Healthy Hair 101: Fun facts

To ground readers who are new to learning about healthy hair care,  I've compiled a list of a few very interesting basic facts about hair that most people might not know. Enjoy!

GENERAL FACTS ABOUT HAIR...

1. We have about 90, 000- 150, 000 hairs on our head. The amount of hair depends on the hair colour.

2. Each hair consists of 3 layers; the cuticle (outside layer), the cortex (middle layer) and the medulla (axis of the hair).

3. The medulla is only found in people with thick hair.

4. Hair is made of keratin protein, the same substance that forms nails and the skin's barrier.

5.  Normally we shed 50-100 hairs a day.

6. Hair turns gray because the pigment cells known as melanin in your hair follicles are not working properly. Melanin usually degrades in production as you age or when you are stressed.

7. Hair is dead; it is not alive. The follicle (the root of the hair) is living and pushes hair cells up through the skin which are dead by the time they're pushed out, that's why it doesn't hurt when it grows or is cut and therefore...

8. ... Cutting hair does not influence its growth.

 ...ABOUT GROWTH

9. Hair grows on average approximately one-half inch per month.

10. Hair growth occurs fastest between the ages of 15 and 30, and grows faster on men than women, due to the higher levels of female hormones (Estrogens).

11. Each strand of hair grows without stopping for about six years. Then, it rests for a few months before falling out. About 10% of the hairs on your scalp are resting.

12. Hair grows faster in warm weather (by about 10 percent).

13. Also, hair grows more during daytime than at night.

14. Hair growth is mainly affected by genetics, but can be influenced negatively or positively by nutrition/diet, health, environment and hair maintenance.


...FACTS ABOUT TEXTURE

15. The texture and width of your hair depends on characteristics of your follicles. Oval follicles produce curly hair, round follicles produce straight hair, large follicles lead to thick hair,  and narrow follicles lead to thinner hair.

16. Hair texture changes throughout our lives. Approximately every 5-7 years.

17. Asian hair grows faster than any other ethnicity, and has the greatest elasticity and thickness.

18. Caucasians have the most varied colour of hair. The colour ranges from black to a pale blond that is almost white, including just about every possible shade in between.

19. Afro-textured hair is the most fragile because it has a thinner cuticle layer and is more prone to dryness...

20. ...but it is the most versatile, especially when it comes to styling. It can go from kinky/curly to straight (even without the use of chemicals) and everything in between.

Hope you learned something new!

Why you want long hair anyways?

NFL player Troy Polamalu

Correction...
I don't want long hair, I want to know that I have the option of having long hair.
Contrary to what most people might think my hair journey is not a vanity project. I'm not trying to get hair down my waist so I can swing it and show off to people just how beautiful I think I am. That's not the purpose of this journey (and documenting it) in the slightest.
If you're a woman (or even a man) of African descent then I gather that you're familiar with the kind of attributes usually assigned to the hair that we have supposedly been "cursed" with: 

Unruly

Hard 

Rough

Unmanageable

 Nappy

Ugly

also kinky and coarse but the negative connotations of the words. However, those words are usually used to describe the hair in its natural states. And for many black women the solution to taming that wild mane of hair was the relaxer, "relaxing" the natural tightly curled or coiled texture to a straight one. And like clockwork, every number of weeks or every time the unruly natural hairs began to show themselves again, we would relax those hairs again making them bone straight. Now don't get me wrong, this is not a relaxed hair bashing, which would be contradictory considering the fact that I'm relaxed, this is just to demonstrate the sort of negative stereotypical thinking that tends to surround Afro-textured hair. And even in it's relaxed state, the hair is bashed for the fact that being chemically treated it is devastatingly unhealthy. But commonality shared between relaxed and natural afro-textured hair is that this "unfortunate" type of hair that we have just won't grow. And consequently we black women are reduced to wearing weaves to hide the shame of our hair and achieve lengths that are thought to be impossible given our race.

So many misconceptions surround afro-textured hair, it's amazing and the purpose of my hair journey is to shatter each and every one of them, particularly the one about the misfortune about the nature of the hair and about growth. My goal is to discard those myths that have surrounded afro-textured hair and kept us from appreciating the hair in all its states whether natural, relaxed, texlaxed, whichever way you choose to wear it. Because of the misconceptions about Afro-textured hair, most of the methods employed in taking care of the hair, for the most part, are damaging which have in turn kept the hair from flourishing the way it naturally should. And I have every intention of rectifying that for myself.

And I believe that if I'm successful, I believe it will be be somewhat beneficial to the race as a whole.Yes, the negative stereotypes about afro-textured hair have been used to put down the race quite often for example the misconception that if a black girl has long hair she HAS to have some other race mixed in there. Because the girl couldn't have such a heralded trait (yes for the most part long hair is prized throughout the world) "being black" alone. Or the aforementioned fact about weaves being a desperate substitute for the hair we can't have.

And it's not as serious as it sounds. I know that hair is just that--hair. I've been taking care of my hair (the wrong way) for as long I can remember, and so have most people out there (i.e. we all wash it and style either ourselves or we go to the salon). The only difference now is that I'm actually taking care of it in a way that is actually beneficial to the hair. And I believe the benefits would show and inspire others.

Like I said before, I don't want long hair, I want to know that I have the option of having long hair. So I'm going to keep along on my journey to give myself that option.