How Hair Grows
The Hair Growth Cycle.
The hair growth cycle has three distinct stages – anagen, catagen, and telogen.
- Anagen Phase: The growing season. Your hair grows about half an inch a month, and usually faster in the summer than in winter. The anagen phase lasts an average of 3-5 years resulting in full length hair strand of about 18 to 30 inches.
- Catagen Phase. At the end of the anagen phase, your hair enters the catagen phase. A short transitional phase that lasts approximately 10 days. It signals the end of the active growth of a hair. This phase lasts for about 2–3 weeks.
- Telogen Phase. The final cycle is the telogen phase, a resting phase when your follicle sheds the hair and hair falls out. The follicle then remains inactive for three months. The follicle then reawakens from its dormancy, comes alive and the whole process is repeated. Each hair follicle is independent and goes through the growth cycle at different times, otherwise all your hair would fall out at once. Typically, you shed up to 100 hairs if you have a healthy head of hair.
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