Some Amazing Hair Facts You Should Know

Hair may consist of dead cells and we may not have any painful feelings about cutting them (at least not physical pain), but hair tissue in itself is really amazing. Here are some weird and wonderful facts about hair that you may find not only interesting but educative as well: - Female hair is about half the thickness of male hair. Male hair is twice the size in terms of diameter, and this is why it appears and feels coarser than female hair. - Hair is the fastest growing human tissue and is second only to bone marrow according to some experts. Since hair cells are so fast growing, chemotherapy (which targets another type of fast growing cell which is the cancer cell) causes hair loss. - We all probably have heard that it is normal to lose 100 hair strands a day. Often it is not the actually falling hair that causes hair loss, but impaired growth of hair that causes the problem. And in the latter case, where there may not be visibly large amount of hair being shed, hair loss may become noticeable only at a fairly advanced stage or when the person has lost about 50% of their scalp hair! So perhaps 50% of our hair is all we really need, because no one is going to notice otherwise! - Some reasons for hair loss are reversible, such as iron deficiency or thyroid imbalance or certain types of medications. Another reason for hair loss that women do no usually have to worry about is pregnancy. Either during those 9 months or soon thereafter, hair loss due to pregnancy occurs to some extent. The good news is however that this will resolve soon, and rarely needs treatment. However when it is genetics that is responsible for hair loss, premature balding and so on, there is really little that can be done about it, no matter what the infomercials promise you. - Human hair is really tough! It takes a really long time to decompose and remains reasonably intact for far longer; even when the rest of the body tissue has decomposed. Cold has no impact on hair, neither does water; even some corrosive metals and acids do not have much impact on hair. Fire can destroy hair but other than that, it is extremely slow to decay. - One hair strand generally will remain attached to the scalp for about 5 and half years. So its life span so to speak is about that long. This is the reason that even if you never cut your hair it will still not grow as long as Rapunzel; simply because it will fall out after a time. - Race affects how hair grows. Asians have it best because their hair has the greatest elasticity and speed of growth. African hair grows slowest and is most fragile. - Theoretically one single strand of hair can support 100 grams of weight and so the one hundred thousand strands and more that most of us have, will in effect be able to pull about 12 tons of weight.