Over the years many myths or misconceptions have formed around the topic of hair. Some are obvious and humorous where others require a bit of research and thought. I have come across many and have divided them into 8 categories:
Part 1: Hair Growth
Part 2: Split Ends and Brushing/Combing
Part 3: Baldness/Hairloss and Gray Hair
Part 4: Texture, Dandruff, and Scalp Problems
Part 5: Short Hair and Coloring Your Hair
Part 6: Thin/Thinning Hair and Summer Hair
Part 7: Hair Products
Part 8: Shampooing and Misc.
Baldness/Hairloss and Gray Hair
You will become bald quite young if you were born without hair.
This is merely an oldwives' tale with no basis whatsoever. Many men who went bald early on in life were born with a full head of hair and many men who have a full head of hair in their senior years were born bald.
Wearing tight hats, ponytails, buns, or tight braids will make you go bald.
Is this one true? Yes and no. The average person who wears a hat or has his/her hair done up neatly in corn rows every now and then does not need to worry at all. It is the repeated abuse of your hair where you have the strands of hair bent very sharply at the root (like with tight braids or ponytails) day after day after week after month that you should start being concerned. Just give your hair a bit of a break and wear a looser style every now and then. Consistent abuse of your hair can lead to temporary hairloss, which could ultimately wind up being permanent hairloss.
Wearing a tight hat might cause breakage or split ends but it doesn't abuse the root of the hair and cause permanent hairloss.
Too much shampooing causes baldness.
This could not be further from the truth. The fact is that the average person with healthy hair loses between 50 and 200 hairs per day. That is to be expected. When people notice a good 100 hairs at the bottom of the shower when they're finished shampooing, they get worried. Shampooing only helps to dislodge hairs that are already ready to fall out. If someone only washed his/her hair once a week and saw about 700 hairs, it would be understandable if she thought she was going bald. It's just the old hair falling out to make way for the new. In fact, regular shampooing is essential for a healthy scalp and gives your hair a much better chance of growing than sporadic or infrequent shampooing.
Gray Hair
Nonsmokers are no further ahead than smokers when it comes to gray hair.
Not true. If you smoke, you are 4 times more likely to have gray hair than nonsmokers. And not only that, if you smoke, you could end up loosing your hair much faster than if you had never smoked.
Hair can turn gray very rapidly.
Hair turns gray when it is genetically predisposed to do so and when it does, it takes quite a while before the job is complete.
When you pull out one gray hair, you will get 2 in return.
This myth must have been made up by someone who absolutely hated the idea of having gray hair and was going into denial that it was something s/he was going to have to face. One strand of hair gets pulled out of one "root" and one "root" can only grow one hair. Having twins just isn't an option.
If this myth were indeed true, many people who had thinning gray hair would be pulling it out just to make their hair thicker!
