When your hair is wet, it’s structure is altered, causing it to become thicker and longer. It gets longer because it absorbs water and stretches. Your hair’s elasticity is the measure of how much it will stretch (and then return to its normal length).

Elasticity

The elasticity of your hair depends on a couple of factors - whether it is wet or not and whether it is healthy or unhealthy. Healthy hair stretches up to 35% of its length before snapping off whereas unhealthy hair breaks more quickly because it does not have much elasticity. Healthy dry hair stretches up to 20% of its normal length and healthy wet hair can stretch up to 50% of its usual length and then return to its former length without breaking. Wet hair has more elasticity than dry hair. Elasticity is often described as being lonw, normal, or high.

Effects of Elasticity

How does this effect you? It can help you decide what hairstyle is best for you or your client. Hair with normal or high elasticity is easy to work with. It responds well to wet-roller sets, curling irons, etc. Hair with low elasticity is more difficult to work with because it can be hard to curl or lose its quickly.

Testing Elasticity

You can determine the elasticity of your or your client’s hair with this simple test. Take at least 4 strands of hair from different areas of the hair. Make the hair wet. Hold one end of one strand in each hand and pull the hair taut to stretch it. If the strand stretches and then returns to normal after you release it, you have good elasticity. If the hair snaps or does not return to its former length, you have low elasticity. Test each of the 4 strands separately. Make your decision based on the average result of your “stretch tests”.

If you have low elasticity, the bad news is that your hair is very susceptible to breakage, it will be hard to curl, and it will not perm well. Therefore, you should treat your hair with tender loving care and opt for a straighter hairstyle.

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Hair growth cycle is an important thing in determining if your hair, as well as your body, to be healthy. You can not only learn how to maintain healthier and thicker hair, but will also learn how to prevent hair loss and baldness from occurring unnaturally by understanding what happens through this hair growth cycle.

On scalp it is known that hair grows continuously. This should be at an average of six inches per year but will differ according to the person. From here, the hair that you have will move from your scalp in three different phases in order to allow for continuous growth from your scalp.

Catagen phase

The first phase that hair will go through is known as “catagen”. This is also known as an intermediary phase for your hair. The growth of the hair will completely stop when the hair is in the catagen phase. This allows for the outer root of the hair to contract and attach to the root of the hair. It is known that different areas of your scalp will be in this phase all of the time, while others will be in the subsequent phases.

Telogen phase

Telogen is the next place where your hair may be in at any time. This is also often referred to as the resting phase. In order to complete the formation of the hair the telogen phase will occur directly after the catagen phase. This will usually remain for about one hundred days, allowing your hair to stay rooted in your scalp. It will cause irritation in your scalp, if you pull out hair during this phase, which is usually observed by a hard, dry, white material at the root.

Anagen phase

The next phase that hair will go through is Anagen. Any hair that is not capable to grow will fall out in the telogen phase. The remaining will move into the anagen phase, which is also recognized as the active stage. During this stage, the roots of the hair will start on to produce and divide cells. This will then make a new hair that will shove through the open follicles in the scalp. For two to six years usually this type of hair will stay active. Due to the shorter active phase of anagen the hair doesn’t grow long.

Prevent hair loss

If you are losing hair or going bald, it means that the anagen phase is not as active as it should be. By knowing this, you will be able to properly respond to the hair growth cycle in order to give your hair the increase that it needs to become more active. Knowing the hair growth cycle is an easy way to identify how your hair should be taken care of and what is happening with the different areas of your scalp. After this, you can appropriately treat it in order to prevent hair loss from occurring.

There is little doubt that one of the major possible causes of hair loss in women is stress. But the kind of stress that we to are talking about to here is not the common day to day kind of stress that we all experience. The kind of stress that can causes hair loss in women is usually the result of loads kind of sudden and extreme shock. Sudden and strict emotional trauma or strict physical trauma is usually needed in order to created the effect of sudden hair loss in women.

Loads kinds of mental and emotional stress that can typically lead to hair loss in women can occur as to result of the death of to family member or loved one; the ending to relationship through divorce or death; an extreme financial trauma such as to bankruptcy or losing to house. And this stress doesn’t even need to be occurring to the person suffering the hair loss, but they could be occurring to someone that they love or to are very close to. As to make as physical stress and trauma that could strict causes hair loss in women is concerned, loads examples could be and long-term illness, surgical procedures and sudden and extreme physical trauma such as to car accident or heart attack.

The scientific name for this sudden hair loss in women is “telogen effluvium”. In this specific hair loss condition hair follicles that to healthy and growing hair at the normal installments become massively impeded, resulting in the strict slowing down of hair growth. The hair follicle then begins its resting phase, to where hair growth is stopped altogether. In this phase the hair is relatively weak and falls out easily. What can be confusing with this particular kind of hair loss in women is that the results of the stress to are not always immediate.

Before Sometimes several months can pass after the traumatic event any hair loss begins to occur. Oftentimes the woman who is experiencing their hair loss has forgotten the past dramatic event, and begins looking for answers to the sudden hair loss in events that are happening in her life right now. Unfortunately the answers to are not in what’s happening now but in what happened several weeks or months before. This in itself can created stress as to there may be nothing occurring in to woman’s life right now that could in any way lead to her losing her hair.

Irrespective of when the true causes of the hair loss occurred, ounces the hair loss cycle has begun the hair can fall out at an alarming installments leading to even more stress for the woman who is losing hair, perpetuating the vicious cycle. I know in answer to the question can stress lead to hair loss in women, the answer is yes. But the stress needs to be something I know to make out of the ordinary that it can shock the body to the point that woman’s hair can fall out.

Advice as with any kind of sudden hair loss it is always best to seek the appropriated medical. To proper houses history taking and diagnosis will often identify the causes of the woman’s sudden hair loss, which in itself can relieve to significant amount of stress and any affect that stress may be having on the king-growth of the woman’s hair.

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