For something that has been on top of our head (and all around our body, actually), hair is one of the most ignored things in the human anatomy. The pre-conception that hairs are just tubular assemblages of dead cells made of protein has made some people complacent, or even careless.

Is Hair Dead?

To clarify, hair is dead matter. The material that composes human hair is very common to the integument system of the human body. By integuments, we refer to the human hair, the nails on the hands and on the feet and the small, down like hair that surrounds the human body. What’s the common denominator between all these different appendages?

That would be the protein-like compound known as keratin. Keratin is responsible for making our nails grow back, and is also responsible in continually reproducing our hair.

Keratin is produced in the human body with the help of the most common micro-nutrients around, namely: vitamin C (or ascorbic acid), vitamin A (the ‘eye’ vitamin is also a hair vitamin), vitamin B (all B-vitamins are helpful) and of course, vitamin D (found in milk and dairy products, and produced in small amounts in the skin when sunlight is present).

Hair, as you may already know, is ‘stacked’ into tubes. These tubes, which number in the hundreds of thousands, is the hair that we stroke when we’re happy or sad.

Is Hair Part of Skin?

Is hair part of your skin? If so, why does it look different? The answers to these questions are as follows. Technically, your hair is skin material. However, it moves away from the skin-form and differentiates itself through the tubular structure and its predisposition to make use of melanin; the natural pigment found on the human skin.

The melanin is there to protect you from the direct ravages of the sun’s radiation. That’s why extreme exposure to sunlight causes the hair to shrivel up and lose some of its original color which is a sure sign of sun damage.

An average person would have more than a hundred thousand follicles at any one time. Babies have more than double this number, but eventually lose the extra follicles as they physically mature. If you count the whole body, the number jumps to five million easily.

What is Anagen & Telogen Phases?

You must remember that hair follicles have two distinct, biological phases. The first phase is called the anagen phase. This phase allows the hair follicles to actively reproduce hair strands as they are being shed everyday. If you’re young (and don’t have male-pattern baldness yet) then at least ninety percent of your follicles are in this phase.

What happens when the anagen phase abruptly quits on you? Well, the hair enters the second, unfortunate phase: the telogen phase. The telogen phase is the time when follicles simply wave goodbye, and your hair falls out.

Anyway, the human hair can grow at least half an inch per month, depending on how healthy your scalp is. When your hair reaches more than three feet, the body detects the relative length, and the hair simply stops lengthening itself.