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Does shaving affect hair growth?
There is a common belief that if you crop your hair (or shave it), it will grow back thicker than before. There are other, similar beliefs, like the idea that if you pluck out one grey hair, two more will grow in its place.
Conversely, there is also the belief (among some people) that shaving your hair will cause it to grow back thinner, and eventually lead to baldness. Similarly, some people believe that wearing tight hats, or brushing the hair too much, will lead to baldness.
In case you were wondering, none of these ideas is true.
The hair we see on our heads is dead protein. All hair growth takes place in the hair follicle, which is below the skin. When we cut or shave our hair, we're cutting or shaving the dead part of it that has grown out past the surface of the skin. This doesn't affect hair growth in any way, neither positively nor negatively.
If shaving somehow did increase hair growth, you can be sure that we'd know about it, because it would essentially be a cure for male pattern baldness. Billions of dollars are spent every year by men trying to re-grow their hair. If all they had to do was shave it for a while, you'd be seeing a lot more shiny domes in the short term.
And conversely, if shaving caused hair to come back thinner or disappear, then we wouldn't need to keep shaving our beards. Granted, beard hair
is different from scalp hair, but at the least, those of us who shave our heads would expect hair loss from the scalp to be even, and not focused on the top as it actually is.
However, there may be reasons why people
think that shaving can affect growth.
Consider this situation: your hair is receding. You shave it all off and then, after some period of time, you re-grow your hair. You will almost certainly have less hair than before you shaved. Although this is attributable to natural hairloss, it may seem to some people that because they shaved, they lost more hair.
Conversely, one might shave one's head, live the bald life for a while, and then re-grow it without suffering any hair loss or gain. Some people, having become unaccustomed to the sight of their hair, might perceive even more hair than they previously perceived. In this scenario, a person might believe that shaving actually increased hair growth.
While these perceptions might arise naturally, they do not reflect reality. Shaving your head will neither increase nor decrease the number of hairs on your head, nor will it affect their thickness or colour. All shaving will do is to make your hair really short for a while.
Some related links:
Does shaving stimulate hair growth / hypertrichosis? [keratin.com] - Includes references to a study done in the 1920's showing that there is no link between shaving and hair growth.
Structure and Function of Hair Follicles [American Academy of Dermatology] - Describes hair follicles and how they work.
Hair Myths - Points out that hair is dead, and cutting it has no affect on future growth, unless you damage the hair folicle, which is below the skin.
Top Ten Hair Myths - Myth #1 is "Cutting your hair makes it stronger or grow faster."
Comments
altough you have stated that croping your hair will not effect the hair growth i believe that not much people will believe it because they state that their hair has grown thicker but when they learn it really didn't happen the way that the hair is cut is differnt then how it grows and thats why it grows thicker although many people don't believe this i certianly do.
The way your hair grows is determined by your genetic coding- whether it's thick, thin, light, dark- doesn't matter, it's all caused by your genes. Nothing you do to the outside of your body will effect your DNA.
Hey stephenie...
sweetie... everything you do, outside, inside, wherever you want... affects your DNA... your behavious, working out, working in, anything can affect it
even killing the hait follicle
You can say whatever you want about it not growing back different but... I absolutely had classic male pattern baldness so I said fuck it and took my cool playing Mr. Clean.
The fact is after about two months it seemed like it was growing back in the previous bald areas and after about a year of shaving my head every day I can gurantee that the bald areas have filled in.
Maybe ther is an unknown variable and maybe not, but the only thing I did different was shaving my head.
I can only tell you that I used to have a gotee and now I shave it. The patern that the gotee was now grows thicker, quicker and more hair that the rest of the face. May be my genetics, but it's strange that I used to have the gotee with the exact same shape nature gave me.
I think that maybe there is in fact a variable..I've read articles that apoint that shaving estimulates sth called- queratogenesis(or sth like that)
and that it does thickens the hair.obviously it's a superficial cut and that doesn't affect genetics..but it's well know that irritation on the shaved area can cause ingrown hair(imagine if this ingrown hair(folliculite) joins in with other hairs,since it's hole is closed..thus forming a colectively-thicker hair..)
that's my theory
yeah right, shaving doesnt make hair thicker... b.s. I eat chocolate and lots of peanute butter and My face gets very oils. I lay off of it and my faces if just fine. Doctors lie and say that research shows that foods dont cause oily skin. They are full of crap! I shaved my head and I damn well see my hair growing thicker and if i pull on it, it doesnt fall out anymore! Believe what u want but I say shaving will make that hair you have more resistant to falling out!
so shaving your hair doesent make thicker?
all you people who disagree are morons. not for disagreeing, but for buying into myth because you're too stupid to think of an alternative solution. your beard grows thicker around your chin and moustache (at least on most people)... that's why it's growing in quicker. male pattern baldness is NOT the only cause of hair loss. if you actually suffer from male pattern baldness, you can shave your head every hour on the hour from now until the end of time and NO MORE HAIRS will grow. some of it is your perception (amazingly, your perception of your hair and its thickness is DIRECTLY ATTRIBUTABLE to how LONG it is. the longer it is, the more obvious the hair loss is. try cutting your hair and comparing. jesus people.
shaving your hair doesn't and CAN'T thicken it, because shaving isn't ANY DIFFERENT THAN CUTTING IT. it's just cutting it where it leaves the skin. it's DEAD MATTER people. what it does do, however, is cut your hair at an angle, leaving it with more of a point than it typically grows out at, making it FEEL rougher to the touch.
and what's up with the dna moron? your dna isn't effected by ANYTHING you nitwit. read a book. your growth and your brain and the rest of you is effected by your environment... but just because you "work out" and increase your muscle mass, doesn't mean your DNA is changing.
people, get over your own stupidity and realize that if someone with scientific fact is disputing your personal beliefs there's probably a reason for the discrepancy. if you're too lazy to learn why, at least realize you proceed in ignorance, not in truth.
effected --> affected, sorry.
I`m shaving my head now see ya in a couple years people
I'm not saying anyone here is right or wrong, but this is totally absolutely 100% FACT. I was getting "too much" hair on my ears, and my girlfriend advised me to shave it using an electric razor. At this point the hair was very thin and light-colored and was growing slowly, but there was enough there that plucking it was taking maybe fifteen minutes twice a month, and whizzing over it with the elcetric razor took five seconds. So I followed her advice. Now the hair is coming in more quickly and a lot thicker, to the point where I have to shave it every single day, and approximately one out of every twenty hairs is jet black. I know most of what you're all talking about here is head hair, but seriously people, this thicker-after-shaving crap is totally true at least for ME on my ears.
So much for generalizations.
Electric I mean. Whatever.
YO LISTEN UP NOW ALL YA NIGGAZ IS TALKIN SHYT.YO ITS 4 REAL HAIR GROWZ BAK THICKER,QUICKER AND STRONGER IT EVEN CHANGES YOUR HAIR COLOR.IT MIGHT EVEN BECOME CURLY. PEACE.
I've got hair... on my balls.
god, you are all stupid.
SHAVING YOUR HAIR WON'THICKEN IT..BELIEVE ME. I SPENT 4 YEARS OF MY LIFE WORIED AND DEPRESSED ABOUT IT..BELIEVING THAT SHAVING HAD RUINED MY HAIR..BUT HERE'S THE FACT..IT DOESN'T..BUT IT MIGHT CROOK IT..SO IN FACT IT WON'T GROW BACK EXTACTLY THE SAME AS BEFORE..SO HERE'S MY ADVICE TO YOU ALL- SHAVE IT ON THE DIRECTION OF THE HAIR GROWTH AND TRY NOT TO SHAVE IT ZERO -BALD.THAT WILL AVOID IRRITATIONS AND WHAT YOU CALL IT?HAIR BUMPS I GUESS..
and it's keratogenesis
the word back there..whatever
Oh boy, what controversy!!!
I have shaved my head for about 2 years now. I thought I would let it grow back to see what my hairline looked like.
Guess what? It was thinner and my hairline had receded! Only due to the fact that I have shaved my head for 2 years and didn't see my hairline receding!
It is like leaving town for a few years and coming back to changes. Like new buildings or businesses comming and going. It wasn't caused because you left, those changes were inevitable, so nothing you could do short of protesting (which wouldn't help you head!) could change a thing. This is just an analogy, don't leave town or protest to try and grow your hair back. See a doctor for that. If you want to shave your head and be happy with what you have, you are at the right web sight!
DNA is indeed affected by both internal and external factors. Apparently some posters at this site paid attention in their college introductory biology course, and now consider themselves genetic engineers.
DNA is a dynamic structure that can respond to environmental stimuli.
In a world where DNA was purely internalized, identical twins would be exactly the same (they are not), cancer wouldn't be such a big deal (seemingly everything in high enough doses can mutate DNA), and people wouldn't sunburn (peeling is the process by which cells with damaged DNA are destroyed).
It's called Nurture vs. Nature. It's an age-old debate, and it certainly wont be resolved at this website.
Will hair grow back thicker after you shave it? I have no idea. I suspect it might.
Bones grow back stronger after they break, muscles grow back stronger after they are damaged (during exercise), and maybe hair will grow thicker after it is shaved. It's not changing your DNA; the motif of stronger repairs is already programmed into your DNA!
Satan, you didn't read the article carefully, or you ignored it. Hair is dead protein; all the growth takes place in the follicle, which is unaffected by shaving. No repair takes place when hair is cut, the follicle just continues to produce more hair (the same as it would do if the hair hadn't been cut), so your comparison with bones is pointless.
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