Hair
From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.
Hair is something that grows from the skin, mostly of mammals. The hair of non-human animals is usually called fur. Having no hair is called baldness. Humans and some other animals have lost much of their hair through evolution, and some animals, such as the elephant and the whale, have almost none at all.
[edit] Human hair
In humans, hair grows mostly on the head, and the amount of body hair is different from race to race. Asians and native North Americans have the least amount of body hair, while Caucasians tend to have the most.
[edit] History and culture
People have been interested in head hair for hundreds of thousands of years. For both men and women, styling and coloring of hair have been a way to show importance and prestige. Sometimes society makes rules to control the amount of hair, for example by not allowing people to cut their hair or beards.
[edit] Hair loss
People have about 100,000 strands of hair on their head. About 100 fall out each day, but they usually grow back.
Men often lose some of their hair as they grow older. This is known as baldness, and doctors call it "male pattern baldness". Its name comes from the fact that hair loss almost always follows the same pattern. It begins by hair falling out first from the front and sides of the head, and thinning from the top of the head, usually until it is all gone. After a while, all that may be left is a fringe of hair running above the ears and around the lower back of the head. Even though it is unusual for women to go bald, many women suffer from thinning hair as they grow old, and the pattern of thinning is the same as it is for men.
People have tried to find cures for hair loss for thousands of years. In an effort to get their hair back, men have tried "cures" like applying strange lotions or even having their heads packed in chicken manure. It is only in the last decade or so that treatments have been developed which do sometimes work. Some doctors do hair transplants, where they take tiny plugs of hair from areas like the back of the neck and plant them in the bald spots on the head. Some drugs will cause hair to grow, but this hair is very delicate and will fall out in a short time if the drug is stopped.
