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 Have you
thought about your hair carefully? What color is your hair? How long
is it? Is it straight or curly? Most Koreans have dark brown or black
hair. On the other hand, Westerners have lighter colors such as blonde
and light brown. So, what determines the color of your hair? If you
want to learn more about your hair, please keep reading!
People have different hair colors. Your genes determine your hair,
skin, and eye color at birth. Hair color is determined by melanocyte멜라노사이트
cells. These cells produce and store the pigment in hair and skin.
Hair color is determined by two different forms of pigments called
eumelanin유멜라닌 and pheomelanin페오멜라닌. Depending on the percentage
of each pigment, people have blonde, brown, red or black hair. The
more eumelanin genes there are, the darker your hair will be. When
we age, hair receives fewer pigments and turns gray or white.
 Hair is the fastest growing tissue in the human body, next to bone
marrow. Male hair grows faster than female hair. Also, male hair
is denser than female hair. In a lifetime, an average man will shave
20,000 times. Hair grows faster in warm weather.
On average, the scalp has 100,000 hairs. Redheads have about 80,000
hairs; brown and black haired people have about 100,000 hairs; and
blondes have about 120,000 hairs. On average, a hair strand’s life
span is about five years. It is normal to lose 100 hairs per day
from the scalp and on the average adult scalp, 35 meters of hair
fiber is produced every day.
 A single hair is 0.02 to 0.04 millimeters thick.
However, it is as strong as a piece of iron wire! A single hair
can support up to 100 grams in weight. A whole head of hair could
support up to 12 tons. This means that your hair can pull two African
elephants!
Your hair can tell many things about you. In fact, one inch (about
25 millimeters) of your hair can reveal a lot of facts about your
behavior. For example, by analyzing your hair, scientists can find
out what you ate in the last month and in what environment or area
you lived! Your hair is truly amazing!
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