new thread
With the discussion recently on extreme hair lenght and a new awkward stage as imagined by matthew aka regardless, I thought this short extract might interest the extreme long hairs out there. I'm rather intrigued by this hair theory mentioned below:
In his book GEORGE MICHAEL'S SECRETS FOR BEAUTIFUL HAIR, long hair care expert Dr George Michael contends that cutting bangs (or fringe) caused the famous Seven Sutherland Sisters ( who toured the USA in the 1890's-1910's showing off their extreme hair lengths) to shrink.
Dr Michael says the phenomenon is attributed to the process of equalization, where hair seeks to have the same lenght all over the head. Dr Michael said that within 12 months the total lenght of the sisters hair went from 49 feet down to 29 feet because of bangs! Comments?
Or it could be the result of an imbalance in bodily humors due to a homunculus growing in the spleen.
Nothing a bout of leeching can't fix! LOL
Wow is that in I'll have to give it a try! One of these days it might be one length and I will have a good shout at my roots!
Cheers,
John.B
Hair is dead tissue; it does not "seek" anything. Your hair follicles, which make a strand of hair, do know "know" how long each hair is. They just make hair for a their period of time and then shut down. And that period of time is the same whether you have long hair or shave your head. There's a lot of manure out there when it come to hair (49 feet? c'mon).
"And the farmer hauled another load away.
You could tell by the smell it wasn't hay..."
I tend to agree with that, Duncan. Sure, the root doesn't know how long is the strand, but the body know the weight repartiton all over the scalp.To balance that, a process of equalization would be perfectly understandable.
Vivien
It seems unlikely. The only method of "communication" between the short spots and the long spots would be via nerve signals regarding less tension in the short spots.
Assuming, just for the sake of argument, that the scalp has a mechanism for enforcing uniform tension/feel. The only mechanism the scalp has for shortening is to shed hairs.
In order for the scalp to "equalize", it would have to shed only the long hairs (the scalp would have to have a very fine sense for how long a hair was, based on very fine gradations of tension).
One problem with this proposed mechanism is that if most of the hairs are already a certain length, you can only shorten to that length. The mechanism would work if it only took out the longest, whispy tendrils that ultra longhairs sometimes have. That's assuming that such a mechanism exists of course, and it seems unlikely that it does. If it did, how would male pattern baldness work? You would think that people who had head injuries that required shaving a portion of the scalp would have observed this effect.
I think it's far more likely that the sisters grew tired of their longests whisps around the same time they decided to trim their bangs.
George Michael made a career of long hair. He's had great success with all the techniques, treatments, etc., that he developed over the years. It's difficult to argue with all the great results of his program.
I've experienced very positive results from some of his treatments. (BTW, I don't have bangs....)
Thanks for the feedback on the hair theory.