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Why Does Hair Grow Back After Epilation?Because hair follicles are not destroyed |
By Stefan Anitei, Science Editor
10th of January 2007, 14:39 GMT
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You surely do not appreciate a hairy girl.
And to please you, they have to make continuous efforts.
Why isn't it possible to get rid off all body hair through a sole epilation?
In fact, eliminating the hairs on the skin surface does not influence anyhow its growth, as the hair above the skin surface is dead, just dead keratin. This hair is grown from living hair follicles, located within the skin. The hair follicles are quite complicated, made of more than 10 different cell types and tissues that multiply to form the hair fiber that reaches the surface of the skin.
Human body possesses more than five million hair
follicles; one million are found on the head, from which 100,000 to 150,000 on the scalp. The hair follicle passes through a cycle consisting of three stages: growth (anagen), degeneration (catagen) and rest (telogen).
The anagen phase leads to the rapid multiplication of cells from the follicle's base (bulb), resulting in the continuous growth of hair fiber. When anagen ends, the hair-producing cells starts dying, entering in the catagen phase, which lasts a few weeks. After that, the telogen installs, when the follicle is metabolically inert and it can lasts for several weeks to even months. After that, the follicle enters another cycle: a new anagen and a new hair fiber start growing. The new fiber pushes out the old fiber which then falls out, often while brushing your hair.
As the cycles of the different follicles do not coincide, different parts of the body produce hairs of different lengths, depending on the various anagen time periods.
Scalp follicles can stay in anagen for many years, producing fibers over one meter in length, while the body remains in anagen only weeks or months, generating shorter hair. The hairs that grow back after epilation are in anagen when they get cut.
That's why, by now, only laser therapy, that destroys the follicles, is able to deliver a permanent epilation. Some waxes can pluck out the anagen follicles of the hair visible in that moment, but remember that ten times more follicles are dormant (telogen) in the skin, and in few months they will generate new hair.
High levels of testosterone in men boost the growth of small hairs on the face, underarms, chest, legs, arms and beard, and these parts can remain in anagen for longer periods. Later in life, even follicles in the nose and ear become sensitive to testosterone, growing big. But hair follicles on the scalp of genetically predisposed men respond differently: they get atrophied and shorten anagen, leading to baldness.
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