• Does Biotin Work? | 6 Weeks Later

    Me and my Hair - October 1, 2016
    Me and my Hair – October 1, 2016

    A neighbor suggested I try biotin to get my hair to grow back in faster. I shaved my head (number zero clipper) over Memorial Day weekend and while the rest of my hair is growing back fine, my bangs are taking forever. It took them nearly three months to grown an inch!

    My hair is weird.

    Yesterday, grabbed my tape measure to check on my progress. In the 6 weeks I’ve been taking this bioin, my bangs have grown just under half an inch. So far, it doesn’t seem to be making a difference.

    For comparison, my neighbor claimed her hair grew three inches in a month when she tried it. I think she may have been exaggerating.

    While I don’t think it’s making a difference, I’ll finish the bottle (120 pills – 1 pill per day). Perhaps the effect takes 2-3 months to kick in. If it’s snake oil, meh, no big deal. It’s a $10 experiment.

  • I Want my Hair Back | Experiment with Biotin

    Photo by Devon C Adams Photography
    Photo by Devon C Adams Photography

    I shaved my head over Memorial Day Weekend – number zero clipper. I’m going back to my natural hair color after dying it for 10+ years and I didn’t want to deal with the grow out. And I thought it would be awesome – every woman I know or know of that has shaved their head had no regrets.  I didn’t need hair products for at least six weeks except for spray sunblock. It was refreshingly cool in the Phoenix heat.

    I felt powerful, strong, and beautiful with my buzzed head, and I liked having a fuzzy head while it lasted. I pet my head daily for the first month.

    And then the awkward grow out period began.

    biotinGrowing my hair out from no hair to short hair may be as annoying as growing my hair out from short hair to long hair. I measured my bangs today; in the nearly three months since I shaved my head, at most they’ve grown an inch! The side and the back feel longer so I’m afraid I’m inadvertently growing a mullet. I’m not sure what I want my style to be for now so I don’t want to cut it yet. I just want it to grow out faster so I have something to work with.

    Let’s do some science!

    A neighbor claimed her hair grew faster when she took biotin. Being a man of science, I’m willing to do a $10 experiment. I picked up a bottle of biotin – 120 pills with 10,000mcg of biotin in each one. The directions say take one pill per day.  We’ll see if there is a positive correlation between biotin and hair growth. It would be great to have a proper hairstyle by the end of the year.

  • Un-Caffeinated People Can’t Read

    Stardate 94202.47

    Dear Hyatt Hotel:

    I enjoyed spending my last night in New York at your establishment, including the complimentary breakfast. In the future, please make the distinction between the regular coffee and decaf coffee more obvious – with the visual equivalent of glitter and sirens.

    I’m sure Seattle’s Best Coffee put significant time and energy into making the labels on their dispensers beautiful, but the verbiage and coloration of the decaf coffee is too subtle for blurry-eyed un-caffeinated people. Before my first hit of caffeine all I can think is “Coffee-There-Gimme.” I barely had the mental capacity to properly put cream and sugar in my cup. (Shut up you people who drink it black.) I opened one of the mini-cups half-and-half and proceeded to pour its contents into the trash instead of my cup.

    Morning Coffee - My Vision is Too Blurry Before Caffeine to tell the Difference
    Morning Coffee – My Vision is Too Blurry before Caffeine to tell the Difference

    Your coffee is delicious. (Thank you for not carrying that Starschmucks swill.) Thank goodness I came by the coffee counter to top off my cup before heading back upstairs. (What is this “thank goodness” crap. Everyone knows I need more than 1 cup of coffee to start my day. I’m just being nice.) By then the smell of coffee and the carbs from your delicious pancakes connected my cerebral synapses long enough to detect the subtle green “decaf” sign on the dispenser where I poured my first cup. (I would have been hurting by 10am if I didn’t get my daily caffeine fix.) I immediately threw that first cup in the bin and pour myself a cup of real coffee.

    In the future, please make the distinction between the real-deal coffee and decaf so obvious that that that actual reading of the dispensers is not required. Put a space between the dispensers and label them with big signs – a neon rainbow-colored sign on the “Real Deal Coffee” (it will be a beacon to your caffeine-addicted patrons, something like “This is the coffee you’re looking for.”) and “I don’t know why anyone wants decaf but here you go” sign on the decaf.