Hair Anatomy: How your hair grows!

One of the most amazing things about our hair is its growth cycle which is different from the rest of the cells in our body. Hair growth happens in four main phases or cycles. And your different hair strands can be in different phases of this life cycle (growth, shedding, dormancy) so you won’t see bald patches across your body!

These four phases are as follow:

1. Anagen phase

2. Catagen phase

3. Telogen phase

4. Exogen phase

Anagen phase is the longest phase and around 90% of the hair follicles in your body are in this phase. This phase starts with our hair follicle building the hair, meaning adding new cells to the bottom of the hair. This strand of hair keeps growing bit by bit until it gets longer and longer. A normal hair growth is about 0.5mm per day or about 1.5cm per month. Anagen phase can vary person by person and genetics play a big role, but on average it takes between 3 to 5 years. 

Catagen phase is the period that the blood supply is cut off from the hair follicle and it starts to shrink and a disconnection between the follicle and the hair strand starts to form. This phase can take up to 2-3 weeks. About 5% of the hairs on your head are in the catagen phase at any given time.

Telogen is the resting phase! At this phase the hair is still attached to the scalp but as a new hair follicle starts to form it will weaken the anchor and the hair will easily fall out of the scalp (Exogen). About 10-15% of the hairs on your head are in the Telogen phase at any given time.

In the Exogen phase, the loss of 100 club hairs every day is considered normal. Exogen phase can last up to 2-5 months which consists of growing new hair and pushing the old hair out.

Super cool Huh!