Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Stress, lactic acid, hypertension, atherosclerosis and hair loss

The last weekend I have read an article in New York Times Journal, entitled “The Claim: High Blood Pressure Will Increase People’s Risk of Losing Their Hair.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/health/research/08real.html), which caught my attention.
NYT have discussed the results and linked to some of the studies suggesting that hair loss may indicate an increased risk of high blood pressure and heart disease.
Curious about this information I have searched at Pubmed were I found a recent paper linking hair loss also to atherosclerosis, with the conclusion by the authors that severe vertex pattern of androgenetic alopecia should be considered to have an increased risk of subclinical atherosclerosis (1).
Going deeper I have found a postulation made in 1997 by Marino Salin, from Italy, telling if there is excess adrenergic tone in the metabolic system, then there is also vasoconstriction, ischemia and hypoxia and if there is hypoxia, glycolysis leads to lactic acid that causes caustic damage to the inner sheath and this sheath seems to be raised above the hair cuticle (2).
This postulation coincides with our thoughts about the acidity theory of atherosclerosis (3).
References
1) Dogramaci AC et al,Is androgenetic alopecia a risk for atherosclerosis? J Eur Acad Dermatol Venereol. 2009 Jun;23(6):673-7.
2) Marino Salin e Andrea Marliani, EDIZIONI ELETTRONICHE “TricoItalia” (Firenze) marzo 1997, BOLLETTINO della Società Italiana di Tricologia, La Teoria e la Clinica delle “INCIDENZE” nelle Alopecie. Full paper in Italian language at http://www.calvizieinfo.com/bollettino.pdf
3)Carlos ETB Monteiro, Acidic environment evoked by chronic stress: A novel mechanism to explain atherogenesis. Available from Infarct Combat Project, January 28, 2008 at http://www.infarctcombat.org/AcidityTheory.pdf

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