Grown-ups have long noticed that their husbands have more body hair than they do.
Now, a new study suggests that may be because of our bodies’ innate tendency to shed hair when we’re tired.
The researchers in Denmark studied how much skin, hair, and other body parts people shed during physical activity.
They found that the more people shed, the more they have to do it, and that women have about 30 percent more body fat than men do.
That’s a bit less than we’d expect if the two genders were equally fat.
But the researchers didn’t get a chance to ask their subjects how much their bodies shed.
Instead, the participants were asked to put their faces in a mirror and see how much hair they shed.
Their answer was the same whether they were exercising or not.
“Our results show that we can measure and control the shedding of body fat through physical activity,” says Dr. Bjørn Kristensen, a researcher at the Institute of Social and Environmental Medicine at the University of Copenhagen.
“This is very important for the health of our health, and it’s something we need to think about.”
The research is part of a broader body of research linking exercise and health.
The new study was published in the journal Obesity Research & Clinical Practice.
“Body fat is not the same thing as fat,” says lead researcher Dr. Joachim Kjaer, a professor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
“In fact, the difference is that the shedding can be caused by things like fatigue, dehydration, hormonal changes, stress, and some medications that are usually not related to exercise.”
The researchers found that women who exercised tended to have more hair, whereas men tended to shed more.
And in men, it was the opposite: Women shed less.
But both women and men also shed significantly more muscle than fat, according to the study.
“We were surprised to find that women shed more than men,” Kjaers says.
“And this is the same for men as well.”
The more we exercise, the bigger our muscles get, which means that the amount of muscle tissue we have in our muscles is related to the amount we have.
But it doesn’t mean we’re shedding more muscle.
In fact, it might actually be the opposite.
“The body fat we lose is related more to the number of calories we burn,” Kristensen says.
So what does all this mean for your health?
The researchers are now planning to study the effects of physical activity on different types of fat, and they plan to conduct further research in that area.
The takeaway is that physical activity is important, but it’s not the only thing you should be doing.
“It’s the way we look at things, not the way the body does things, that’s important,” Kristsen says.
