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Hair dye and chemical straightener use and breast cancer risk (2019)

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Re: Hair dye and chemical straightener use and breast cancer risk (2019)

#11

Post by chmod775 »

manmal wrote: post #9
karim79 wrote: post #2

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 onc…

Sorry to hear this. But are you implying one single use of hair dye could have caused her cancer?

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.

Re: Hair dye and chemical straightener use and breast cancer risk (2019)

#12

Post by throwawaymaths »

karim79 wrote: post #2

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 onc…

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

Re: Hair dye and chemical straightener use and breast cancer risk (2019)

#13

Post by mchem »

exceptione wrote: post #7
echelon wrote: post #5

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 importanc…

"Dyes have electron delocalization. That's why they're optically active." What do you mean by that?

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!

Re: Hair dye and chemical straightener use and breast cancer risk (2019)

#14

Post by NBJack »

Thoeu388 wrote: post #8

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.

Sorry? What do you mean here? Hate on what/who?

Re: Hair dye and chemical straightener use and breast cancer risk (2019)

#15

Post by arp242 »

Thoeu388 wrote: post #8

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.

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.

Re: Hair dye and chemical straightener use and breast cancer risk (2019)

#16

Post by karim79 »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #12
karim79 wrote: post #2

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 onc…

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…

> 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.

Re: Hair dye and chemical straightener use and breast cancer risk (2019)

#17

Post by bsder »

karim79 wrote: post #2

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 onc…

Viral or environmental triggers are WAY more likely in someone so young.

Re: Hair dye and chemical straightener use and breast cancer risk (2019)

#18

Post by Tozen »

exceptione wrote: post #6

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 pe…

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.

Re: Hair dye and chemical straightener use and breast cancer risk (2019)

#19

Post by dredmorbius »

echelon wrote: post #5

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 importanc…

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-...>

Re: Hair dye and chemical straightener use and breast cancer risk (2019)

#20

Post by throwawaymaths »

karim79 wrote: post #16
throwawaymaths wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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,…

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/

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