Donate your hair!

If you have been following my blog for a while you will know I have written about how your donations can help people having treatment from cancer

You can donate:

• Blood -See the Scottish Blood Transfusion Service website for more information
• Bone Marrow – See “Bone Marrow Donors Save Lives“
• Clippings from your Yew trees/hedge to make the chemotherapy drug Taxol. “Watch Breast Cancer Cells Die on YouTube“.

Hair!

Yes, that’s right, hair.  If you have (very) long hair, you can ask your hairdresser to put it in pony tail after they’ve cut it. Your hair can then be sent to factories in the States and China and made into a wig (some types of chemotherapy cause you to lose your hair, temporarily).  It takes at least 10 pony tails of hair to make one wig. There is more information on the Cancer Research UK webpage “Hair Donation and Wigs“.

A charity called the “Little Princess Trust“, based in England, make wigs for children who have lost their hair, often as a result of cancer treatment. They give more information on their “Donate your Hair” page, you do need to have long hair, it needs to be at least 10 inches, or 25 cms long (even for boys wigs). But, if you have long hair and are planning a hair cut, it’s a painless way to help out.