I recently read about a special comb that stops hair loss by shooting laser beams into the scalp and stimulating the follicles.  Sounds like a hunk of hooey.  I'd have to see some serious independent studies before I even consider believing that might work. On the other hand, I'd like to share what I learned recently when charged with doing some research on the matter.

There was a recent New York Times article that discussed nutrition at length.  At great length.  It was really long. But the gist of it was that modern nutrition science sucks. Scientists see something happen, they isolate a chemical that seems to be at the center of the activity, put it in a pill and call it a vitamin.  A recent study  showed that many (not all) vitamins had absolutely no effect on lifespan when comparing one group of regular vitamin takers with a group of people who eschewed them.

Bottom line: we just don't understand the complex reactions that occur in food well enough to pull a chemical out and confidently pronounce to the world that this is the supplement you want to to take for whatever reason. We do it anyway, but the public would be smart to be skeptical.

I've always been in the camp that said if if you eat a balanced diet then you're getting all the vitamins/nutrients you need. Now I also know that if you stuff a bunch of vitamins in your mouth you might not be getting the vitamins/nutrients you need (at least not from the pills) because the molecules in the vitamin just don't work the same way they did when they were inside the food they came out of because they worked together with all the molecules around them. This isn't to say all vitamins are worthless, but some of them certainly are.

And what does any of this vitamin/nutrition stuff have to do with baldness and prostate cancer? Well, nothing. Although it may have something to do with stopping both of them. But we'll get to that.

Anyone who has done a little research on hair loss probably knows that most hair loss is caused by a chemical called dihydrotestosterone (DHT).  I read about that years ago but for some reason the authors all left out the interesting fact of where DHT comes from. There is a non-coincidental link between balding men and prostate problems.  Both are triggered by DHT, which is created by an unhealthy prostate.

I encourage all of you to look this up for yourselves because not only will it give you more confidence in the truth of it and greater incentive to act but you also might come across even more new information to share.

Anyway, when a prostate begins to create DHT, some of it goes into the blood stream and as one of the side effects it swells the skin around certain hair follicles towards the center of the scalp, crushing them slowly so that each successive hair is thinner and wispier until the follicle is no longer able to generate a hair and eventually dies a permanent death.

Rogaine attacks this process, but it does nothing about the DHT.  Rogaine is like Viagra — originally a vassodialator, blood pressure medication (don't even think about drinking it, the concentrations are way too high in the topical ointment for oral application and it's cut with some nasty stuff).  By dilating the pores where the folicles are located, Minoxidil (the active ingredient in Rogaine) temporarily undoes some of the work the DHT has done, but does nothing about the DHT itself.

Propecia actually blocks the production of DHT, but it does so inefficiently and with side effects.  It is also possible there may be long-term side effects which are not yet fully understood.  On the other hand it has been proven that certain foods can also promote prostate health and even stem the production of DHT to an extent. We'll get to that in a moment.

Usually around the age of 40 many men develop a need to pee in the middle of the night, a feeling that their bladder is full when it is not, reduction in urine pressure, and other problems related to an enlarging prostate. DHT, once created by the prostate, triggers prostate growth.  In an unhealthy prostate this can result in a chain reaction of the prostate growing larger very rapidly, picking up speed over the course of several months or years until it is too big of a problem to ignore.

Well, this unrestricted growth is believed to trigger another: prostate cancer — which is why waiting until the problem is too big to ignore is always a really, really bad idea and why prostate exams are important for men over a certain age even if no symptoms present themselves. However Soy products as well as other plants (Saw Palmetto, for instance) have been shown to slow the production of DHT.  So every time you eat tofu, edamame or even soy sauce you are not only promoting a healthy prostate, but also preventing hair loss. 

I'm not usually one for dietary supplements, but I read enough about Saw Palmetto extract to say it's worth investigating for yourself or discussing with your doctor (you're always supposed to do that when considering new dietary supplements, dontchya know?)  From my research, it seems to do a good job fighting the production of DHT and has no side effects.  And the pills that are available aren't "vitamins" that have been discovered, they're basically nothing more than the juices of the plant put into a gelcap. But maybe that's exactly what the human body needs.

The basic trend here seems to go back to what I was saying at the beginning: We're pretty terrible at isolating specific chemicals/vitamins/nutrients/whatever from foods.  We put them in pills and many of them just don't work the same.  Nature has done a pretty good job putting all of the pieces of the puzzle onto the earth and while some people may just be genetically doomed to hair loss and/or prostate problems, they can probably lessen those problems through diet.  In the meantime everyone else may be able to avoid those problems unnecessarily by being educated about diet. 

As a footnote: Tomato products also promote a healthy prostate.  Although they are not hair related, they're worth mentioning because the anti-oxidants promote healthy upkeep on organs throughout the body.  My suggestion is if you're not already taking a prescription from a doctor, but you're looking for one because of your hair or prostate, just be sure to eat soy products often and take another supplement like Saw Palmetto. — And eating tomatoes won't stop hair loss but it will help in lots of other ways so eat tomatoes and drink red wine (1 glass per evening — that's a 4 oz serving, don't get any ideas with that beer stein) .

 - one

I know I've been lax in my posting duties recently but things have been rather hectic around these parts. I don't have much time, even today, to write but I had something really worth mentioning and so here it is:

Matthias Kuentzel wrote an excellent piece last autumn that I just became aware of.  It's a piece on the clash between Muslims and Jews in the middle east, but it's also much more than that.  It's called HITLER'S LEGACY: ISLAMIC ANTISEMITISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST and if I was teaching a course on just about anything I would make it required reading for the class.  Unless it was science or math.  Or Comedy/Satire, although the piece is filled with observations of irony elsewhere in time and space.  What was I talking about?  Oh yeah, anyway read it and pass it along.

In a nutshell, and this does not nearly do justice to summing the piece up, Jews and Muslim Arabs got along just fine 100 years ago.  Keep in mind that the Muslims faced off doggedly with the Christians in the Crusades back in the Dark Ages, so it's not like there are different people there today than a century past.  It's just that they lived in harmony with Jews — and even the Zionist movement — and now they don't.  In fact, now it seems no matter what actions of peace Israel takes, it just encourages the attacks to grow in intensity.

Case in point: Israel pulled out of Lebanon and Hizballah took over the former occupied territories and used them to set up military operations against Israel.  When the Israeli army withdrew from the West Bank much the same thing was done by Hamas.  It's been made quite clear that Israel could meet every demand met of them and certain groups still wouldn't be pleased until it was eradicated and all Jews killed.

What isn't in the article that worries me is how some of these things seem to mirror events in the Christian community in the United States.  If the Muslims of Egypt could go from living in harmony with Jews to rabidly opposing their very existence between 1933 (when the Nazi party could find little support for their anti-semitic views) and today, perhaps we need to take the radical Christian movement more seriously before they gain any more ground.

There has always been a little bit of religion in U.S. government (e.g. how many times have we heard, "God bless America") and a little bit has never been a problem, but now with the Neo-Conservative movement religion seems to be pervasive throughout the executive branch.  Characters like Bush Jr. and Cheney seem to embody a magnification of all of Ronald Reagan's worst traits while ignoring the very aspects of the man which made him great.

In this day and age there shouldn't be a continuing struggle over teaching evolution in schools.  But there is.  And whether it be violence, hatred or mere intolerant disdain for Jews, gays, blacks, or just about any group that can be easily described, there just isn't anything quite like religion when it comes to creating some real, quality long-term problems between different groups of people.  Nothing quite like it when it comes to taking a functioning society and singling out individuals as different, making them into outsiders or even enemies.

On the one hand, most religions preach peace.  On the other hand, a lot of people just can't handle the fact that other religions exist besides their own.  Some of them deal with that by trying to convert the unbelievers (Have you considered taking Jesus as your personal savior?) and others by trying to kill them. 

Karl Marx once called religion "The Opiate of the Masses" and though many interpret this as meaning religion makes citizens docile and dopey I take it one step further.  When a heroin addict can't get their fix they become discomfited, possibly violent and in some cases will kill for heroin.  Replace the word heroin with religion and suddenly the suicide bombing of a Jewish wedding or the car bomb outside a Shi'ia Mosque make a whole lot more sense.

Not that this is news to anyone, but I think it's important to keep it at the forefront.  If all we do it say, "Oh that's terrible" and go on with our lives this problem isn't going to get any better.  It's going to get worse and it's going to inch closer and closer to our own homes.

- one