Why has some of my hair stopped growing?

Factual Questions
1

I have naturally dark-brown black hair, but I dye it bright red. I’ve been letting the natural color grow in, so I have red hair with about 1/2" - 3/4" of black roots that are growing in. However, there is still a good amount of hairs that are bright red all the way down to the root. I’m The Queen of Not Being Able To Estimate Decently to Save My Life, but I’d say about 25%-40% of them have stopped growing (well, that or started growing in bright red, which for some crazy reason I don’t think is the case).

What’s going on? Is my hair going to stay short for the rest of my life? :frowning:

I just had bloodwork taken a few days ago for something unrelated (frequest dizziness and fatigue) so I’m probably going to have a doctor appointment soon to find out the results, and I’ll ask her about it then, but until then, anyone know why this would happen?

2

Maybe you did an uneven job when dying (or through successive dye jobs) and not all of the hair got coated evenly down to the root area and you are only seeing this now that it’s growing out.

3

Um, I believe that would leave to more root-age rather than more red-age. :slight_smile:

4

Hair has a natural life cycle. It grows for a set amount of time, then it stops. After it stops it stays dormant for some time and then falls out, being replaced by another hair. The ones that still have red roots have probably reached the end of their life cycle and will fall out in a few months.

Although 25-40% seems pretty high for this explanation, you really shouldn’t have that many stopped growing. Not sure about that.

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_044a.html