Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Next Stop...Hair and Nails

This time let's learn some interesting facts about our hair and nails, two things that I am fond about. I love nail polishes and like to have healthy hair. I don't know why but it always sounds so weird to me when I, or anybody else, say "healthy hair".  I was actually shocked about fact #7. I always thought blondes had the least amount of hair follicles. Things you learn everyday!



  1. Facial hair grows faster than any other hair on the body. If you’ve ever had a covering of stubble on your face as you’re clocking out at 5 o’clock you’re probably pretty familiar with this. In fact, if the average man never shaved his beard it would grow to over 30 feet during his lifetime, longer than a killer whale.
  2. Every day the average person loses 60-100 strands of hair. Unless you’re already bald, chances are good that you’re shedding pretty heavily on a daily basis. Your hair loss will vary in accordance with the season, pregnancy, illness, diet and age.
  3. Women’s hair is about half the diameter of men’s hair. While it might sound strange, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that men’s hair should be coarser than that of women. Hair diameter also varies on average between races, making hair plugs on some men look especially obvious.
  4. One human hair can support 3.5 ounces. That’s about the weight of two full size candy bars, and with hundreds of thousands of hairs on the human head, makes the tale of Rapunzel much more plausible.
  5. The fastest growing nail is on the middle finger. And the nail on the middle finger of your dominant hand will grow the fastest of all. Why is not entirely known, but nail growth is related to the length of the finger, with the longest fingers growing nails the fastest and shortest the slowest.
  6. There are as many hairs per square inch on your body as a chimpanzee. Humans are not quite the naked apes that we’re made out to be. We have lots of hair, but on most of us it’s not obvious as a majority of the hairs are too fine or light to be seen.
  7. Blondes have more hair. They’re said to have more fun, and they definitely have more hair. Hair color determines how dense the hair on your head is. The average human has 100,000 hair follicles, each of which is capable of producing 20 individual hairs during a person’s lifetime. Blondes average 146,000 follicles while people with black hair tend to have about 110,000 follicles. Those with brown hair fit the average with 100,000 follicles and redheads have the least dense hair, with about 86,000 follicles.
  8. Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails. If you notice that you’re trimming your fingernails much more frequently than your toenails you’re not just imagining it. The nails that get the most exposure and are used most frequently grow the fastest. On average, nails on both the toes and fingers grow about one-tenth of an inch each month.
  9. The lifespan of a human hair is 3 to 7 years on average. While you quite a few hairs each day, your hairs actually have a pretty long life providing they aren’t subject to any trauma. Your hairs will likely get to see several different haircuts, styles, and even possibly decades before they fall out on their own.
  10. You must lose over 50% of your scalp hairs before it is apparent to anyone. You lose hundreds of hairs a day but you’ll have to lose a lot more before you or anyone else will notice. Half of the hairs on your pretty little head will have to disappear before your impending baldness will become obvious to all those around you.
  11. Human hair is virtually indestructible. Aside from it’s flammability, human hair decays at such a slow rate that it is practically non-disintegrative. If you’ve ever wondered how your how clogs up your pipes so quick consider this: hair cannot be destroyed by cold, change of climate, water, or other natural forces and it is resistant to many kinds of acids and corrosive chemicals.

-From I Can't See you

4 comments:

  1. Great stuff on hair! And, I might add, many of the marketing claims used for hair products are total nonsense: you can't "nourish" hair with ingredients in a topical solution like shampoo, any more than you could treat a headache by taping an aspirin to your forehead! The size of the hair care industry is not widely advertised, but the US market alone passed the 7 billion dollar mark back in 2005! We are clearly very hair-obsessed.

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  2. I have heard before that humans can not digest hair, is that true? I heard a story that a girl used to chew on her hair and then one day died. they found a huge ball of hair in her stomach....is hair really that amazing that we can't digest it?

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    1. You know I heard the same about nail biting. My sister told me that there was a girl who used to bite her nails a lot and one day she had a severe pain in her stomach, so someplace inside of her. Anyways, when the doctors examined her they found like a ball of nails. I tried to search online some information on hair and nails and whether they are digestable or not. I could not find anything. I have to ask my biology tutor or a professor. I'll let you know!

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  3. Interesting read Saman! I always find facts exciting to learn about! =)

    I also always found in odd that the hair and nails are dead cells and grow from specialized epithelial structures, yet we work so hard on trying to make them look great! With such things as nail polish and hair products... I always wondered the extent of the damage we cause!

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