Wonderful and Weird Hair Facts

In a lifetime, an average man will shave 20,000 times.

July 2010

The average person's head has 100,000 to 150,000 hairs.

Hair is the fastest growing tissue in the body, second only to bone marrow.

A single hair can support up to 100 grams in weight and a whole head of hair could support up to 12 tonnes - the equivalent of two African elephants!

A hair grows by 0.3 to 0.5mm per day - about 1 to 1.5cm a month and 12 to 15cm a year.

African hair grows more slowly and is more fragile than European hair. Asian hair grows the fastest and has the greatest elasticity.

The word shampoo comes from the Hindi 'champna', meaning to massage or knead.

Early hair remedies read like witches' potions. One sixteenth-century doctor claimed to restore hair by applying a mixture of boiled slugs, olive oil, honey, saffron, soap and cumin to the head. But nobody knows if it worked.

Children lose an average of 90 hairs each day, which increases to 120 by old age.

Women often experience major, but reversible, loss of hair two or three months after giving birth. The massive production of the hormone oestrogen during pregnancy puts hair follicles into their 'growth phase'. After the birth, the hormonal balance is restored and the hair follicles go into the 'loss phase', causing a large number of hairs to fall out at once.

African and European people are more prone to balding than Asian people.

Hair is the second fastest growing tissue in the body. Only bone marrow is quicker.

It is possible for your hair to turn white from shock... but not overnight! Hair pigment is produced in the hair shaft beneath the skin, so it would take about 13 days for any white hairs to show.

One centimetre of hair can reveal much about your behaviour in the past month - what you ate, drank and the environments you encountered.

In 2002, men and women in the UK spent more than £4 billion on razor blades to remove unwanted body hair.

The first liquid shampoo to go on the market was Dop, which appeared on the shelves back in 1952.

We now spend £4 billion pounds on hair products every year in the UK.

Hair will fall out faster on a person that is on a crash diet.

The average human head weighs about eight pounds.

The reason why some people get a cowlick is because the growth of their hair is in a spiral pattern, which causes the hair to either stand straight up, or goes to a certain angle.

The reason why hair turns gray as we age is because the pigment cells in the hair follicle start to die, which is responsible for producing "melanin" which gives the hair colour.

The big toe is the foot reflexology pressure point for the head.

The loss of eyelashes is referred to as madarosis.

The longest human beard on record is 17.5 feet, held by Hans N. Langseth who was born in Norway in 1846.

The average human scalp has 100,000 hairs.

90% of scalp hairs are growing and 10% are resting.

Many drugs can cause hair loss.

Thyroid imbalance and iron deficiency are reversible causes for hair loss.

The only places on the human body where we don’t grow hair are on the palms of our hands, the soles of our feet and our lips.