I'm sure many of you have experienced this - you scratch yourback or brush your hand over your arm and find a ridiculously longthin white hair, sometimes as long as 3 or 4 inches. I know a fewpeople who get these quite frequently, and anecdotal evidence seemsto suggest they almost grow almost overnight. A quick Google searchfor "single long white hair" throws up plenty of references tothem, and various beauty advice, but I'd like to know the biologybehind them.
- What triggers abnormal body hair growth?
- What causes these hairs to grow so much longer than other"normal" body hairs in physical proximity?
- Why are they so thin and white compared to other bodyhair?
My primary hypothesis is that the hair cell grows rapidly in anuncontrolled manner, similar to how cancer might, and that theunusual appearance is due to the cells being starved of nutrients.I may be completely wrong, though.
I'm mainly interested in humans here, but if more in-depthresearch is available on animals that'd be interesting too.
I'm sure many of you have experienced this - you scratch yourback or brush your hand over your arm and find a ridiculously longthin white hair, sometimes as long as 3 or 4 inches. I know a fewpeople who get these quite frequently, and anecdotal evidence seemsto suggest they almost grow almost overnight. A quick Google searchfor "single long white hair" throws up plenty of references tothem, and various beauty advice, but I'd like to know the biologybehind them.
- What triggers abnormal body hair growth?
- What causes these hairs to grow so much longer than other"normal" body hairs in physical proximity?
- Why are they so thin and white compared to other bodyhair?
My primary hypothesis is that the hair cell grows rapidly in anuncontrolled manner, similar to how cancer might, and that theunusual appearance is due to the cells being starved of nutrients.I may be completely wrong, though.
I'm mainly interested in humans here, but if more in-depthresearch is available on animals that'd be interesting too.
