Everything you have always wanted to know about the hair

Our scalp skin has up to 200 single hairs per quadratcentimeter. The hair production altogether is immense: about 30 meters of hair grow out of our body every day

In our latitude the hair is 0,04 to 0,08 mm thick. The strongest hair can be found in South Europe or Asia, where the diameter can be up to 0,1 or even 0,12 mm.

Same as finger and toenails, our body hair of the head are skin integuments consisting of keratin, a protein compound. From the inside outwards, the hair consists of medulla, scales and fibres layers.

The external layer consists of about seven scales that are laid out as roof shingles. Their condition is responsible for the fact that the hair shines or seems to be dull: if the external scales are smooth, they reflect the light and shine, but when they ruffle up and are directed “against the current”, they swallow the light and seem to be dull.

You can get a sensation of these layers if you pass your fingers from the hair roots up to the ends of the hair – or vice versa.

On an average, about 100.000 hairs grow on the head of a person. However, there are some differences: the amount of the hair is dependant on the hair colour. Blond people have finer hair and therefore 20% more of it. The hair of people with red and dark hair is stronger, but they have 20% less of it.

An eyebrow is made up of about 300 hairs, there are about 200 eyelashes around the eye.

The male beard consists of 7.000 to 15.000 hair, this corresponds to the amount of hair that a woman has underarms and on the legs altogether. A male beard hair grows for about 6 years, and then a new one substitutes it.

How long a hair grows, depends on so-called regulating cells. They disperse the growing factors to the hair roots. Due to it, the lowest hair cells divide and the hair grows – more than one centimetre per month. Sometimes female hair grows slower.

A beard hair is sometimes as thick as a female hair, and when it is dry, it is almost as unruly as a copper wire.

On an average, a man spends about 3.350 hours – so about 150 days of his life – removing hair on his face. He shaves up to 800 meters beard hair totally.

The strength of the hair length varies strongly. Scalp hair grows 1 to 1,5 centimetre per month, beard hair a little more, eyebrows a little less than that.

If eyebrows grow, how can I still see anything? The main hair as well as the body hair has a natural length stop, and in the case of eyebrows it guarantees a free vision!

A dry hair, which has not been treated, can carry 40 to 100 gram until it ruptures. Wet hair ruptures if the load is half as strong.

Before a hair ruptures, it can be stretched up to 40% of their length, wet hair even by twice. However, it is not recommended, since after stretching by 10%, the hair can no longer be reshaped. It looks as a stripped out elastic band and its structure is damaged.

Each of our scalp hairs has its own cyclic activity. It grows, sprouts, the old one is removed. Here are the phases of hair growth: anagen phase, which is the growth phase of the hair and it lasts three to seven years. The hair is fed by the surrounding vessels via the hair root (follicle). Catagen phase is a resting phase of the follicle, which lasts for several weeks, the hair is detached from the substrate supply. Telogene phase: it is a phase of discharging hair out of the follicle, which is followed by the anagen phase for a new hair.

The hair develops before the birth. Its development begins in the 6th week of pregnancy, when about 5 million follicles are created. After the birth, no more new follicles appear. Though the man has as many follicles as a chimpanzee, he does not have as much hair since not in each hair follicle a hair grows.

A hair follicle can develop many hair types over a course of a lifetime. The hair follicles in the face of a man start developing beard hair only in the puberty. The same is true for the pubic hair.

How thick a hair will be, depends on the diameter of hair follicle and cannot be influenced externally. Fine children’s hair gets thicker, since the hair follicles increase.

In the course of aging, the thickness of the hair on the scalp skin of each person reduces. This is a normal physiological reaction, same as the influences of seasonal fluctuations: the biological hair change from “summer to winter coat” also occurs in people, though in a very weak form. In spring and in autumn people inclined to it lose more hair.

Still the transition from normal to diseased hair loss is fluid. Do you have a feeling that you lose much more hair than usually? The hair doctor can clarify what the exact reasons are and initiate a treatment when needed.