Msn.com is a wealth of information, including this fab stuff about your hair. When you fully understand your strands, you can do a better job of styling and taking care of them. If you've always dreamed of being the girl with the best hair in town, this info is going to help you get there. Some of it is helpful while some is just interesting. Whatever you need to know about your hair, you're going to find it here.
1 Forensic Evidence
Although hair is one of the most common types of forensic evidence, you can't tell someone's gender from a strand of their hair.
Frequently asked questions
2 In the Bloodstream
The core structure of the human hair can reveal information about everything that has ever been in the bloodstream, including drugs.
3 Hair Follicles
There are approximately 5 million hair follicles in the human body.
4 Forming Hair
All of the hair follicles in humans are formed by the time a fetus is just five months old.
5 Hair is Stretchy
Hair can stretch up to 30 per cent of its original length when wet.
6 Hair Color Numbers
The most common natural hair colour globally is black. Blondes make up just 2 per cent of the population.
7 Red Hair
Red is the rarest hair colour, found in one per cent of the population.
8 Hair Regrows All the Time
Every time a hair falls out, it will re-grow. It can do this up to 20 times in a lifetime.
9 Fast Growing Tissue
After bone marrow, hair is the second fastest-growing tissue of the body.
10 Longest Hair
Xie Qiuping (pictured) from China is in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the longest hair. She started growing her locks from the age of 13. When measured on 8 May 2004, her hair length was 5.627 metres.
11 Growing Phase
At any given time, 90 per cent of the hairs on your scalp are in a growing phase, while the rest are dormant.
12 Blonde Hair and Prostitution
Did you know that blonde hair was associated with prostitution in ancient Greece?
13 Red Hair = Vampires
The ancient Greeks also believed that people with red hair turned into vampires after death.
14 Removing Unwanted Hair
Egyptians were the first people known to remove unwanted body hair using natural products.
15 Split Ends
Trichoptilosis is the scientific term for split ends.
16 Scottish Red Hair
The Scottish population has the highest percentage of redheads in the world - about 13 percent.
17 Shedding Hair
It is normal to shed between 40-150 strands of hair per day (unless you're bald, of course).
18 African Hair
African hair grows more slowly and is more prone to damage than other hair types.
19 Weather and Hair Growth
Warm weather stimulates hair growth, while cold weather inhibits it.
20 Hair is Insulation
Ever wondered why the head has so much hair? Because it does not have a layer of fat, and hair tufts act as insulation.
21 Shaving the Beard
On an average, a grown man will spend five months of his entire life shaving his beard.
22 Blonde is More Expensive
You have to shell out more money to buy a blonde wig. Blonde hair fetches as much three times the price of dark hair.
23 Hair is Strong
One hair strand can bear up to 100 grams of weight. On an average, a person has around 100,000 hair strands on head—strong enough to lift the weight of two elephants!
24 Won't Grow Faster
Trimming or cutting your hair at regular intervals will not help it grow faster; It only removes split ends, which make the hair prone to breakage.
25 Blondes Have More Hair
Blond people have more hairs on their body than people with darker hair.
26 Hair Roots Are Alive
Your hair root, located beneath the scalp, is the only part of the hair which is alive.
27 Five Year Lifespan
A single hair has a lifespan of about five years.
28 Goosebumps
We get goosebumps because stimuli, like fear or cold, cause the muscles surrounding the hair follicles to contract.
29 No Straight Hair
Nobody ever has totally straight hair. All types of hair tend to twist as they grow. The only difference is that in some people the twist occurs to a greater degree than others, giving them curly hair.
30 Long Beard
If a man does not shave his beard in his entire lifetime, it will grow to be about 30-35 feet.
