Facts About Hairs

Our hair is made mostly of a protein called keratin.

The follicle is the only 'living' part of our hair. The hair strand above your skin has no biochemical activity and therefore it is considered 'dead'.

We actually have two main types of hair that our body produces, terminal (or androgenic) hair and vellus hair.

Vellus hair is a fine, short, light-colored hair that is barely noticeable, it develops from childhood and covering most of our body.

Terminal hair is long, thick and dark hair that is less common but much more noticeable than vellus hair. These hairs are on our head, face, chest (men), pubic and armpit.

Hair can grow anywhere on our body except for a few places like the soles of the feet, the palms of the hands and on the lips.

The eyelash protects our eyes from dust, dirt and other harmful objects.

Facial hairs on human grow faster than any other hair on the body. However, we lose about 55 to 120 strands of hair every single day from the scalp.

On average, people have 90,000 to 140,000 strands of hair on their head.

All the hairs on your head is actually strong enough to support two elephants.

A bus weighing 9,585 kg was pulled by He Yi Qun with his hair on January 2015 in Jiangyin, Jiansu, China.

Hairs grow slightly faster in warm weather.

Red is the most rare hair color in the world (only exists in about 1% of the world's population), whereas black is the most common. USA has the largest population of redheads (2-6%).

When wet, our hair can expand by up to more than 25% of its original length.

Hair is the second fastest growing tissue in your body.

Only about 6% of women colored their hair in 1950, surprisingly in 2015 its up to more than 70%.

On average, human hairs grow 4-5 mm per day, 1.3 cm per month and 14 cm per year.

If you try to grow out your hair, you need to know and be patient as it takes about more than 2.5 years to grow it to your shoulders and 7 years to your waist.

Tran Van Hay holds the world record for the longest hair (6.8 meters). This Vietnamese man often got sick after a haircut and therefore he decided not to cut his hair again since 50 years ago.

Asha Mandela holds the world record for the longest dreadlocks (55 feet long and weighs 42 pounds).

In animals, hooves, beaks, quills (porcupines), baleen (whales), feathers, claws, and horns are also made of keratin.

The only thing about us that cant be identified by our hairs is our gender - women's and men's hairs are identical in structure.

Hair is 50 percent carbon, 17 percent nitrogen, 5 percent sulphur, 6 percent hydrogen, and 21 percent oxygen.

Natural blonde people generally have more hair strands than red or dark-haired people.

Towhead usually has 120,000 strands; black/brown-haired people have 100,000 whereas redheads average about 80,000 strands.

Xie Quiping holds the world record for longest female hair (5.62 meters). Thats nearly as long as the height of a giraffe. She has been growing her hair since 13 years old.

Many stereotypes are associated with your natural hair color; brunettes are attractive, redheads have fiery tempers, and blondes are fun.

Personality traits of red hair color: passionate, romantic, mysterious, alluring and fiery, those with this hair color tend to have different personalities, seductive, opinionated, bad tempered and explosive are some other traits believed in people with red hair color. According to Men's Health, redheads are also said to have far more active sex lives than people with blonde and brown hair.

Personality traits of blonde hair color: feminine, obedient, youthful, and naive. Females with this hair color are usually high maintenance. Gentlemen do tend to prefer blondes. An experiment run by Men's Health showed us that men often prefer to help women with blonde hair than any other coloring. However, according to survey, the divorce rate is higher in this category.

Personality traits of brunette hair color: hard working, serious, and stable in relationships. Men are more likely to marry brunettes than they are blondes because women with this hair color are often associated with being more reliable and steady. Majority of Nobel prize winners are brunettes. However, people with brown hair color are also more susceptible to nicotine addiction.

Personality traits of black hair color: self centered, deep, serious, introspective and meditative. Those with black hair color are interested in religion, spirituality, poetry, the more likely he/she is to develop Non Hodgkins Lymphoma.

We are born with either naturally straight, wavy, or curly hair. The amount of wave, curl depend on the number of disulfide bonds between proteins of the hair inside the hair shaft; straight hair has fewer links while curly hair has greater number of links.

There are proteins inside the hair shaft, and it also contains sulfur atoms. Disulfide bond will form when two sulfur atoms pair up and bond. If these two sulfur atoms in the same protein join together from a distance to form the disulfide bond, the protein will bend. That is how hair curls are created.

Straight hair is classified as a 1: This type of hair is not only the most resilient hair but also reflect the most sheen. Straight hair is also known as the most oily hair texture of all because the sebum works its way to the end from the scalp without the interferene of kinks or curls.

Wavy hair is classified as a 2: This type of hair lies somewhere between curly and straight hair. This hair is more prone to frizz. It also imparts sheen more than curly hair. While type A wavies can alternate between curly and straight styles very easily, type B and C is resistant to styling.

Curly hair is classified as a 3: This type of hair is shaped like an 'S', it is naturally curly. Due to its texture, the hair tends to be dry. This is because the natural oil in the scalp could not easily reach past all of the bends and curves along the S shape of the hair strand.

Type 4 is kinky hair: This tightly coiled hair is quite fragile and delicate by nature. This type of hair is the driest of all and therefore the hair is more easily break and requires a gentle touch. What makes it different from type 3 is that this hair remains in the same shape whether it is dry or wet.