Most hair; in particular; body hair; only grows to a certain length and then stops. Consider the hair on your arm or your eyebrows or eye lashes. On most people, this hair has likely been the same length for years and years; so it isn’t growing; right?
Now say that you take a razor and shave a small patch of arm hair off. It grows right back. How did it “know” that it’d been cut so that it could “know” to start growing again? And how does it “know” when to stop growing (you know; stop at a fraction of an inch rather than grow several feet like the hair on your head)? The external hair = dead cells cells right? I don’t see how a “signal” (or whatever) could be sent when the hair is cut to commence growing again.
What am I missing here?
Also, when certain hair gets cut; it tends to grow back thicker than it was before. A classic example is of someone who shaves the “peach fuzz” between his or her eyebrows and then is relegated to a lifetime of doing it because when it grows back; it is thicker than “peach fuzz”. I think this was actually brought up by “George Costanza” in a Seinfeld episode but it is common knowledge that this happens. What doesn’t seem to be common knowledge; is why it happens.
The hair doesn’t stop growing per se, at least not how you think - the hair will grow out to a certain length, then the root will die off and another hair will begin growing underneath, pushing the upper hair out. Link
As for the “shaving makes it thicker,” it doesn’t. You’ve taken a thin, soft-tipped hair and chopped off the end, making it rough-feeling.
Hair doesn’t know it’s been cut. It pretty much grows at a continuous rate regardless of whether or not it’s cut. Different hairs have different maximum lengths - head hair obviously grows longer than arm hair for example - but cutting has no effect. The reason your hair as a whole seems to maintain a set length is because natural hair has a cycle of growing to a certain length and then falling out.
The reason that regrown hair looks thicker is because it is thicker. Hair naturally comes to a tapered point. When you cut it, you cut off the narrow point and the regrown hair is now blunter and thicker.
That is an interesting system and thanks for the responses. I am still not convinced about the cutting having no real effect on thickness and length though. Well; actually I agree with the not affecting thickness part; but what about length? I have a small mole on my upper arm that had slightly longer hair than the surrounding area when I was a kid. I shaved it one day for the heck of it and of course it grew back longer than before. Anyway; it has been about 20 years now and every now and then I still run a razor across it when I think of it. I swear that the several hairs on that small mole can grow to be a couple of inches in length now; literally; whereas the surrounding hair outside of the mole is still just blonde “peach fuzz”.
So yeah; it hasn’t gotten progressively thicker over the years of course (else it would be like an oak tree by now) but it has definitely gained the “ability” to grow longer. According to the article that Ferret Herder linked to; a growing cycle is “programmed” in; the length of the cycle determing the length of the hair. So to be able to grow to longer lengths; the growing cycle would have to be lengthened; right? How can this happen from shaving? I realize that you guys are probably going to tell me that it doesn’t happen but I am living witness to it; lol.
Your mole hair would be growing longer even if you hadn’t shaved it (of course you have no way of really knowing that). That sort of thing changes over time, and it’s not unusual for certain odd hairs to grow faster or completely disappear.
If shaving had any positive effect on hair growth, there wouldn’t be many bald people, would there?
Head hair seems to do its own thing compared to the rest of the body hair. Plus; there is a biological reason that people go bald that trumps any effect that shaving might have anyway (note that baldness doesn’t effect body hair; further evidence of head hair doing its own thing).
This may sound ad hoc but I promise that it isn’t; there are one or two hairs in the immediate vicinity of; but not on; the mole that are close enough to get shaved occassionaly with a quick swipe of the razor. Those also grow to the same length as the actual mole hairs.
How do you know that shaving is the cause? Maybe that follicle’s growing cycle has just been getting longer as you age. I know that my ear hairs are getting longer, and I’ve never once shaved my ears.
You are right; I don’t know. But when there is a small area of hair (a mole and a bit of the surrounding area) that has hair that grows about 20-30 times the length of all the hairs just a fraction of an inch away; and this is the exact same area that you have shaved periodically for 20 years…
Anyone up for a long term experiment? Pick an inconspicuous spot that has always just had peach fuzz. Then shave a small section. Do this for about a year. I predict substantially longer hair in that area as a result.
I have a Van Dyke beard that I’ve had on and off for the last 15 years. If shaving had any affect on hair growth I’d know about it when I grew my beard out. It’s been studied pretty hard already, and there’s nothing to it.
There are a lot of places a woman shaves that area adjacent to peach fuzz. Women don’t take care to only shave the hairs that are longer and to avoid the peach fuzz. When we stop shaving, the peach fuzz comes back exactly as peach fuzz. If it came back as anything else, the next time we started shaving we’d have a bigger area to shave and then more peach fuzz on the perimeter would be shaved. Then that would grow in longer and so on until one day we’d be just sitting in the shower with a daisy razor in one hand weeping over our freakishly hairy bodies.
Women don’t tend to have the potential to grow long thick body hair anyway.
I have several small moles that all look identical. Only one has the ability to grow 2" lengths of hair. The difference between peach fuzz and a 2" dark colored hair is astronomical. I saw it be able to get progressively longer each time I shaved it; i.e. it would grow to longer lengths faster.
Anyway; I have seen it happen and there is no way that I can transfer memories to any of you. Maybe I’ll start shaving a different mole on my other arm just to prove it to myself; not that I really need any more convincing than what I have seen already.