Have you ever wondered what your hair can reveal about you? Beyond style and beauty, every strand carries clues about your health, lifestyle, and even your diet. Hair protects your scalp from the sun, keeps dust away from your eyes, and prevents germs from entering the nose and ears. Body hair also helps regulate temperature by trapping warm air close to your skin.
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On average, a human head has 1,00,000 to 1,50,000 hairs on the scalp. It is made mostly of keratin, the same protein found in nails, feathers, and rhino horns. Hair grows everywhere except the palms, soles, lips, and mucous membranes. There are two main types of hair: vellus hair (fine, short) and terminal hair (longer, thicker), with men having around 90% terminal hair and women about 30%.
Each hair has a shaft (the part you see) and a root (inside the skin). At the base is the hair bulb, where new cells form and push the hair up. Hair grows in three phases: anagen (growth, lasting 3–7 years), catagen (transition, 2–4 weeks), and telogen (resting, a few months). Hair grows about 1 cm per month and naturally sheds 70–150 hairs daily. Its color comes from melanin, and hair stores clues about medicines, vitamins, and substances in the body.
A single hair strand usually keeps growing for about six years before it falls out. When it comes to colour, black is the most common, while red is the rarest worldwide. The five key elements that make up hair are sulphur, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon.
Hair thinning or slow growth happens when the growth cycle is disrupted by poor nutrition, illness, or stress. Hair loss increases if roots are damaged or many hairs enter the resting phase at once. Bald spots can form if new hair doesn’t grow. This condition is called alopecia, which can be temporary or permanent, like in male pattern baldness.
📢 What’s your opinion? Did you learn something new about your hair today?
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