Hope for hair

We seem to be a culture obsessed with hair. I have noticed supermarket shelves lined with a rich array of hair products. We have commercials of hair products that have women swinging their long black hair in such an abnormal fashion that you think that some kind of neurological condition is ailing them. We hear swoons and an instant sing-along chorus when these lines are heard playing on the radio: "Here, running my hand through her hair." We make fun of bald people (although to this date, I have never really figured out why "Pendong" is an expression uttered when a bald person is spotted). I remember a cartoon show on TV when I was a kid called "The Wacky Races" and there were characters there who had hair covering even their faces and who would club each other for all sorts of reasons. Morticia, the matriarch of the Adam’s Family, is defined by her long, smooth, dark hair. I have always worn my hair the same way, long and straight, since I was about 12. My friends say that I run a little short of "daring" in the way I wear my hair. But I have always felt it was such an intimate part of me that I could not mess with or change in the same way I would change clothes. I feel like who I am would be affected somewhat if I altogether changed the way I wore my hair. In a dance I am learning, we literally and deliberately let our hair down so it would move with our bodies and what additional magic it exudes! The hair on our heads (or the absence of it) seems to play a role in the way others perceive us. Oh, and hair fashion could define entire generations! Remember those "beehives" in the 50s and 60s? Those hippie hair in the 70s that symbolized "liberation" from traditional values or the status quo, that in the Philippines, Marcos even regulated hair length for men? And what of that spiked hair in the 80s?

Then of course, we are also aware of how worried men and women, although for different reasons, become if they start losing their hair. Science has found links between a high level of testosterone and hair loss in men and I have heard men use this link to say something about their "manhood," turning this "absence" into an "asset" instead. It is more bothersome for women to lose their hair but it still pales in comparison when people, especially children, lose their hair because of chemotherapy.

But for the first time ever in genetics, scientists at the Rockefeller University this week have successfully grown hair from adult stem cells extracted from the skin of hairy mice! This is a first since it is from adult stem cells and not from those controversial stem cells from embryos. "Stem cells" are those rare and especially potent cells in our body that have the capacity to differentiate into the many different organs of the body. Dr. Elaine Fuchs, professor and head of the Laboratory of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development at Rockefeller and an investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, together with Rockefeller University’s postdoctoral research fellows Cedric Blanpain, M.D., Ph.D., and William Lowry, Ph.D, and assisted by graduate student Lisa Polack, tried to isolate a stem cell not a hundred, not even a thousand but several million times before they were successful in grafting it on to the back of a hairless mouse. The result was so amazing in that not only hair was grown but the entire package that enables hair to grow such as skin and sebaceous glands, which give off the oil that lubricates the hair. They all seem to be very excited about the possibilities this would have for humans.

A human head has, on the average, about 100,000 hair follicles and normally loses about 50 to 100 a day. Hair grows about five to six inches a year. The outer part of the hair is called a cuticle, while the soft interior part is called the cortex. Those with coarse hair have larger follicles compared to those with fine hair. Curly hair means that your hair follicle cells grow in an uneven pattern, while those with straight hair have their hair follicle cells following a regular pattern. I have yet to find out what is in those fashionable and expensive hair-straightening formula they offer in beauty salons.

Hair is also an extension of our sense of touch like antenna. When the wind blows our hair, we sense the presence of a force in the environment because it sparks a nerve. When we get goosebumps, our body hairs stand, signaling fear, alertness and anxiety, thus we have the expression "hair-raising." Diane Ackerman (A Natural History of the Senses, NY: Vintage Books, 1990) counted hair on the human body the way a writer would and counted five million and noted the extra-sensitivity of hairs in the most sensitive areas which need only to move .00004 of an inch to fire a nerve or the eyelash which need only to shelter an infinitesimal dust to cause a disturbance in our senses.

I hesitated before writing about "hair" this week since it may seem trivial and I would not want to waste your time. Learning more about "hair" though, I now have a richer appreciation of what "hair loss" or being "hairless" means. It renders you directly vulnerable to the elements without advance warning to prepare. You lose a part of your "senses" and that is not a trifle matter.

* * *

For comments, e-mail [email protected].