Going Natural: Shed Hair versus Breakage

Posted by admin on Sep 27, 2011 in Before Your Transition to Natural | 0 comments

 

 

 

Shed Hair versus Breakage: Hair Loss During Transition from Relaxed to Natural

Something that you will notice as you transition from relaxed to natural hair is that you may have more hairs in your comb or brush during your daily hair maintenance.

During this hair journey, I learned that most normal heads of hair shed 50 to 100 hairs per day.   The average person has 90,000 – 150,000 hairs on their head all of which are in different stages of growth at the same time.  Blondes have the most hair strands, upward of 140,000 while natural red heads have approximately 90,000 hair strands.  Brunettes have about 105,000 strands.

I will not get all technical, since I am not a scientist, but the growth phase of 1 strand of hair could be up to 8 years and the length could grow to 48 inches in that time at the average rate of 1/2 inch per month.

Do not be alarmed when you see long hairs in your comb or brush.  This is normal.   These long hairs will have a bulb at the end, the root, so you will know it is a shed hair.  If you start to see short hairs with no bulb, then you may have breakage….unless of course you have short hair in which case you should look for the root bulb to be sure.  If there is no white root bulb then you probably are experiencing breakage and you need to adjust your hair regimen.

I examined the hairs in my denman brush many times to make sure it was shed hair and not breakage in the brush.  My hair likes low manipulation and protective hairstyles, when my hair is not loose and rubbing on my clothes. As your hair grows out you will learn what it does and does not like and this will help minimize breakage.