The Price of Beauty: Chemical Hair Straighteners Confirmed Carcinogenic
The Journal of the National Cancer Institute recently published a research report. After tracking 33,947 women aged 35 to 74 for 11 consecutive years, researchers found that 378 women who frequently used chemical hair straighteners were diagnosed with uterine cancer.
The study showed that women who used chemical hair-straightening products more than four times a year had 2.5 times the risk of uterine cancer compared with those who had never used such products. But other hair-care products—such as dyes, bleaches, and permanent-wave products—did not carry this risk.
White, a cancer epidemiologist at the U.S. National Institutes of Health who led the study, noted: “The chemicals in these products are essentially similar to estrogen in the human body; they can disrupt normal hormonal processes, thereby affecting cancer-causing risk.”
This is one of the great prices women pay for “beauty.” Estrogen can make women more sensual and attractive, but its cancer-causing side effects must not be underestimated. Besides chemical hair straighteners, some other beauty products can also cause cancer. I previously treated a breast cancer patient who had taken estrogen in middle age for cosmetic purposes and later developed breast cancer for that very reason.
Not only female estrogen imbalance but also male hormonal disturbance can cause tumors—for example, men who frequently take aphrodisiac drugs or wines containing androgens may develop prostate cancer. Once normal sex-hormone secretion is disrupted, the target organs of sex hormones (in men: genitalia, prostate, testes, epididymis; in women: breasts, uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes) may undergo carcinogenesis.
Whether endogenous or exogenous sex-hormone disturbance, both lead to these endocrine-related tumors. Academia had previously disputed whether products like chemical hair straighteners that disrupt normal hormonal processes are carcinogenic; now this U.S. government study confirms that chemical hair straighteners are indeed carcinogenic.
So I advise women friends: do not disregard health risks for the sake of beauty. Be wary not only of chemical hair straighteners but of all supplements, drugs, and beauty products that can disrupt your own sex-hormone secretion; unless necessary, use them sparingly. Once the human endocrine system is disrupted, the risk of disease is great. Besides inducing carcinogenesis in sex-hormone target organs, estrogen also causes common diseases such as mammary hyperplasia. Likewise, androgens can induce benign prostatic hyperplasia.
Women can also achieve anti-aging and beauty effects through self-cultivation, emotional stability, adjusted routines, dietary control, and exercise—while enhancing inner beauty. There is no need to rely on modern scientific methods to artificially interfere with hormonal secretion for beauty. So we love beauty, but we love health more.