12 Astonishing Facts You May Not Know about Your Hair
YOU HAS 100,000 to 150,000 STRANDS OF HAIR
The average head will hold about 100,000 hairs, though it varies by hair color varies by ethnicity, age, scalp region and scalp conditions such as male and female pattern alopecia. Blondes average 150,000, brown-haired people have 110,000, and redheads have about 90,000 scalp hairs.
HAIR IS ALL DEAD
Yes, each single strand of hair you can see is dead. The only hair that is not dead is the hair that is still inside the epidermis of our scalp - how weird? This is so surprising since we often focus on the hair that's on the outside, when we should consider that what we put inside our bodies directly affects the hair that we can see!
HAIR FOLLICLES GROW NEW HAIR WHEN YOU PULL OUT OLD HAIR
Your hair is really a stack of dead cells. Your “hair shaft cells are essentially fossilized,” Stenn writes. Thus, you can’t feel it when your hair gets cut. Nor does it send a signal to your hair follicles. Pulling hair out by the root alerts the follicles to grow again, but cutting does not.
HAIR IS MOSTLY KERATIN
Keratin is the same protein that we find in our outer layer of skin and our fingernails, and also surprisingly what constitutes animals’ hooves, claws and feathers. Hair is 50 percent carbon, 21 percent oxygen, 17 percent nitrogen, 6 percent hydrogen, and 5 percent sulphur.
HAIR IS SUPER STRETCHY AND STRONG MATERIAL
Hair is so strong that it could hold more weight than a piece of copper wire the same length and width as a single hair. It is said that a whole head of hair combined could support the weight of around 12,345 to 18,518 pounds (5,600 to 8,400 kilograms), or the equivalent to the weight of two car.The texture of a person's hair is determined by the shape of their hair follicles: A round follicle is straight hair, an oval shape is wavy and an elliptical shape is curly or spiral texture.
BLOOD FLOW
When it comes to healthy hair growth, blood flow is everything. Your hair needs blood to survive and grow because nutrients and oxygen are carried in the blood and form the building blocks of the hair follicle. Heat can stimulate blood circulation and encourage hair growth, hair can grow ever so slightly faster in warmer climates.
GOOSEBUMPS MAY HELP HAIR GROWTH
Goosebumps from cold or fear are the result of hair follicles contracting, causing the hair and surrounding skin to bunch up. These mechanisms may have implications for reversing hair loss and understanding wound healing in the skin.
COWLICKS CAN REFLECT HANDEDNESS
95% of right-handed people grow cowlicks in a clockwise direction. A cowlick is more likely to happen if you have wavy or curly hair. Cowlicks are natural growth patterns in the hair that cause strands to go in opposing directions, which can leave them laying flat to our head, sticking straight up, or controlling the flow of our hair in an unwanted orientation.
INFO CAN BE FOUND IN OUR HAIR
As our hair grows it carries our biological make up with it. Hair contains information about everything that has ever been in your bloodstream, including drugs, and is one of the most commonly used types of forensic evidence. This has been used for many years as a way to see if someone is malnourished or is lacking something in their diet.
HISTORY of HAIR STYLING
The bob, or ‘Castle bob’ was made popular in the early 20th century by the American ballroom dancer and style icon Irene Castle. She cut her hair short around 1914, and many women followed the trend. The bobby pin was invented specifically to hold these new shorter styles in place.
THERE IS NO MALE OR FEMALE HAIR
The gender of a person cannot be identified by the hair since both have men and women have identical hair structure.
SCIENTISTS CAN PROGRAM HAIR TO FALL
Some sheep farms inject their herds with a protein growth factor that makes hair shafts break off, so fleece peels right off the animal, no shearing required. The same technology can be applied to you!