The Shelf Life Of Hair And How It Relates To Your Trimming Schedule

Apparently like your semi natural food in a can, your hair can have a shelf life. There is a notion that says because hair has a shelf life then it would make sense to trim your hair on a set schedule, like every three months or every six months depending on what your stylist recommends.

The thing is how do you figure out what your hair’s shelf life really is? Human hair weaves* do not have a shelf life until they are installed on a person’s head, then the manufacturer gives it a year with regular use, other than that an unused hair weave* can stay on the shelf for years.

Let get back to basics shall we

A hair strand has a specific scientific structure, and outer layer known as the cuticle, the middle layer known as the cortex and the inner most layer known as the medulla. The cuticle layer can respond to things, like cold water, heat, or a chemical by opening and closing or degenerating depending on what we do to the strand.

That is as far as it goes in terms of what the strand can do, no matter how you look at it, the strand reacts it never regenerates of behaves on its own, like other biological processes in our bodies.

For us visual people let me put it to you like this, right now I have mini twists in my hair and if for any reason I decide to release one and instead of patiently unraveling it, I just rip it apart then I will cause physical damage to a couple of my strands causing them to look fried, frizzy and damaged.

That damage will remain there until I either patch it up with protein which would probably not work, or I trim off the damage areas. Your hair can be patched, by adding things that stick to the strand, like protein but it cannot heal itself, so what does all this mean?

This means that your hair will remain intact as long as you do nothing to cause it damage, so the shelf life is pretty much endless. If you wash, dry, braid, twist, bun, yank, pull, don’t moisturize, heat style, go out in the sun your hair will suffer some level of damage.

With that said any sort of manipulation is what will dictate how often and when you should trim your hair to eliminate damage. Now don’t get me wrong, since we all manipulate our strands, if you wanted to keep a schedule just to catch any damaged areas you can very well do so and be just fine.

Just realize that you have the choice of also waiting to trim your hair according to how your strand looks.

Does cutting your hair often make it grow faster?

Girl no! That’s a myth and it came from the fact that when men shave their beards, the hair seems to grow in fuller and longer than ever before and quickly too. This is all due to male hormone activity and has nothing to do with the hair on your head. The good news is, your hair is always growing so your job is to retain that length the best way you can.

Apply everything you have learned about hair care to do just that but trust and believe if you cut your hair often you will have short hair, no science there, just pure common sense.

If you want to figure out what determines your growth rate then you have to look at what you are dong internally ;What you eat, how much water you drink, your level of physical activity and of course genetics. All of these components together affect how fast your hair grows and how much hair you actually have on your head.

When you trim your hair, you are doing it for two reasons only, aesthetics, and to prevent further damage; That’s it! So if you prefer your hair to fuller perhaps, then trimming thin ends will do the trick. If you prefer your hair to remain long keeping your ends because you do not see any split ends then that is also your choice.

How do split ends cause further damage?

Well that’s easy, if you take a piece of string and split it in half just at the end, and you keep playing with the string, playing with the string, that little split will travel up the string until you end up with two strings.

The follicle cannot hold two halves of a strand so the hair falls, it might fall before it gets to the follicle because the strand also becomes weak. The best thing to do is eliminate the split before it gets bigger, so that you can preserve the strand, its better to have a hair strand one inch shorter than to lose it all together.

When someone says your ends looks unhealthy they just mean they do not look appealing, because the truth is once the hair strand leaves the follicle it has no health, its dead. What it has, is an appearance, it looks shiny or it looks fluffy, or it appears fried, bushy or thin, its all semantics really, the point is your trimming schedule is pretty much a choice. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise

In conclusion does hair have a shelf life?

Yes and no, it does because of what you do to your hair on a daily basis, but it doesn’t if you do nothing to the strand. More manipulation will mean a shorter life and less manipulation? Well you can expect those babies to last a while!

How often do you trim your hair?