Is There a Normal Amount of Miniaturized Hair in Women?
Hello,
Can there be a “normal” amount of minaturized hairs throughout your head without a balding problem present?I’m wondering because just from observing women’s hair, woman of all ages, I’ve noticed a lot of woman with some wispy hairs sticking out on different areas of their head, but these woman are without signs of hair loss. Do people have a normal about of miniturized hair through out their head? Or perhaps are these wispy hairs caused by blow drying,coloring,etc.
Thank you and hope you can answer my question.
A “follicular unit” has full terminal mature hairs and some vellus (shorter and thinner) hairs. If you take a small area of your scalp (like the size of a pea) and cut down the hair, the thinner hairs produced by the miniaturization process in genetic balding may not be distinguished from vellus hairs (both hairs have smaller diameters). When I look at the scalp under intense magnification, I will often see some hairs that have thinner hair shafts. I generalize that a normal non-balding person will have less than 20% of the hairs that I see with finer hair shafts. They may be miniaturized hairs of the balding process if they impact the entire follicular unit to some degree OR they may really be vellus hairs in their numbers are less than 20% of the follicular unit hair count.
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