Why We Don't Braid Our Armpits
With all the recent emphasis from scientists attempting to regenerate organs or grow new ones, many people forget that our body actually renews many parts of itself on a regular, if not continuous basis. For example, next to things like bone marrow, which manufacture new blood cells constantly, our hair is one of the fastest growing/replaced cells that we have.
Hair grows from the follicle, where cells form slowly, and push the older cells above the skin level, resulting in a hair. On average, up to perhaps middle age, your hair will grow at an approximate rate of .5mm per day. That means it will take 50 days to grow one inch. Anyone wanting to have lovely locks flowing down their backs is going to have up to a three year wait. And don't bother cutting it in an attempt to make it grow faster. Cutting has nothing at all to do with the action at the root of the shaft, where the cells form.
So why is it that we can grow fabulously long, curly mops on our heads like King Charles of France, but only a paltry inch or so everywhere else on our bodies? Because we are genetically programmed so that hair grows for a certain length of time, enters a rest phase at which time it breaks off, and then grows again. For the rest of our body, that phase is about two months, but on our heads, hair can keep growing for years.
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