Each Person Has a Maximum Hair Length and 26 Cool Hair Facts

If you never cut your hair ever again, it would grow long for sure, but not endlessly. That means the real-life Rapunzel would probably have to provide her knight with a ladder first. You also wouldn’t be able to wipe the floor with your hair, or use it as a hammock, uh-uh.

There are three different parts in a hair strand: the cuticle, the cortex, and the medulla. Now pay attention. The cuticle is the outer layer, made of a sort of overlapping cells, similar to fish scales or even roof tiles facing downwards. This part protects those inner layers from damage. Shiny and healthy hair has flat and smooth cuticles.

The cortex is made up of keratin. It’s a fibrous protein from which most of your hair’s strength comes. Another important element in the cortex is melanin. It determines if you’re going to have red, brown, or some other hair color, depending on the amount of it. The cortex can stay healthy if the cuticle is in good shape, and not ruined from chemical processing, dry and harsh weather conditions, or other things that can damage your hair.

And, finally, there’s the medulla. It’s a softer, semi-hollow hair center present only in thicker hair types. Fine and blond hair don’t have it. Each of your hairs has its very own individual hair follicle. There’s a hair bulb at the base of these follicles, and they contain your growing hair cells. They multiply, divide, and push upwards all the time. When they’re at the upper part of the bulb, they arrange into a thing we actually know as hair.

Hair has three phases of growth. The first one is when cells in the hair bulb multiply and push their way out through the follicle. This is when you get new hair growing, around half an inch per month. The second phase is when hair stops growing because roots get cut off from your circulatory system, which is why it doesn’t get blood supply anymore. And the third one is when your hair starts falling out, 50 to 100 hairs per day. Sounds a lot at first, but don’t worry, when the hair is falling out, your body already grows a new one.

The fact that you shed hair is the reason why it has its limits when it comes to length. Also, no trimming, shaving, or cutting will make your hair grow faster. Its maximum length depends on how long the phase of growth is. The longer it lasts, the longer your hair is going to be.

Still, our hair can’t grow forever, which is why it’s different in length on our head and face or body. The growth phase for your head hair lasts around 2 to 6 years, depending on the genetics. That explains why not everyone can grow their hair the same way to the same length, not even with fancy shampoos or other methods. Sure, taking good care of your hair and keeping it healthy helps its growth, but can’t do much more than it’s written in your genes.

Body hair is shorter because the phase when hair grows isn’t so lasting. Only after a couple of weeks, the body sends ‘stop’ signals to your body hair follicles, which is why this hair is much shorter than on your head. Scientists believe this may be happening because our head hair has a bigger role when it comes to protection. The head is more sensitive and needs to be protected from direct sunlight or some other extremes.

A Chinese woman got into the Guinness World Records with a hair length of 18 ft 5 in. It was measured in 2004 when she was 44 years old, and she started growing her hair at the age of 13.

Around 95% of our skin is covered in hair. Yes, hair can literally grow anywhere on our body, except for the soles of our feet, palms, lips, and mucous membranes. We actually have the same amount of hair follicles per square inch of our skin as a chimpanzee! Bone marrow is the fastest growing tissue in our body, but the hair comes right behind it. When it falls out, it re-grows in most cases, and does so up to 20 times over our lifetime.

As said before, no product can be magic and force your hair to grow more than your genetic code allows. But your hair grows a bit faster on warmer days. Heat affects circulation, which boosts your hair growth. Also, it grows faster when you sleep.

Not always did scientists assume hair growth is mostly related to genetics. For instance, if you went to see a doctor in the 16th century, they would advise you to encourage your hair to grow with a mixture of olive oil, honey saffron, and boiled slugs. Ew.

On average, the human head contains more than 100,000 hair follicles. If you had a dollar for every strand.... Whoa. You’d get an even better dollar-deal for counting hair follicles on your body, since there are 3 to 5 million of them. Plucked your hair accidentally? No worries, a new one starts to grow right after that happens. In fact, 90% of our hair is growing, and the remaining 10% is resting, all the time.

Hair may seem all helpless and thin, but it’s much stronger than we think. One strand can support up to 6.5 pounds. That means an entire head of hair can take a weight of 2 tons. Compared to a copper wire of the same thickness... Our hair comes out as the stronger one! Not only that, our hair is definitely more elastic than we thought. When it’s wet, you can stretch a strand by up to an additional 30%. Still, not recommended if you want your hair to stay healthy.

If you never shaved a beard, it could grow to more than 30 feet in a lifetime. There’s less than 4% of the population with natural red hair. At the same time, black hair is the most common. Remember that protein stuff called keratin in the cortex of the hair? Well, the same substance can be found in the outer layer of our skin and nails. But it’s also a very important part of animal tails, manes, hooves, or claws. In the 1950s, only 7% of women dyed their hair. Just about half a century later, that went up to 75%.

An eyelash has an average lifespan of around 90–150 days. When you cut your hair, it won’t make it grow faster, but it will at least help to deal with split ends. No way to fixing those anyway. How thick your hair is going to be depends on the size of the follicle. You can see hair texture and the different cross-section shapes hair has under the microscope. Curly hair is oval, while straight hair mostly comes in a round shape.

Each one of your follicles has its own muscle, nerve, and, of course, blood supply. When we’re scared, cold, or excited, we have goosebumps. They happen when muscles responsible for each strand contract. The average lifespan of one strand of hair is 2–7 years. Our hair is a true storehouse of all kinds of information. Analyzing just one strand can tell a lot about the bloodstream, vitamins, minerals, and so many other things in our body. Ooh, DNA!

Follicles are totally independent of each other, so yup, no wonder your hair sometimes doesn’t cooperate when you want to get those disobedient strands done. The first commercial shampoo showed up in the 1930s. People used soap detergents before that. Hair can absorb oil from water.

Earlier I said we get goosebumps when we’re cold or really excited. That happens because every muscle of each hair strand starts contracting, which is why hair rises. Animals also get goosebumps; it’s an evolutionary feature that helps them stay warm. For instance, when animals that have fur or thicker coat are cold, the hair rises which creates insulation. That way, they retain heat.

Animals generally have dense hair because it has to be wind- and waterproof. For example, a piece of beaver skin which is the size of a fingertip has around 40,000 hairs. Thick fur could be a problem for animals since the liquid under the fur wouldn’t be able to evaporate. Luckily, evolution took care of that part, so they don’t sweat. The period when hair grows fastest is between 16 and 24 years old.

Those classical barber shops you see in movies were rather popular before. After safe razors showed up, people could shave at home, so they didn’t have to go to barber shops that much. Oh, and about those irritating cowlicks. 95% of right-handed people grow them in a clockwise direction. Finally, we left out the part about the hair that grows out of your nostrils when you get older because, well, we didn’t want to scare you. Maybe some other time.