Does hair grow faster in the summer?

Factual Questions
1

I recently got a bad haircut. A really bad haircut. The best thing people have been able to say about it is “It’ll grow out”, though I also liked “Oh my god, what happened?”, “Well, that’s interesting” and “AAAAAA! EEEEARGH! EEEEEK!”. But so far in this ordeal, about half a dozen people have told me that I’m lucky that this happened in the summer, because hair grows faster in summertime.

I searched the web, and found out that if I ever stop growing hair altogether, there’s a lot of possible help out there for me, most of which seems to involve chemicals or hair plugs. I searched Cecil’s collected wisdom, and found out why my arm hair is always the same length. I thought about searching the boards, but these days even thinking about searching the boards makes the baby Jesus cry. And Snopes is down.

So, I turn to you, O Teeming Millions. Does hair grow faster in summertime? Or is it a myth? Or are these people trying to make me feel better? The issue holds some interest for me, as I’m trying to calculate when I might be able to go back out in public again.

2

Well I know it’s true for me personally. The explanation given by this site is that " hair growth is subject to the environment and temperature, with rapid hair growth in the summer, due to increased blood flow which is a result of increased dermal temperatures."
Makes sense to me, since I know that doing a lot of excercise also increases my hair growth.
Hope that helped. In the meantime might I suggest a wig, or a paper bag with two holes. :smiley:

3

Yes.

4

As a veteran leg-shaver, I concur. Fingernails and toenails also grow faster.

5

…And it is a tree ring thing too.

6

Yeah, but this site: http://www.hair.com/content/003.html says you lose more hair in the summer too!

I would wager individual variation is so great that one cannot make much of any sweeping statements of seasonal hair growth.

7

If you lose some, you lose some. It doesn’t stop the rest growing at whatever rate is seasonally appropriate.