Beauty Parlor Stroke Syndrome: Interview with Headbed Creator Catherine Randabel Explains Her Device

From episode: The Hair Radio Morning Show LIVE #887 Wednesday, August 30th, 2023

We got so much to talk about. First of all, Catherine, I should welcome you back to The Hair Radio Morning Show. You have been with us many times, in the past, and one of the major reasons, I should say, is because of what you have done, and who you are. As the creator of Headbed, you've done just an enormous contribution to the hair and beauty industry, so first of all, let's have you tell everybody, officially, what Headbed is. Well, thank you, Kerry. My clients used to come see me with neck pain, shoulder pain, headaches, after having been to a hair salon. It got me thinking about the position of a person's head and neck when they are at the shampoo basin, and research from the medical literature shows, and I was not surprised to find, that there's medical evidence of neck injury, and even, in the worst case scenario, stroke. So I designed the Headbed to have a support placed under the head of the person, and therefore, it takes all the weight off the head, and the neck, therefore, can relax. There's a lot less pressure on the neck, and it delicate blood vessels and nerves, when the head is properly supported at the basin. The neck can take up to 40 pounds of pressure on the vertebrae, if the head is reclined backwards and not supported at the shampoo basin. This is what really motivated me, nearly, yeah, seven years ago now, to design and research and make a Headbed. Well, I'm just blown away, because first of all, for our listeners out there, you know, the folks who are in and around the hair and beauty industry, this may be the very first time they're really ever hearing of a syndrome such as this. Can you talk to us a little bit about this, and how it's, you know, this has kind of come to light? I mean, you really have been sharing this for quite a bit of time, so kind of bring everybody up to speed on what this beauty parlor syndrome, stroke syndrome, is all about. Yes, well, it was actually published by a New York doctor, a neurologist, who started looking at a pattern of injury and strokes that happened particularly to women, middle -aged women in particular, as they'd come back from hair salon. So whether the same day or a few days later, they develop symptoms of slurred speech or pain down the arm or headaches, and then eventually ended up with strokes. And these would be ladies in their 40s and 50s. So he published an article in a very prestigious medical journal to say, look, there is a very definite problem there. So Beauty Parlor Stroke Syndrome, as it's called, or salon sync radiculopathy, which is a very fancy name to say that pain travels down the nerve branches of the neck from too much pressure on the neck. And that all happens because a human head weighs anything between four to five kilos, which is about eight to 10 pounds.