Evidenced by ages of personal testimonies and cemented into facts by countless papers in print, below are 5 believed truths about the hair that are but products of our ancestors’ fiction-loving minds. So, before you go about your hair-y business, check this out. There might be one, two or more of the hair myths below you totally believed in.
- Brush your hair 100 times before going to bed at night to stimulate growth and thicken it.
I’ve always read this one in fairy tales and I believed it myself. But one seasoned dermatologist said brushing could actually do more harm than good to your hair.
“Brushing, especially using bristle brushes, damages the hair,” she says. “Our hair, like other fibers, is prone to wear and tear which leads to it being dull-looking, prone to breakage and unmanageable. Brushing hastens that wear and tear process.”
Instead of brushing, the skin and hair doctor recommends the use of plastic combs that are smooth and wide-toothed. Smooth, plastic brushes are also better choices than the bristled ones.
“And lay off with the washing, coloring or using any other hair treatments,” she adds.
- Pluck out a gray hair and two will grow in that same spot.
This doesn’t have any grain of truth in it at all. Hair experts say that every hair fiber grows from its own hair shaft. It is entirely impossible and out of the context of natural laws that one hair shaft could grow two gray hair fibers!
“Split hair fibers give the illusion that there are two,” one dermatologist clarifies.
- If you give your hair a regular trim, it’ll grow faster and even thicker.
This is one hair hoax that I, again, totally believed in. and I know you’ll agree with me that after getting a trim, hair does seem to appear thicker!
Dermatologists explain that a new hair fiber has a pointed tip that lends to the thinning-end look growing hair usually has. However, if you trim the ends, the tips go blunt from being pointed which makes the mass thicker.
The truth of the matter – trimming your hair doesn’t make it grow faster and doesn’t actually make it literally thicker. However, it does keep your main healthier as trimming even out hair fibers that are tangled or have suffered from breakage. It also eliminates unsightly split ends.
- Stress can gray your hair overnight.
If you’re feeling stressed out lately, you might fear this supposedly hair fact. But hair experts assure all of us hair worriers that this one is entirely false.
The color of your hair grows out from its roots and won’t magically change [much more overnight!] just because your day left your peaked out. But they do concede that too much stress can cause premature graying of hair and even hair loss if it runs in your genes.
“Genetics is the main factor for hair graying and by how much,” says University of California’s assistant professor in dermatology. “There are other contributing factors to more graying as well like smoking.”
- If you shave/wax your body hair, it’ll grow back thicker.
Shaving or waxing doesn’t make hair regrowths thicker in any way, says one research. What it shaving or waxing does is blunt the hair tips when they grow back making them look like they’re blacker. And because of the blunt ends, they will also feel thicker.
So, don’t be afraid to shave or wax off unsightly body hairs. They won’t grow thicker, that’s this research’s promise.
What other hair myths do you know that others totally believed in? Share them with us!
