Episode 18: Another Team Daphne and Faith episode! This time we are talking about how your skin keeps up when you start to grow and get taller – and how your hair grows, too!
Key points:
How does skin grow when you get taller?
The skin does lots of stuff for you!
- It’s a barrier against chemical, physical, and biologic threats
- It helps regulate our body temperature
- It provides us with the ability to sense things outside the body (tactile sense)
- It provides metabolic functions, such as the production of Vitamin D
- It can act as a blood reservoir
- It can excrete waste through sweating
The skin is made up of 2 layers: the epidermis and the dermis. There is a third layer of fat called the subcutaneous tissue, or hypodermis, that resides on top of the muscle layer.
- The epidermis is the outermost layer of skin where your body creates new skin cells
- The dermis is the second layer and where most protective functions of the skin occur
Desquamation is the process of skin cell turnover—shedding and replacing the epidermis.
As we discussed earlier, the epidermis has 4 major layers of cells, with a fifth layer found only in thick skin.
How does your hair grow?
You lose about 50 to 100 hairs a day
That’s because the follicles don’t all grow hair at the same time. Each scalp follicle grows hair for a few years and then takes a break. When a follicle is on a break, the hair in the follicle falls out. Because the follicles take breaks at different times and the other hairs keep growing, you probably don’t notice when you lose hairs.
Hair grows out of little pockets in your skin, called follicles. Here’s how it happens:
1. Your hair begins growing from a root in the bottom of the follicle. The root is made up of cells of protein.
2. Blood from the blood vessels in your scalp feeds the root, which creates more cells and makes the hair grow.
3. The hair gets pushed up through the skin as it grows, passing an oil gland along the way. The oil gland adds oil to the hair and keeps it shiny and soft. It can make it greasy, too. That’s why you need to wash your hair.
4. The hair dies by the time it is long enough to poke out through the skin. Yes, hair is dead. That’s why it doesn’t hurt to get a haircut.
Hair on the rest of your body goes through this same process, but the whole cycle only lasts for a month or so. That’s why body hair does not grow very long in length like the hair on your head does.
Here are some facts about follicles and your hair:
· You are born with all of the follicles you will ever have — about 5 million.
· You have about 100,000 follicles on your scalp, which is the skin on your head.
· Hair grows very fast and male hair grows faster than female hair. The only part of your body that grows faster is bone marrow, the soft stuff inside your bones. The hair on your head grows about 6 inches a year. So, even though it’s one of the fastest-growing things on your body, it takes a while to grow it really long.
· Some follicles stop growing hair as you get older. This happens more in some people than in others. That’s why some people get thinner hair when they get older, or go bald.
Connect with Jennifer!
IG: @autobiologywithjennifer
Website: https://autobiology.net/
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