Do people really believe any of this?

When people are not employed by a for-profit healthcare service, they have the time to put together lists of hints, tips and guidelines. Whether this is actually useful is not the point. It's the philosophy behind it that fascinates. Socialized medicine actually believes in trying to educate the public. This is what you should know. The following are myths — stop believing them. It rarely happens in the US. Mostly what you get to see are the ads for drugs and the latest medical devices. Little or nothing to encourage wellness or preventative medicine is ever published. No-one here believes in it. So here is one of the latest offerings from the British National Health Service. It has recognized the number of men who fear the early onset of baldness. It has issued two short documents. One is an encouraging and informative list of the current treatments recommended by NICE — the Brits have an advisory group that, on the basis of the best medical evidence, issues guidance on which treatments are both effective and good value for money. The second document is a myth buster, setting out all the things we are not supposed to believe. The mystery is whether anyone really does still believe that getting a cow to lick your head prompts the hair to grow back. It has all the hallmarks of a frat-boy prank. You can just see some poor sucker persuaded to give this a try during some drunken (not hazing) initiation rite. But now it's official. There's nothing magical in a cow's saliva. All you get is a wet head. The following are the highlights from the rest of the list of myths: • washing your head in cold water or standing on your head cures baldness — although cold water and changes in the vertical may encourage the flow of blood through or to your head, this has no effect on hair loss; • brushing your hair or massaging the scalp helps keep your hair — vigorous brushing can actually damage the scalp and increase the rate of hair loss; • hairstyles have nothing to do with hair loss — any style that puts the hair under tension can cause hair loss — this can be a simple ponytail or more complicated styles like plaits and corn-rows; • hair products can cause hair loss — the ordinary run of shampoos and medicated hair products do nothing more than encourage the usual daily shedding of hair. That said, some people react badly to different chemicals used in some hair products and this can damage the scalp and roots, causing hair loss; • the more sex you have, the less hair you lose — it's tempting to believe the more you prove you are a man, the more hair you will retain but this is a myth; • losing hair every day is a sign you are balding — everyone sheds some hair every day. Under normal circumstances, these grow back. If you have male pattern baldness, the hairs do not grow back in the defined areas of your scalp; • young men do not go bald — hair thinning and loss is a natural part of aging but, usually because of the genes inherited from your parents, premature balding can start early. In all this, there is one unspoken truth. Propecia has been through the full range of clinical trials and there is absolutely no doubt that it stops hair loss in cases of male pattern baldness, Obviously, if you have tension hair styles, you only need to let your hair hang loose. For men whose genetic make-up is encouraging loss, you need propecia to rebuild the level of hormones necessary to keep your hair growing.