FRONTAL HAIR WHORL AND ADHD ANY SORT OF CONNECTION?

[Anonymous]

hi,

my question is mentioned in the title.I was just wondering if there is a relation with adhd and frontal hair whorl. i am 24 years old and currently taking concerta medication for adhd. This title poped up when i came across a childhood photo of mine which my dad uploaded onto the computer recently.In that i particulary noticed a patch on my forhead which i later came to know as FRONTAL HAIR WHORL.Then recently i was just reading about ADHD when i came across another childs picture with a frontal hair whorl on his forehead. This specifice picture can be viewed at this link http://www.concerta.net/assets/children/Ed_rights_brochure.pdf (It is a legitimate and existing link not created by me nor offensive). It is a 19page article.This picture i am talking about is on the (17)th page. When i looked at the picture of that boy i noticed a FRONTAL HAIR WHORL on his FOREHEAD similar to the one that i noticed on my childhood foto. I read about hair whorls on WIKIPEDIA and it was quite informative. Hoping to get a reply. thank you .Sincerely Nigel from Surrey,BC. Looking forward to attend your seminar in VANCOUVER this NOV 2010. Regards to Dr Umesh Jain and team My email is nigeloommen@yahoo.ca

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[Anonymous]

I don’t think it’s related. In fact, those may be stock photos

that had nothing to do with ADHD until used in that brochure.

I have all the ADHD symptoms but no whorl like that.

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[Patte Rosebank]

Those are definitely stock photos of cute kids. And cute kids with tousled hair like that, look even cuter.

More importantly, I’ve never had a frontal hair whorl either. My hair has always been straight, straight, straight, and never formed cowlicks or whorls. Ditto for my brother, who doesn’t have ADD.

The notion that having a hair whorl identifies kids with ADD is just as ludicrous as the notion that people with “caveman” brows and “apelike” faces are mentally deficient. There were scientists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who were involved in the field of Eugenics (that is, selective breeding). Their books had many photographs of institutionalized people who had these particular facial features, as “proof” of the theories. The theories have now been completely discredited, and the photographic “proof” exposed as a matter of only photographing people whose appearance supported the theories. And that ain’t good science.

Similarly, the “science” of Phrenology (the belief that the position of bumps on a person’s head indicate personality traits and health issues) has been exposed as pure bunkum, though some people do still believe in it.

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[Anonymous]

Nigel, I think they all look just like kids. I’m a teacher (have been for a long, long time) and I’ve shall we say ‘experienced’ many an ADHD/ADD kid in my time and none of them had any distinguishing hair whorls. In fact, I just checked out my own hair and all I noticed was it was time to get it touched up again. My gray is back (but no whorl!).

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[Anonymous]

Hi Nigel!

I am an ADHD hairstylist of 28 years and there is absolutely no connection!

I’ve literally seen and talked to over 45,000 heads (30 clients a week for 50 weeks of the year times approx. 30 years) with people attached.

Hair Whorls, or Cowlicks are very common….at least 50% of people I’ve seen over the years have them.

Much more noticeable when you cut the front too short and then ******bing******

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[Anonymous]

Couldn’t find any reference to hair whorls. On a similar though somewhat slanted note, there is a literature that suggests that children with Autism tend to look more attractive than other kids. Protective? Why?

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[Anonymous]

Maybe I’m a bit Autistic too then given that

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[Saffron]

@ Dr. J: Interesting! I’ve often thought about how coincidental it was that every child with autism I’d met seemed to have longer eyelashes, fuller hair, rosier lips, more symmetrical and proportionate features, etc., than most NT kids.

Now I myself have a daughter with mild autism, and she is indeed unusually pretty—just like a tween Brook Shields. People actually stop us at supermarkets and approach us at her school to comment on how stunning she is.

(P.S. Good looks aside, she is also an utterly magical child in terms of personality and creativity, and we can’t believe how blessed we are to have her.)

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[BuxomDiva]

I know a lot of folks living with ASD and they run the spectrum in the looks department, just like neuro-typical folks.

I once had a colleague think I was nuts when I mentioned that babies born by Caesarian are cuter; apparently she didn’t understand that I meant only for the first few weeks of life, when babies delivered the old-fashioned way have that cone-head thing happening.

I do remember hearing from a reliable source that many of us with ADD have a pinky finger that curves in. That’s the only physical trait I’ve ever heard of.

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[Anonymous]

Well, I had a baby- and I was really interested in the fetal development. When my kiddo was born- I noticed that on the forehead was a soft light whorl of fine hair. It can be all over a baby’s skin and it is called “lanugo”. It disappeared eventually, but what I did notice, and is apparent in nature- that many things grow in this world from a spiral pattern.

Has anyone seen the movie “Pi”? It kind of relates to this. Here’s the movie page at Internet Movie Database:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138704/

I have noticed that hair on our heads grows in a spiral as well, and that’s where “cowlicks” come from, when the direction of how the hair lies conflicts.

Nigel- I like how you are trying to connect stuff. I don’t think posting email addresses in the forum is a good idea- it leaves you open to spam. We need a way to connect through Private Messages on this forum…good idea no?

Personally, I think that swirls are part of the natural blue print of all life.

I love thinking about how things are connected!

The bent pinky thing is interesting, but I am skeptical about a direct correlation. I do have inward bent pinky fingers- but the so do other people in my family who don’t have ADD to my knowledge. Hmmmmm…

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[Patte Rosebank]

Looking for connections can be good. Unless it involves things that have been completely discredited by science. Then, it’s a waste of your time and energy.

Bent pinkies, hair whorls, bumps on the head, “cavemen/simian” cranio-facial features, palmistry–All have, at one time or another, been pointed to as indicators of some form of mental illness or personality trait or “moral deviancy”. And all have been discredited.

I did palmistry for years at fairs, and sometimes, when we were bored, we’d tell people the opposite of the standard interpretations, just to see what would happen. And the people who got the “opposite” readings would always be amazed at how perfectly we’d described them—which is exactly the reactions we’d get from people when we did the correct interpretations. It’s because people are so eager to find a personal connection that our brains fill in the gaps to create connections that aren’t there. That’s why you can give a huge, random group of people the identical horoscope, just changing the star sign to match each person’s, and everyone will say that the horoscope was dead-on.

For the record, according to classical palmistry, a curved or twisted pinkie denotes someone who is dishonest and manipulative. Now, this could be because some people interpret the great leaps of logic and flashes of creativity that occur in people with ADHD or autism, as being dishonest or manipulative behaviour. But I’ve met a lot of dishonest, manipulative people with perfectly straight pinkies, just as I’ve met lots of very honest people with curved pinkies. So, for me, this proves that palmistry is NOT an accurate way of determining a person’s health and/or personality traits.

The one thing you can trust, though, is that swirls do occur frequently in nature. Sometimes joined in a spiral; other times, as radiating circles. And they can be very interesting to look at.

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[Anonymous]

“Looking for connections can be good. Unless it involves things that have been completely discredited by science. Then, it’s a waste of your time and energy.”

Yeah ok, but say for rebuttle’s sake- what if you stumble upon something never noticed before? Science is constantly admitting it’s mistakes, and if people don’t question the answers around us- we don’t progress.

I’m disappointed about the reality of the palmistry stuff. I believe you, but I am the type of person who would rather believe in fairies…

I had my palm read at 9 years old and that was a cool experience. I tried my hand at palmistry, but I guess got confused and quit.

I think it’s cool that you were into it though.

Aren’t the lines on our feet, hands, and body- created from how we are positioned in our mother’s womb? I thought I had read that somewhere.

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[Anonymous]

Dr. Anne Bassett made a connection that a shortened second toe was linked with schizophrenia. Still inconclusive but the original research genetic findings were very promising.

Psychiatry is full of observations. Pattern recognition is all we do.

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[Author]

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