RE: “SHAVING, CORONARY HEART DISEASE, AND STROKE: THE CAERPHILLY STUDY”

Extract

In a recent prospective study, Ebrahim et al. (1) reported the striking finding that men who shaved less often than daily (infrequent shaving) had a 52 percent higher risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality over 20 years than men who shaved daily (frequent shaving), after adjustment for age. They concluded that the association of infrequent shaving with CVD mortality was “probably due to confounding by smoking and social class” (1, p. 238); however, they found a significantly increased risk of stroke events among infrequent shavers compared with frequent shavers even after adjusting for these and other variables. Furthermore, they reported similar relations of infrequent shaving with CVD mortality and stroke events in nonsmokers.

In both the study by Ebrahim et al. (1) and my study (2), in which I reported infrequent shaving among men under 44 years of age who had had a myocardial infarction, the infrequent shaving was accompanied by evidence of hormonal aberrations, including breast tenderness (2), gynecomastia (2), and a decreased sex drive (1, 2). Given the strong relation between beard growth and sex hormone status (3), these findings suggest a possible role of sex hormones in the relation between infrequent shaving and CVD mortality. Although Ebrahim et al. did not find a relation between hormone levels and shaving frequency, they suggested that hormones might play a role. In addition to the possibility that infrequent shaving could be a prospective marker at an early age for CVD, the interrelations of infrequent shaving, smoking, hormones, and mortality have etiologic implications that invite speculation and warrant further investigation. I suggest that sex hormones may underlie these relations.