Just a thought.

[kansan22]

I was thinking about hair density the other day. Now when I say hair density, I don't mean how many hairs there are per cubic inch on your scalp. What I am talking about is the number of cells per cross sectional area of the hair shaft. Most of us are familiar with the term osteoporosis. It's a weakening of the bones that happens from bone density loss. Do you know what makes iron different from steel? Steel is iron that has been heated up and had Carbon atoms forced in between the iron atoms. Think of a box with a beach ball in it for steel and an empty box for iron. What makes the steel stronger than iron is the carbon atom taking up space. Lead or gold would be an ideal example because of how tightly packed the atoms are.

Now think of the structure of the human hair. If it was like the bones of a person suffering from osteoporosis we would expect the hair to be brittle. Also there would be more free spaces for other things to get in like holes in Swiss cheese. If the wrong things, like DHT, are getting in there to cause damage it wouldn't matter how wide the hair shaft was. You could have thick hair or thin hair structurally speaking, but if the density of cells was low enough to allow things like DHT and free radicals in hair loss would be inevitable. Anyone who's ever cooked with a strainer in the kitchen knows that if the space between the holes is small, only liquids pour through while the solids remain behind.

You could have low hair density on a cellular level but the cells could be arranged in such a way to make it look like you have thick hair, ie a wider hair shaft. The same holds if you have high cellular density in the hair but the cells are arranged to give the appearance that the hair is thinner. This could be why guys with thick hair go bald where as guys with thin fine hair keep it around all their lives.

I would like to point out that our hairs do have receptors on them for things like DHT and free radicals. But in accordance with my line of thinking, higher cellular density in the hair shaft when it's being formed would be a guard against hair loss because it's not likely that all of them are going to be affected by DHT, meaning the ratio of those affected by DHT compared to those not affected is very low. A way to test this would be to get hairs of the same length, measure their diameter, weigh them, and then see how many cells there are per unit area, then compare that with local DHT levels at the site of hair formation.