27/08/2013
Amazing facts about hair
The average person's head has 100,000 to 150,000 hairs.
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.
African and European people are more prone to balding than Asian people.
Hair is the second fastest growing tissue in the body.
One centimetre of hair can
reveal much about your behaviour in the past month - what you ate, drank and the environments you encountered.
We now spend £4 billion pounds on hair products every year in the UK.
