Hair Loss: Myth Vs. Fact
An estimated 80 million Americans suffer from hair loss, including thinning and male pattern baldness. The Onion examines the myths and facts surrounding hair loss.
MYTH: Genetics are the main cause of hair loss.
FACT: Hair loss is most commonly caused by standing too close to an open flame.
MYTH: Hair loss is permanent.
FACT: For six easy payments of $1,200, nothing is permanent.
MYTH: Baldness is caused by too much testosterone.
FACT: Baldness is caused by too little hair.
MYTH: If your mom's father is bald, you'll be bald.
FACT: If your mom's father ignores the feeble witch on the side of the road, you'll be bald.
MYTH: Too much sun can lead to hair loss.
FACT: Hair needs soil, water, and sunlight to grow.
MYTH: Women aren't attracted to bald men.
FACT: Every woman you've ever met is sexually aroused by Stanley Tucci.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
2 hours ago
- Boston Globe
An expensive Alzheimer's lifestyle plan offers false hope, experts say
Kerry Briggs was taking them all because a doctor had told her that with enough supplements and lifestyle modifications, her Alzheimer's symptoms could not only be slowed, but reversed. It is an idea that has become the focus of television specials, popular podcasts, and conferences; the sell behind mushroom supplements and self-help books. Advertisement But the suggestion that Alzheimer's can be reversed through lifestyle adjustments has outraged doctors and scientists in the medical establishment, who have repeatedly said that there is little to no proof for such a claim and expressed concern that the idea could harm a large group of vulnerable Americans. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up John Briggs had come across the idea after learning about Dale Bredesen, who had been performing a series of small and unconventional studies through which he claimed to have designed a set of guidelines to reverse Alzheimer's symptoms. 'Very, very few people should ever get this,' Bredesen told an audience in July, referring to cognitive decline. His company has made bracelets with the phrase 'Alzheimer's Is Now Optional' on them. His pitch has gained a following. Bredesen's 2017 book, 'The End of Alzheimer's,' has sold around 300,000 copies in the United States and became a New York Times bestseller. Advertisement A day's worth of supplements for Kerry Briggs, diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. JAMIE KELTER DAVIS/NYT Many doctors encourage Alzheimer's patients to modify their diets and exercise regimens in hopes of slowing the disease's progress, said Dr. Bruce Miller, director of the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California San Francisco. 'The question, though, of reversal is very different.' 'It's one thing to say that you're reversing an illness because someone says they feel better and another to prove it,' Miller said. 'We don't have the proof.' Bredesen, 72, was once also a top neurologist at the University of California San Francisco, but he has not had an active medical license for much of the past three decades and doesn't see patients anymore. He became skeptical of the medical and pharmaceutical industries' approach to treating Alzheimer's and dedicated himself to an alternative method focused on food, supplements, lifestyle tweaks, and detoxification treatments. The central idea was that there was no 'silver bullet' -- no one pill or intervention -- that could cure Alzheimer's. Instead, Bredesen believed in firing a 'silver buckshot' (a reference to the sprayed pellets that come out of shotgun shells) by modifying 36 factors simultaneously. His strict protocol could be personalized after extensive lab testing but generally involved a low-carbohydrate diet, intermittent fasting, supplements and, at times, interventions such as hormone treatments and home mold remediation. For the Briggses, who live in North Barrington, Ill., the adjustments did not come cheap: $1,000 a month for supplements, $450 per hour for a specialty doctor and other costs, which altogether added up to $25,000 over eight months. Advertisement But Kerry Briggs wanted to do something to help find a treatment for the disease, and John Briggs wanted to help his wife. More than 7 million people in the United States -- roughly 11 percent of those 65 and older -- have Alzheimer's, the world's leading cause of dementia. Despite decades of research and the development of a few medications with modest benefits, a cure for the disease has remained elusive. The Alzheimer's Association, which helped fund Bredesen's earlier and more conventional research, sees his recent approach as insufficiently rigorous. His trials have suggested his protocol can improve cognition, but Maria Carrillo, the organization's chief science officer, said they 'fall short of what the research community' would consider convincing enough to suggest to patients, since they lack control groups and are small, with the number of participants ranging from 10 to 25. Others have expressed similar unease. In 2020, Dr. Joanna Hellmuth, then a neurologist at the University of California San Francisco, published an article in The Lancet Neurology pointing to a number of 'red flags' within Bredesen's studies, including 'the substantial potential for a placebo effect.' Dr. Jason Karlawish, co-director of Penn Memory Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said Bredesen's research and recommendations don't adhere to the standards of medicine. The Alzheimer Society of Canada has gone so far as to say Bredesen is offering 'false hope.' Bredesen maintains that the results of his program can be remarkable, though he acknowledges it's less successful for people with more noticeable symptoms: 'It amazes me how people fight back against something that's actually helping,' Bredesen said. Advertisement He connected The New York Times with patients who said they had benefited from his recommendations. Sally Weinrich, 77, in South Carolina, said she used to forget her pocketbook or miss the school pickup window for her grandchildren, but now thinks more clearly. Darrin Kasteler, 55, in Utah, who had struggled to tie a necktie and to drive, said both had become easier. To Bredesen's supporters, the testimonials are evidence of promise. But what divides Bredesen from the medical establishment isn't his emphasis on lifestyle adjustments; it is the boldness of his claims, his unconventional and strict treatment plan, and the business he is building around both. It was one of Kerry Briggs' sisters, Jennifer Scheurer, who first noticed that something was off. In 2021, while visiting Scheurer in Oregon, Briggs repeated the same story a few times in one day, and had trouble finding words and playing board games. Scheurer also found Briggs standing in her kitchen, seemingly lost. This was particularly odd; Briggs was an architect, and she had designed the kitchen herself. Briggs underwent a series of tests, ending in a spinal tap, which showed evidence of Alzheimer's. She was 61. The news was devastating, but Briggs told her husband that she wanted to enroll in a clinical trial to help others. But none of the trials admitted her. She weighed too little, and her disease was already too advanced. Then a friend recommended 'The End of Alzheimer's.' John Briggs read that book and a follow-up, 'The First Survivors of Alzheimer's.' Excited, he reached out to Bredesen's company, Apollo Health, to see what could be done for his wife. Bredesen had developed a paid plan called 'Recode,' a portmanteau of the phrase 'reversal of cognitive decline,' and a training program for health practitioners like medical doctors, chiropractors and naturopaths to learn to implement it. On the Apollo Health website, Bredesen's program is advertised as the 'only clinically proven program to reverse cognitive decline in early stage Alzheimer's disease.' Advertisement In January 2024, John Briggs paid an $810 fee to join Apollo Health, which gave Kerry Briggs access to a personalized plan and matched her with Dr. Daniel LaPerriere, a doctor in Louisville, Colo. On LaPerriere's recommendation, the Briggses began to eat a modified keto diet that was low in sugar and rich in plants, lean protein, and healthy fats. The Briggses were not allowed most fruit -- no apples, bananas, peaches or grapes ('all these things that we love,' John Briggs said), though the couple made an exception for blueberries. To see if Kerry Briggs was in a metabolic state of ketosis, where fat is used for energy instead of carbohydrates, John Briggs experimented with pricking her finger twice each day to test her blood. In keeping with Bredesen's general guidelines, Kerry Briggs began working with a therapist to manage stress and tried the brain-training games the protocol recommended, though she struggled to play them. LaPerriere gave John Briggs the unconventional instruction to collect dust samples at home in order to determine whether 'toxic mold' was present (only trace amounts were) and ordered lab tests to see if Kerry Briggs was suffering from an inability to flush it from her organs (she wasn't). He also prescribed Briggs hormone-replacement therapy, in the hope of improving her cognition. Advertisement Briggs' primary-care physician raised concerns about the risks, John Briggs said, but she took the hormones anyway. Briggs understood that the protocol would be unlikely to restore Kerry Briggs to her former self. But he was determined to see it through for at least six months. By last September, though, John Briggs was struggling to notice many benefits. Kerry Briggs could no longer keep track of conversations with her therapist, who suggested they stop the sessions. The next month, John Briggs began touring memory-care facilities for his wife. In February, after about eight months, they quit the protocol altogether. Bredesen said that he rarely tells people not to try his program, even if the chance of helping is small, because of the possibility of improvement. But he considered Kerry Briggs' experience 'not representative' of the results he has achieved in trials and said in retrospect that 'you could kind of tell ahead of time' that she would not fare well. Bredesen has urged prospective patients to start his program preventively or early in the disease's progression. Helping patients already experiencing significant decline, like Briggs, is difficult, he and LaPerriere said. 'People are more incentivized to come in when they're farther along,' Bredesen said. 'And that's a real dilemma, which is why we're telling people, 'Please do not wait because we can do so much more.'' This article originally appeared in
New York Post
2 hours ago
- New York Post
How huge health funding cuts in Washington ‘put lives at risk' in communities across America
Americans are losing a vast array of people and programs dedicated to keeping them healthy. Gone are specialists who were confronting a measles outbreak in Ohio, workers who drove a van to schools in North Carolina to offer vaccinations, and a program that provided free tests to sick people in Tennessee. State and local health departments responsible for invisible but critical work, such as inspecting restaurants, monitoring wastewater for new and harmful germs, responding to outbreaks before they get too big, and a host of other tasks to protect both individuals and communities, are being hollowed out. 'Nobody wants to go swim in a community pool and come out of it with a rash or a disease from it. Nobody wants to walk out their door and take a fresh breath of air and start wheezing,' said Lori Tremmel Freeman, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. 5 A student receives a vaccination inside a mobile health unit visiting Independence High School in Charlotte, N.C. AP But local health officials say they now have no choice but to do a lot less of it. The Trump administration is cutting health spending on an unprecedented scale, experts say, including pulling $11 billion of direct federal support because the pandemic is over and eliminating 20,000 jobs at national health agencies that in part assist and support local public health work. It's proposing billions more be slashed. Together, public health leaders said, the cuts are reducing the entire system to a shadow of what it once was, threatening to undermine even routine work at a time when the nation faces the deadliest measles outbreak since at least the 1990s, rising whooping cough cases and the risk that bird flu could spread widely among people. The moves reflect a shift that Americans may not fully realize, away from the very idea of public health: doing the work that no individual can do alone to safeguard the population as a whole. That's one of the most critical responsibilities of government, notes James Williams, county executive in Santa Clara County, California. And it goes beyond having police and fire departments. 5 A mobile health unit is parked outside of Independence High School in Charlotte, N.C., on Wednesday, March 19, 2025. AP 'It means not having babies suffering from diseases that you vanquished. It means making sure that people have access to the most accurate and up-to-date information and decisions that help their longevity,' Williams said. 'It means having a society and communities able to actually prosper, with people living healthy and full lives.' Keeping communities healthy saves lives — and money Just outside a Charlotte, North Carolina, high school in March, nurse Kim Cristino set out five vaccines as a 17-year-old girl in ripped jeans stepped onto a health department van. The patient barely flinched as Cristino gave her three shots in one arm and two in the other to prevent diseases including measles, diphtheria, and polio. Like many other teens that morning, the girl was getting some shots years later than recommended. The clinic's appearance at Independence High School gave her a convenient way to get up to date. 'It lessens the barriers for parents who would have to be taking off from work and trying to get their kids to a provider,' Cristino said. The vaccinations also help the community around her. The teen won't come down with a life-threatening disease, and the whole community is protected from outbreaks — if enough people are vaccinated. The Mecklenburg County department, with 'Protecting and Promoting the Public's Health' emblazoned on its van, is similar to other U.S. health departments. They run programs to reduce suicides and drug overdoses, improve prenatal health, and help people stop smoking. They educate people about health and test for and treat diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis. Some, including Mecklenburg, operate medical and dental clinics too. 'You come to work every day and think: What's going to be my challenge today? Sometimes it's a new disease,' said Raynard Washington, Mecklenburg's director. 'That's why having a backbone infrastructure is so important.' What they do is cost-effective, experts have found. For every dollar spent on childhood immunizations, the country is estimated to save $11; on tobacco cessation, $2-$3; on asthma control, $70. Disease prevention is unseen — and ignored Critical care can be glamorous — surgeons, cardiologists, and cancer doctors can pull off breathtaking medical feats to save lives at the last possible moment. Prevention work is low-key. It's impossible to identify who was saved because, if it goes well, the person never knows when they've fended off a mortal threat with the invisible shield of public health. 5 'You come to work every day and think: What's going to be my challenge today? Sometimes it's a new disease,' said Raynard Washington, Mecklenburg's director. 'That's why having a backbone infrastructure is so important.' AP 'People don't appreciate it,' said Dr. Umair Shah, former health director for Washington state. 'Therefore, they don't invest in it.' State health departments are funded by a varying mix of federal and state tax money. Some states deliver services in a centralized way while others provide resources to local departments, which generally also get money from counties, cities, or towns. Some large cities get direct federal funding for their health departments. Mecklenburg — a large department with around 1,000 workers serving 1.2 million people — has an annual budget of around $135 million, while some metro hospitals have operating expenses in the billions. About 70% of the department's budget comes from local funds, which helps fill gaps in state and federal money. But Mecklenburg is still strapped for cash and resources. At times, employees work 12- to 14-hour days, especially during outbreaks. Nurse Carmel Jenkins recalled responding to mpox exposures at a day care center — arriving before 5:30 a.m. to alert the children's parents and working late into the evening. 'Even though there may be limited resources, we still have a service to provide,' said Jenkins, a director of clinical services for the department. 'We don't mind going above and beyond to be able to do that.' Chaos in Washington puts 'lives at risk' In March, the Trump administration pulled $11 billion from state and local health departments without warning under the leadership of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist and public health critic. The cuts abruptly ended COVID-era grants, which had also been approved for non-COVID work, including vaccination and disease detection, tracking, and testing. A week later, thousands of people were laid off at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many had worked closely with state and local health departments to provide information, grants, and other support. The sudden, one-two punch delivered a serious blow to the system, public health leaders said in interviews, court filings, and public testimony. A Kennedy spokesman said in an email that America remains unhealthy compared with other developed nations and HHS is reorganizing what he said were 'broken systems' and reprioritizing resources to 'centralize programs and functions that will improve our service to the American people.' 5 A dentist cleans the teeth of a child in the public health department's mobile dental clinic visiting Starmount Elementary school in Charlotte, N.C. AP 'These cuts are not about abandoning public health — they're about reforming it,' spokesman Andrew Nixon said, adding: 'We reject the implication that HHS has turned its back on urgent health threats.' HHS justified the grant cancellations by saying the money was for COVID, and the pandemic is over. But most of the cuts were in areas that are especially important given today's health threats. The biggest chunk, more than $8.9 billion, involved epidemiology and laboratory capacity related to infectious diseases, while another $2 billion was related to immunizations. In some places, the cuts are on hold due to a federal judge's order in a lawsuit by states. But elsewhere, cuts are continuing. In Mecklenburg, for example, 11 community health workers lost their jobs, meaning less outreach to groups like the Hispanic community. All eight employees dedicated to the mobile vaccine program were laid off. In Columbus, Ohio — one of several communities in Republican-led states suing over the cuts — the health department had to lay off nine disease intervention specialists. This left it operating at 25% capacity in its disease tracing and investigation work, just as it prepared to address a measles outbreak. Kansas City, Missouri, will not be able to do its own testing for infectious diseases because the cut came just as the city was about to buy $500,000 worth of equipment. And Nashville had to end a program offering free flu and COVID tests and cancel plans to buy a van to deliver vaccinations. The cities complained the cuts had created 'severe budget uncertainty' and forced them to redirect their limited resources 'to respond to the resulting chaos.' CDC staff cuts are also having a ripple effect on state and local departments. Children who are deaf or hard of hearing will no longer benefit from an early intervention program run by states after everyone who worked on the program at the CDC was laid off. The team in the Office on Smoking and Health, which funds state tobacco hotlines that help people quit, was let go. So was the CDC team that worked to reduce drownings, partly through funding low-cost swimming lessons in local communities. Drownings kill 4,000 people a year in the U.S. 'The experts who know the things that can be done to help prevent the No. 1 cause of death from children ages 1 to 4 have been eliminated,' Connecticut state health commissioner Dr. Manisha Juthani told a Democratic congressional hearing in April, referring to drownings. She said the abrupt and disorganized nature of the cuts leaves her department scrambling as officials try to understand what is being cut and to close important programs on the federal government's impractical timelines. 'The current uncertainty puts lives at risk,' she said. Public health funding is going bust — and about to get worse The new cuts are especially damaging because health departments are funded differently than other government agencies meant to protect the public: Funding pours in during emergencies and slows to a relative trickle when they subside. Mecklenburg's Washington notes the contrast with fire departments, which are kept ready at all times, not scrambling to find firefighters and fire trucks when houses are already burning. With health departments, 'there's a long-established pattern of boom-and-bust funding,' said Dr. Steven Stack, Kentucky's public health commissioner and past president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. A temporary surge of money during the pandemic allowed some health departments to expand and strengthen programs. In Alabama, the influx of COVID money allowed the state to reopen a health department in largely rural Coosa County that closed a decade ago due to a lack of money. In California's Santa Clara County, a COVID-era lab grant paved the way for a new science branch with nearly 50 positions. But by early this year, most of that money had disappeared, along with other COVID-era grants across the nation — some because they ended, and some because the government rescinded them. Departments were again left brittle and vulnerable. 'We're facing funding cliff after funding cliff after funding cliff,' said Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara County's health director. 'What really worries me is I felt that we had finally built the infrastructure in the public health department. … We were still pretty trim, but we weren't just, like, bones.' In Chicago, one-time COVID grants made up 51% of the health department budget, and their ending will push staff numbers below the pre-pandemic level of 588, slowing responses to outbreaks and forcing officials to scale back food safety, violence prevention, and other programs. In Mecklenburg, the department lost 180 employees as COVID funds dried up. It also lost a wastewater monitoring partnership with the University of North Carolina at Charlotte that helped the county react quickly to changing COVID variants and could have also been used to detect new threats like bird flu. 5 A temporary surge of money during the pandemic allowed some health departments to expand and strengthen programs. AP The cuts are not over. The Trump administration has proposed cutting billions more from the CDC's budget, enough to cut the agency's spending in half. CDC sends about 80 percent of its budget to states and local communities. Michael Eby, director of clinical services in Mecklenburg, said the relentless cuts to the system leave departments unable to respond to new pandemics and old diseases returning across the United States. 'Without the appropriate funding, we can't properly address these threats,' he said. 'We're at risk of them getting out of control and really causing a lot of damage and death to individuals that we could have saved, that we could have protected.'
Los Angeles Times
2 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Texas' measles outbreak is starting to slow. The U.S. case count climbs slightly to 1,024 cases
Texas' measles outbreak shows signs of slowing, with fewer than 10 newly reported cases in the last week, but experts say it's not fully over. 'This outbreak does appear to be leveling off, but the affected states remain hypervigilant, and that's because it's travel season,' U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention incident manager Dr. Manisha Patel said Thursday of the southwestern outbreak, which also affects New Mexico and Oklahoma. 'There is a lot of global measles activity right now.' Across the U.S., there are 1,024 confirmed measles cases as of Friday. Texas still accounts for the vast majority of cases. There are three other major outbreaks in North America. One in Ontario, Canada, has resulted in 1,622 cases from mid-October through May 13, which rose by 182 cases in a week. Another in Alberta, Canada, has sickened 409 as of Thursday. And the Mexican state of Chihuahua had 1,306 measles cases and one death as of Friday, according to data from the state health ministry. Since the outbreak in the Southwest U.S. began, two elementary school-aged children in the epicenter in West Texas and an adult in New Mexico have died of measles. All were unvaccinated. Measles is caused by a highly contagious virus that's airborne and spreads easily when an infected person breathes, sneezes or coughs. It is preventable through vaccines, and has been considered eliminated from the U.S. since 2000. Measles cases also have been reported in Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. The CDC says more than twice as many measles have come from outside of the U.S. compared with May of last year, and most of those are in unvaccinated Americans returning home. In 2019, the U.S. saw 1,274 cases and almost lost its status of having eliminated measles. The best way to avoid measles is to get the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. The first shot is recommended for children between 12 and 15 months old and the second between 4 and 6 years old. Measles has a harder time spreading through communities with high vaccination rates — above 95% — due to 'herd immunity.' But childhood vaccination rates have declined nationwide since the pandemic and more parents are claiming religious or personal conscience waivers to exempt their kids from required shots. Measles first infects the respiratory tract, then spreads throughout the body, causing a high fever, runny nose, cough, red, watery eyes and a rash. The rash generally appears three to five days after the first symptoms, beginning as flat red spots on the face and then spreading downward to the neck, trunk, arms, legs and feet. When the rash appears, the fever may spike over 104 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the CDC. Most kids will recover from measles, but infection can lead to dangerous complications such as pneumonia, blindness, brain swelling and death. There's no specific treatment for measles, so doctors generally try to alleviate symptoms, prevent complications and keep patients comfortable. Shastri writes for the Associated Press.
