Today’s Mail Online features incredible pictures of a very hairy young man, providing some anecdotal evidence for a previously studied link between heartburn in pregnancy as a predictor for hairy babies.
Hair He Is!
At the end of July, Chelsea Noon, a 32 year old hairdresser from Brighton on the UK’s south coast, gave birth to a bouncing baby boy. When we say bouncing, Junior weighed in at a healthy 10lb. Other than that the remarkable thing about his arrival was the amount of hair on his head. He arrived sporting a full head of hair – it was predicted by the medical team at the hospital that this would all fall out in due course. While it is normally the case that babies lose the hair they are born with after a week or two of rubbing their wispy strands against whatever they are lying on, this was most definitely not the case for Junior. His thick hair just grew and grew.
Statistically Speaking
What was it about Junior that saw him born with such extreme hair and could his mum’s terrible heartburn during pregnancy have been an indicator? Researchers, as you might well imagine, are curious to discover the trigger. The Mail Online article provides a clue, pointing us back to research performed at John Hopkins University in the US back in 2007. They followed 64 pregnant women, of whom 78% reported heartburn. Interestingly, of the 28 who described their heartburn as moderate to severe 23 went on to deliver babies with average or above average amounts of hair.
The implication might be that high levels of oestrogen, believed to be responsible for the increased incidence of heartburn for pregnant women, can also influence hair growth for the baby.
The Cloud Inside The Silver Lining
If you are here reading this site it is highly likely you are concerned about your own hair loss, or maybe you are researching for a loved one. It is worth mentioning that there is another side to the coin for young Junior. Chelsea, the doting mum, tells us that his hair is too thick to dry on its own, so the hairdryer has to come out every time. While this might not be the most onerous thing you have ever heard of consider that the boy is so cute the weekly shop takes three times as long as it used to… entirely due to the volume of other shoppers who want to speak to her about Junior’s hair. Let’s hope the novelty wears off for those curious shoppers before it does for his poor mum.
HIS Hair Clinic
Unfortunately for Junior, how much hair you start with is not much of a clue as to when you might start losing it… though he probably has some room for optimism. The majority of us, men and women, will experience hair loss at some point in our lives.
