new thread
I want my hair to be as long as possible. Of course, this involves just letting it grow for ages, but I do like to get 1cm inch off my already 10 or so inch hair every 6 months.
What confuses me is the whole terminal length thing. If I get trims, I'm cutting length off the terminal length. This much is obvious. But how can I expect it to grow to it's full length let's say if I stopped trimming?
As I understand it, when a hair gets to its terminal length, it has a rest period, falls out, and starts growing again. This, to me, doesn't seem like it would happen enough for it to grow to any substantial length, unless it fell out in large amounts, and that doesn't happen.
I guess what I want to know is, will trims prevent full length hair permanently, and if/if not, why?
Did anyone understand that? :)
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JoNty
- Ignore my first post. -
I want my hair to be as long as possible. Of course, this involves just letting it grow for ages, but I do like to get 1cm inch off my already 10 or so inch hair every 6 months.
What confuses me is the whole terminal length thing. If I get trims, I'm cutting length off the terminal length. This much is obvious. But how can I expect it to grow to it's full length if I "regularly" trim?
As I understand it, when a hair gets to its terminal length, it has a rest period, falls out, and starts growing again. This, to me, doesn't seem like it would happen enough for it to grow to any substantial length, unless it fell out in large amounts, and that doesn't happen.
I guess what I want to know is, will trims prevent gaining full length hair? If so/if not, why?
Did anyone understand that? :)
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JoNty
I do not trim my hair and I didn't reach my terminal length until now, so this length must be longer than 52 cm (the length of the longest lost hair). I guess the lifetime of the hair is determined by genetics and this is responsible for the terminal length, so any trim will reduce the reachable length. But there are other possibilities to prevent maximum length, breaking through friction and missing hair care.
wolfgang
I believe I understand your question/concern. My theory would be to think that trimming a strand of hair would effect the total length of that strand when it reaches terminal length and falls out.
From my reading and understanding of hair, is that it is dead, so the follicle itself is the only element living. The follicle produces the strand of hair and it may have no knowledge that it's strand of hair has been trimmed. I would think that terminal length can be associated with time itself. The follicle would rest for example, after growing the strand out for 4 years, let it fall and grow a new strand. So every trim in my opinion would effect the terminal length of that strand of hair, if the follicle itself is associated with a "timer" (Grow a strand for a period of time, rest, let it fall, start over again).
This would tie together of how fast one's hair grows. If your hair grows fast, you should achieve a longer terminal length than one's hair that grows slow.
Just my thoughts of course and they are made available for specualtion and debate.
If I understand Coldflu correctly I think I agree.
Hair doesn't so much have a terminal length, more a terminal age. So if your hair has a terminal age of 4-5 years then regardless of how often you trim your hair, those old strands will still fall out after 4-5 years.
As you've already pointed out, the hair sort of has a "rest period" b4 it falls out where no more length is gained. This kind of implies that trimming small amounts like 1 cm every 6 months would only cost you 10 cm over the 5 year period so unless the "rest period" was less than 8 months your Terminal length would not be affected.
Make sense?
In a nutshell: If what you trim over the hairs growth cycle exceeds what you would grow (if you hair was still growing) during the "rest period". Then YES, trimming will effect your terminal length. But not by very much.
Just my 2 cents.
If you have 10 cm cut off each hair during its 5 year life, then your terminal length will be 10 cm less.
Just in case the signal-to-noise ratio was too low in the previous post, here is my pearl of wisdom again:
In fact, presumably you will cut even more than 10 cm off the terminal length because you will be trimming back any extra-long straggly hairs that happen to live longer than 5 years, so that they are the same length as the hairs which stop growing before the 5 years are up.
Yeah - actually your right... I think I argued myself into false logic. Started the new year drinking too early and began thinking too deeply, not a good plan.
Are you a Ham radio user?
Are you, Ball Guy? That's how I got into the Internet hobby. I migrated over here from ham radio, along with lots of others in the mid-1990s.
I've been studying AARL's material and practicing with a friend's tone generator to perfect my CW transmitting, and will hopefully test some time this next semester
Good luck! And cool you're learning the Morse code!
When I got into the Internet in the mid-1990s, there were lots of hams on it, because hams are almost always among the earliest to embrace any new technology. They also tend to use their callsigns or their names because "handles are for CBers". Keep an eye out for callsigns and you'll see quite a few before the at sign in e-mail addresses.
There also seem to be more than the usual share of longhaired guys at hamfests. Though some people see hams as somewhat conservative, this definitely does not extend to hair!
73,
I actually replied to this yesterday, but got a screening message, so I'm trying again.
Answer = no, afraid not
mookie
In order to reach terminal length, you must not cut or trim your hair in any way for at least 6 years. You may want to go 7 or 8 just to be sure. You may want to do it just so see how long it can get. There's no other way to know. Some people really like the way terminal length hair looks. I think it's ok as long as it is well taken care of. In any case, the ends will be uneven. If the hair is curly, much of the unevenness gets disguised anyway.