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Hair Loss News Archives
July 2005
Hair-raising agenda for hirsute forum
For people prone to bad-hair days help is at hand in the shape of 300 clinical experts who are in Zurich for the European Hair Research Society’s 11th congress.
Switzerland’s inaugural hair-science meeting has attracted delegates to the city’s University Hospital from 30 countries, including the United States, Australia and Indonesia.
The agenda covers topics such as the affect of stress on
hair growth, advances in measuring hair density, the link
between ageing in hair and the rest of the body, and an
intriguing lecture entitled: "A nonsense mutation in the
Corneodesmosin Gene in a Mexican family with Hypotrichosis
Simplex of the scalp."
It may come as a surprise to many people that so much time
and effort is spent on hair research.
But our follicles have
a vital role to play in our physical, emotional and social
make-up, according to Professor Ralph Trüeb of Zurich
University Hospital.
"Hair has lost many of its functions compared to the animal
world, but it still protects our heads from UV radiation,
helps regulate body temperature and is an important sensory
organ," said Trüeb, who is president of the congress.
"It also gives off sexual signals and is symbolic of youth
and strength. Many women dye their hair blonde because it is
seen as a sexually attractive colour, or red to denote a
strong will. Many Japanese youngsters dye their naturally
black hair perhaps to break away from the conformity of the
older generation.
"Men usually colour their hair to hide greying, particularly
in China where grey hair is seen as a sign of weakness.
Young men may also grow their hair long to demonstrate
independence."
Hair loss
Trüeb said that one of people’s main concerns about hair is alopecia, or
hair loss.
"Recent studies have shown that 50 per cent of men are concerned by moderate
hair loss, which rises to two thirds when the alopecia is severe," he told
swissinfo.
"The studies also point to the fact that all women are alarmed by hair loss,
even when it is moderate. I think this highlights just how important hair is
to us."
Trüeb noted that there were now many hair products on the market, but he
warned people not to go overboard for fear of damaging their locks.
"Shampoos and conditioners are generally good, but remember that if you have
miserable hair to start with, it will never look as good as the model on the
advert even after using the products."Roots Trichology, or the scientific study of hair and the scalp, has its first
known roots in Egyptian times when hair specialists played an important role
at the courts of the Pharoahs.
But the science has come on in leaps and bounds in the past 50 years, and
the ability to create new hair using stem-cell technology may be just a few
years away.
One of the keynote speeches at the forum, "Hair Throughout the Ages", will
be given by Doris Lier of the CG Jung Institute Zurich.
"Hair science in the early days was viewed as a form of magic, for example,
red hair used to be associated with witchcraft," said Trüeb.
"But since the discovery of fungi and bacteria it has become a much more
exact science and we now know what can go wrong with hair and the scalp and
where we can intervene."
But what hair-raising antics do the Swiss get up to? "The Swiss are not
people of extremes generally, so they don’t tend to go to extremes with
their hair in my experience," said Trüeb.