Hair acts as a layer of thermally
insulating protection for our heads, which lack the insulation that fat
provides for the rest of our bodies. Throughout history, humans have used their
hair to represent their class, indicate religious faith, and upset their
parents. Samson used his hair to store his power while Rapunzel used her hair
to sneak the prince into her tower.
The simplicity of human hair leads
to all kinds of complexities. We brush
it and shampoo and condition it. We buy special products to keep it growing and
sometimes buy fake replicas of it when all else is lost. It's our hair and most
of us are very attached to ours. It makes us feel attractive, and we miss it
when it's gone. But how much do you know about this material you call hair?
·
Hair grows slightly faster in warm
weather, because heat stimulates circulation and encourages hair growth.
·
When hair is wet; a healthy strand
of it can stretch an additional 30% of its original length.
·
All hair is dead with the exception
of the hair that’s still inside the epidermis of your scalp.
·
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.
·
The only thing about you that can’t
be identified by your hair is your gender—men’s hair and women’s hair are
identical in structure.
·
Black is the most common hair color.
Red
is the rarest and only exists in about 1 percent of the world’s population,
with blonde hair found in 2 percent.
·
As soon as a hair is plucked from
its follicle, a new one begins to grow.
·
Hair is 50 percent carbon, 21
percent oxygen, 17 percent nitrogen, 6 percent hydrogen, and 5
percent sulphur.
·
Hair can grow anywhere on the human
body with the exception of the palms of hands, soles of feet, eyelids, lips,
and mucous membranes.
·
Goosebumps from cold or fear are the
result of hair follicles contracting, causing the hair and surrounding skin to
bunch up.
·
The average number of hair strands
varies by natural color, with blondes having the most and redheads having the
fewest.
·
The scientific term for split ends is “trichoptilosis.”
·
Aside from bone marrow, hair is the
fastest growing tissue in the body.
·
Balding only begins to become
visible once you’ve lost over 50 percent of the hairs from your scalp.
·
At any given time, 90
percent of the hairs in your scalp are growing, while the other 10
percent are resting.
·
A single hair has a lifespan of
about five years.
·
Eighty percent of
Americans wash
their hair twice a day.
Each strand of hair can support up
to 100 grams in weight. Multiply that by the average 100,000 to 150,000 strands
on each head, and your entire head of hair could support the weight equivalent
to two elephants.
·
On the outside, the average person
has more than 100,000 head hairs, plus about 4.9 million more in assorted other
places.
·
Hair knows when you are sleeping; it
knows when you’re awake. “Clock genes” control our circadian rhythms, and the
easiest place to extract evidence of their activity is from hair
follicles.
·
Maybe dirty isn’t so bad. Oily hair
absorbs the air pollutant ozone seven times more than clean hair.
·
One thing is certain: You don’t want
to eat your hair. Trichophagia is a rare but potentially life-threatening
compulsion to ingest hair.
·
Eventually, we may opt to induce
baldness, or alopecia. Hair keeps us warm.
“Loving oneself isn't hard when
you understand who and what 'yourself' is. It has nothing to do with the shape
of your face, the size of your eyes, the length of your hair, or the quality of
your clothes. It's so beyond all of those things and it's what gives life to
everything about you. Your own self is such a treasure.” (Phylicia
Rashad)[i]
[i] Sources used:
·
“20 Things You Didn't Know About... Hair” By Rebecca
Coffey
·
“20 Weird Things You Didn't Know About
Your Hair” by Rachel Krause
·
“5 Things You Didn’t Know: Human Hair” by
Saying from Bangladesh
·
“50 Things You Didn't Know About Hair!” by
BabaMail
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