How Does My Hair Grow? | Hear Your Hair

How does hair grow? Now that we know and understand the reasons why we suffer from hair loss, we need to go back and understand how it grows. We need to understand the life cycle of hair so that we know what treatment we should get.

Check out the causes and symptoms of hair loss for this post to make more sense!

How does hair grow?

Hair loss is a problem that can occur at any time and to anyone. Hair goes through three different growth stages:

1. The first stage: Anagen: is where the hair grows and lengthens from the follicles. This process takes 2-5 years on average.
2. The second stage: Catagen: is where the hair starts to get weak and separate from the follicles. This process takes about 2 weeks on average.
3. The third stage: Telogen: is where the hair breaks from the follicles and falls. This process takes 3 weeks on average.

Here are some facts about hair that you may not know:

According to research by Dr. Iman Al Haj, who received her board certification in General Surgery from the United Kingdom Medical Board and is a hair transplant specialist in Qatar, hair is made up of a protein called keratin, that is produced in hair follicles in the outer layer of the skin.

As the follicles produce new hair cells, old cells are being pushed out through the surface of the skin at a rate of about six inches a year.

The hair you see is actually a string of dead keratin cells. The average adult head has about 100,000 to 150,000 hairs, and loses up to 100 of them a day.

Finding a few stray hairs on your hairbrush is not necessarily a cause for alarm. At any one time, about 90% of the hair on a person’s scalp is growing.

Each follicle has its own life cycle that can be influenced by age, disease, and a wide variety of other factors.

Here are a 15 other random facts about hair

1. Hair can grow anywhere on the body, except for the palms of your hands, the soles of your feet, and on your lips and mucous membranes.
2. Hair can expand by up to 30% of its original length when wet.
3. Up to 75% of women color their hair, as opposed to when the trend started in the 1950 with 7%.
4. The average time a woman spends to wash, dry and style her hair is** 1 hour and 53 minutes a week**. By the time she is 65, she will have spent 7 months of her life doing her hair.
5. Cutting your hair does not affect its growth.
6. Hair is the second fastest growing tissue in the human body, after bone marrow.
7. Hair is mostly made up of keratin, which can also be found on the outer layer of our skin and nails.
8. On average, hair grows** .3 – .5 mm per day**, 1.25 centimeters or 0.5 inches per month, and 15 centimeters or 6 inches per year.
9. In the Victorian Era, people had brooches and pendants made from the hair of lost loved ones as a piece of jewellery is considered sentimental.
10. A strand of hair is actually stronger than a copper wire with the same diameter.
11. Hair is composed of: 50 % carbon, 21 % oxygen, 17 % nitrogen, 6 % hydrogen, and 5 % sulphur.
12. A person’s hair can contain forensic information about their DNA that can help identify them.
13. When it comes to hair loss and growth, men and women have the exact same numbers.
14. All of the hair follicles in the human body are formed at five months in the womb.
15. When a hair falls out, it will usually re-grow. It can d