Medical Myths and the Myths about those myths - Part 4 (hair and nails grow after death)

A myth I didn’t hear about until sometime in the past ten years is that fingernails and hair grow after death. However, I never believed this myth because I heard it in the context of history and how people believed vampires in the past. They used to dig up graves of recently dead people to look for signs of undeath. They apparently often found such signs in the form of what appeared to be hair and nail growth on a corpse. Please note that I personally am not 100% convinced this is the source of the myth because this directly contradicts a similar vampire evidence story (myth?) about people in the Dark Age believing bloated bodies of the recently dead was a sign of a vampire. Not to mention the fact that one of the beliefs about vampires is that if fed with blood, they return to the physical form from the point they become a vampire (meaning their hair can't grow). [How's that for talking on myths about myths? :-)]




The fact is, as I’ve heard from many difference sources by now, the body’s skin dries out sometime after a person dies. As it does so, it shrinks. The nails and hair remain in place, so it can appear as though they grow because they protrude farther out from the skin. That said, I would still guess it is possible the nails and hair do grow a tiny bit right after death, though they certainly do not continue to grow once all body functions stop.

Movie: I am Legend

I haven't been excited for a film in awhile. I was mildly excited to see I am Legend. I know the story from its previous incarnations and was looking forward to a big budget version that would do it justice. Though I enjoyed much of the film, I found that is lacked a strong story.

The movie is based on a book by the same name. Also, several low budget or independent movies have been made based on this book. This version deviated from the book and the other versions in some ways that seemed necessary, but in other ways, made this movie weaker than other versions. I will say I feel that if the movie would've followed the book, the movie would've been boring. Granted, the book does make excellent social commentary. With that said, it is not one of the better books written in the realm of fiction. I am of the sort that thinks if a movie can be made better than the work upon which it is based, then it should be. In this case, I will say that the movie was well paced. Choices in differences in the plot from the book through much of the movie were good.

However, not enough effort was given to the ending. Where the movie deviates from the book the most (the ending) is perhaps where it should've stuck to the original story more. The whole reason for the title "I am Legend" is that main character becomes as scary to the new vampire civilization in the new world as vampires are scary to us in our world now; deep social commentary. Instead, with this movie, there's a simple ending that doesn't do the rest of the movie any justice and ended up making this movie seem like a prequel to 28 Days Later (which, in my opinion, is a better film). At the end, I was like, "It's over already? That sucks." The voice-over by the heroine at the ended made an attempt to explain the movie title with the movie ended, though this was a very weak attempt at that.

One other point, the CGI was very weak and dated. It felt cartoony.

Movie: The Namesake

There was enough interest generated in The Namesake movie during its release, Allie and I felt it was worth renting it now. The movie is about an Indian family living their lives out in America. I was disappointed by this movie. Cinematography was annoyingly inconsistent. Some scenes gave too much space above or below the actors. Others where just simply centered on the scene itself, without much regard to where the actors actually were in the scene. Acting was good sometimes, but shoddy at other times.

Some of the scenes lost importance because the acting wasn't up to par. This one scene where the father is trying to have a conversation about life with his son didn't work at all because Kal Penn was trying so hard to be the teenage with angst that it actually distracted from the moment instead of making the moment what it was meant to be (and needed to be) for the film. I would say it was a case of overacting, but I think a better word for it is wrong-acting. Also, other scenes suffered from a lack of acting effort.

Editing was not well conceived or executed. The flashbacks of Gogol's character (Ken Penn) came off as just cheesy. Some scenes were awkwardly cut in order to hold off on that portion of the story until later in the movie. This, unfortunately, made the movie seem like it dragged on, with random spatterings of story telling. Overall, the story felt disjointed, without much reason for why it was edited this way.

The story itself meandered from point to point. There was no real main character, though it was supposed to be Gogol. Most of the movie seemed aimless. Character motivation was poorly executed. Again, Gogol's character kinda just took action that didn't really have a solid explanation. It made the character seem extremely superficial, even as he faced up to his heritage (which I am sure was an unintentional impression by the film maker). Well, either way the story wasn't well written.

The movie appeared to be a jumbled mess. I can't understand what many of the critics saw in this movie. It was a lackluster attempt to show something didn't really end up being all the important to the story (why the main character was named Gogol). This movie seemed to be an independent film for which the big studios wisely did not waste their money. I'm sure I would've cared about this movie more were I of Indian background, but even then I would have to admit it was not an example of good film making.

Medical Myths and the Myths about those myths - Part 3 (cutting hair makes is grow back thicker)

"Myth: Shaved hair grows back faster, coarser and darker."

My own experience on this is that it is partially true. It’s not a complete myth. Studies have shown that shaving doesn’t affect hair in that way. Nor do I think the act of trimming hair causes it to grow back thicker and coarser. I do think that how the skin surrounding the hair is treated does have significant impact. I did my own quasi-scientific study on myself when I was an adolescent. In an attempt to grow more hair body hair (being an adolescent trying to speed up the maturity process), I rubbed the skin on my chest aggressively over a period of a few months or so. In the oft chance to see if what I was doing would work, I rubbed one side of my chest more often then the other side. Having seen no immediate hair growth, I stopped this practice. It was about a year later I noticed the results. As hair did start to grow in, it only grew in where I had rubbed my skin months before. Yes, the hair on my chest grew in with the pattern I used to rub my skin. Even today, the thickest portion of my chest hair still vaguely matches the initial pattern I establish during my adolescence.

Another example of the effect of skin treatment is more recent. Although I’m not rapidly balding, I’ve always had a high and somewhat asymmetric hair line at the corners on my forehead. A few years ago, I learned that DHT levels in the skin and body can influence hair growth. It can cause hair to grow in some parts of the body. It can also cause a receding hairline on a man’s forehead too. I started a passive search for products that could affect DHT levels in the skin. In that search, I discovered Nioxin. The brand makes a claim that its shampoo can wash away DHT from the scalp. I tried it. I didn’t see any immediate results. Eventually, I decided to just to use it up. After about six months or so, I kinda started noticing what appeared to be new tiny baby hairs at the edge of my hairline. I decided to try Nioxin out for another few months. I bought more and kept using it. Over the next year, I noticed the hair growing back even more. Now, we aren’t talking about thick new grass on the field. I did perceive the start of a recovery of what I have lost over the past decade.

After awhile, I mentioned to Allie that I noticed a difference. She didn’t believe me. Then one day, she’s looking at me while we are snuggling and all of a sudden she was all like, “Is this all new?” with an amazed look on her face as she ran her fingers along my hairline. At first, I thought she was just she was trying to stroke my ego, so I challenged the comment. But I know her. She’s not the girly type that does that sort of thing. She was being genuine. Since then, my hairline has evened out a bit, and continues to recover at a slow pace.

So, from my own person experiences I can say cutting hair doesn’t change it, but how you treat the skin surrounding the hair does definitely impact it, though it takes a long time.

Medical Myths and the Myths about those myths - Part 2 (Eight glasses of water)

As a child, I remember learning that humans need to drink at least eight glasses of water each day. Nowadays, I consider this complete lunacy. In the past year, I saw one “expert” on TV have the balls to say that everyone walks around in constant state of dehydration because we don’t take in enough water. Huh? I don't know about that guy, but in American, there's not too many water-zombies waking around seeking out sources of water to quench their thirsts. I’ve even heard several “experts” declare that we should drink water way beyond the quenching of the thirsty feeling. Again, HUH? I actually did try to drink 8 glass of water for a period of time. Two things happened. First, my body often screamed at me to STOP! Second, there was no difference my health while I was doing this than before doing this or since I stopped.

So, in a poor effort to debunk this myth, it can be argued that the statement should be instead of water, we should be drinking eight glasses of fluid. Again, this is semantics since by fluid, one means water mixed other substances. Technically, mercury is a fluid, but I’d never want anything to drink that. This does mean we don’t need to actually drink all that fluid. We can get our required water in the foods we eat and other types of drinks, such as tea or orange juice. However, I still contend the requirement for eight glasses of fluid or just water is still a bit ridiculous. I’ve never seen a factually supported statement anywhere that says eight glass of anything is required for our health. I consider both the eight glass of water myth to be just crazy. I also consider the attempts to debunk the myth to be its own myth.

Medical Myths and the Myths about those myths - Part 1 (10% of your brain)

There’s a lot of interesting medical myths in pop cultural. However, from my perspective, the myths about these myths can be even more interesting. It was reported that the British Medical Journal ^[1] recently covered the topic of popular culture medical myths. There are many scientific attempts to debunk them. However, I find these explanations for things are themselves myths of sorts. So, here starts a new series of postings where I skim the surface of the myths and the myths about these myths.

As a child, I remember learning that humans only use 10 percent of our brains. This was stated as fact to me by my parents and from many other sources. I now know this is false, in a manner of speaking. I often find the explanation for why it is false to be a little dubious. Often the sited evidence as to why it is false is based on MRI or PET scans that show no dormant areas within our brains. Why is this suspect to me? Well, even though the myth states we only use 10% of our brains, it doesn’t say anything about dormitivity.

Sure, we do use most of our brains over the course of our many experiences in our live. However, at no moment is our entire brain ever fully engaged. In fact, many areas of the brain do have reduced activity. We still have access to these areas when we need them, but when we don’t need them they are not functioning to full capacity. For example, a recent study suggests the reason people think time slows down during extremely frightening experiences is because an area of the brain called the amygdale becomes more active at that time, laying down more memories during those kinds of events in our lives.^[2] The presumption from comparing this information with the debunking comments is that we don’t use all of our brain capacity all the time and that their explanation for debunking the 10 percent brain myth is not complete.