How does Hair Grow?

Did you know that both hair and nails have the same origin? They both develop from the horny layer of our skin. A hair develops when  part of this skin goes down into the lower layer and strikes roots there.

Then it shoots upwards through the layers of the skin and comes out as a hair. In the roots of the air there are four different layers of cells. They divide and multiply and push the shaft of the hair up through the skin.

As they move farther away, the hair cells change into a horny material like that of our outer layer of skin. On the outside surface of the hair, the cells change into a horny material like that of our outer layer of skin.

On the outside surface of the hair, the cells become flattened out and lie on top of one another like shingles. Near the cells of the root there are big, round, fat cells from which come the materials to build the hair.

By the way, the hair root is sort of  “screwed” into the tissue. It cannot be torn out. So when you pull out a hair, you do not pull out the root.

Your hair grows at the rate of about 12 millimeters a month. And  the surprising thing is, it does not grow at the same speed at all times. Hair grows very slowly at night, then speeds up in the morning, then slows till late afternoon, then grows faster again!

The hair on a man’s head lives about three to five years, and on a woman’s it has a life of about seven years. Your eyelashes live only abut six month! Altogether, an adult man has somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 hairs in his skin.