Useless Theories

I have long hair and often sleep with it wet. I have seen no ill effects.

My hair won't grow long. It curls into lugs and when they get hanging on with a hair or two I just pull them off. I never use scissors. They wound I think. Painless I know but with haircuts there's a lot of them. After my nightly soak my next move is to go to the pub and my hair is still wet unless there's a drying wind during the stroll.

I haven't noticed any ill effects of that either.

Dylan has a theory that if you cut your hair it encourages it to grow the other way inside your head and it clogs up your synapses.

You pull your hair out instead of cutting it?

Well-as I said, I get balls of hair hanging on. They come off easy. I never cut it.

I don't use soap either. I'm an evolutionist. We are not evolved for soap. It's nasty stuff if you know how it's made. A fatty sludge really rendered cute with colourings, fragrances, packaging and adverts.

my cat gets those, but they just brush out...

odd you are.

(they don't care for soap either...)

You're not painting a pretty picture of yourself, Spendi.

Just you wait, LittleK. The cumulative effects are gonna lay you low sometime.

I like cats. They teach useful lessons.

Seriously? I've been doing this for more than 10 years.

The only serious part was serious TiC, LittleK.

He was stoned when he said this, right? What other wisdom does he have to impart.

Which Dylan? Nevermind. Forget I asked.

I don't think you get sick while you sleep with wet hair, but how is your pillow
holding up from all the dampness, littlek?

@spendi, I am even less impressed now having found out you don't use soap
or deodorant, and if you can pull out your hair instead of cutting, you must have
very, very little to speak of.

Not attempting to poke fun at you in the least, CJ, but I think this might be an example of mother tongue interference.

'when' will work in this case, but 'while' doesn't.

I'm still cogitating as to why.

I keep two pillow covers on it as well as a pillow case. It seems fine. I neither see nor smell any signs of mold.

I think while works fine. Though when might fit better.

Causes terrible migranes, you know.


Just kidding.

<grin>

My first stab at a theory about heat loss and sickness: the problem is not about the heat loss itself. It's about the major effort we warm-blooded animals spend on keeping our body temperature constant in spite of the heat we lose. Indeed, maintaining our temperature is the only reason we even have hair in the first place.

Perhaps, then, there is a grain of truth at the core of the don't-sleep-with-your-hair-wet story: when we sleep, our bodies run on a reduced energy budget. When our hair is wet, more of that budget goes into maintaining body temperature, and isn't available for other purposes—like our immune system for example.

For some supporting evidence, I offer that I do get sick when my hair is wet—but only if there also is a stream of air, like from an AC. That makes sense under my theory. Air stream plus wet hair equals more water evaporating than from wet hair alone, equals more evaporative cooling, equals greater energy expenditure on maintaining body temperature.

So much for the true core of the myth. The rest is exaggerations from the same people who would have you believe that masturbation will cause your palms to grow fur.

I've seen several statements that that heat loss from the head was greatly exaggerated - except in an Army experiment circa 1955 involving soldiers in full Arctic gear except for being completely bareheaded. One of them was described or quoted here by Robert. I've seen other references to the same material.

Humans don't get sick from being cold or getting cold. They get sick from viruses. People sleep outside in all sorts of cold temperatures and never get sick.

I've slept in a house that had no insulation to speak of and no external source of heat thru a whole winter. Outside temperatures went as low as 40 below [F & C]. I never got sick because of it.

My bedroom in the dead of winter is rarely above 5C/41F, and often it's below that, sometimes quite a bit below that. I can't remember the last time I had a cold or the flu.

The cold and flue season happen when [not 'while', LittleK] people close their houses up tight, start heating and remain in close quarters.