is rising. In fact, results also showed a rise in men dressing for their body shape, discussing their image with partners. One in eight men is even dieting in secret. Baldness and ‘moobs’ emerged as men’s biggest concerns.

Read the rest — Men stressed about beer bellies, baldness and moobs

The survey revealed that men had the most anxiety about being overweight, followed by yellow teeth, going bald, and growing breasts.

Snippet from the article:

Scientists have found a surprisingly simple way to turn mature cells back into a primitive state. Simply giving mouse blood cells an acid bath is enough to produce so-called pluripotent cells that can develop into any cell type in the body, they report in two new papers this week. The remarkable transformation contradicts many assumptions about cell biology and may ultimately lead to new ways to treat disease and injuries.

Scientists not involved in the work say the technique could be a game-changer if it pans out. “If this new approach is applicable to human cells, it would have great implications for regenerative medicine,” says Hongkui Deng, a stem cell researcher at Peking University in Beijing. “It’s quite surprising” that the technique “doesn’t involve any genetic manipulation,” says Rudolf Jaenisch, a developmental biologist at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Read the rest — Acid Treatment Could Provide Breakthrough Stem Cell Technique

But wait…. the above snippet is from an article that was published and appeared in many publications, but then the scientific community tried to replicate the study. Now there are many other publications that show how the attempts to replicate these results were unsuccessful. Read more about the investigation here.

For those interested in hair breakthroughs, this report could have been significant and prompted considerable excitement for creating stem cells that could be turned into hair cells, but without direct support by the greater scientific community, this was probably another blind end for stem cell development.

Dear Dr.,

If a new product came to market that was substantially better/more effective than propecia and rogaine for treating hair loss, how would you go about informing people of it through your blog and practice?

I’d just simply tell them and post on the blog. I don’t hide new treatments that are proven safe and effective, but I am not going to promote the iffy ones that make unproven claims. We write about pretty much everything on here.

Doc,

You’ve been a kind internet friend. I’ve sent questions and thoughts, and you have posted them.

Question: Remember Michael Keaton? Love this guy. Huge in the 1980’s….but clearly balding (Mr. Mom, Gung Ho, Clean and Sober, Beetlejuice). When he was cast as Batman (1989) he clearly had some work done. Cosmetic. Surgery. Blah Blah. Blah.

Now in 2014, promoting Robocop (the reboot) he tells tales of the bat suit and has CLEARLY had work done in. Check the video out (here).

Your thoughts? It looks painful……..(the redness above the occipital bone). Come on. He’s rich. WTF hasn’t he had that cleaned up?

I am not sure that I see what you are talking about…

Michael Keaton has very visible male pattern baldness from what I can see in the video you sent. I’ve attached a photo from 2013 on the right that shows he’s losing his hair. I don’t clearly see any work done here.

It is entirely possible that Hollywood movie magic (hairpieces or styling tricks) were used in many of his past film roles.