new thread
Hello guys =) I just posted about this on my blog on the Long Hair Community and I really wanted to share it here as well. It might be a tag controversial but here goes =) It's just my personal experience and I'm not sure of the relations there but it's interesting nonetheless!
From TLHC:
As some of you can rememer, I very usually comlplained, throughout my long hair journey, of how much I used to shed, especially on washing days.
Some of you may also know that very recently I decided to embrace my androginy and femininity as a boy, and I stoped lifting weights (which I had been doing for practically as long as I had been growing my hair) and started to do aerobics instead, persuing a more lean and gracefull body to match my actual personality and new clothes
Actually let me update you on that: my arms are so much slimmer right now, and my back is straighter, and my waist is much thinner I have been enjoying food more than ever though, although I'm eating less. I have been loving aerobics, which I do twice a week. I'm very happy I decided to make those changes!
Anyways, back to the shedding thing. While in the process of working out with weights, and debating myself with the hair shedding, I started searching for a relation between the two. I found some sites that related one to another, because of testosterone increase. I am not sure but I guess I actually found a site once that stated that anaerobic exercise (weight lifting) could increase hair shedding and aerobic exercise could decrease it. I didn't really pay atention to that though and kept working out the same way untill I realised I wanted to look more feminine overall.
Actually, while working out for all those years, sometimes I took like 2 weeks or a month off of it and I did notice a decrease in shedding, which kinda made me think.
Now that I haven't lifted weight for about a half year, and done aerobics instead, I have to say that there may very well be a relation between shedding and the type of exercises you do. I have been shedding SO much less, but SO, So, SO much less. Maybe 1/5 or 1/6 of what I used to, I'm not sure. I don't remember if I used to shed more during the Winter or the Summer, but now, even on washing days, instead of shedding about 200 to 300 strands (which was my usual count) I might shed about 60 perhaps. I'm very thrilled with this I didn't want to divulge this before letting a little while go by, because I thought it was a temporary thing - and it still may be - but there can definitly be a relation here, and I think it's great info for hair people
There is also another thing that can imply that I'm shedding less. I read in a hair site once that there is a period in life (spamming from 20 to 23 years old, or somewhere in between) when people tend to shed more. Still, I have shed quite a lot since I was 17 or 18 years old. I'm 23 now. The shedding decrease may also be related to this.
So yeah Either ways, I'm very happy!
Let me know what you guys think =)
Hi Joao,
Ha ha, like Ken had mentioned in one of his posts I never figured our how to place that "~" over your "a".LOL.
Ok, now on to your topic.In my experience my bigger sheds seemed to occur during the late summer,early fall months.So say late August up until early October.Then after that it tapers off noticably which is confirmed by the amount of hair I collect on my brush during grooming.Like right now I have very, very little shed hairs:)If I recall correctly the shedding may pick up somewhat in the spring but the late summer/early fall has always been when I shed the most.
As for lifting weights I don't think that is an issue with me.I have been going to a gym for many years as well as have long hair during them same years and I'm talking over 20 years.Now I don't life heavy weights because I'm not all that strong so its more for conditioning and toning.If you ever seen full height pics of me you'll notice how tall and thin I am.Actually just click on my avatar and you will see that.If I ever thought weight training affected my shedding I would have stopped and done something like your doing with aerobics as I actually prefer the slim physique myself.Regardless whatever is working for you I would fully support.You have tremendous hair, to die for, as well as a fit body.Still I found your post interesting and is something to think about for those who shed a lot.
Otherwise hope all is well with you Joao as I always enjoy your participation here my friend.Cheers.
Mark
Now I haven't noticed increased shedding at any time during the year including late summer and early fall.
I used to lift weights at the Y until I stopped my membership
and didn't notice any increase/decrease in shedding.
Hey Hairball!
Yeah, it can be a lot of diferent things that had affected my hair cycle or shedding rate. Anyways, I thought it was good information =) I can't tell what happened for sure, but I wanted to share the experience with you guys ^^
How common is this? I've only noticed a small amout
of strands, even after washing my hair. I haven't counted them
but i'd have to say it's much less than 200-300 or 60.
Am I shedding more and just not realizing it?
Hey there!
Well the common shedding rate would be about 20 to 80 strands a day. I use to acumulate strands though, because you shed the most on washing days, since with the friction you free all the shed hairs from the folicles.
The amount I was shedding was not abnormal per se, but it was bothersome because it felt like a lot. I'm glad it decreased =)
Hi !
Glad to hear from you, João.
What you are saying is really interesting. I can't say I confirm (since two years, I ride a bike every day. The only short distance transport I use); I haven't really noticed IF my shedding rate has decreased or not. Actually I do not pay attention to it anymore, at least not as much as few years before.
Unfortunately it's difficult to prove scientifically. The only thing we can do is to try, but then how do we know what would happen if we don't ? :)
Cheers !
Vivien.
Well Vivien you're right! Not even I am sure if these relations are correct, and it of course may depend on the person. I just know that overall I'm much better now so all's good on this end ;)
Hi Joao David,
Great to see an update from you :D ! I've been concerned about hair falling and pulling out myself ever since my hair started putting my hair in a ponytail. I wash my hair every night, so I loose about 30 strands of hair each night after washing... sometimes I'm worried that one day I'm going to loose all of my long hair and have to start all over >_> . Just out of curiosity, since you loose that many, how often do you wash your hair :o ???
Sincerely,
yoshiki
Hi there Yoshiki!
Well, 30 strands a day is just fine, below average shedding rate actually. I do think though, that you are washing your hair too often. But that's for you to figure anyway =)
I wash my hair once a week, so that's why I had so many strands falling out on those days. Usually not all the hair you shed on a day falls out, some of it can get caught on the others hairs or still be slightly attatched to the root. With the friction of a hair wash, all those strenghts are loosened and finally shed away, so on washing days it may seem like more. I know my case had a little bit of this too, and even today I shed more on washing days still.
As for the ponytails, as long as you're gentle, no harm done =)
Keep up ^^
Hi Joao. (Sorry, tilde does not work on my machine, giving a letter n.) I sure can relate to the severe shedding on wash days. I actually keep a spreadsheet on my hair with detailed records on the amount of shedding in milligrams per day. I keep records of what I eat as well as weather. Heat triggers excess shedding in me.
For you, aerobic exercise is probably best. Distance running or cycling will keep you really slim. I have estimated your height at 180 centimeters tall. (Please correct me if I am wrong on your height.) A good slim weight at 180 cm tall would be between 65 and 70 kilograms. The androgenous look works well for you. Be sure to check out the post by Marco. The link is to a Russian site with hundreds of mostly androgenous long hair men.
The normal range of testosterone in a male is from 2.99 to 9.99 nanograms per ml of blood. You may want to ask your physician to test it on your next visit. (Mine tested from 3.61 to 4.32 which is well on the low side.) You probably want to keep it down around 4.00 or a bit lower.
Adding SOY to your diet may lower your testosterone levels. Try to be careful. If you lower it too much, you may end up with female related health problems. Remember, 2,99 is the cutoff point.
Again, I keep track by total weight of hair shed instead of number. I find this much easier to quantify. (For most people, hair count is used.) I found your findings absolutely fascinating. Friend me on Facebook, if you wish.
Scott
Hey Scott!
I always find it so amusing that you have such big scientific knowledge, that's so awesome =D
You've got my height almost right, I am 175 cm tall =)
As to soy, that's something I don't consume at all. I am not really worried about testosterone at this point because I'm fine as it is. I see androgyny as something very natural on some people, and I'm very lucky in that aspect.
I'm glad you found my post interesting =) And I will surely keep up with aerobics! It's so much fun ^^
Stay well!
Congratulations on the embracing of your androgeny. Whether or not this reflects your sexuality only you can know. Would love to see you wearing some of your creations.
Well thank you!
Androgyny, or the way you look actually, shouldn't have anything to do with your sexual orientation. People tend to do it just because most can't understang how indpendent sex/sexuallity/looks are as atributes. Oh well =P
And I actually create for myself sometimes! Thank's for your reply =)
Hi João and thanks for your facinating comments. I'm just hoping your theory is correct, as for me, unable to do a lot of exercise these days, I should have no shedding lol. Best wishes, Ian
I'm glad you're enjoying your new look.
As to shedding hair, a healthy scalp is always shedding hairs that have reached the end of their life. There are other hairs growing alongside to take their place, why worry about shedding?
Your overall volume of hair will stay the same, unless and until male pattern baldness kicks in(hopefully decades away!)
Best of luck
Andy
Hi João,
Uh oh! This threatens to be one of those irritating 'me too' posts ... but ME TOO! :)
At least as far as the androgynous look goes.
I'm heterosexual, I'm masculine and I'm not in the slightest bit camp but I have a feminine side and I am not afraid to explore it and enjoy it. Hey, like everyone else I have at least one X chromosome and I spent the first nine months of my life inside a woman. It kinda figures I'm gonna have a feminine side; why try to smother it? :)
I like having long hair, I like wearing an earring (gotta get the other one pierced too), I like being skinny and I sometimes like wearing clothes with what is traditionally thought to be a feminine touch: for instance, blousy poet shirts made of satin with lots of ruffles! I have zilch interest in gyms and building up my muscles. But I do think I would enjoy doing aerobics; thanks for the tip!
If that doesn't conform to someone else's opinion of what I should be, too bad. I am ME! I have lots of friends and a great social life so I guess I must be doing something right.
As to shedding, I have no idea. I've never counted the loose hairs I shed. I figure it's just a natural process and hair is constantly renewing itself - so it doesn't bother me in the slightest.
Ah, you may be onto something there. Interesting thought!
Damon
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Come on, guys! It ain't difficult! Computers have this thing called "cut & paste"! ;)
In Windows, the symbol is also in Character Map. Simply press Alt + 0227. Like this ... ã.
I'm sure Macs have something similar.
Damon
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Or "copy & paste" ... whatever! ;)
(Wish we could edit posts!)
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My computer pastes and copies the character map letter a with tilde as the letter "n".
This won't work on my machine. Any ideas how to fix this? I am not computer savvy in this area.
Scott
Hi Absalom,
First off, what kind of computer and operating system do you have? That'll help to help troubleshoot.....
Sincerely,
yoshiki
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I have windows XP. It is a PC. A friend helped me put it together.
Scott
Machines that run XP came after ASCII, and they have ASCII keyboards. When making web pages, you can make an "a" with a tilde over it by typing an ampersand, the letters "atilde" and a semi-colon. The "ampersand" is also called "the 'and' sign", and it is usually over one of the number keys. My Mac has the ampersand over the "7". We have a Dell PC and it is in the same place. Make sure you use the "and sign", not the "at sign", which is in the middle of e-mail addresses.
Every kludge that lets users enter non-ASCII characters reduces them to ASCII characters to send them over the Internet. Even when you send pictures over the Internet, they are reduced to strings of ASCII characters before transmission. Fortunately, there are programs in your computer that can do both the encoding and decoding for that. The Internet runs on ASCII. Note that all the characters I said you should type, the ampersand, the lower case letters, and the semi-colon, are all part of the ASCII character set.
Yeah, this stuff is all complex, and the Internet is mostly not geeks anymore. For MOST users NOWADAYS, the easiest way to keep them out of trouble is to tell them not to use curly quotes and letters with funny little marks on them.
An interesting aside: When we registered the Men's Long Hair Hyperboard with the IRS (the U.S. tax agency) we had a hell of a time doing it. We finally found out that the IRS computers don't process words with apostrophes in them, and of course the word "men's" in English always has an apostrophe in it. The apostrophe IS part of the ASCII set and it is part of standard English spelling, but the IRS computers were programmed back in the days when every bit counted, and they opted to exclude it. The IRS has been using computers since before ASCII was come up with. So even "sticking with ASCII" won't always work with computers, and we had to misspell the first word of our name as "mens" to get registered.
Bill
But not everyone has Windows or a Mac. Some telephones don't even have a Q or a Z.
The earliest digital code was Morse code. In time we got Baudot, which also had only capital letters, and still no marks like tildes. I remember when people with newer equipment would tell people who had teletypes that they were "shouting" when they couldn't make little letters at all. No keyboards had euro symbols before about the year 2000. The "cents" sign and the 1/4 and 1/2 that used to be on typewriters have all mostly disappeared. Older typewriters did not have the number "one". You had to type a lower case L.
New devices and technology have gotten spawned from whatever was already in use, and "whatever was already in use" tended to be whatever was commonly used at the time of spawning in English. And every spawning has not gone in the same direction. For Windows text you may use one scheme. For HTML coding you may use another. If you use the "wrong" scheme, you may get what you intended, and you may not. Or you may see what you intended, while some other readers may not.
To be 100% safe that everyone will see what you typed on the Internet, you have to limit your input to what you can make with a "US-ASCII" keyboard without pressing any keys with other keys, other than the "shift" key. Using anything else is, unfortunately a crap shoot.
The underlying scheme for the Internet was invented by the Department of Defense. They are good at blowing up stuff. Applying diplomacy to their making of decisions has never been their strong suit. The U.S. Army sees little sense in putting little wiggles over letters. They don't stencil letters with wiggles over them onto tanks.
Bill
Hey Bill, now that was quite an explanation and very educational too.It's amazing how complex computing can be once you start digging into it, at least for me that is.The only way I know of of getting that "~" over a letter/character is to borrow it from the text I'm replying to if its included in the body of the message.Yea I know that's cheating.LOL.Cheers
Mark
And like most cheating, that won't always work. People who aren't seeing that character correctly to begin with won't see it correctly after you paste it.
To understand what we are up against, you have to look at the history. Once humans start doing things a certain way, those ways are very difficult to root out. Why do we use keyboards with the letters for "typewriter" all on the same row? (So salesmen could sell the new devices without revealing how tedious "hunting and pecking" is. No one knew you could learn to type without looking at the keys yet.) Why do we say hunting and "pecking"? Did most people back then have chickens? Why do we ride a motorcycle but drive a car? Is this what we did to one horse versus a team? Why do we drive on one side of the road or the other? Why do we often pronounce "him" and "them" as "em"? (Because they were both the same word a thousand years ago, and it was said like that.)
"Computer" was originally a job description for humans who sat all day and did math problems. Humans don't defend themselves with teeth and claws, they use projectiles, and the reason the human brain grew so large is that it takes a lot of computational power to calculate trajectories. (Ponder, why are almost all of our sports centered around projectiles and trajectories? We are fascinated with them.) Hitting moving targets required calculating faster than humans could make, so the military developed "computing machines". Another need at the time was to calculate odds on horses at race tracks. With races going off every 25 minutes, humans could not keep up with the calcs required. A company called the American Totalisator Company built a computing machine that ended up in the bowels of every race track. It controlled the light bulbs on the "Tote Board", that scoreboard you still see at race tracks today. This told the bettors what the up to date odds were on the horses.
My dad was a race track official. As a kid I hung out around the track. I learned to multiply and divide not at school but from the guys who ran that machine at the track. The machines had zillions of relays in them. They were BIG. Every bit counted. They were concerned that the machine would work and do the math. They were not concerned that the result would be politically correct or pretty. Once in a while one of the numbers on the Tote Board would get garbled. Someone would call out, "There's a chinaman on the tote board!" It probably never occurred to any of them that this might be offensive to some people or that someday someone might want to make Chinese characters out of light bulbs. They just wanted to get a number there. Keep in mind that these are the same people who knew damned well that years would not always start with "19". But making a one and a nine would mean a lot more relays every time you wanted to make those numbers. Saving bits was everything.
Forty years ago, when we got the standard code that the Internet was built on, we were lucky to get lower case letters in it. Putting tildes over A's was way down anyone's list, if it was even on it. The Internet was intended for the military to exchange data with companies and universities with defense contracts. That it might someday be used outside of the United States or that people may try to send material in foreign languages over it was way down on anyone's priority list.
Since then, everyone wanting to do those things has dealt with kludges to make a scheme work, and not everyone has gone with the same scheme. What will work with HTML (for web pages like I am making now as I type) will not work for e-mails, which use a different standard. Microsoft, as a notorious example, does whatever it wants. Never try to paste anything you created with a Microsoft product into anything else. Even "curly quotes" are not part of the original ASCII from 40 years ago, and they won't come out right.
ã
Bill
WOW!!! I can honestly say that this board really IS a learning experience! Thanks, Bill.
I tend to assume that everyone uses either Windows, Linux or a Mac. That's wrong of course - and you're right. People can use all sorts of ways to access web pages and type on them.
That never occurred to me!
Damon
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Hi Bill, honestly I'm blown away by your response.Obviously this stuff is way over my head but maybe I'm making it seem more complicated than it really is.Regardless I do appreciate your explanation and hopefully I learn something from it.I have to say I know of no one else on this board with such a vast knowledge of the internet and computing.Loved your history of calculating adds at the track!
Mark
I'm sure I was the only kid in my third grade class who could grab the Racing Form and handicap the horses, and who could also look at the tote board and tell you how much a $2 Win ticket on the Four Horse would pay if he won. There were seldom any other kids around the track, though, and it was a pretty boring place to spend the summer.
Bill
I should add that I had one other brush with upcoming technology. It was 20 years later and by then I was in college. I was a DJ at my college's radio station, and some of the longhair hippie jocks there had discovered they had this room over at the computer center where students were sitting all around the room playing video games with each other. We got hooked on going over there because it was great fun. At first we thought everyone playing the game was on terminals in that building, but we soon learned they were in a few universities scattered around the country. They were testing a novel new idea where they could tie several universities together into a network, and they had conned us into playing the game to test the configuration. The new little network they were testing we later learned had a name but it meant nothing to us at the time. Its name was "The Internet".
Bill
Out of interest, can you see this? ã
That was made by simply pressing Alt + 0227 on a Windows PC. I'm just curious if everyone can see it?
Damon
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Th|
00000400 61 74 20 77 61 73 20 6d 61 64 65 20 62 79 20 73 |at was made by s|
Note the "e3" in the middle line of the code from your post's web page, just copied above. That is your ã.
Bill
Yeah, that's a bummer! I can see that the method you used is more universal and hence safer. ã
Many thanks for the excellent explanation, Bill. And for your patience - I've gone far off-topic. I have a strong streak of geek in me and I find computer technology fascinating!
Damon
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I did some more looking around my Mac. Under "System Preferences" there are multiple languages. Under Safari's "View" tab there are several different 8-bit decodings available if you select the "Text Encoding" tab. The "Default" setting, which I use, made your ã characters show like you wanted, but as I cycled through the other options, various Asian and Cyrillic characters would jump into their place. On the other hand, the ã characters which I had made by typing ã were rock solid. They never changed.
It's probably a fair statement that many non-English speakers have their computers or browsers set to their own languages rather than English defaults. This may affect what they see and also what they create when they type on their keyboards. The only way to be sure that everyone sees what you intend is to limit your input to 7-bit ASCII characters. Ampersands, lower case letters without diacritical marks, and semi-colons are 7-bit ASCII characters, and if you insert them into the file, they will pass over the Internet to everyone unchanged. All the English characters showed up on pages viewed as Chinese as unchanged, for example. The ALT key is not a 7-bit ASCII character, and it's not going to give a user that universal result.
Sorry if we're boring any of the non-geeks on here. Since we have users who are not native English speakers, though, this does at some level impact everyone. If you really can't deal with it, just do what most people do. Be lazy and don't use characters that have diacritical marks on them. Face it, looking up what geeky numbers to type is more "tech" than most Internet users want to burden themselves with. Well, some people don't want to learn the rules about when to use apostrophes, so they use the same approach. They just leave them out.
But if you do see some garble on the board, the source of the problem you'll now know is that everyone's computer on this planet is not exactly alike.
Bill
Hi Bill,
I did the same thing, but with Firefox for the Mac, and opened up the "character encoding"tab.Like you I was sifting through the different languages watching the text and characters change along the way.But I still wonder what exactly do I need to do if I type say Joao's name and want to place that"~" over the "a".Do I change the language in system preferences?Just for the record I have an older mac,the ibook G4, without the intel chip.I have version 10.4.11 for all that's worth.I'm not that much of a computer geek but I'm kind of interested in this particular aspect.
Mark
Mark, what you do, to put an ã in the body of a message, is type: ã
You can't use that technique in the "name" or "subject" of a message, though, because hackers have used ampersands to exploit bulletin boards, and back when we allowed those fields to have ampersands, our users were getting virus infections through them. When our users try to put an ampersand in one of those fields, the MLHH software replaces it with a plus sign. "Bill + Mark" means the same thing as "Bill & Mark" in English text, but it breaks HTML attempts in those fields. Therefore, the only way to put an ã in the "name" field is to put it in using an extended character set, like João has been doing it. This means that Russians may see his name as something else, like Joyo, for example. Ditto for users of other languages who have implemented differing extended character sets.
This is all very complex for most users. To explain all this to an average user would be about as tough as trying to explain what is in the Holy Bible. As we said way earlier, what MOST users will find easiest is to not put in characters with funny marks ("diacritical marks") on them. The language of the board is English, and such marks are optional in English, so I'd recommend that non-geeks exercise that option to keep their sanity and to enjoy talking about what they came here to talk about. Hair.
Joao doesn't post very often, and when he does, this topic inevitably comes up, because there are always new people who wonder about it. Meanwhile, poor Joao has his every thread splattered with a segment talking geek talk. I'm surprised he ever comes back. On the other hand, one could say by now I suppose that he knows by using that spelling he will be "asking for it". It's not the fault of anyone on here, though. Let's all just go back to what I suggested before and blame the Army, because they invented the Internet and they don't stencil wiggles over letters on tanks.
Bill
The Romans made everyone drive on the left, and Napoleon Bonaparte made them switch to driving on the right. This is why we still drive on the left in England, because Admiral Nelson beat Napoleon at the battle of Trafalgar. As to why Americans drive on the right, firstly, you must have switched, and secondly, it must be some sort of political statement!
.... ..
--... ...-- -.. . .- .-.. ..- -.
Alun, I fear we've beaten this dead horse so much that we can't tell anymore that it used to be a horse. [sigh]
Well, we could take away their keyboards and put straight keys in front of them. I defy any of them to find a tilde on a straight key.
73 ES GN OM - SK DE K9AT
Hey Damon UK,
At the beginning of this month, I began wearing hair ties that matched the color of the shirt that I was wearing for the day... a bit of a step in the other direction, too, but I think that's probably as far as I'll go :p (except for a fun hairstyle on a wacky day, maybe ^_~ ).....
Sincerely,
yoshiki