Hair, Hair Everywhere
By Sandie Lee

Hair. Whether it’s long or short, curly or spiky, we all have it in one form or another. But no matter its style, everyone’s hair shares one quality...

Hairy Cells

To know more about hair we have to start at the beginning. As most living things, a hair starts out as a cell. The cells live inside small tube-like pits buried in your skin called, follicles (fol-il-cles). These are surrounded by nerves and are constantly being fed nourishing blood. As the cell matures, it divides and is slowly pushed up by younger cells beneath it. While all this pushing and shoving is taking place, a tough protein called keratin (ker-a-tin) joins in. This hardens the cells and when they finally emerge from the skin, it’s a hair. By this point, however, the hair shafts are so far away from the blood supply deep inside the follicle, it’s already dead. As gross as that may sound it’s actually a good thing. It means pain free hair cuts.

Shape Up, Follicles!

When your follicles become tired, your hair falls out. In fact, we lose between 40 and 100 hairs a day. But don’t worry, you still have about 5 million hairs all over your entire body.

Did you know follicles are also in charge of what kind of hair you have? If your hair is curly, your follicles will be rectangular. Wavy hair sprouts from oval ones and round follicles give you straight hair. While they may seem hairier, chimpanzees and humans have about the same number of follicles.

Baby Beards

Babies don’t have beards…or do they? Actually, they grow facial hair before they’re born. A soft, colorless hair called, lanugo (luh-noo-goh) grows on most of a baby’s body, starting on the face. Then about a month before the infant’s born, it all falls out.

More Hairy Facts

Everyone has tiny hairs in their nose. The itty-bitty hairs way back in your nose keep it from running all the time. They do this by sweeping the mucus back into your throat. The small hairs near the front of your nostrils keep things like dust and bugs from getting in.

On average your hair grows about 6 inches a year and grows faster in the summer. The longest hair recorded belongs to a woman in China. Her hair measures 18 feet, 5.54 inches! Now that’s some hair-y interesting stuff!

Hair, hair everywhere. It’s so much more than just the stuff we have to comb before we go out.