Hi,

I have been eating a lot of chicken lately in order to intake more protein to supplement by weight training. I have some body hair, and would eating too much chicken cause my body hair grow even more?

I am 25 years of age and always eat chicken properly cooked with spices.

Where did you get the idea that eating chicken can cause hair growth on your body? At your age, good nutrition will ensure that your genetics will be properly expressed. Just maybe, you have arrived at that age which will grow that body hair you have been incubating. So to answer your question — no, eating a lot of chicken doesn’t cause body hair growth. Not even with the spices.

Only thing I wonder is what’s the point of meeting prior patients? I’m sure the doctor will only select patients that had great experiences and outcomes to allow you to meet anyway. Just like on a job application, when they ask for personal references…..doesn’t everyone only list those that’ll give the most glowing reviews?

Aside from getting personal experiences from past patients and being able to ask them questions patient-to-patient, you can also have the opportunity to see the results in person. True, a doctor can just show off the best of the best, but you can at least determine if the best is even possible with that doctor. The results don’t lie, and if the doctor just has a pool of patients with poor results, their best won’t even make the grade.

We hold monthly open house events at both of our offices, where anyone can attend. If a patient was dissatisfied for whatever reason (results, aftercare instructions, etc), they have the opportunity to reveal that to others. I haven’t found that to happen in the 17 years that we’ve been holding these free events, so that’s a good thing and I believe that means we’re doing something right. Many times patients just drop in to say hello and we did not even know that they were stopping by. There’s no way we could control these open house events to only show off our best patients, as they are… open. That is why few doctors offer similar events year after year.

Dear Dr Rassman,

Firstly i would just like to thank you for providing such a constructive and educational forum for unbiased, informative hair loss advice. I work in a hair transplant clinic and never hesitate to refer patients to this site for additional information.

My question however is regarding a friend of mine who suffers from psoriasis, her scalp being the worst affected area. I felt compelled to seek your advice after seeing her in tears yesterday, fed up with the constant irritation and discomfort. She is nearly always scratching her scalp and is now experiencing noticeable thinning and loss in some areas.

Can you recommend any particular treatments to control the condition or at least alleviate the itching? She has seen numerous doctors and dermatologists but is yet to find anything that works.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

This is a standard dermatologic condition which any good dermatologist should be able to address. The best person to treat your friend’s psoriasis is her dermatologist, but as she’s having difficulty finding a treatment that works, I found a good list you can both review at the National Psoriasis Foundation site.

From the article:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, making his presence felt amid speculation about his health, has lashed out at football players sporting long hair, a Japanese newspaper said Monday.

The bouffant-haired dictator was outraged at the hairdos while watching a university match and ordered all men to go clean-cut, the Mainichi Shimbun said in its evening edition, quoting an unnamed source close to the regime.

Read the full article at Yahoo News UK

The story goes on to say that the dictator’s reasoning was because he couldn’t tell if he was watching a women’s or a men’s football (soccer) match since some of the players had long hair. Some may say clothes make the man, others feel the mane of the lion indicates it’s might… but if you can’t tell the difference between a man or a woman because of the length of their hair, you should perhaps consider never telling anyone, ever.

Dr. Rassman,
My mother saw your picture and she says you’re very handsome. She says you look a lot like Lenny on Law & Order. She also likes your mature hairline and salt and pepper hair.

As a single, dating man, I always like to hear that kind of stuff. I don’t think I have a resemblance to the late actor Jerry Orbach from Law & Order, but I’ll take it! Thank her for making my day.

Hi, I’m trying to figure out if I’m balding or not. I’m a 24 year old male (Korean), with thin and straight hair. I recently heard a “good” test is trying to pull on hair and see how many come out. I pulled (relatively hard) on my hair on the top of my scalp and got about 5 hairs to come out. After that, I tried to do it again, and got about 2 hairs to come out, once again, pulling pretty hard, but not ripping it out. I did it again, and got about 2 more hairs to come out.

Is this normal? Did I pull too hard? I still have a little tingly feeling on my scalp from all the hair pulling. I tried searching through your blog, but couldn’t find an answer. Thanks for all your responses.

I realize there is such a thing as a hair pull test, but this is used to identify hairs that have moved out of anagen and into the telogen cycle (read about the hair cycles). When gentle traction is placed on a group of 50 or so hairs (pull test), if more than 10% of the hairs come out then that would indicate there are hairs in telogen, and the condition we call telogen effluvium is present. Genetic balding does not give you a positive pull test.

I generally do not subscribe to the hair pull test for genetic balding. If you pull to the point of pain, you are pulling too hard. Aside from it being variable and not very scientific, the patients would likely be mad at me for pulling out their hair. The “good” test is a microscopic assessment of how each of your hair shafts look under a microscope, and seeing what the variability is around different parts of your scalp. That is in essence a miniaturization study.