Issue by Sesamestreet K: Why Do you need to have to shave hair when you have cancer?
I do not have most cancers but I have just seen that when people have most cancers they usually shave there hair off. I just want to know why?
Greatest reply:
Solution by peaches6
Some individuals lose their hair from chemo treatments, so they both shave it off once it begins slipping or use a wig to cover the loss of hair. My father was blessed. He failed to drop any hair.
Give your response to this concern under!
7 Comments
Kimotherapy causes it to fall out involuntarily, they don’t shave it
This is a good question. Its not all cancer patients but most, specifically those with lukemia
the medicines and radiation that those patients undergo when they have cancer are hard on the body. Their hair folliciles are destroyed and their haird starts to fall out, this is not so bad, but further treatments make it hard for the body to regrow hair, so to prevent the hair shedding or eventual baldness (which is very emotional on a person) they shave it off.
The chemo therapy causes the hair to come out because chemo is made to kill fast growing cells in your body. But it can not tell the difference between the fast growing cancer cells and fast growing hair. It just kills fast growing cells. So all your hair falls out.
Chemotherapy drugs ( and sometimes radiation also) usually cause people to lose their hair. Some people will shave their head because they dont want to watch their hair fall out. Other people simply lose hair naturally.
A lot of the chemo treatments cause your hair to break at the roots and fall out. Sometimes radiation therapy can also cause you to loose hair in the areas you were treated.
Most of the people I know, just cut their hair short. I shaved my head mostly because I wanted to be the one to claim my hair. The chemo and cancer can take my energy and health, but I’m claiming my hair.
not all but a majority of cancer patients going through chemotherapy and radiation lose some or all of their hair. As one ariter pointed out, chemo does kill fast growing cells such as hair follicles. While radiation as a whole can kill cells, (think of radiation from exposure from a atomic blast, the victems of Hiroshima lost hair and teeth as their cells died.)
However, the hair does grow back, it is not a permenant loss, (with the exception of high dose radiation treatments). As to why we shave our heads, well, the hair does not fall out all at once, it may be over a period of weeks to lose all your hair, or hair just in certain spots. For men hair is not a vanity issue, (we’ve been losing hair since the stone age, picture fred flintstone with no hair on the top of his head!! lol) For women, it’s a different matter, some do not mind shaving and wearing a wig, others are emberrassed about it. a select few, enjoy having air conditioning on the head!!
Hope this helps.