You have begged, you have pleaded, wondered what kind of voodoo magic Demi Moore is up to and finally, given up. But there’s no question that countless middle-aged women share the same lament: “Why—really, why?—won’t my hair grow any faster? And is it just me, or does it seem to get slower each year?”
Long Hair in Hollywood
In a world of Blake Livelys and Giseles (not to mention plenty of more mature leading ladies), it can seem like everyone is sporting insanely long locks. But keep in mind two things. One, natural, mid-back hair growth is not as common as Hollywood would have you think. While there’s no statistic measuring the overall population’s varying hair lengths, consider a Los Angeles hair expert’s very educated guess. “Oh please, it’s so rare! So many women have extensions. It’s very, very unusual to see naturally long hair. I’d roughly estimate it’s not even 10 percent of women,” says Christophe Belkacemi, a top stylist at the Serge Normant at John Frieda salon in LA.
Growth Stages
Second, the hair’s anagen phase (aka the growth stage that is crucial to achieving great lengths) is, like everything else in the world of beauty, seemingly wasted on the young. A P&G (makers of such hair care as Pantene and Herbal Essences) report on the hair growth cycle found the following: “As people grow older, the period of anagen shortens. For example, the hair of someone with a five-year anagen can grow to a length of 60 centimeters before it enters the shedding phase. If their anagen period drops to three years as they age, their hair will then grow only to shoulder length before it falls out or is brushed out.” Not exactly Demi territory.
MORE: The Science of Hair Growth
There’s another new, semi-depressing finding on the correlation between hair growth and aging. Biologically, researchers are finding that hair simply changes. Another in-depth study executed by P&G found that sebum (oil) production overall but here, specifically on the scalp, decreases rapidly starting at age 45. When hair becomes less able to keep itself hydrated, it can become coarser-looking and more susceptible to breakage. Again, not exactly conducive to growth.
