new thread
Hello everyone. I've been getting a little worried (paranoid would probably be a better word) about losing hair.
Lately it just seems like it's been falling out left and right, but mainly only right after i take a shower and a few hairs here and there for a couple hours afterwards.
Now it doesn't seem to look like it's getting any thinner than it ever was, And I think that I heard that it's normal to lose up to 100 hairs per day. And I haven't counted really more than 20 or so.
So i'm kinda thinking maybe i'm being worried about nothing.
But i guess my question would be, What is the normal amount that a person loses per day? is 100 actually accurate? If so, that will really make that nervous feeling go away.
And also, another question. Does the time of year play a part in how much you shed? because I noticed that spring is nearly here and it's around this time that i've noticed it the most.
Anyways, thanks in advance for your answers, guys. And good luck to all of you in your hair growth :).
I've heard that 100 hairs a day is the average a person sheds, and sometimes if you for example haven't washed your hair in a few days, it seems like more hair is coming out because those hairs that would have come out earlier come out then instead.
I also feel that i shed more hair in the springtime.
Devin, Simpa's right, there seems ta be a seasonal thing with the whole shedding phenomenon. Ugh. Bothersome. Fear not, though, I recall a past girlfriend FREAKED if she had more than fifty hairs in her hair brush per day and hers was waist length.
Keep it goin' and growin', bro. You're doin' great. It's just part o/t process, losing a few. Long hair rocks!
Yours for longhair'd camaraderie,
Quenyan
A typical human hair has a lifespan of about 5 years. Part of it is active growth and part of it is a rest period when it's not growing at all, but it stays in place. Perhaps counterintuitively, it is when the hair begins to grow again when it falls out. The new hair for all intents and purposes pushes out the old hair as it grows.
To calculate how many hairs you should expect to lose a day, its helpful to know how many you have. I have about 100,000. My daughter has over 300,000. Females tend to have more hair than males, and hair number also varies by color with blond being very dense and red and black being fewer. The way we counted our hair was to take a ponytail and divide it in half 10 times. The result is about 1/1024 of the total count. Let's just round that to 1/1000 since we probably can't divide in equal halves to that precision anyway. Then we counted the number of hairs in that 1/1000th. Counting a hundred or two hairs is no big deal.
So, then take the number you came up with and divide by the number of days in 5 years (1825). The result is the number of hairs you should expect to lose on average each day. For me, it's 55. For my daughter, it's about 165.
Hi Victor, be sure to keep in mind that at any given time perhaps 10%, and maybe even more, of your hair even if waist length or longer does not reach the tie. In actuality you likely have 110,000 and your daughter has 330,000 hair strands. Her hair must be very fine. Have you ever measured the diameter of one of her shed strands? With well over 300,000 on her head they probably average only 50 microns in diameter.
Scott
Good point. An alternative would be to estimate the time it took for the hair to grow at the point being counted and subtract that from the 5 years (which is also just a rough average).
My daughter's hair is finer than mine. On the other hand, the diameter of a ponytail is larger for her than for me -- she has a greater mass of hair for a given length. A tight ponytail has a diameter of about 4 cm for her. That's about 40,000 microns.
If 300,000 hairs is the number in the hair tie, then the ponytail is sqrt(300,000/pi) = about 310 hairs across. Dividing 40,000 by 310 we get 129 microns, but this includes the space between hairs. I'm not sure how tightly hair packs. I bet it's about 50% but would depend on shape.
According to http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/BrianLey.shtml the diameter of human hair varies from 17 to 181 microns.
That is super thick hair. Her ponytail is about as big around as my wrist.
Scott
You have pretty skinny wrists. Actually, though, she doesn't like how thick her hair is. The last hair dresser she went to says she has the thickest hair she'd ever seen. These days, she usually gets it cut and thinned.
Re: Strand Thickness
I have very coarse hair that is often likened to horse hair, and was curious about this. An acquaintance of mine used to work at a lab that had equipment that would measure things using a microscope. I sent her two hair samples and she was kind enough to run them through and give me photographs of the results.
The first strand I sent her was one that I consider to be more or less average thickness compared to the rest of hairs on my head.
The second strand I sent her was one that I consider on the upper end of my thickness range.
Re: Number of hairs
My ponytail circumference is about 12 cm. The problem with equating nape circumference to total hairs is that the thickness of hairs varies quite a bit. I've got many finer textured hairs that reach terminal length near my shoulderblades. These have a short life expectancy as well, and they shed out within 1-2 years.
Re: Follicle Lifespan
Everyone has a different follicle lifespan. The lifespan times the growth rate suggests your max theoretical terminal length. In my case, I grow about 6" per year, and my longest hairs are over 60". That suggests that my follicle lifespan is ~10 years for my longest-growing hairs.
I have a strand of Robert's hair (that I got at a long hair meet) and it is only 105 microns in diameter. I thought his hair was really coarse, but yours is amazing. Here is a photo of it which I just took with my digital camera through the eyepiece of my microscope. Notice the measuring reticle which is graduated in 50 micron increments.
That strand of 165 microns sure appears to have a kidney bean cross section to it. It has a major and minor axis. The minor axis may be only 100 microns or so. A hair that is not round in cross section will lie flat on its major axis when pressed against a glass slide.
Scott
Yeah, in case the color isn't obvious enough, I can tell the difference between his and my hairs by feel when I'm picking his and my sheds off the carpets. ;)
Next time we have a meet in SF I'll happily give you a few more samples and we could verify this. I do have wavy-textured hair, which has a more oval shape than straight hair which is more perfectly cylindrical.
I also have a few odd hairs growing in that I think are grooved/ribbon-like. I'd really like to see what those look like under a scope.
I would be willing to take a look at them. The one that is 165 microns in diameter appears like it is grooved. The center of the hair definitely shows an indentation.
For comparison, I measured the diameter of a hair strand from a horse's tail. It is 180 microns in diameter. This was the coarsest hair in the sample that I have which consists of about 10 hairs. An average one is probably 150 to 160 microns in diameter. Your mention of having hair as coarse as a horse's has seems to hold true.
One reason you can grow hair 5 feet in length is because of its coarseness. My growing cycle could be 10 years too, but my hairs break off. All my hair strands have broken tips. The longest shed hair strand from my head was 44 7/8" long with a blunt broken tip. My hair is somewhat fine, which makes it fragile. If it did not break, I would possibly be able to grow it to my ankles.
Scott
I'm not sure whether it's an indentation, or whether it's simply blurry in the middle because the microscope's focus is at the depth of the edges of the strand. Anyway, that'd be cool if you could take a look at a few more samples. :)
Heh. A horse is a horse is a horse, of coarse? ;)
Indeed. I'm very grateful that my hair is so coarse. Sometimes I wish it were finer and softer. OTOH, I have a fairly active lifestyle and like to do a lot of things outdoors that are rough on hair. My hair would definitely have a shortened terminal length if it were not as sturdy.
Here's a scan of a beard hair and a millimeter ruler. Comparing the two, I get about 270 microns for this one. Sometimes I have beard hairs easily twice as thick as this one.
Sorry for the poor quality of the picture. I don't have a microscope, so I used my flatbed scanner.
Scott,
Next time I see you I'll have to give you a mane strand and a beard strand of mine to see the difference in the diameters of hair from the two places. I know the hairs in my beard are a lot coarser than the hairs in my mane, but it would be cool to see how much!
Bill
The measurement will show the LONG axis of your hair strand, due to curly hair being oval in cross section. A hair will lie flat on its long axis when pressed against a microscope slide. I need to rig up some kind of miniscule clamp to hold and rotate the hair 90 degrees to make viewing of the short axis possible as well.
Scott
The result is the number of hairs you should expect to lose on average each day. For me, it's 55. For my daughter, it's about 165.
Whoa thats a staggering amout of hair!
Todd
As your hair gets longer, you shed fewer hairs per day. With 100,000 hairs and shedding 100 per day, a hair would only live about 1000 days. In 1000 days a hair will grow to 16.4 inches long at a 6 inch per year growth rate.
My hair is well over 3 feet long and I shed maybe 20 per day.
Scott
That's 60 feet of hair a day. Someone who has one foot long hair and sheds 60 per day would be shedding the same amount of hair that you do, if it is measured in lineal feet per day, and a person is going to grow the same lineal feet per day of hair no matter what his terminal length is.
My partner complains about all the shedding I do around the house, but I remind him that he leaves a lot of the hair he grows on the barbershop floor. I leave all of mine in the house. He has a very thick head of hair and he probably grows more hair than I do, if one were to measure it in lineal feet per day. He just gets rid of his in a way that it doesn't end up in clumps on the floor is all.
Bill
Scott are you sure you aren't letting any strays get away unnoticed?? :)
Todd B
I keep multiple ties on my hair, 99% of the time, so it is well contained. This makes recovery of 80% of my shed strands possible. I am somewhat obcessive/compulsive about how much hair I shed. I use weight instead of strand count. See photo.
Scott
Thanks guys for your answers to my questions. I feel quite relieved now that I know that it's a normal process.
Also Victor, thanks for taking the time to explain all that to me, it was very informative and i definitely learned something new. :D