Do you know why does hair turn grey?

Prof. Know Why answers:

Generally with age, our hair turns grey, although people can get grey hair at any age! Some people go grey at a very young age, whereas others may be in their forties before the first grey strand is seen. And in most of the cases, our genes determine how early we get grey hair.

But what is grey hair? How does our hair turn grey? And why at all does our hair turn grey? Lets find out the answers! Melanin is the pigment that is responsible for producing color. To put it simple, - when the cells present at the base of the hair root, stop producing this melanin, the hair shafts turn grey.

Melanin is made up of specialized pigment cells called melanocytes. These are found at the openings on the skin’s surface (follicles) through which hair grows. As the hair is being formed, melanocytes inject melanin pigments into cells containing keratin (a protein that makes up our hair, skin and nails). Throughout the years, melanocytes continue this process, giving the hair their colorful hue of black, brown, blond, etc. But with age comes the reduction in the amount of melanin and the hair gradually turns grey.

Well, people who get grey hair in their twenties might not like it, but grey streaks or salt-and-pepper hair at a matured age surely gives one - a ‘distinguished look’ or so they say!

Related Post:

• Do you know why people go bald?

Do you know why women are marrying younger men?

Miss Finder –The Journo, investigates:

When a woman marries a man, who’s a few years older than her, we take it as normal. But when it’s the opposite, it becomes a topic of gossips! Let’s see why this inverse relationship is picking up pace in this modern times.

Though there’s a lot of debate about this issue, according to psychologists, - as women gain economic equality, they no longer marry for economic protection. Instead they marry purely on the grounds of attraction.

Relationship counsellors feel that older women are seeing younger men as someone who they can have fun with and also who doesn’t necessarily want to have children. They want somebody who is young enough not to feel threatened by their career as well. While on the other side, an older woman come across as being lot more mature and confident about herself, which can be very attractive to a younger man.

Psychotherapists believe that this has a lot to do with women’s increased position as a sex. They are doing better than men, with better education and more powerful jobs. They are therefore able to be more demanding and essentially doing what men used to do, - go for the younger, more beautiful models.

Some younger guys even told me that they find older women more sexy as they put on more flesh at right places with their age, transforming into a wholesome super curvy figure. Well, the debate may go on, but there’s surely an increasing change in the ratio of the role reversal, i.e. more older women marrying younger men. And gossipers, you are certainly going to get more engaged as this promising trend picks up more flames in the coming days!

Related Posts:

• Do you know why Richard Gere kissed Big Brother Shilpa Shetty?
• Do you know why Bush winked at the Queen?

Do you know why people go bald?

Prof. Know Why explains:

Normally, there are about 100,000 to 150,000 hair strands on the human scalp. However many people cannot retain them and eventually go bald.

Androgenetic Alopecia, the most common type of baldness — otherwise known as male pattern baldness — occurs due to a chemical known as Dihydrotestosterone (DHT) that builds up around the follicle and eventually kills the follicle and the hair. In simple terms, the growing cycle becomes shorter. So the hair does not grow as long as it once did. It becomes finer, and eventually the growth cycle is eliminated.

A follicle’s resistance to DHT is genetic – which is why some people go bald and others do not. If you have relatives with thin hair or who are bald, you may well develop the same problem. Doctors say that the gene can be inherited from either the mother’s or the father’s side of the family and skips generations.

In other conditions, such as Alopecia Totalis and Alopecia Universalis, the entire scalp and entire body become completely bald due to a viral condition.

Patch baldness, in which hair falls out of the scalp in patches, is caused by stress or poor nutrition or adverse scalp conditions. In this case, the hair usually grow back once the cause has been rectified.

While the effects of hair loss can be devastating, there are treatment options from non-surgical techniques to hair transplants that can slow or stop hair loss or even gain the appearance of a full head of hair. So just don't worry too much and be happy!

Do you know why people snore?

Prof. Know Why explains:

This is one of the most common problems worldwide. Snoring occurs when the muscles at the back of the throat relax during sleep and narrow the passage through which you breathe. As the air passes through this narrowing, the soft palate and uvula vibrate and produce the sound of snoring. The airway can be further narrowed due to:

- Poor muscle tone (after alcohol or sedative use).
- Enlarged tonsils and adenoids.
- A long soft palate or uvula.
- Blocked nasal airways from polyps, a deviated septum, allergies or a cold.
- Excessive weight causing tissue at the neck to be bulky and flaccid.
- Tissue swelling from cigarette smoking.
- Hypothyroidism.

However, snoring can be treated medically.

Somnoplasty is a new technique to treat snoring painlessly. It involves placing an electrode for a brief moment into the soft palate to locally reduce the quantity of tissue. As it heals over the next few weeks and the soft palate shortens and stiffens, the vibration of the soft palate decreases and snoring is eliminated.

In selected cases, laser treatment is the best choice. It is done using a high-intensity laser beam to trim and reshape the uvula and soft palate.

Wearing a dental appliance at night can also offer another solution. Molded to the teeth, this appliance keeps the lower jaw in a forward position during your sleep therefore decreasing your snoring. This appliance is often used to treat obstructive sleep apnea.

Do you know why Bush winked at the Queen?

Miss Finder –The Journo, investigates:

When you've just made it sound like the Queen is more than 200 years old, there could be only one way of recovering from the gaffe. That’s typically the Bush’s self-proclaimed way of projecting smartness, after a blundering stupid act. Yes! Turning to her and giving her a sly wink which might not necessarily needed to be included in any book of royal etiquette though. That's exactly what happened on 7^th of May, 2007 after George Bush mangled his greeting to the Queen on her state visit to the U.S.

Stumbling over his words, he came perilously close to suggesting that the monarch had toured the States in 1776. And although the President's following wink was initially rewarded with a regal glare, the Queen did at least seem to see the funny side of the blunder.

Being human, it was only a forgivable slip-of-tongue-issue, though not expected, which could have been rectified with a normal and humble ‘sorry’, instead.

But may be that the president, without finding any other form of expression, resorted to his impulsive cowboy-type street smartness!

Any comments guys?

Do you know why the sky is blue?

Prof. Know Why explains:

The atoms of nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere separate the sun’s white light into its many colors and scatter them throughout the atmosphere. The wavelength of the blue light scatters better than the rest, predominating over other colors in the light spectrum. This makes the sky appear blue to us on a clear day.

The scientific name for this phenomenon is ‘Tyndall Effect’, more commonly known as ‘Rayleigh Scattering’. This phenomenon describes the way in which light physically scatters, when it passes through particles in the earths atmosphere that are 1/10th in diameter of the color of light. The light spectrum ranges in wavelength from red to violet and since the wavelength of the blue light passes through the particles with greater ease than the wavelengths of other colors of light, the sky appears blue to the naked eye.

The human eye has three types of light receptors, known as cones, located in the retina. The cones are either considered to be red or blue or green, based upon their strong response to light at these wavelengths. As light stimulates these receptors, our vision translates the signals into the colors we see. The skylight stimulates the red and green cones almost equally, while stimulating the blue cones more strongly, resulting in the blue colour of the sky.

Do you know why we laugh?

Prof. Know Why explains:

The reasons we laugh, including ‘contagious’ laughter, may be products of evolution. Natural laughter is a two-part, spontaneous, response to humor, that has physiological, psychological, and physical benefits. Most agree that we laugh when we find something to be humorous, though different reasons exist for what we find to be humorous. Additionally, different things are humorous to us at different stages of life.

Laughter, a physiological response to humor, can be broken down into two parts. The first is a set of gestures, and the second is the production of sound. The brain forces to conduct both responses simultaneously.

From a physiological standpoint, a ‘sensor’ in the brain responds to laughter by triggering other neural circuits in the brain, which, in turn, generate more laughter. Oddly enough, laughter is an orderly response, and almost occurs spontaneously during pauses at the end of phrases, earning it the name the ‘punctuation effect’. Human beings are the only species capable of laughter, and an average adult does so approximately 17 times per day.

Scientists say that laughing is a great exercise and estimates that laughing 100 times is equivalent to a 10-minute workout on a rowing machine, or 15 minutes on a stationary exercise bike.

Do you know why Richard Gere kissed Big Brother Shilpa Shetty?

Scene 1 -Shilpa surprised!

Scene 2 -Shilpa resisting.

Scene 3 -Shilpa submitted, mission accomplished.

Miss Finder –The Journo, investigates:

The occasion was an AIDS awareness programme in New Delhi, India on 15^th of April, 2007. Hollywood star Richard Gere went on to hug his Pretty Woman, Big Brother Shilpa Shetty on stage. It was supposed to be a normal hug, or so was thought by Shilpa! But suddenly Richard held her tight, and then leaned on to kiss on her cheek. Shilpa was quite taken aback, tried to kind of resist somehow, but finally submitted, all with her gracious laugh.

Now, what could the reason be, behind this sudden act?

Well! It could be that Richard wanted to pass the message that AIDS doesn’t get transmitted like this, or one should be so much affectionate with an AIDS patient.

And it might also be for a spicy headline though, in his otherwise not so happening career at the moment!

Or could it be that he was eyeing this conservative Asian beauty all this days, post Celebrity Big Brother and was just waiting impatiently for a chance to get close to her?

And did someone say, he is in love with this elegant ever smiling dusky erotica?

Well! Well! Well! Why think so much dear? It was just only a mere kiss after all! Beg to differ? -Post your comments.

shilpa