I dont believe you guys

I agree with the poster. I am still skeptical after all these years reading magazines and people claiming it has no effect. Even doctors claim that acne is not caused by diet! Of course, from my personal experience–my diet DOES have an effect on my acne. My personal experience: I started to shave at 9 years old out of curiosity from watching my mother shave. She warned me that it would be darker and thicker. Well, guess what? I couldn’t wear shorts anymore. I was too embarrassed, and I even tried leaving it on for months unshaved. It makes no difference in making the hair like it used to be. Finally at around age 12 and 13, I decided to shave despite my mother wanting me to wait until age 15. It was the biggest mistake that I made. Also, I had tummy hair growing. I was a curious pre-puberty child weirded out by some strange body changes. I shaved that–BIGGEST MISTAKE! I never shaved it for years and it just stayed dark.

I am also the type of person who do not believe every scientific facts. There are studies claiming acne is not caused by diet. Same thing can be with the hair growth.

I know that many of you, including Andrea, will continue to believe that fact, but I don’t believe it, period. My own body does not make sense with these studies. They use certain people and not everyone in a fair way including the acne studies.

Let me tell you why diet causes my acne because my back cleared up using the Perricone diet in 3 days. The inflammation went away completely because of all the Salmon I ate which reduces inflamation. Eating lots of fruits makes my skin glow rosy like it never is.

This has nothing to do with acne, but it’s an example to show why I don’t believe scientific studies prove everything for everyone. I even read that companies are claiming that shaving doesn’t change the hair growth, but that they use that to keep customers buying their razors. I totally believe in that. I believe there are nasty secrets with drugs companies, doctors and the government that are being withheld from the people.

I was hearing this man on tv after midnight and he has a book called Natural Cures Doctors Don’t Want You To Know About. He says that there are cures for MS, diabetes, acid reflux (drinking vinegar!). It’s the companies that are trying to stay powerful pushing their drugs and having people come back to get their $200,000 income. Fast Foods have additives to make people come back for more and addicted to Fast Food. Why is it the fattest country in the world? After all, it’s a Capitalism country. It’s up to you to be skeptical and believe your own studies and your own personal experience.

I work at Borders and we sell way too many Perricone books…we can thank Oprah for that. Anyways, here is a link that we have been sending to each other. Of course, we aren’t allowed to share this with the customers:

http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/perricone.html

This fight is hilarious.

I believe the medical research b/c it never made sense to me that shaving should make the hair stronger. I just don’t see why or how it would do that since it does not even go anywhere close to the sources of the hair (the bulb and root).

BUT, i have this fear of shavig areas where i cannot afford to have thicker hair or i would brust in agner towards myself. I was raised to fear the rasor, and remenants of that cotious feeliing remain deep inside my brain.

But the funny thing is that I’m currently having this same argument with my electrolysist who happens to believe that shaving is as bad as waxing and plucking. He stands by the belief that it makes the velus hairs grow in as terminal hairs over time, and that it also distorts the folicle <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I can’t show him enough articles to convince him, so… whatever, to each his own!

Hi NoFate

I have just scanned through all the posts quickly and have not visited all the medical links. Valid comments exist here on both sides of the issue. All I want to say is that I started shaving my legs some years ago when I took up cycling and I was quite familiar with the density and length of these hairs. At the end of 2003 after a lot of leg shaving I let it grow back and it was exactly the same (too much and too long as before). All I rely on is my personal experiance and I can see no change on the odd occasion that I don’t shave for some time.

Stuart

There was a point in time where I believed that shaving had an effect on hair growth. I write for my school newspaper and the title of my column is “What Was I Thinking.” What a coincidence! If shaving makes hair grow thicker and darker, then why does my beard look the same day after day? I shave it only on days that I have to work and I have not grown new hairs or thicker hairs in quite some time. And, once again, we must return to the male-pattern baldness analogy. All those bald guys could just start shaving whatever bit of hair they have left and BAM! a full set of hair will appear! There is too much lunacy in this world…
My freshmen year in college I used to shave my chest about once or twice a week. At first I thought it was making a difference in hair growth or hair texture, but thats because I was 19 years old and was just really starting to grow most of the hairs in that area.
Also, whoever started this flimsy debate has said that we also can’t cure hairiness. I must be mistaken again (gasp!) but I think they call it electrolysis and to some extent, laser hair reduction. Hmmm…people will believe anything.

The reason you THINK shaving makes hair grow thicker is you no longer can see the hair’s natural taper at the tip, beccaue you have cut off the tip. Thus, you see the thicker part of the hair shaft as the new tip, and it looks thicker, because it is. If you let the hair grow out naturally, it will once againn have a tapered end, just like you had never shaved it. The stubble of shaving looks thicker than natural untrimmed hair, but that’s just because the tip of the hair is finer than the middle part. Over time, you body hair will go back to exactly how it was before shaving, no more, no less. This is a fact. I have no idea if waxing makes hair grow finer as some claim or not, but after waxing your hair should grow out exactly as it was before, with a fine tip.