[HN Gopher] Hair dye and chemical straightener use and breast ca...
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       Hair dye and chemical straightener use and breast cancer risk
       (2019)
        
       Author : ImpressiveWebs
       Score  : 62 points
       Date   : 2023-07-23 16:28 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (onlinelibrary.wiley.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (onlinelibrary.wiley.com)
        
       | Thoeu388 wrote:
       | This theory was quite popular in manosphere. Some hardcore haters
       | were even making videos to warn women. If you check sources,
       | studies like this go back to 1970ties. It will be interesting to
       | see, if it gains traction now.
        
         | NBJack wrote:
         | Sorry? What do you mean here? Hate on what/who?
        
         | arp242 wrote:
         | You can have the right conclusion for all the wrong reasons, or
         | the wrong conclusion for all the right reasons. It's really the
         | reasoning that matters more than the conclusion which,
         | certainly in this case, seems coincidentally similar more than
         | anything else.
        
       | karim79 wrote:
       | This one caught my attention.
       | 
       | In 2015 my (now ex) girlfriend was diagnosed with TNBC. I
       | obviously researched the hell out of it to gain as much of an
       | understanding as I possibly could as a non-medical professional
       | as I'm sure anyone would, and most of my reading suggested that
       | it was mostly African American women and youngish white ladies
       | who tend to get this.
       | 
       | As far as I know, she had used permanent die at least once in her
       | early twenties. Thankfully less than a year later and after chemo
       | and surgery, she fully recovered.
       | 
       | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7783321/
       | 
       | Edit: added space after comma, fixed grammo
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | manmal wrote:
         | Sorry to hear this. But are you implying one single use of hair
         | dye could have caused her cancer?
        
           | chmod775 wrote:
           | You're rolling the dice every time you do something that
           | increases your cancer risk. Cancer doesn't have some sort of
           | threshold where you get it.
           | 
           | So yeah, it _could_ have caused it. Is it the likely cause?
           | Maybe not.
        
         | bsder wrote:
         | Viral or environmental triggers are _WAY_ more likely in
         | someone so young.
        
         | throwawaymaths wrote:
         | TNBC is not really a direct category of breast cancer. It's a
         | catch all for "any breast cancer that doesn't have one of the
         | main three targettable handles associated with breast
         | cancer"[0]
         | 
         | In many cases, it could even be a cancer "from some other
         | organ" that winds up in the breast and happens to, even by
         | chance (not growing in the breast because it's a favorable
         | environment), grow there.
         | 
         | [0] could explain why TNBC is more common in African American
         | women -- less research done in those populations
        
           | karim79 wrote:
           | > TNBC is not really a direct category of breast cancer. It's
           | a catch all for "any breast cancer that doesn't have one of
           | the main three targettable handles associated with breast
           | cancer"
           | 
           | > In many cases, it could even be a cancer "from some other
           | organ" that winds up in the breast and happens to, even by
           | chance (not growing in the breast because it's a favorable
           | environment), grow there.
           | 
           | That would imply metastasis, would it not? By which, the
           | originating organ of the tumour could be determined by
           | examining the samples from the initial biopsy. The doctor
           | said that in the case of TNBC there is no hormone expression,
           | which makes it differ from other BC types, and why a more
           | aggressive chemo regime is required for this diagnosis.
           | 
           | I was there, at her second-opinion encounter. Nothing was
           | mentioned about it possibly originating from another organ.
           | She had had repeated body scans, blood work, all that one can
           | imagine. I'm not saying you are wrong, I am saying there was
           | not a single mention in any part of the treatment nor
           | received "coping" literature that this could have come from
           | another organ.
        
             | throwawaymaths wrote:
             | It doesn't imply metastasis in the way you're thinking
             | about it. Just because a cancer cell has moved once doesn't
             | mean it will aggressively keep moving to other organs.
             | 
             | Honestly doctors won't investigate too hard because the
             | recommended course of action is likely going to be the
             | same.
             | 
             | Anyways the longtime leading TNBC model cell line (which
             | came from an African American woman, IIRC) turned out to be
             | "likely originating from a melanoma".
             | 
             | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5515196/
        
       | milsorgen wrote:
       | I've used my fair share of dyes since my blue haired teenage
       | years and I'm curious as they mention non-professional
       | applications of dye in terms of risk. Does this mean the risk is
       | elevated during the application phase and not the 'wearing' phase
       | of dye use?
       | 
       | >We observed a higher breast cancer risk associated with any
       | straightener use and personal use of permanent dye
        
         | karim79 wrote:
         | Assuming that the application phase leads to permanence I don't
         | really see the difference, yet I get your point. E.g. massaging
         | the dye into the scalp vs a pro not going to deep into the
         | roots.
        
       | echelon wrote:
       | The paper cites endocrine disruption, but that seems like the
       | least of your worries.
       | 
       | Dyes have electron delocalization. That's why they're optically
       | active. Those bonds will gladly participate in chemical reactions
       | within your body. (One of the cited chemicals was a biphenyl, and
       | looked particularly nasty.)
       | 
       | Chemical straightener is even worse. They're intended to break
       | disulfide bonds, which are of critical importance in biochemical
       | structure.
       | 
       | This stuff could percolate to your DNA and introduce deleterious
       | changes.
        
         | exceptione wrote:
         | "Dyes have electron delocalization. That's why they're
         | optically active."
         | 
         | What do you mean by that?
        
           | mchem wrote:
           | A flawed model to understand this would be to picture a
           | hexagon with nodes on the vertices. Then, consider a hexagon
           | with one main node in the centre.
           | 
           | When electrons are tightly bound into nodes in and between
           | the vertices, they are energetically 'stable'. They,
           | therefore, do not like change.
           | 
           | When electrons are shared equally between all nodes and are
           | mobile, they could be considered to be 'more active'. As the
           | electrons are not tightly bound, it is 'all to play for' and
           | some change in state may be accommodated.
           | 
           | The optical activity described occurs because the equally
           | shared, 'central node' electrons are 'free-er' and have the
           | flexibility to accept unusual states. This is because in the
           | multi-node model, the electrons may be considered tightly
           | bound to each node and so any the effect of any change in the
           | state of a given electron is highly concentrated and local.
           | 
           | In the shared electron central node model the electrons are
           | 'more mobile' and so any change in state has a distributed
           | and shared effect across all electrons, rather than only
           | those in a given node of the multi modal model.
           | 
           | To emit light, an electron must absorb enough energy to reach
           | 'the next level'. In the multi nodal model, the next level is
           | extremely far away and may require so much energy that the
           | molecule will disintegrate rather than emit light.
           | 
           | In the equally shared central node model, the next level is
           | 'accessible' in that, whilst unstable, the mobile bulk of
           | electrons in the molecule can accommodate the change and
           | radiate the excess away.
           | 
           | The exact colour of light is determined by the energy
           | required to reach the next level, in most cases. This is a
           | consequence of the delocalisation of electrons in dyes, which
           | may be considered as following the shared central node model.
           | A further consequence is increased reactivity.
           | 
           | This explanation should be considered poor and ignores a lot
           | of nuance and theory (whilst relying on a hazy memory).
           | Likewise, it neglects to explain intriguing phenomena such as
           | the anion-pi interaction. In any case, I hope it is not 'too
           | wrong' and helps!
        
         | dredmorbius wrote:
         | OT: hijacking to reply to a past comment:
         | <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36147435>
         | 
         | You might find my work based on the HN front page of interest:
         | <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/110437783957361794>. Note that
         | this is a _subset_ of total HN activity, though a significant
         | subset.
         | 
         | There's also Whaly.io's retrospectives based on the HN API:
         | 
         | <https://whaly.io/posts/hacker-news-2021-retrospective>
         | 
         | <https://whaly.io/posts/top-10k-commenters-of-hacker-news-
         | in-...>
        
       | exceptione wrote:
       | From a quick scan the results are a bit surprising. One should
       | know that dying ones hair involves 2 components:
       | 
       | 1. developer. Some liquid that breaks open your hair follicles,
       | containing usually 3%/6%/9% hydrogen peroxide. This is the
       | aggressive stuf.
       | 
       | 2. hair dye. The stuff that contains the color pigments.
       | 
       | The more you have to bleach the hair, the more aggressive the
       | developer formulation needs to be. If you have perfectly black
       | hair and you want to go blond, you basically going for the
       | nucleair scenario: aggressively breaking open your hair follicles
       | so that the existing dark pigments will fall out of it (bleach)
       | so that the new pigments can enter eventually.
       | 
       | It suggests that black women have higher risks than white women.
       | But also that semi-permanent dyes do incur way less risk. Semi-
       | permanent dyes work different as in that the developer is way
       | less aggressive, as a trade of with doing a less thorough job in
       | getting the hair follicles to open.
       | 
       | The strange this is that for black women, the color of the
       | permanent dye makes a more drastic difference in cancer risk
       | compared to white women.
       | 
       |  _" The association with permanent dye use among black women was
       | evident for both dark-colored dye (HR = 1.51, 95% CI: 1.12-2.05)
       | and, although less precise, light-colored dye (HR = 1.46, 95% CI
       | 0.91-2.34). Among white women, breast cancer risk was associated
       | with use of light-colored permanent dye (HR = 1.12, 95%
       | 1.01-1.23) but not dark dye (HR = 1.04, 95% 0.94-1.16)."_
       | 
       | For me, this leaves the question open if one is comparing apples
       | with apples, as I don't see the formulation for the developer
       | accounted for.
        
         | Tozen wrote:
         | I'm confused by your analysis. For black women, it's not just
         | hair dye, but they have hair straightener products that have
         | companies putting some very toxic and carcinogenic stuff into
         | them. So black women can be putting themselves at greater risk,
         | if they use such chemical straighteners (they do have non/less
         | toxic options).
         | 
         | It also indicates that black women are less likely to get
         | breast cancer than white women, but when they do, they are more
         | likely to die from it for a whole bunch of reasons. To include
         | factors like time of diagnosis, quality, or cost of medical
         | care.
         | 
         | > For me, this leaves the question open if one is comparing
         | apples with apples, as I don't see the formulation for the
         | developer accounted for.
         | 
         | Here, I agree with you. Clearly what the companies are putting
         | into the products vary significantly. That by itself, might be
         | worthy of more study as to what's gong on. Dumping more toxic
         | and carcinogenic chemicals into the product, would seem to
         | clearly increase risk. For consumers, they need a guide as to
         | what products and ingredients are safer or more dangerous.
         | Looks like certain ingredients arguably need cancer warnings or
         | some kind of warning on the label.
        
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       (page generated 2023-07-23 23:01 UTC)