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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camry.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stop? Mom? Never told you?

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Speaker 1: From House top Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to

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Speaker 1: the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristen Kristin. Today,

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Speaker 1: I want to start with the story that has been

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Speaker 1: on my radar for a few months. In March two

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Speaker 1: thousand nine, Miss Virginia two thousand eight, Tara Wheeler was

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Speaker 1: attempting to raise money to shave her head. And she

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Speaker 1: wanted to shave her head because as Miss Virginia, she

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Speaker 1: visited all these kids who had cancer and they went

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Speaker 1: to school and they were mocked because they didn't have

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Speaker 1: any hair. So she wants to be able to go

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Speaker 1: to the hospital and say to them, hey, I'm a

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Speaker 1: beauty queen and I'm bald too. So she went to

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Speaker 1: the Miss America people and they said, mmmm, you know,

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Speaker 1: if you're gonna shave your head, I mean we want

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Speaker 1: you to raise a lot of money. And so basically

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Speaker 1: put a pryce on her hair and it was five

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars. So she needed to raise five thousand dollars

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Speaker 1: before the Miss America pageant, which had her under all

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Speaker 1: sorts of contracts would letter shave her head. So what happened, Molly.

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Speaker 1: Let me tell you Kristen. She did not meet her

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Speaker 1: fundraising goal. You know there are some you know, if

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Speaker 1: you read the blog comments on this, people were kind

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Speaker 1: of grossing that Miss America said it's so high that

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Speaker 1: she would never reach it because they didn't want a

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Speaker 1: bald beauty queen. Um. And you know, in our last

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Speaker 1: podcast we talked about how women have this emotional attachment

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Speaker 1: to their hair. There's no choice. Woman can make be

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Speaker 1: at length color, you know, style that doesn't say something

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Speaker 1: about herself to the outside world. So obviously Miss America

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Speaker 1: didn't want to have this statement about baldness. I guess um.

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Speaker 1: But after her reign as Miss Virginia was over, even

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Speaker 1: though she did not raise the full amount, she did

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Speaker 1: raise a good chuck at change though for pediatric cancer.

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Speaker 1: It was pretty awesome. Um. After her reign was over,

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Speaker 1: she went to a bar and in front of everyone,

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Speaker 1: shaved her head completely bald. Good for her, good for her,

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Speaker 1: But you know that's voluntary baldness. It's very easy to say,

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Speaker 1: oh man, what a great show of solidarity, But do

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Speaker 1: you remember all those um, like would you rather questions,

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Speaker 1: and there were things like would you rather be completely

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Speaker 1: bald or completely hairy? Uh? Like, you know, whenever bald

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Speaker 1: came up against anything else, that one was always a

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Speaker 1: hard one for me to pick. Oh mo, yeah, I'd

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Speaker 1: take bald, ever being completely hairy? Yeah. One word wigs.

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Speaker 1: I think you always then when someone says wiggs, you

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Speaker 1: always say, but you can't have any wigs. You always

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Speaker 1: keep having to qualify it. Hate that game. But there

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Speaker 1: are some women. My point, and even though we've we've

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Speaker 1: gone into a little would you rather, my point is

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Speaker 1: that there are a lot of women who don't get

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Speaker 1: to make that choice for themselves, right. Um. Actually, according

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Speaker 1: to the American Academy of Dermatology, around thirty million women

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Speaker 1: in the US deal with serious hair loss every year,

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Speaker 1: which was far higher than I would have guessed if

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Speaker 1: you had said, tell me how many women in the

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Speaker 1: US have a problem with baldness. And because of all

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Speaker 1: the things we talked about our last podcast, it's almost

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Speaker 1: sort of this silent thing you go through in private

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Speaker 1: because it's too hard to admit to someone that you

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Speaker 1: are losing your hair. If it is this ultimate symbol

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Speaker 1: a femininity and womanhood, then you don't admit you don't

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Speaker 1: have hair, right, And it's even come down to the

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Speaker 1: point that female baldness has not been studied nearly as

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Speaker 1: much as male baldness, and only recently have they begun

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Speaker 1: to understand underlying causes. Right, So let's let's try and

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Speaker 1: share what they do know about female baldness. Well, we

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Speaker 1: know how hair grows, Molly, that's true, and I think

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Speaker 1: we touched on this in our do you Need to

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Speaker 1: Shampoo your Hair? Podcast? But really, briefly, um, your hair

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Speaker 1: grows about a half inch per month, and at any

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Speaker 1: given time, about of all your hair is in the

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Speaker 1: anagin phase, which means it's growing, yes, and then after

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Speaker 1: the anergen comes the resting. The resting. Everyone needs a

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Speaker 1: good rest after all. That's the roast about what Like,

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Speaker 1: you know, twenty of your hair is just resting, is

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Speaker 1: in the intelligent phase, and then after it rests, it

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Speaker 1: will shed itself from your head. And if you've ever

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Speaker 1: cleaned out your shower drain, you know that there's a

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Speaker 1: normal amount of shedding that goes on with a woman's hair.

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Speaker 1: It is is a gross thing to clean up. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: But anyway, if anything goes wrong in either stage of

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Speaker 1: that process via anagen intelligent then there will be hair loss. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: The type of hair loss that we usually think about

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Speaker 1: would be like male pattern baldness female pattern baldness, which

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Speaker 1: um is, we can collectively refer to that as androgenic alopecia, right,

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Speaker 1: And this is when a group of hormones called androgen's

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Speaker 1: interfere with the process and the big culprit here I mean,

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Speaker 1: you know, they're testosterone. Testosterone is involved to some extent,

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Speaker 1: but the big one that everyone watches is called dihydro

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Speaker 1: testosterone or d h T. Yeah. Basically what happens is

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Speaker 1: testosterone is converted to d HT and sometimes during that process,

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Speaker 1: it can harm your hair follicles. Right, It can shrink

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Speaker 1: the hair follicles, which will affect how much hair is

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Speaker 1: growing at any given time, and then follicles can eventually

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Speaker 1: die because so much d h d HT has bound

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Speaker 1: itself to a hair follicle. And now we might associate

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Speaker 1: that obviously with men, because we don't think that women

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Speaker 1: would have high levels of male testosterone. It doesn't mean

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Speaker 1: that women who have uh pattern baldness alopecia assarily have

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Speaker 1: a ton of testosterone surging through their veins because all

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Speaker 1: women have lower levels of d H D antestosterone, and

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Speaker 1: even those lower levels can trigger this pattern baldness, right,

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Speaker 1: which is why, um, some researchers don't even like to

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Speaker 1: give the condition the same name as male. You know,

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Speaker 1: we're saying um androgenic alopecia, but there are some who

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Speaker 1: don't like that term when it relates to women. This

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Speaker 1: is more thought of as sort of the hereditary form

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Speaker 1: of baldness. If you go bald for this reason, it

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Speaker 1: might be because your mother also had problems with this

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Speaker 1: hormone attaching itself to follicles. So to some extent it's hereditary.

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Speaker 1: But there are also a lot of underlying causes. So

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Speaker 1: before we go into all the underlying causes, let's talk

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Speaker 1: about some other forms of baldness. Yeah, the nice form

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Speaker 1: of baldness I think we should talk about would be

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Speaker 1: intelligion of fluvy um. And this is basically the type

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Speaker 1: of baldness that happens because of shifts and major shifts

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Speaker 1: and hormones, and it can also be caused by environmental

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Speaker 1: factors such as being in a car crash or being

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Speaker 1: under intense stress. Right, So what happens is there can

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Speaker 1: either be yes a big stressful event that all of

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Speaker 1: a sudden just shocks your hair into going into a

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Speaker 1: resting phase. And when you have more hair in a

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Speaker 1: resting phase, then obviously you've got more hair on deck

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Speaker 1: to be shed. Um. Or it can happen over time

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Speaker 1: a build up of hormones, like let's say you go

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Speaker 1: on birth control. There are a lot of women who

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Speaker 1: lose their hair because that build up of hormones affects

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Speaker 1: the hair. And this is also the type of thing

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Speaker 1: that can happen right after childbirth, because the same hormones

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Speaker 1: that are stimulating fetal growth also stimulate hair growth. And

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Speaker 1: so and then I know this has happened to friends

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Speaker 1: of mine who've gotten pregnant. Their hair just grows like

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Speaker 1: crazy when they first get pregnant, and then once they

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Speaker 1: have the child, the hormone levels drop, and then their

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Speaker 1: hair is kind of shocked into this intelligent phase. And

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Speaker 1: so the experience hair loss right and it's it's you know,

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Speaker 1: you can read a lot of um pregnancy LARGI about

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Speaker 1: how shocking that is to be a new mother and

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Speaker 1: then all of a sudden to have no hair. UM

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Speaker 1: And that was What was most surprising to me and

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Speaker 1: researching this podcast, as we think about UM female hair

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Speaker 1: loss happening to older women. You know, obviously the one

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Speaker 1: of the biggest hormonal ships your body will go through

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Speaker 1: his menopause, So we associate that change happening at menopause

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Speaker 1: and older women having bald spots. But I really didn't

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Speaker 1: know much about the birth control aspect, or the childbirth aspect,

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Speaker 1: or just how at any stage of your life as

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Speaker 1: a young woman you can lose your hair. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: then you have um a third type of of balding

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Speaker 1: that's called anagin affluvium, and this is what's associated with chemotherapy. Right.

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Speaker 1: The point of chemotherapy is to attack all the rapidly

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Speaker 1: dividing cells in your body, because that's how cancer cells

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Speaker 1: are acting by the rapidly dividing and spraying the cancer.

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Speaker 1: But the other cells that are rapidly dividing in your

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Speaker 1: body are your hair cells. So basically it freezes out

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Speaker 1: that growing process in your hair, sends it into intelligen

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Speaker 1: and that's why you lose so much hair. Soon you

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Speaker 1: start chemotherapy and then UM, this is a more rarer

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Speaker 1: type of of hair loss. But it's something called traction alopecia.

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Speaker 1: And this has to do with actual hair care, Like

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Speaker 1: if you wear your hair and very very tight braids, UM,

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Speaker 1: it can actually cause your hair to eventually fall out. Now,

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Speaker 1: this doesn't mean, like you know that just because I

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Speaker 1: wear my hair in a ponytail every day that I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna end up bald. Right has to be a style

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Speaker 1: that you maintain over several years. And that was something

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Speaker 1: I took away from these articles Christen, is that there's

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Speaker 1: really nothing women can do in terms of caring for

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Speaker 1: their hair. You can't use like a bad shampoo or

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Speaker 1: brush it too many times and make it fall out eventually.

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Speaker 1: What they're trying to get across with this stuff about

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Speaker 1: um some of these ways that females go bald is

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Speaker 1: that it's likely that they have an underlying condition that

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Speaker 1: they need to get checked out, as opposed to the

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Speaker 1: men who are probably just having some sort of hereditary action.

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Speaker 1: And Molly, one of the main underlying conditions that can

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Speaker 1: trigger female baldness is polycystic ovarian disorder, and then on

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Speaker 1: top of that, according to web m D, things like

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Speaker 1: thyroid disorders, anemia, chronic illness, um severe dieting and even

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Speaker 1: certain medications can also contribute to because so there could

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Speaker 1: be a whole host of reasons why a woman a

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Speaker 1: woman might be losing her hair right with the polycystic

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Speaker 1: every syndrome and other autoimmune diseases. Sometimes the hair loss

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Speaker 1: is the first symptom that you have. So it's really

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Speaker 1: important to go get to the root of the problem,

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Speaker 1: as they say, to throw a little hair put in there, um,

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Speaker 1: to not just assume that you're going bald because of

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Speaker 1: your age or because you're unlucky, that there might actually

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Speaker 1: be something going on with your body. But women might

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Speaker 1: not want to go get this checked out because, as

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Speaker 1: we've said, it's so shameful not to have hair in

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Speaker 1: this society. Um. But for some women who are losing

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Speaker 1: their hair, it can be literally a painful process, not

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Speaker 1: just emotionally painful, but it can actually hurt. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: was reading about this condition called trick I dnia, and

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Speaker 1: a third of the women who experience hair loss claim

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Speaker 1: to their doctors that their hair is physically painful to them.

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Speaker 1: And what was kind of weird is that I was

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Speaker 1: reading all these scholarly articles about the condition, of which

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Speaker 1: there are not that many and so many male researchers

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Speaker 1: were just saying, Oh, this is on the women's heads

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Speaker 1: because they're so sad they're losing their hair. Yeah, they

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Speaker 1: just processed pain differently, so it's just a woman's play.

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Speaker 1: But there is um also a chance that the follicles

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Speaker 1: are actually inflamed or they have a jolt of the

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Speaker 1: neuropeptide P in their scalp that is causing legitimate pain

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Speaker 1: and and that hair it's falling out. So if a

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Speaker 1: woman goes in and complains of trichodinia, what some doctors

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Speaker 1: will do, it's just put them on antidepressants to deal

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Speaker 1: with this emotional stress of losing hair. But the nice

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Speaker 1: thing about I don't want to say there's a nice

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Speaker 1: thing about female pattern baldness, but to some extent, a

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Speaker 1: lot of this baldness is reversible. It's likely not reversible

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Speaker 1: if there's an hereditary thing going on. But you know,

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Speaker 1: if you're on birth control and that's what what's causing it,

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Speaker 1: they can put you on a different birth control. If

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Speaker 1: you are really stressed, you can learn, you know, how

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Speaker 1: to reduce this stress in your life. After childbirth that

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Speaker 1: grows back after a few months, so a lot of

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Speaker 1: these things. Once you address the underlying cause, be it

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Speaker 1: you know, a nutritional deficiency or a medication, then the

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Speaker 1: hair does grow back. But like we said earlier in

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Speaker 1: the podcast, Molly, there simply has not been as much

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Speaker 1: research around female baldness as their husband with male baldness,

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Speaker 1: So there are not as many treatment action options out there.

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Speaker 1: But the women can use monoxidil and hopefully have some

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Speaker 1: of that hair grow back. Right. There has been luck

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Speaker 1: with topical application of it um. But you know, as

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Speaker 1: the American Hair Loss Association put it, there aren't a

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Speaker 1: whole lot of drug companies for rushing to study uh

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Speaker 1: baldness cares for women. So if it does look like

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Speaker 1: it's permanent as opposed to one of these temporary baldness is,

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Speaker 1: then you're a little bit more out of luck. But Molly,

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Speaker 1: there was one condition also that you ran across when

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Speaker 1: you're doing all this research on hair loss, and that

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Speaker 1: that affects women more than men. And it's a case

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Speaker 1: where people are actually pulling their hair out of their head.

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Speaker 1: They're not it's not baldness, they're literally ripping their hair

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Speaker 1: from their bodies. Right. It's called trick a Tillamnia and

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Speaker 1: I wrote a blog about it a few weeks ago

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Speaker 1: on our blog how to Stuff. But basically, in this condition,

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Speaker 1: which as you said, does affect women a lot more,

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Speaker 1: they literally pull out hair wherever they can find it,

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Speaker 1: mainly from their heads, maybe their eyebrows, eyelashes, pubic area,

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Speaker 1: and then it's it's probably very close to Tourette syndrome

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Speaker 1: based on research they've done about the genes involved, where

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Speaker 1: it's just a nervous tick that you can't stop, and

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Speaker 1: it causes these women great shame for the same reason

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Speaker 1: that it causes any woman who doesn't have as much

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Speaker 1: hair as is societally acceptable great shame, right, And there

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Speaker 1: is a range of behaviors associated with it, Like for

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Speaker 1: some it might be a woman pulling a hair out,

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Speaker 1: you know, once a day. You know, nothing too bad,

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Speaker 1: You're not getting able. She's not gonna have a huge

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Speaker 1: bald patch because of it. But then for some people

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Speaker 1: it's almost a ritualistic process of finding the right hair.

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Speaker 1: Some women will report even feeling certain hairs that they

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Speaker 1: need to pull out and in it can also be

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Speaker 1: associated with underlying depression and anxiety as a form of

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Speaker 1: a self suit self soothing mechanism to alleviate the emotional pain,

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Speaker 1: and most of women, after they pull the hair out

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Speaker 1: usually play with it or put it in their mouth.

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Speaker 1: So one big side effect of this condition is hairballs,

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Speaker 1: which can cause vomiting and all the sorts of gas

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Speaker 1: or intestinal problems. In addition to the shame and guilt

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Speaker 1: women feel. You know, whether you're whatever reason you're losing

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Speaker 1: your hair, it seems to be based on all this research,

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Speaker 1: is that you're going to have all this shame and

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Speaker 1: guilt associated with it. It may be because you know,

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Speaker 1: you don't know why it's happening in the case of

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Speaker 1: something like alopecia, or it might just be because you

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Speaker 1: don't understand why you're doing it to yourself. With the

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Speaker 1: trick it tell a mania, because there's this huge emotional

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Speaker 1: weight associated with hair. Any loss of it is just traumatic,

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Speaker 1: and women go to great links to disguise it. But

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Speaker 1: I think that the lesson we want people to take

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Speaker 1: away from this is that whether you're pulling it out

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Speaker 1: yourself or whether it's just coming out in huge clumps,

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Speaker 1: you need to head to the doctor. Yeah, I need

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Speaker 1: to have the doctor because even with tricky tellamania, Uh,

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Speaker 1: you can get help for it. It is classified as

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Speaker 1: an impulse control disorder, and so a lot of times

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Speaker 1: UM doctors will prescribe UM either an aidepressants or UM.

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Speaker 1: Certain drugs have been used to treat O c D.

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Speaker 1: And then there's another antioxidant they've recently discovered UM that's

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Speaker 1: in a lot of health food supplements that can curb

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Speaker 1: that impulse to pull your hair out, and then they'll

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Speaker 1: do that along with some cognitive behavioral therapy to address

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Speaker 1: whatever underlying anxiety or depression might be urging, you know,

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Speaker 1: pushing you to act out and pull pull your hairs out.

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Speaker 1: So more of the podcast. Don't be ashamed, go to

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Speaker 1: the doctor. Don't be ashamed, go to the doctor. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: For me, it was enlightening just to note that thirty

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Speaker 1: million women out there have a problem with baldness, and

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Speaker 1: I think that it's something. You know, the more women

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Speaker 1: are aware of it, and the more we're going to

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Speaker 1: our doctors, the more researchers are going to start paying

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Speaker 1: more attention to these problems and having more resources out

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Speaker 1: there for us. Okay, sounds good, And as always, we

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Speaker 1: want to hear your comments and questions about anything we

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Speaker 1: talk about. You can email us at mom stuff at

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. And let's finish up with

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Speaker 1: some listener mail. All right, someone who did email us

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Speaker 1: at mom stuff at how stuff works dot com. And

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Speaker 1: this is about in the podcast are Women Funny? And

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Speaker 1: it's from our listener kid who's a girl comic, as

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Speaker 1: she puts it, in New Orleans, Louisiana. She does stand

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Speaker 1: up comedy, and she is one of a handful of

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Speaker 1: the female comics in the city. And what I liked

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Speaker 1: about her emails She's sent in her her anthropologist style

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Speaker 1: observations about the comedy scene. Ready. Yes, Number one, comedy

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Speaker 1: is male dominated, even local comedy. I'm usually the only

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Speaker 1: girl in the show, and if I'm not the only girl,

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Speaker 1: I will almost certainly be the only lesbian. Number two,

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Speaker 1: boys can talk about pooping. Girls can't, no matter how

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Speaker 1: attractive or the girl is. Number Three, if there's a

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Speaker 1: large comic community, the guys can get catty, just as

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Speaker 1: catty as the performers at drag shows. She also does

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Speaker 1: a lot of work with um drag shows. I forgot

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Speaker 1: to mention that in the intro. Number four, interesting fact

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Speaker 1: the stand up comics seem to look down on the

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Speaker 1: improv comics. I'm not sure if this is a local

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Speaker 1: thing or not, but um, I think I got another

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Speaker 1: email from someone else who also who also had the

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Speaker 1: same observation stand up is better Number five. When I

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Speaker 1: do comedy, I acknowledge the audience directly. I know it

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Speaker 1: comes from hosting the drag shows because, apart from the host,

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Speaker 1: I am the only comic who looks audience members in

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Speaker 1: the eye and ask them non rhetorical questions. Other comics

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Speaker 1: act like they're on stage and for I have a

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Speaker 1: huge audience. So there you go, she makes more of

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Speaker 1: a connection with the audience. Awesome. Well, if you're in

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Speaker 1: New Orleans, you should. You should check out our awesome

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Speaker 1: mom stuff listeners, hilarious comedy and learn why Yes women

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Speaker 1: are funny. And if you want to read some of

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Speaker 1: our funny and probably pretty unfunny the so that we're

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Speaker 1: writing during the week, you can head over to our blog.

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Speaker 1: It's called how to Stuff. Like Molly said, she wrote

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Speaker 1: about trick Atillamania a couple of weeks ago, if you

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Speaker 1: want to learn more about that, And as always, um,

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Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about hair disorders, scalp care,

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Speaker 1: hair do dads and all those things. You can go

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Speaker 1: over to our website it's called how stuff Works dot

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Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

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Speaker 1: Does it how stuff works dot Com. Want more how

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Speaker 1: stuff Works, check out our blogs on the house. Stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot Com home page brought to you by the

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Speaker 1: reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you