“I lost my eyebrows. And I don’t think they will come back. » Edouard Philippe engaged in a rather rare exercise for a politician: talking about his health. Guest of BFM-TV, on February 2, the former Prime Minister wanted to explain the reason for his spectacular change in appearance: he suffers from alopecia, a disease causing the loss of his hair. “My beard has turned white; it falls a little, and my hair too. The mustache is gone, I don’t know if it will come back, but I would be surprised. »
The opportunity for the mayor of Le Havre to show pedagogy and, at the same time, to demonstrate an empathy which he has often been criticized for lacking. “It is neither painful, nor dangerous, nor contagious, nor serious. Losing your hair at 52 is fine, it’s not a subject. There are people who are stricken with alopecia at 15, it’s not the same story at all. » As for the origin of the evil, on the other hand, it is difficult to decide – “maybe it’s the stress”, suspects the chosen one. No one will blame Edouard Philippe for ignoring the exact cause of his alopecia: scientists have been turning the question around in all directions for more than half a century.
A final verdict
The first time that The world evokes this pathology in its columns, on October 6, 1962, it is to look into “one of the most worrying problems in dermatology” of the moment, a “global phenomenon” : “female alopecia”, manifested by thinning of the hair. “Exceptional thirty years ago, today they are not only very frequent but also very serious”, Claudine Escoffier-Lambiotte, doctor and head of the daily medical section for nearly three decades, is alarmed. Especially in young women, aged 30 to 40.
A study conducted among one hundred and seventy-three international dermatologists delivers an unequivocal verdict. “It seems that the too intense and too frequent traumas to which female hair is subjected in our time are the main culprits, notes Claudine Escoffier-Lambiotte. These are of course rubbing and tugging due to combs, curlers, intense backcombing and brushing, but also, and above all, it seems, to the harmful action of lacquers and new shampoos based on sulphonated fatty alcohols launched on the market by the hair industry. » Products also at the origin of “neuro-vegetative imbalances” and of “endocrine disorders”. The return to the good old Marseille soap is therefore advocated, as well as stricter regulations in the field of parapharmacy.
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