From member lagirl: “I found a very good article on all the possible causes of excessive hair growth, including medical conditions and medications. Maybe you can post this in a sticky on both LHR and Electrolysis forums. Can probably help some people determine what they have or IF they have something.”
Hi Andrea,
Just a quick note on this article. After reading through it and discovering that they had included waxing and tweezing in the self care methods of hair removal that do not affect hair growth, I did contact them and point out the inaccurate information.
This is the dialog;
Dear Ms. Hook,
Thank you for your email, and feedback regarding www.PDRhealth.com. Kindly note, your comments have been forwarded to our PDRhealth.com Editorial Department for review.
sincerely,
Thomson Healthcare Customer Service
On August 26, 2006 at 4:15 PM,
>To Whom it may concern,
>
>In reading through your article about hirsutism in women: http://www.pdrhealth.com/patient_education/BHG01EN13.shtml
>I did find two methods of temporary hair removal, indicated as non-stimulating that actually have the potential to increase hair growth.
>
>In the portion of the article dealing with Self Care, the following statement was made “Use physical hair-removal methods. Contrary to popular belief, temporary hair-removal methods such as shaving, waxing, tweezing, and depilatory creams do not cause hair to grow back coarser and darker than the original hair.”
>
>Shaving and the use of depilatories will not affect hair growth as they only affect the hair shaft above skin level. Waxing and tweezing do stimulate hairs to grow deeper, thicker and darker, as well as having the potential of accelerating local vellus hairs into anagen growth. Both of these methods remove hair by literally tearing the hair follicle out of the dermis, requiring the body to generate additional capillary growth to affect proper healing. With an increase of blood flow into an area, higher levels of androgens and other hair growth stimulants and drugs will be introduced, exacerbating any existing problems. This makes the dissemination of this information potentially harmful to those individuals seeking information for self-help in this area.
>
>I hope that this statement will be corrected.
>
>Thank you,
>
>J.P. Hook, Licensed Electrologist
Anyway, despite this one picadillo, it is an excellent article, although somewhat limited in their discussion of drugs that have the potential for stimulating hair growth.
Joanie
Thanks Joanie for taking your time to address the inaccuracies in this piece. Do you think the editorial board will review and correct this? I’m not being cynical in asking this, but I have very little knowledge of the inner workings of such institutions and wonder if letters from readers prompt them to correct misinformation. Anyone know if letters like this help?
Dee
Hi Dee,
I believe that they will consult their legal department, get a second opinion, and then make corrections as required as people are so suit-happy these days.
I did give them my contact information and have all of my references in a row as far as supporting evidence goes. The fact that I am a licensed electrologist might give this the emphasis to make them at least take a good look at the situation.
I think that they will correct their information as their credibility is on the line and this requires just the deletion of a few words from a web page. Not a big issue. However, it might take them a while to get “a-round-toit”
Joanie
Hi Dee,
I just looked at the article again and they haven’t changed it yet. My guess is that someone just doesn’t want to be bothered about this.
Oh well! We can always look on this as a form of job security! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />
Joanie
Hi lagirl,
Excellent overview of hair and hormonal problems. Bears looking at as a general info source. Thanx for passing it along.
Joanie
I appreciate the work Geoffrey Redmond does. I have attended his lectures. He wrote a couple of books that I regularly loan out to clients who plan on seeking medical help.
His books provide lots of information written for the lay person; information that helps my clients self-advocate when they are trying to get a proper diagnosis and treatment.
Nice to see his link here. Thank you lagirl.
I’ve been away for a few days, but popped in and say this thread to add:
I now know personally some drugs and topicals really do increase hair growth or cause folliculitus. I used Triamcinolone recently for a week. Talk about folliculitus, I just didn’t bother with shaving or even dealing with the area. Anytime I got a razor close to it, just nicks all over the place. Terrible. But it’s all fine now. It did it’s job and I’m no longer using it.
Mantaray
To think that there are so many causes that enable more hair to grow on unwanted places, except for the hair on a bald(ing) person’s head. Life is not fair.
Johnson, there are quite a few hair transplant surgeons who move body hair to the scalp these days. Apparantly, beard hair is the best and closest in thickness and cycle to head hair. I haven’t updated the below in a few years:
http://www.darkskinlaser.com/BodyHairTransplants.html
Cool eh!
Results can vary, but most of the pictures I have seen suggest little or no scarring in the body area where the hair is extracted from.
New data suggest a offline too…
tends to make things worse.
Since this popped up - had a new (to me) client this year who had successful treatments decades ago. She’s now post-menopausal and had a bad problem of large diameter white hairs on her chin and jawline. She admits she’d been tweezing for awhile. We were both seeing a decrease of hair as treatments progressed. Yesterday she informed me that she’d been taking some nutritional supplement (sounds like masha?) which was supposed to balance her endocrine system. Her “person” (I can’t remember if it’s a yogi, herbalist, nutritionist, or what) told her to stop taking it. Come to find out one of the side effects is hair growth.
I sure miss Hair Route’s regular publication listing drugs which cause hair growth.