Impacts of sports discipline on hair loss quantified

[randomuser1]

Hi forum,

those of you who know my theories (link to the full thing here) are aware that one of the observations (or predictions?) I made is that certain kinds of sports should be better or worse for hair health and the rate/degree of hair loss. My favorite example so far was sumo wrestlers: Overweight but perfect hair. I also pointed out that marathon runners often have worse hair than others.

Until now, this was only an unquantified observation. So this weekend, I set out to quantify it. Giving away the result: There are quantifiable differences in hair loss between olympic marathon runners and olympic weight lifters.


Data gathering Methodology

I gathered all participants in the olympic marathon and olympic weightlifting competitions from the Tokyo 2020 games in tables ordered by rank. I then added a column for their dates of birth which I gathered through Google searches. I also googled for photos of theirs from the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and estimated their hair loss degree on the Norwood scale, then added this estimate to the table. For those that ran with caps on, I googled for the most recent photo without any head covering before the Tokyo 2020 games (only a handful of marathon participants though). To counter my own confirmation bias, I erred on the side of caution for the runners. So if I wasn't sure if someone was NW2 or NW3, I'd note down NW2. For the weightlifters I limited myself to the three lowest weight classes because marathon runners are much lighter than the heavier weight classes.


Comparison methodology

I did three comparisons:

1. Average Norwood for everybody. Problem with this is that olympic marathon runners are on average quite a bit older than weightlifters so I performed two more comparisons as follows.
2. Average Norwood for all marathon runners whose age is at most that of the oldest weight lifter
3. Age matching the top 20 marathon runners for whom an age match exists

Results

1. Average for everybody
   1. Runners
      1. Average age: 31.15
      2. Average Norwood: 2.12
      3. n: 75
   2. Weight lifters
      1. Average age: 26.0
      2. Average Norwood: 1.22
      3. n: 36
2. Age-capped to oldest weightlifter
   1. Runners
      1. Average age: 29.31
      2. Average Norwood: 1.95
      3. n: 57
   2. Weight lifters:
      1. Average age: 26.0
      2. Average Norwood: 1.22
      3. n: 36
3. Top 20 age matched
   1. Runners
      1. Average age: 28.25
      2. Average Norwood: 1.95
      3. n: 20
   2. Weight lifters:
      1. Average age: 28.25
      2. Average Norwood: 1.15
      3. n: 20

Even in age-adjusted comparisons there is still a sizeable difference in hair loss degree between the two groups of 0.7 to 0.8 Norwood.


Discussion

It is my theory that insulin resistance (in different forms) is the root cause of androgenetic alopecia (Androgenetic Alopecia). Endurance exercise, if performed for longer durations, leads to cortisol release. (The science isn't settled on how long is too long, i.e. after how many minutes of continuous endurance exercise cortisol release kicks in - this also depends on body weight and exercise intensity.) Cortisol, especially if released more often or for longer, can cause or contribute to insulin issues. Marathon running should lead to cortisol release as it is well above the thresholds typically assumed to be minimum durations for cortisol release. Weight lifting, on the other hand, should usually not lead to cortisol release.

The differences observed between the hair loss degree of marathon runners vs. weight lifters should by the way not exist when comparing sprinters and weight lifters, though I haven't checked that yet.

Thought it was interesting enough to share. This difference in average Norwood degree seems to support the insulin resistance angle.


PS

Check out the photos of the olympic lifters in the 61 and 73 kg weight classes. How can 24 men all have such perfect hair?! (well, my theory predicts it haha, so I'm not exactly surprised). This also makes me wonder if the one NW5 (Goga Chkheidze) in the 67 kg weight class actually used steroids. His hair situation stands out among the dozens of weight lifters with perfect hair.

 

[cryingariver]

Bye!