I found this very interesting article while trolling the net. It left me deep in thought and I think it would be great for you to read as well. Please leave your comments!
Source is ; http://akorra.com/2010/03/21/9-reasons-to-avoid-perms-and-relaxers/
Here it goes:
The dependency of African Women on
Hair relaxers is truly worrisome especially as most women are not
well informed about the chemicals present in these relaxers. Women relax their
hair at least once every month and this ritual continues mostly for the rest of
their lives. Being exposed to potentially harmful chemicals in small doses for
a long period of time is what's absolutely scary. Hair companies do not print
all the chemicals present in black hair products, if they did they’d probably
go out of business. I realize there isn’t a lot of advocacy on
this issue which is also interesting as i would assume people would want to
know more about what they put in their hair, and once they know it's harmful,
would want to spread the message across to others.
I always hypothesized
that the use of relaxers, in the long run would cause some sort of ailment. But
like all scientific hypothesis, it has to be tested. Seeing I'm just a young
Scientist with no fancy lab or high tech equipment to call my own, I decided to
do what scientists do best which is to
find some sort of evidence..but this time using good old Google. I’m
happy to say i found a recent study on this.
A
new study in the American Journal of Epidemiology has linked hair relaxers to
uterine fibroids, as well as early puberty in young girls.
Scientists followed more than 23,000 pre-menopausal Black American women
from 1997 to 2009 and found that the two- to three-times higher rate of
fibroids among black women may be linked to chemical exposure through scalp
lesions and burns resulting from relaxers.
Women who got their first menstrual period before the age of 10 were
also more likely to have uterine fibroids, and early menstruation may result
from hair products black girls are using, according to a separate study
published in the Annals of Epidemiology last summer.
Three hundred African American, African Caribbean, Hispanic, and White
women in New York City were studied. The women’s first menstrual period varied
anywhere from age 8 to age 19, but African Americans, who were more likely to
use straightening and relaxers hair oils, also reached menarche earlier than
other racial/ethnic groups.
While so far, there is only an association rather than a cause and
effect relationship between relaxers, fibroid tumors, and puberty, many experts
have been quick to point out that the hair care industry isn’t regulated by the
FDA, meaning that there’s no definite way to fully know just how harmful
standard Black hair care products really are.
Fibroid
Facts
Fibroids are tumors that grow in the uterus. They are benign, which
means they are not cancerous, and are made up of muscle fibres Fibroids can be
as small as a pea and can grow as large as a melon. It is estimated that 20-50%
of women have, or will have, fibroids at some time in their lives.
From lessons in Epidemiology, i
learnt that A might be associated with B but not the cause of B. In this
case the study found that there
is only an association rather than a cause and effect relationship between
relaxers and fibroid tumors. In lay terms this means relaxers are
associated with fibroid tumours but relaxers are not the reason why
people get fibroid according to this study.
Until more research is done in this area we can't dispel anything with
confidence. My hypothesis remains a hypothesis until someone spends years
looking into this.
PhD thesis anyone?
Hmmnnnn scaaaaarrryyyyy!!
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