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ClassicAim
September 15th, 2014, 04:09 AM
Hello everyone,
The other day I was talking to my father about my grandma's hair (waist length braids 3/4 something hair) and he mentioned that as she got older (she died well into her 70's) her hair got shorter and she was rather upset about it.
I was wondering if this is common?
And if it does happen how does it work?

Looking forward to all your answers :) x

FoxyGhost
September 15th, 2014, 04:16 AM
Never heard of that before. Maybe here hair got more brittle with age and some length broke off over time. Or maybe a texture change caused it to be more wavy and appear to shrink.

Sarahlabyrinth
September 15th, 2014, 04:16 AM
I am not sure how this works either. I think there can be some thinning with age, though my mother still has thick hair at age 90 and my grandmother had classic length hair until she died in old age. Maybe with some people it does fail to grow to previous lengths, or perhaps it thins a little - or a lot - or not at all.

I will be interested to see if more knowledgeable people chime in with information. I guess the difficulty is that most elderly folk these days have short hair, so that wouldn't help matters to do with this topic.

embee
September 15th, 2014, 04:57 AM
I think the grow-time of the hair is not as long, so each individual hair will shed away before it gets to the length it would have reached at age... 30 or 50.

ClassicAim
September 15th, 2014, 05:00 AM
FoxyGhost - I think it may have gotten more brittle with age. Its the only thing I could think of that would affect it :) x

Sarahlabyrinth - it may be the failure to grow to previous lengths. I have no idea if she cut it or not

ClassicAim
September 15th, 2014, 05:01 AM
Sarahlabyrinth - P.S: your grandma sounds like she had gorgeous hair :) x

martyna_22
September 15th, 2014, 05:03 AM
Hair tends to get weaker with age, as well as thinner, and as it is more prone to breakage, maybe that's it?

ClassicAim
September 15th, 2014, 05:08 AM
embee - Hmmm... That's interesting :) I'll try to do some research of if anagen phases change with age :) x

ClassicAim
September 15th, 2014, 05:10 AM
martyna_22 - I think that may have been it because curly/ coily hair is prone to breakage anyway so the thinning out of it as she aged might have shortened her hair x

Sarahlabyrinth
September 15th, 2014, 05:13 AM
Sarahlabyrinth - P.S: your grandma sounds like she had gorgeous hair :) x

Thank you ClassicAim. She died before I was born but my father told me that her hair was very beautiful ("long enough to sit on") and that when he was a little boy he used to sit and watch her brushing it. It must have made an impact on him for him to remember it. I am growing mine to classic if I can to honour her.

ClassicAim
September 15th, 2014, 06:51 AM
Sarahlabyrinth - Thats so lovely of you :) I have a lot of respect of that :) x

hanne jensen
September 15th, 2014, 07:17 AM
My Icelandic great grandmother lived to be well into her 80's. She had hair to her ankles and chopped back to lower calf every year with sheep shearing shears. Every year until she died. Her hair was fine and thick. I never met her as she died the year before I was born. Both my grandfather and my mother have told me how gorgeous her hair was even as an old lady. I have a lock of her hair and it is exactly like mine.

lapushka
September 15th, 2014, 07:18 AM
I don't think there's a situation (ever) where hair magically shrinks back into your head. Maybe grandma had it cut shorter and talked about it a little distractedly because she was ashamed of that fact.

Angelica
September 15th, 2014, 08:15 AM
It's not about hair shrinking back into the head :) Hair changes when you get older. My own hair is turning grey and I notice that some of the greys are rather coarse and even wavy. Grey hair can be drier and yes I think terminal length can change. It also has a lot to do with genetics, some people are fortunate to keep their hair, others won't (I notice more women losing their hair these days). So it does make sense what the OP is saying.

Madora
September 15th, 2014, 08:26 AM
It hasn't so far for me! :D

@hanne jensen...wow, I bet your Icelandic great grandmother's hair was glorious!! Ankle length..at such an advanced age, is truly remarkable! Some hair genes, those!!!!

dulce
September 15th, 2014, 08:53 AM
I'm 62 and it is still growing normally so far..It probably varies from person to person and may also be linked to illnesses or certain meds as you age?

Edelweiss
September 15th, 2014, 09:01 AM
I've never heard of it before.
Maybe it can just happen to some people because of old age, like hair loss... ?

ClassicAim
September 15th, 2014, 09:27 AM
hanne jensen - That is SO amazing :O I agree with Madora, her hair must have been glorious. You're very lucky to have a lock of her hair, I wish I had one of my Grandma's too :) X

lapushka - That is a possibility, I imagine it may have gotten harder for her to look after as she aged but I can't be sure either way :).

Angelica - This is really interesting to know, from what I have gathered from my family as she aged almost all of her hair turned grey. The possibly dryness of the greying and the curliness of her hair may have lead to breakage which shortened her hair.

Madora - :D You have absolutely LOVELY hair, I must admit I am rather jealous :)

Is it weird I feel like we're all being like hair detectives trying to figure out what happened to my grandma's hair with very minimal information? :P

spidermom
September 15th, 2014, 11:57 AM
Just like an ovary will only produce a limited number of eggs during a woman's lifetime, a follicle will only produce a limited number of hairs. This varies widely with the individual and with each follicle. One follicle might produce 20 hairs over a lifetime while the one right next to it will produce 40. That is why hair thins with age; some of the follicles are no longer active. The rate of growth per month can change, too, as well as the number of months a hair grows before it sheds. Therefore, it could be that the follicles that produced the longest hairs were no longer active in your grandmother's latter years.

AmyBeth
September 15th, 2014, 12:32 PM
I'm only in my early 50s, so I can't yet speak to experiences of the very elderly, but over the last few years of learning how to really care for long hair, I can say that my hair is longer than ever- even though I grew it for 24 years, it would never pass my waistline. Now it's almost TB and still growing very slowly, but still. It's also easily doubled in thickness. I feared that menopausal changes would take a toll on my hair, but that hasn't happened at all. I think that if people are healthy that the hair will probably reflect that state of health.

chen bao jun
September 16th, 2014, 02:32 PM
Lapushka brings up an interesting point. But I think the main culprit for shortening/thinning hair in old age is that abusing catches up with you, because you have been doing it for a long long time. and also a lot of women begin to thin because in older age, they feel they must cover their gray and dye definitely makes your hair thinner. Maybe Dulce will tell her hairstory.
I'm 57, which is not the same as 80, but my hair is thicker and healthier than ever.

Silverbrumby
September 16th, 2014, 03:17 PM
I have read that after menopause many women will have some decrease in hair volume. I certainly have and it runs in my fathers side of the family. I've got about 1/2 the amount of hair I had in my twenties. That's more extreme of course than most people. I eat very well and do all the right things. I also can't grow my hair past BSL with any thickness like I use to when I was younger.

spidermom
September 16th, 2014, 09:47 PM
Please read my post. I know these things for a fact.

browneyedsusan
September 17th, 2014, 05:29 AM
Please read my post. I know these things for a fact.

Thanks for sharing. Your post makes a lot of sense and passes the :bs: test. :thumbsup:

chen bao jun
September 17th, 2014, 07:09 AM
Spidermom, your post sounds very fact-based and I know that Silverbrumby is telling the truth about her experience. However, as you state Spidermom, this varies a great deal and for a woman to assume her hair is thinning because of menopause--well, it doesn't happen to everybody and I read, not even to a majority. I read somewhere that 50% of women will notice SOME thinning. I would say, don't assume that your thinning is because of menopause, until you are doing everything right like Silverbrumby and still having it. a lot of women will find, like Dulce, that if you quit the dyeing and hair-dresser induced cutting, the hair problems vanish. I know I was amazed at how my 82 year old grandmother stopped dyeing her hair and within a year or so had twice the thickness.

sarahthegemini
September 17th, 2014, 08:25 AM
Hmm, all I can think of is maybe the ends broke off?

lapushka
September 17th, 2014, 10:43 AM
My mom was about a ii, medium thickness. After menopause that came down to i/ii (barely ii). So yes, it wreaks havoc on some people.

ClassicAim
September 23rd, 2014, 06:13 AM
spidermom - I've never heard of such a thing before :O! Wow. Thanks for the information :), That sounds like a very likely culprit.

AmyBeth - Your hair sounds lovely :). I'm not sure of the level of health my grandma was in so this may also have something to do with it. I've noticed that as people get older their bodies don't let them get away with the unhealthy habits they have as much as when they where young so maybe that had something to do with it.

chen bao jun - Yeah, I believe your right, like with health as one ages things affect them more than when they where young. I'm almost certain she combed her hair and if it was as curly as mine (3c/4a) like my family have told me this would have caused damage to her hair. This coupled with thinning/ slowing growth rate with age could really have affected the length of her hair.

sarahthegemini - This was probably part of the problem. She had very curly hair so breakage is a likelyhood throughout life and this coupled with the thinning of aging others have suggested probably had A lot to do with it :) x

Silverbrumby - Menopause probably did also have something to do with it :)

lapushka - Wow!