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So let's say you have reached you the genetic length of your hair. If it's down to your knees and you cut say 24 inches, will your hair grow back? What is the biological process if your hair "thinks" it has grown its full genetic length?
your hairs maximum length is reached when the longest (aka oldest) hairs on your head reach the time to fall out, and hair only lives so long before it falls out and new hair is grown so your maximum length is when you hair has been growing for so long that you can't grow it anymore because the longer ones will have fallen out
ps that sounds kind of confusing im sorry mabye someone can clear this up better than me im bad when it comes to english
If your hair is at your 'terminal' or 'bioligical' or 'genetic' length, whatever you call it, and you hack off 24 inches. It will eventually grow back to its natural maximum terminal length again. No more, no less, exactly the same.
What is the biological process if your hair "thinks" it has grown its full genetic length?
This is false. Hair does not have a mind of it's own. Hair cannot 'think', hair is dead, literally.
When you get to your terminal lenght you might think your hair stoped growing, but it didn't. Terminal is when the longest strands in your head are falling out, and no other strands are growing longer than that. Tough even at terminal, when you shed a long strand, a new one comes out growing all over again. Then if you'd cut a terminal knee lenght to shoulder lenght, you could catch up the newest strands of hair that were already growing, and are now heading to knee lenght again... Hair never stops growing =) Unless you'd go bald... Hope this helped =)
WOW, so maybe this is where the term "hair-brained" comes from? I hope my hair has a high enough IQ to keep growing longer... or maybe I should hope for a low IQ instead, --- so I can fool it! But, then again, I myself maybe don't have a high enough IQ to fool my hair as successfully as I wish to...
Gee, I'm getting all confused thinking about this topic! Time to start coming out with the blonde jokes now...
- Ken in San Francisco
I think others have already answered well, but it helps to understand hair's growth cycle. A hair has a cycle with two main stages. One is a period of active growth. The other is a period of rest. In some animals, all the hairs go through these phases at the same time, and there is an obvious molting. Humans, on the other hand, have hair that has cycles that are more random.
Anyway, when a hair starts its period of active growth, that's when the hair falls out. Then growth continues actively for several years until the rest period. During the rest period, the hair remains the same length and stays in place.
Most people don't realize that it's the start of the active growth cycle when hair falls out. An interesting thing related to this is that if you take some sort of product to encourage hair growth, one evidence that it's working could be that your hair gets SHORTER after using the product. This should be temporary, until the new growth attains its terminal length.
