If you love your hair, TURN IT DOWN!

OR…how music can ruin (or save) your hair, depending on the instrument.

So we’re all well aware by now of the effects of sustained high decibels on your hearing. But now I've run into an article explaining how it affects your hair. Huh?

In a brief segment entitled “The Best Reason To Turn Down Your Music,” mental_floss magazine quoted an article from Scientific American. It seems an English study had finally found why people lose their hair: music.

Here’s the report linking the loss to certain instruments:

“While stringed instruments prevent and check the falling out of hair, brass instruments have the most injurious effects upon it. The piano and the violin, especially the piano, have an undoubted preserving influence. The cello, the harp, and the double bass participate in the hair-preserving qualities of the piano. On the contrary, the brass instruments have results that are deplorable.”

Uh…okay. How was this tested? How many subjects were in the control group? Where’s the research? I delved into Scientific American’s online archives trying to get to the root of it – all the way back to 1993. Failing that, I re-scrutinized the mental_floss reference. The date of the quoted article? 1896! Really?? 

You know what? Crank it up!