You Probably Didn’t Know This About Hair

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1. The average person has between 100,000-150,000 strands of hair on their head, and loses about 40-150 strands per day. Interestingly, natural blondes usually have more hairs than other hair colors—blonde hair is usually finer than more pigmented hair (think black, brown, and red), which means there’s room on the scalp for more blonde hairs.
2.  Speaking of hair colors, black hair is the most common hair color in the world, while, unsurprisingly, red hair is the least common and is found in only 1% of the world’s population.  Natural blonde hair is also pretty rare, found in only 2% of the global population. 
3. Because heat can stimulate blood circulation and encourage hair growth, hair can grow ever so slightly faster in warmer climates.
4. Also, 90% of the hairs on your scalp are growing at any given time, while the other 10% are resting.
5. Other than bone marrow, hair is the fastest growing tissue in the body. However, if you were to buzz your hair off, on average it would take three years to grow it out to your shoulders, and seven years to grow it to your waist.
6. Hair is oftentimes used by forensic scientists to learn everything in a person’s bloodstream, including medicines, alcohol, drugs, vitamins, and minerals. The only thing that can’t be identified by your hair is your gender, as women’s hair and men’s hair are identical in structure.
7. The reason blonde hair is so light is due to the fact that blonde hair holds little pigmentation—two types of hair pigments are responsible for natural hair color. A pigment called pheomelanin is most dominant in redheads, while eumelanin pigments is most dominant in dark-blond, brown, and black hair.
8. Fun facts about aging and your hair: you’d have to lose 50% of your hair for it to be actually apparent that you’re balding and research has shown that a lack of B vitamins, especially Vitamin B12, can actually speed up the hair greying process. So make sure you eat up on the milk, yogurt, eggs yolks, and salmon for more B12.
9. In 2007, natural hair was used during the Cusco Busan oil spill in San Francisco Bay to act as a sponge and help absorb oil from the water.
10. Centuries earlier, in the Victorian Era, hair was used as jewelry, where people would make pendants, brooches, and watch fobs out of the hair of their lost loved ones.
11. Did you know that weight-by-weight hair is the same as steel? Your entire head of hair can even potentially hold the weight of two elephants!
12. If you’re working towards growing out your hair, hang tight, because it only grows about 6 inches per year.
13. Eventually, the U.S. government gave up and stopped asking Americans to provide their hair color on passports because people had begun to dye their strands so often. The question became more confusing than clarifying.
14. Although, the Ancient Romans were actually the first people to lighten up their strands. Typically with wigs dyed a golden hue.
15. While Ancient Egyptians took a bit of a different route and instead darkened their hair with henna. Although they did play around with color a bit via red, blue, green, and gold plant extracts.