Growth cycle and colour of your hair
Growth cycle and colour of your hair
This article would cover and provide information on growth cycle and colour of your hair. The hair growth starts right at the time of birth and continues till a ripe age.
How do the hairs grow, and what is this growth cycle?
Your hair follicles grow through three different cycles, and each hair goes through these 3 cycles, 20 times, on an average. The three phases are known as:
ANAGEN
CATAGEN
TELOGEN
Let’s have an in-depth look on what happens during these cycles:
ANAGEN
Also known as growing phase, this is the first stage of any hair growth’s cycle. At any given time, it can be safely said, that up to 90% of hairs on a healthy scalp, are in this phase. During the Anagen phase, the hair follicle keeps growing continuously; the growth continues for up to seven years. The hair pigment is produced by the hair bulb; the rate of the growth, on an average, is half inch in a month.
CATAGEN
At the second stage, when first phase, the ANAGEN phase, is finished, the hairs enter a transitional phase, before they finally go to rest. This is a very short phase, lasting for only two to four weeks. During this transitional phase
The hairs are detached from the blood supply. Thus, detached follicle shrinks by 1/6th of its normal size
No more pigment is produced by the hair bulb
At any given time, up to 3% of the scalp hairs are in this stage.
TELOGEN
After Catagen, the hair follicles enter their last and final stage of Telogen. Sometimes Telogen, is also called the resting phase. In this stage, the hair follicles fall off and are replaced by new growth of hairs. At any given time, up to 15% of hairs are in this stage. The duration of this period is around 3 months, before the hair follicle eventually falls off. The new hair follicles appear in the place made vacant by fall off of the old hair.
We promised to give you information on growth cycle and colour of your hair, now that, the growth cycle of a hair has been described, we would explain about colours of the hair.
Colour of our hair
What gives the colour to our hairs? What is that which determines the shades of our hair? And why do our hairs finally turn grey?
The natural colour of hair is determined by the amount of melanin, which is present in everybody’s hair. The more the amount of melanin you will have, the darker your hairs will appear. The melanin present in our hairs is of two types:
• Eumelanin
• Phaeomelanin
Eumelanin is a pigment black-brown in colour and determines the intensity. Phaeomelanin, on the other hand is responsible for blonde hairs or redheads.
Our hairs start to turn grey naturally as we age; this happens due to decreased production of melanin in the hair roots. But hair greying can also happen due to genetics and other factors; therefore, ageing is not the only factor determining the grey hairs.
We hope, this article would have served to give you some idea about growth cycle and colour of your hair.