lately i’ve been stumped by a bodily nuisance which is not serious enough to persist in bugging a doctor about but is nonetheless irritating: hair loss around my part line, which seems to have worsened after i caught COVID last may. in fact i did casually mention it two different doctors within the past year, who both ordered blood tests, but the results did not provide any meaningful insights. one doctor thought that my B12 levels, while technically within the healthy range, might be a tad low. but a few months into my B12 regimen and still weary from plucking strands from my pillow, vacuuming knotted monsters from the floors and unclogging the shower drain with the german equivalent of Drain-o every few weeks, i decided to go shopping at a nearby drugstore for hair supplements.
the drugstore options were plenty and varied, from very cheap (~€3) to very expensive (~€35) price tags on a 30-day supply. i settled on somewhere in the middle and picked up a €10 box containing something called Merz Spezial Haar-Activ Dragees. The packaging looked a bit tacky, with pale green-and-orange colors and metallic font, so I think I was sucked in less by the marketing and more by the price point (not too cheap, not too expensive; seems credible!)
after I arrived home and told Ulrich about my purchase, I noticed a few peculiarities about the bottle (which had been, until then, tucked away in its cardboard packaging): it was made out of either glass or ceramic, and there was no safety seal on top. In addition, the little pale-orange pills (dragées, I suppose) looked more like skittles than pharmaceutics. But maybe this just proves my ignorance of dragées! Ulrich got a kick out of the outdated packaging and then, pondering a moment, realized he had already seen it before. after some quick searching he pulled up this 80’s ad from Merz’s flagship Dragées product (not limited to just hair back then but for hair, skin and nails):
i have a feeling these skittles won’t wind up solving my hair loss nuisances, but i’m enjoying the mini excursions back to my birth decade twice per day, each time i take a dose of dragées! somehow i doubt that my next bodily nuisance wild yield such fun misadventures…
Omg that commercial! Also I’ve heard that anecdotal link about hair and loss and covid too