Questions? Comments?

[Igor]

I did a little work on the Estimating your terminal length (http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/vbjournal.php?do=article&articleid=75)-article and would like to know if I have covered everything now. Anything I forgot?

[LittleOrca]

I like how you posted all the info and was still like "Yeah, this 3-6 year stuff is bull---."

I don't think that is a direct quote, but you get the idea. lol

I also "love" how that auto offsite calculator changes with just a few hairs! It's amazing how dramatic the change is! For example:

If I shed ____ hairs a day, I will grow my hair to _____ legnth:

10 hairs; 185 inches
15 hairs; 117 inches
25 hairs; 65 inches
35 hairs; 43 inches
45 hairs; 31 inches
50 hairs; 27 inches
75 hairs; 15 inches
100 hairs; 10 inches

I really hope I'm losing only 10 hairs a day, lol

[vanity_acefake]

I love it! Allegedly my terminal length is 235.99". If only that were true! That would mean my terminal length is more than 3 times my height. I'm almost stubborn enough to try it!

[lapushka]

The odd thing is, I did the terminal length calculator thingy that you referred to in your article, Igor, and it more or less matches up with classic length for me, and that's the length I reached as a kid, before I had it all cut off. :roll: I'm still kinda curious if it would have grown much beyond classic... :hmm:

Just wondering... Kinda confused too...
Isn't terminal the length that you can reach while still having your hair look full, without too much thinning or fairytailing? Isn't it the more fairytailing, thinning, there is, the harder it will be to get all the hair to that length? Is that what's meant by terminal?

[jaine]

My shedding seems to be seasonal so I don't think the shed hairs calculation would be accurate for me...

[Igor]

Just wondering... Kinda confused too...
Isn't terminal the length that you can reach while still having your hair look full, without too much thinning or fairytailing? Isn't it the more fairytailing, thinning, there is, the harder it will be to get all the hair to that length? Is that what's meant by terminal?

I think terminal is where your hair is highly fairytailing. You will only have so many hairs at the absolute terminal length while the rest is in a state of constant regrowth

[lapushka]

I think terminal is where your hair is highly fairytailing. You will only have so many hairs at the absolute terminal length while the rest is in a state of constant regrowth

I was trying to visualize terminal length and got confused. I thought that that might be what it looked like but I wasn't entirely sure. Thanks for answering, Igor, and thanks for the article! :)

I used to get trims as a kid to get the hemline to thicken up (circumference gets thinner with growth in all of us), but I guess getting the other hairs to catch up a little is still different from fairytailing all the way to terminal. Heck there's probably normal fairytailing / normal thinning and it getting so thin and whispy that you actually notice you're at terminal.

[Igor]

Thank you for your kind praises LittleOrca, vanity_acefake and lapushka :flowers: :grouphug:

[enfys]

All I can think could maybe be missing is where you mention the ponytail and graph method, mention that layers or artificial thinning will have a MASSIVE impact on the result. It won't be obvious to everyone.

Since that's all I can possibly think to add I would say it's a very complete, excellent article on one of the harder things to get your head around when you're new.

[ImperfectBrat]

I can't see that you are missing anything. The calc though put me at term 3 inches ago lol

[Igor]

That’s a good point Enfys. I added that to the article :flower:
All I can think could maybe be missing is where you mention the ponytail and graph method, mention that layers or artificial thinning will have a MASSIVE impact on the result. It won't be obvious to everyone.

Since that's all I can possibly think to add I would say it's a very complete, excellent article on one of the harder things to get your head around when you're new.

[Igor]

Added this to try to explain terminal:

Explanation of terminal length
Like no two snowflakes being alike, no two hairs grow to the same length. People have short hairs that never grow to the full length of the rest, usually around the hairline and temples (Personally I have two sets of “donkey ears” of the thickness of a pencil that only grow to ear to brushing shoulder length) That is completely normal.
When a hair comes to the end of its natural growth-cycle, it will enter a resting phase before being ejected from the follicle. This means that a single hair will be at its absolute maximum length for a relatively short period of time. In the meantime, the vast majority of hairs from the scalp will be at varying lengths in the process of growing out.
If you practise S&D, you will snip individual ends to get rid of damage, but it shouldn’t influence your hemline much. The general shape of your hemline won’t change even if you snip ½ inch from individual hairs and it definitely shouldn’t shorten your possible length.
That means that hair reaching the maximum length will be heavily tapered. Members who have reached their true, untrimmed terminal length often describes their very tippy ends as “The few, longest trailing hairs”. That is maybe the best description of what true terminal length will look like.

[lapushka]

That's a great addition, Igor!

[Igor]

I like how you posted all the info and was still like "Yeah, this 3-6 year stuff is bull---."

I don't think that is a direct quote, but you get the idea. lol

About that, its one of the hair-things that really irritates me. 3-6 years will put most people between BSL and classic (I think) and I have honestly only met two people in my entire life that would have trouble crossing BSL. I have given it a lot of thought to how many people I can say I have met through my life and I think I come to a number of around thousand?
Anyways, both had that extremely fine, fragile native Scandinavian hair and both pretty much did shampoo and blow dry as their only hair care. Even the thinnest, finest hair can grow longer than that once you have a good diet and care routine! I know we have many past-classic i-heads here on LHC and I know before the server move we had one listed as “calf length”.

If you write off the short, un nurtured, barely cared for thin heads of hair as a “true terminal” you are kind of stupid to put it bluntly.

But really, has any real scientific study ever been done on the true terminal length of the public? Did anyone really gather enough long haired people to make an educated statement to that the maximum growth length is “6 years”? For that matter, did anyone ever measure a bunch of people’s hair to find that “3 years” is the lower limit of hair length?

No, no one did.

Same with another one of those “everyone knows that!”-numbers, that “normal hair loss is 50 hairs a day”. Really? So someone painstakingly picked up all their shedded hairs, picked them out of the little hairball they tend to gather in and counted them day after day long enough to make an educated statement like that?

Having been on LHC for over 7 years, I have seen shedding rates of between 10 and 200 hairs a day on perfectly healthy and beautiful heads. I have seen people with massive season shedding both in summer and winter, I have seen people report huge differences in shedding according to what they put on their hair and scalp and I have seen people whos shedding never fluctuate. The idea of “50 hairs a day being normal” is completely wrong.

All these numbers are truly stupid and I wish someone would actually make studies to disprove them so we can shove the result in the face of the people who keep quoting them :rolleyes:

I really feel bad when new members come here and think they are going bald because they think their shedding is through the roof or think they will never, ever reach their hair goals because of these stupid numbers :nono:

[bumblebums]

About that, its one of the hair-things that really irritates me. 3-6 years will put most people between BSL and classic (I think) and I have honestly only met two people in my entire life that would have trouble crossing BSL. I have given it a lot of thought to how many people I can say I have met through my life and I think I come to a number of around thousand?
Anyways, both had that extremely fine, fragile native Scandinavian hair and both pretty much did shampoo and blow dry as their only hair care. Even the thinnest, finest hair can grow longer than that once you have a good diet and care routine! I know we have many past-classic i-heads here on LHC and I know before the server move we had one listed as “calf length”.

If you write off the short, un nurtured, barely cared for thin heads of hair as a “true terminal” you are kind of stupid to put it bluntly.

But really, has any real scientific study ever been done on the true terminal length of the public? Did anyone really gather enough long haired people to make an educated statement to that the maximum growth length is “6 years”? For that matter, did anyone ever measure a bunch of people’s hair to find that “3 years” is the lower limit of hair length?

No, no one did.

Same with another one of those “everyone knows that!”-numbers, that “normal hair loss is 50 hairs a day”. Really? So someone painstakingly picked up all their shedded hairs, picked them out of the little hairball they tend to gather in and counted them day after day long enough to make an educated statement like that?

Having been on LHC for over 7 years, I have seen shedding rates of between 10 and 200 hairs a day on perfectly healthy and beautiful heads. I have seen people with massive season shedding both in summer and winter, I have seen people report huge differences in shedding according to what they put on their hair and scalp and I have seen people whos shedding never fluctuate. The idea of “50 hairs a day being normal” is completely wrong.

All these numbers are truly stupid and I wish someone would actually make studies to disprove them so we can shove the result in the face of the people who keep quoting them :rolleyes:

I really feel bad when new members come here and think they are going bald because they think their shedding is through the roof or think they will never, ever reach their hair goals because of these stupid numbers :nono:

Excellent article--I stumbled upon it a couple of days ago and wondered how I missed it before... Now I know, it's new!

Anyway, regarding scientific studies of terminal length--it has been done, although one can certainly quibble with the methodologies.

Here are some links:

A study on terminal length:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119144117/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

A study of seasonal fluctuations in shedding rates:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2133.1991.tb00423.x/abstract

Enjoy!

[curlylocks85]

Do you think you can give an example of how to do the math? I am not so good with just reading how to do it I need to see how it is done mathematically. :)

[Avvoltoio]

i think my terminal length will be at knee length, i am not sure how much hair i lost a day, cause it is different every day, some days i only count 15, some it is up to 35, and this is true for the growing too, some time it grows faster almost an inch sometimes slower, not half inch in a month. also there is a big diference between 90000, 100000, 110000 hair on head.
Also i don't really can use the ponytail measurement, cause my hair is layered(not cause trimmed to be in layers, cause i started from with some cm very short hair, and so my top of head hair is not reach my end, cause i not trimmed that much since i grow my hair, but with minitrims i may i will have thick hemline in some years).

[Krentje]

The calculator put me at a stall at 18 inch:

- 0.6 inch of growth per month = average
- reddish-brown hair, 100.000
- 75 hairs of shedding per day (that was random, but i think quite close to reality, allthough around 60 might be more sufficient since i am experiencing less stress).

Even when putting 60 instead of 75, my term length would be around 25". Well, we'll see!

[AnnaJamila]

Wow, my terminal length would be tiny!!! Hopefully I'm just in a shedding rut... O_o

[Coan-Teen]

The article seems fairly complete to me. I wonder if we could do an informal LHC study comparing length with average growth rate. For instance those of us still growing could do monthly measurements for a year and calculate how long their growth phase was to get their hair to their current length. Just a random thought. I may track that for myself now since I plan to grow as long as I can.

[prosperina]

Well done. It looks like your article is complete and clearly written.

On a side note, I wonder where they got the estimates for number of hairs on head? I know a few redheads with way more hair than I've got and I'm a natural blonde.

[Igor]

Excellent article--I stumbled upon it a couple of days ago and wondered how I missed it before... Now I know, it's new!
The article itself is at least a year old. The reason I started this thread was because “I did a little work on it” like I wrote in the first post. I felt I wanted to add more information and a lot more explanations than it originally contained.


Anyway, regarding scientific studies of terminal length--it has been done, although one can certainly quibble with the methodologies.
Oh yes. I think my first protest before even reading any material is that very few people will have a chance of reaching their true, maximum length because the overwhelmingly vast population will abuse their hair too much to have any actual scientific value :lol:


Here are some links:

A study on terminal length:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119144117/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

A study of seasonal fluctuations in shedding rates:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2133.1991.tb00423.x/abstract

Enjoy!
Thank you :flower: I will sit down with a cup of coffee and read thoroughly through it


Do you think you can give an example of how to do the math? I am not so good with just reading how to do it I need to see how it is done mathematically. :)
“Another method is that you take the estimated number of hairs on your scalp and divide it with your annual estimated shedding (Daily shedding x 365) that number is the number of years it will take for your scalp to have replaced all the hairs growing.
Multiply this number with your annual growth (monthly growth x 12 or total growth as some people have higher growth in the summer)
This is your estimated terminal length using the shedding calculations”

Okay, here are my own calculations as example:

Number of hairs on my head, estimated: 120000 (I have a lot)
Estimated, average daily shedding: 30 (5-50 hairs)
Average growth: 1,5 cm (when I measured it was 1,5 or 2 cm per month)

120000/(365 x 30) = 120000/10950 = 10,9
10,9 x (1,5 x 12) = 10,9 x 18 = 196, 2 cm
196,2 / 2,54 = 77,2 inches


@ Avvoltoio and Krentje: Yea, unfortunately there are so many approximations in this and so many numbers we have no chance of knowing... :ponder:


Wow, my terminal length would be tiny!!! Hopefully I'm just in a shedding rut... O_o
That is why the article is named “Estimating your terminal length” and not “Know your terminal length for sure”


The article seems fairly complete to me. I wonder if we could do an informal LHC study comparing length with average growth rate.
I have tried to gather numbers like that in the past and given up. I haven’t been able to put enough connections between growth rate, number or hairs, hair type etc etc together. Would be fascinating if we could though


For instance those of us still growing could do monthly measurements for a year and calculate how long their growth phase was to get their hair to their current length. Just a random thought. I may track that for myself now since I plan to grow as long as I can.
Sounds interesting :flower:


Well done. It looks like your article is complete and clearly written.

On a side note, I wonder where they got the estimates for number of hairs on head? I know a few redheads with way more hair than I've got and I'm a natural blonde.
Ah, that is a brilliant point! The numbers for redheads, blondes and brunettes are another one of those numbers people just “know” from somewhere. The fact that black hair has no number should show that the estimation cant be taken serious.
Personally I believe it has more to do with your race (Gosh, I hate using that word) than the colour. Indian and Asian people seems to have a total upper hand when it comes to the thickness and toughness of their hair and native Scandinavian people seems to have thin, fragile hair.
In my own case, I have been using the “blonde count” even though most people seems to think I’m a redhead :shrug:
Maybe I should add that disclaimer to the article, but by now it feels like every single number used in it comes with a Do Not Trust-tag *Frustrated sigh*

[BellCat]

i know this sounds stupid but how do you figure out how many hairs you shed a day :S ?

[Igor]

i know this sounds stupid but how do you figure out how many hairs you shed a day :S ?
There is the obvious way of actually counting them.


Or you can estimate.

Its fairly easy to spot how many hairs are in your brush or comb if you clean it out on a regular basis.

Hairs on the floor tends to form up in little balls. If you can see that 5 shedded hairs form a ball of this size (_) then 10 shedded hairs will probably form a ball of this size (__) and a ball of 30 hairs a ball of this size (______)

Hairs in the shower seems to form up in long strings because of the water. Like the floor-balls they grow in size according to how many hairs are actually in them and can be estimated.

[Marjolein]

I like the additions to your article, Igor! And I couldn't agree more about the 3-6 years growing stage nonsense. The tips of my hair are already over 8 years old, and there's still very little taper. I guess I can grow another few inches :)

[mali]

I hope I'm shedding 10 hairs a day too! :laugh: Hey,can't stop dreaming,right? :cloud9:

[gthlvrmx]

I think i did mine wrong....oops. It gave me a really short terminal.

[Ligeia_13]

I would just like to say, that out-of-lhc calculator says my terminal length is 0.07 inches.

Really.