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It is this part of the structure which is responsible for how quickly our hair grows, dividing every 23-72 hours – the fastest of any part in the body.
As these cells divide, they push up older cells which slowly die and form the shaft, or what we understand to be hair.
Hair goes through four phases in its life, and each individual strand will be at a different stage to others.
Its active growth stage is called the anagen period, which lasts between two to seven years.
This is the stage in which our hair grows and the more time the hair stays in it, the longer it will become.
The hair’s next, transitional stage is its catagen phase in which the follicle shrinks to around a sixth of its usual length and detaches from the papilla that feeds it, after which a new hair begins to form in its place.
This normally lasts around two to three weeks and, on an average head of hair, around 1-2% at any given time will be in this phase.
After this, the hair rests for around two to four months in what is known as the Telogen phase before it falls out and is replaced with a new hair in the Exogen stage.
We shed approximately 100 hairs per day from these different phases, which is completely normal and not a sign of hair loss.