Body Focused Repetitive Behaviours (BFRBs) with Professor Clare Mackay

Welcome back to Series 11 and episode 3. What are BFRBs? It's picking, biting or pulling, skin, nails or hair or Body Focused Repetitive Behaviours.

Here I’m in conversation with Professor Clare Mackay, Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Oxford.

Professor Mackay has spent over thirty years studying the structure and function of the human brain. In 2023 she turned her attention to a disorder she’d been living with for most of her life: hair pulling, which comes under the umbrella of BFRBS.

BFRBs are often done unconsciously at first and, as we’ll learn, are a throw back to primate grooming behaviour gone a bit awry. Most of us do have some BFRBs, we may pick the skin around our nails, or bite our nails or even become fixated with plucking that stray hair, but it’s when it goes into overdrive that it can become a problem.

In this episode we find out about a fascinating neuron which surrounds every hair follicle called the CT fibre, which, when stimulated (stroked etc) by someone we trust releases endorphins. This is why we love having our hair or skin stroked or touched (or those fabulous head massages!).

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Produced by Hester Cant. Art work by Lo Cole. Music by Toby Dunham.

So, could BFRBs be a misfire with this neuron? We discuss this and talk in depth about what BFRBs are, what they’re not, how to deal with them if you suffer from them and there’s some really useful advice for parents with children with BFRBs.

Clare’s written a fascinating book called Keep your Hair on, which is published on April 2nd 2026.

I hope you enjoy this fascinating episode and with grateful thanks to Emily Tammam for the suggestion.

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