Have you ever toyed with the idea of braiding your hair in cornrows and tying little shells to the ends? Well, before you try something like that, you should probably look a little more closely at what tight weaving and braiding like that has been found to do to African-American women. Apparently, going by a new study, hair weaving in the African style is almost certainly a cause of female hair loss.
So does the study actually prove that hair weaving can be a cause of female hair loss? While the study doesn't actually prove it, it does line up quite a lot of evidence against styling one's hair in this way. The thing about hair weaving that most people find immediately impressive is that the stylist is able to take unruly hair and bring it under such tight control. Those tiny little braids are all usually so perfectly and neatly done that one just can't help but admire them.
Taming unruly hair and ordering it in this fashion though takes quite a bit of brute force. To weave hair so neatly and easily, the hairstylist usually uses a great deal of tight pulling. And they lock the tightness in with those tight braids. While your scalp and your hair follicles certainly can take quite a bit of pulling, they can usually only take it for a short time. When the tightness is locked in with the braiding and the tying up, your hair follicles remain in a permanent state of stress. Often, this can lead to scalp and follicle inflammation.
If follicle inflammation sounds dangerous, it really is. In many women, follicle inflammation of this kind can easily be shown to be the cause of female hair loss. It is a kind of balding that the technically-minded like to call scarring hair loss or central centrifugal cicatricial alopecia. That's when your scalp just gives up and begins to shed its hair, the source of all its pain. It does so in a very identifiable pattern – hair loss starts at the crown of your head and spreads everywhere else. So far, scientists have only found that this happens to African-American women; but that could be because braiding one's hair in this particular style is mostly only popular with the African-American community.
While they haven't studied this thoroughly enough that they might be able to conclusively prove these things, the study has indeed been called scientific. And until they find a better way to back their findings up, one would be wise to err on the side of caution and stay away from tight braiding.
