Equation for determining your Terminal Length

[KittyMeowMeow]

I remember seeing this equation on another board I'm a member of (LongHairCommunity), and the consensus among most of us was that it was fun to fool around with and be encouraged by, but it was not accurate enough to really make any predictions as to true terminal length. I do think, however, that Black women can grow our hair as long as anyone else - with proper care.

Oooh, great! I found the post. Thank you for sharing- I had no idea someone had already calculated it!

 

[Qtee]

Can I get the cliff notes version of this..cause reading the OP gave me a headache...do I have to count the shed hair 1 by 1? or are we just guess-timating...

 

[KittyMeowMeow]

Ok, sorry for the many posts in a row! A few other things (compiled from everyone else's posts):

1. On the usefulness of determining TL: I wouldn't think most people would be bothered with counting hairs (unless they are so few that you easily know how many hairs you shed). It might be useful if your hair isn't getting longer and you want to see if this could be an issue and what to do about it. Even without counting hairs, if we know there is a relationship between # of hairs shed, growth rate, and TL, if someone is thinking they are at TL (I've seen this on the board before, usually it's breakage issues), just knowing if you shed "a lot" of hairs or grow slowly will point to possible solutions. It's not there to crush dreams or obsess over! Most people can prob grow hair longer than they want anyway. If your hair is getting longer, great! No need to do anything!

2. As suggested by the equation, TL is not a fate you must succumb to. We have the power to affect it with healthy living (if this increases growth rate) and other factors.

3. I now believe that black women have the potential to grow very, very long hair! I assumed that because I'd never heard of a bw with, say, thigh length or floor length hair or even longer that we occasionally see in other races that maybe it wasn't possible for us. I agree with Nonie's post on the previous page that we do face additional challenges, but I do now believe that it could be done!

 

[Vshanell]

Even if we were to use the argument that knowing how many hairs you shed a day can help you estimate how many years it can take for each of the 10K hairs to eventually shed and therefore an estimate of how long your terminal time is*, then:

For someone who loses 100 hairs a day, then if that^ theory is true,
s/he would take 1000 days for all the hairs to go through the shedding process.
That works out to be a little under 3 years.

Now comes my feather-ruffling point:

For someone who loses 2 hairs a day, it would take 50,000 days for all the hairs to reach shedding = max length for each hair
That means terminal time (term) would be 136 years. LOL

OK, if that is the case, then considering that none of us have been around that long, then I don't thick shedding would have even started yet.

Yes, if you cut your hair today, you will still shed your quota at that TWA length. Why? Coz your hair follicles don't really care how long the hair is; they are just concerned w/ whether their lifetime (term) is over or not. So the reason hair will shed is because at the time of BCing, some follicles were at term time so those hairs that had been growing for years were just about to shed and it was going to happen regardless of what you did to the outside hairs.

So this is my belief: even when you THINK you only lose two hairs, that's a very optimistic view. Shed hair comes out when

• you comb through your hair (usually with a comb whose teeth are so close together as to go between strands enough to not miss any),
  
• slide fingers from base to ends when finger combing like you're stroking your strands
• or brush your hair.
  

If you aren't doing this daily, just because you don't see hair fall doesn't mean it's not there hanging by a thread. If you were to gently tug on a hair that isn't about to shed, it would not come out unless you've got some type of follicular disease or hair loss. But if you were to start sliding your fingers from base to ends holding a very thin section of our hair--so thin that it's as if your hairs are in a line so that you are stroking every single one) and you did that on small sections all through your head, I bet you'd see more hair come out than you realized you were shedding.

*The reason I suggested that rate of shed (if accurate) might help with determining term (assume total hairs count is accurate too) is because when a new hair starts growing, it's because another was shed not too long ago. So let's assume today is the day Hair #1 starts its journey. It obviously will not be shed for a long time. One of the other 99,999 will be shed today, and tomorrow, and so on, until the day Hair #1 and any that were born the same day will celebrate their shed day. If every hair that was older has had its turn and now it's Hair #1's turn to fall out, logic tells me that Hair #1 has grown for as long as it could grow, which would give a good estimate of how long hairs on that head take to grow from birth to shedding, = terminal time.

I totally agree with the bolded part of your post. I have no opinion on the terminal length part of the thread but was shocked at people loosing zero and 2 strands of hair daily and like 10 a week.....like how? lol

Do you guys have hair catchers for the shower because you wouldn't believe how much goes down that drain.

 

[Nonie]

KittyMeowMeow since you like calculations and since you do agree that someone shedding 2 hairs a day would have her hair continually growing throughout her lifetime, then how would they ever shed 2 hairs?

We both agree shedding happens when the hairs reach their terminal time. Someone who sheds 2 hairs a day has a terminal life of 136 years give or take. So until that time passes, they would notstart shedding. Hair shedding starts at the end of the first terminal time from the time we come into existence.

I don't know how a lot of you finger comb, but I cannot finger comb my entire head because it would take too long. This video of me undoing twists shows you how I start to fingercomb, but it isn't the full story:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jff-Uqfb_SA

I will try to make a video of how I fingercomb so you can see what I mean about it not being possible to properly fingercomb a whole head. I do this while watching TV and I enjoy it so much. And only when all the strands are separated do I feel ready to part the hair again to retwist. You'll notice I don't have tangles or knots, if I succeed in making the vid. (My memory card is broken so I don't know if 32 KB will cut it. If not, I'll try to do it using my phone. Back later or tomorrow if it seems to take forever to upload.)

So unless you're doing that to your entire hair and stroking narrow section a hair thick so that your fingers are stroking each strand, you can't really have a good estimate of how much you shed.

 

[Minty]

well thank you for the scientific speculative convo ladies. Now I'm off to take my vitamins, stand on my head, rub in my msm, take my garlic, say a prayer and wrap my head in silk......goodnight.

 

[KittyMeowMeow]

KittyMeowMeow since you like calculations and since you do agree that someone shedding 2 hairs a day would have her hair continually growing throughout her lifetime, then how would they ever shed 2 hairs?

We both agree shedding happens when the hairs reach their terminal time. Someone who sheds 2 hairs a day has a terminal life of 136 years give or take. So until that time passes, they would notstart shedding. Hair shedding starts at the end of the first terminal time from the time we come into existence.

Hmm? If they are shedding 2 hairs a day, then they would be shedding 2 hairs a day. Maybe I don't understand what you mean? If you mean that the hair doesn't start shedding until the amount of terminal time has gone by- this is not true. Since each hair is on it's own schedule, it sheds when it has reached it's own terminal time. If you mean that none of the hair sheds until the length of terminal time has passed, by this logic , if a child has a terminal time of 7 years, they would not shed a hair until age 7, which we know is not true. The hair is continually shedding, regardless of how long the terminal time is.

I don't know how a lot of you finger comb, but I cannot finger comb my entire head because it would take too long. This video of me undoing twists shows you how I start to fingercomb, but it isn't the full story:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jff-Uqfb_SA

I will try to make a video of how I fingercomb so you can see what I mean about it not being possible to properly fingercomb a whole head. I do this while watching TV and I enjoy it so much. And only when all the strands are separated do I feel ready to part the hair again to retwist. You'll notice I don't have tangles or knots, if I succeed in making the vid. (My memory card is broken so I don't know if 32 KB will cut it. If not, I'll try to do it using my phone. Back later or tomorrow if it seems to take forever to upload.)

So unless you're doing that to your entire hair and stroking narrow section a hair thick so that your fingers are stroking each strand, you can't really have a good estimate of how much you shed.

I do stroke through in very narrow sections under running water to detangle & clump while washing, which would explain the extra shedding on wash day. This is why I used 15 (not 2) as my daily shed amount - to round it up & to account for the fact that I only shed a few hairs regularly, but then shed a lot (relatively) during weather changes. I agree that it would be difficult for anyone to get a 100% accurate view of how much they shed (the equation is intended to be approximate anyway, since we don't know how many hairs are on the head which is the greatest source of inaccuracy), but I think you can get in the ballpark

 

[Nonie]

@KittyMeowMeow, do you shed the same amount when you comb your hair?

I have never tried to finger comb under runner water; only used a real comb under running water. I feel as if because of how wet hair sort of sticks together, then shed hair would get caught in there. Which is why most people use a comb or Denman during a wash.

Anyway, here's a clumsy vid (You can see making movies isn't my forte ) of me finger combing. It is not perfect because I don't do it in front of a mirror to ensure the strand separation is 100% complete but I believe I do it thoroughly enough to separate the strands the way a fine-tooth comb might. When I tell how I wear twists for a long time redoing one at a time as time permits, this is basically how I treat each section before retwisting.

Notice how easily the strands slide out of the bunch because I'm untwisting and stretching the hair to open up the strands. I only retwist when I don't feel any thick sections that imply that strands are still bunched up together. And I know this works because when I last flat-ironed my hair, I first combed it with a fine-tooth seamless comb when washing and there were no tangles whatsoever. In fact, I was surprised I could get the comb through because the closest teeth on combs I normally use are like those of the metal pick with a fist, whose teeth were at least twice as wide as the fine-tooth comb. And as you probably know, 4B hair doesn't stretch when wet, but shrinks back, yet I still was able to comb through during shampooing, conditioning, and all the rinsing including ACV. I washed in braids of course, undoing to comb and then rebraiding, except for the final conditioning where I just left it out after undoing each section to comb out and then rinsed. This pic was taken during that wash:

and this is the comb I was using:

OK, nuff ramble, here is my vid on finger-combing a hair section just taken out of a twist:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5iU4NgNGgI