Does Your Hair Change Every 7 Years

By Lindsay Colameo, Attraction

(Photo: Delphine Achard/WWD)

If you lot've ever run your fingers through your pilus and idea to yourself, Gosh (yep, gosh) my hair feels different than it did when I was a kid...or in high school...or fifty-fifty college, you are not lonely. I frequently think dorsum to the days of my thick, shiny golden pigtails (and after, my glorious adolescent hair flip) and sigh as I rummage pilus that now feels fine and wispy. And for years, I've accustomed the explanation I go from stylists that nearly every seven years, your hair changes. But this calendar week I finally got to the root of the matter (forgive the pun). I spoke to Carlos Wesley, a cosmetic surgeon and hair loss specialist in New York City, to find out more about the hair growth cycle.

First, a quick biology lesson. In that location are iii phases in the pilus-growth bike: The anagen phase, when the hair is actively growing; the catagen stage, a transitional phase in between the growth and resting stages; and the telogen, or resting, stage, when the follicle is fallow for up to four months and eventually sheds its strand of hair so that a new one can enter the anagen phase.

"We are built-in with 100,000 pilus follicles on our head that are all preprogrammed to get through a certain growth cycle," explains Wesley. "The typical cycle is about 4 to seven years." But this is just true for the first couple of cycles. As your hair naturally sheds, the anagen phase becomes shorter and the hairs that grow back are a little different. "They are thinner, in smaller bundles, and their growth stage is shorter," says Wesley. Bundles, you ask? Each follicle actually contains small-scale bundles of hair strands. These bundles include anywhere from 1 to four individual strands of hair. "When we are born all of our hair is in bundles of one, merely as you lot abound up they get ii-, 3-, and iv-strand bundles," says Welsey. "Your hair bundles pinnacle at around 12 years quondam." Then, sadly, as you age, bundles of 4 become bundles of iii, bundles of three become bundles of two, and it's all downhill from at that place. End result: hair appears thinner and less total.

Approximately 100 hair shafts fall out every day, so hair follicles are constantly in different stages of the pilus cycle, and what'due south more, different parts of the scalp historic period differently. Then while it is truthful that your pilus changes consistently over fourth dimension, the seven yr bicycle applies to less and less of our head as you age. "Equally time goes on, the role of our hair that cycles every 7 years is increasingly restricted to the back of our caput," says Wesley.

In the finish, says Wesley, the seven-year wheel is actually the best we can hope for. What can we do to extend the anagen phase? Avoid stress. "Stress can shorten and precipitate hair loss, pushing a loftier pct of hair follicles into the telogen phase," he says. He also recommends a healthy diet full of poly peptide and iron.

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