Different Hair Types

Human beings have three distinct types of hair. Lanugo is fine hair that covers nearly the entire body of a fetus and is lost before birth. In very extreme cases, lanugo has actually returned. Under conditions of extreme malnutrition, a starving body will try to insulate itself. This has been witnessed in cases of prison camp victims, anorexia, and even athletes who have pushed too hard. Vellus hair is the very short, fine, almost invisible hair that covers our bodies. We call it peach fuzz. Terminal hair is fully developed hair. It is longer, coarser, thicker, and darker than vellus hair- and is the reason you are visiting my website. When you stare for hours in the mirror, lamenting your diminishing hairline, you are looking at terminal hair- maybe in more ways than one.

Hair texture is described as fine, medium, coarse or wiry, depending on the hair diameter. There are additional terms if you infrequently wash. Within the four texture ranges hair can also be thin, medium or thick density and it can be straight, curly, kinky, or wavy. Hair can be average, oily, dry, invisible, a wig, damaged or any combination.

Hair is genetically programmed to be straight, curly, kinky or wavy, and it can change over time.

The follicle determines the shape and the direction in which each strand grows. Curly or kinky hair is shaped like an elongated oval and grows at a sharp angle to the scalp. This growth pattern, in turn, determines the cross-section of the shafts. Curly or kinky hair has a different biological structure from straight hair. It tends to be much drier than straight hair because the oils secreted into the hair shaft by the sebaceous glands have trouble traveling down the shaft. People with very curly hair are often dry and frizzy. All hair is affected by the amount of humidity in the air. It serves as a restoring force for the hair, forcing water back into the hair fiber and forcing hair shaft to its original structure. You see this more with curly hair as it will get frizzy as the humidity rises.

Natural hair color is determined by the pigments produced by your follicles. Gray hair develops when hair follicles produce less pigment and some of their hair becomes colorless. Gray hair is actually a combination of the dark and colorless hair. Going gray is all typical of the normal aging process and varies from person to person- depending on how many children they have. On average, men appear to go gray before women although this is a near impossible statistic to confirm as most women dye their hair and rarely admit it. Nearly everyone who reaches 75 years old has turned gray- if they have any real hair left at all!