WHAT IS THE Secret Life of HAIR ‘Pullers'

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An intimate look at a disorder that causes sufferers.Jane Spelling (not her real name) started pulling out her eyebrows, eyelashes and hair on her legs when she was about 14. “I remember sitting in my chemistry class at school and pulling out all my eyebrows, I was in a trance.” Spelling started pulling from her head when she was in college after getting a cut on her scalp. Spelling, now 30, still continues to battle with her pulling demons daily. Both Raikes and Spelling suffer from trichotillomania (TTM), a disorder that causes people to pull out their hair, often slowly and methodically, most commonly from their heads, eyebrows and eyelashes. Not surprisingly, the social stigma around the trichotillomania can be intense. hair pullers go to lengths to hide their bald spots or lash-less eyelids, all the while asking themselves, “Why do I do this? Why can’t I stop?” Science hasn’t yet been able to provide a clear answer, though recent findings suggests that at least in some cases the cause is biological. New Discoveries, New Questions Trichotillomania usually starts during puberty and affects 3 percent to 5 percent of the world population, though some research suggests it’s a high as 10 percent. But Raikes, an award-winning filmmaker who tackled TTM in her documentary A Bad hair Life, believes the statistics don’t capture the true scope of the problem. “It’s really extremely common,” she says. Considering the stigma surrounding the disorder, Raikes says she isn’t sure the statistics match up to the sufferers. When you know where to look, the signs of TTM are everywhere: the little boy at a baseball game with a crew cut and bald spot on the crown of his head, or the woman caught in traffic, rummaging her fingers through her hair then plucking when she thinks no one is watching. Though trichotillomania sufferers try to hide their disorder to avoid being pegged as mentally unbalanced, in late September 2006, researchers at Duke University in Durham, N.C., discovered the first TTM gene. Isolating the gene proves that there is a biological, rather than psychological, basis for the disorder in about 5 percent of cases. “[It] is not really a large amount, but in terms of understanding, it’s the first gene associated with trich. For pullers it’s as if ‘My God, it’s not my fault, there’s a biological reason,’ ” says Allison Ashley-Koch, a senior investigator for the study, which will be published in the October 2006 issue of Molecular Psychiatry. “This is probably a complex genetic disorder,” says Ashley-Koch, who expects to link other genes to TTM in further studies. “This discovery opens the door to so many more questions.” WHAT DO YOU THINK????