Weight Of Hair

girl with curly hair

An average human being’s body has around 5 million hair follicles that protect us from cold temperatures.

Thicker hair grows on a person’s head, because there is little or no fat to insulate that part of the body.

How Much Does Hair Weigh?

A single strand of hair is around 0.02 to 0.04 millimeters thick and weighs approximately 0.62 milligrams.

lady with black hair

Interesting Facts About Hair:

Hair is made from keratin, which mainly consists of the amino acid ‘cysteine’.

Keratin is also the material that makes up the surface skin layer of a human’s body and our fingernails.

An outside layer, known as the ‘cuticle’ protects the internal layers found in hair.

A middle layer, known as the ‘cortex’ includes long, intertwined proteins.

A third layer in the center of every hair is known as the ‘medulla’.

hair at the scalp

A hair may look like a simple feature of the body that we all take for granted. However, each hair is made up of a number of important, complex parts above and below the skin.

These include the hair shaft, dermis, epidermis, arrector pili muscle, sebaceous gland, hair follicle, hair bulb, and hair papilla.

Hair is one of the fastest growing parts of our bodies, increasing in length by 0.3 to 0.5 millimeters every day.

As well as fast hair growth, we also lose a lot of hair every day, with 40 to 150 strands of hair shed every day!

 ~ Fun Fact ~
It may seem to be a very fragile material, but hair is very strong and elastic. A strand of hair is stronger than a strand of copper that has the same diameter as hair.

An average strand of hair is strong enough to support a weight of as much as 3 ounces. This means that a full head of hair could lift up to 12 tons, which is the same weight as 6 large cars!

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