Re:Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
by na85 on Monday December 28, 2020 @10:57PM
(#25566564)
Are you suggesting that a cure for male pattern baldness would address heart disease?
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Re:Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
by klaudius on Monday December 28, 2020 @11:14PM
(#25566644)
Yes. You can look up scientific papers linking balding with health issues. We know premenopausal women have much lower incidence of heart problems than men. Some ethnicities of men like east asians also have better heart health and incidentally have better hair than caucasian men.
Re:Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
by jazoom on Tuesday December 29, 2020 @02:37AM
(#25567635)
Correlation does not mean causation. I'd actually be very surprised if fixing the hair addressed any correlated heart disease. The hair would be a downstream symptom, almost certainly.
I'm a doctor, if that makes a difference.
Re:Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
by klaudius on Tuesday December 29, 2020 @11:07AM
(#25571131)
It has been shown that finasteride, which is a systemic drug actually helps [1] with heart health.
It's not that fixing hair would improve heart health, but that on a systemic level improving heart health could prevent balding.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25632043/
Re:Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
by jazoom on Tuesday December 29, 2020 @03:50PM
(#25574808)
The experiment you linked was on mice.
Anyway, that's the opposite of what you said before. Treating heart to improve balding is not the same as treating balding to improve heart.
And finasteride is not a cure for balding. At best it slows it, with variable results among different people.