The very word ‘hair’ stirs up our emotions. Hair, the
undisputed crown of human body covering the precious
Scalp and most
parts of the body. It is amazing to know
the amount of man hours that are spent everyday by human beings in attending to
their hair; and equally enormous is the trade that goes on hair tonics, hair
dyes, shampoo, hair-clips, flowers , wigs, crepe hair, combs, carcanels,
snoods, epilating chemicals, peroxides, depilatory devices, coiffeurs’ and
barber’s shops, etc. Religion and literature have also given lot of importance
to them. So what is unique about hair? It seems to have the qualities of all
the element in it, it is free and flowing like water; tough and tangible like
earth; it converts the radiation from the sun rays into assimilable form of
Vitamin D; it is light and lilts about in wind ; it is living because it is
growing ; it is dead because it is without sensibility.
It is
inextricably linked with life itself; it is treated as something very sacred
and also as something sapless to be severed; it is important when it
fimbrillates the face, but infectious when it falls into your food.
THE MYTHS AND MYSTERIES;
There are so many myths and
mysteries about hair.
Ancient Romans believed that
till a lock of hair is devoted to PROSERPINE, the Goddess, she refused to
release the soul from the dying body. When DIDO mounted the funeral pile, she
lingered in suffering till JUNO sent IRIS to cut off a lock of her hair.
From the red hair of JUDAS, there was a superstition that
considered people with red hair as untrustworthy.
A man with black hair but red beard was considered worst of
all. There is even an old rhyme ‘A Red Beard and Black Head catch him with a
good trick and take him dead.’
RELIGION:
In ancient Egypt, those who dedicated to the services of deity
were required to tonsure. Many religions insisted on scalp-lock, a strand of
hair left uncut, like a pigtail, occultists say it was left to mark the bregma, the
occult aperture at the top of the cranium.
Young men of the Jewish sect of Nazarites who dedicated
themselves to God never cut their hair, as it was considered as a source of
strength, Samson was an example.
In India, the Sikhs prohibit men from ever cutting their hair.
St.Paul said, “if a man have long hair. It is a shame unto him ( I .Cor.11:14).
In ancient times, people cut their hair only on an auspicious
time and through a carefully selected barber and special days are set apart to
dispose the cut hair amid
Recitations of incantations.
Very orthodox Hindus in
ancient times supposedly had set only 9 occasions for cutting hair, i.e.
pilgrimage, death of father/mother, preceptor, for purification, etc.
MYSTERY AND MAGIC:
It is still a mystery as to why hair grows only on some parts
of the body and not all over. Sorcerers used to do black magic with hair.
Witches tossed their tresses as a love charm.
GREY OR WHITE HAIR:
There is a myth
about hair growing gray or white overnight or in a very short period out of
fear, anxiety, sudden shocking emotions, etc.
Sir Thomas More’s hair was said to have whitened the night
before his execution, Marie Antoinette grew gray from grief during her
imprisonment and so on. Medically it is
not possible to have such changes overnight.
The facts are normally the scalp alone has about one lakh
hairs; and every fully grown hair, even though it is held in the follicle which
gave it birth, is actually dead tissue and not accessible to change.The hair
can only fall out, in time, leaving the follicle, to grow new hair. We all
normally loss about 75 hairs a day and always have new hairs growing. Sometimes
the rate of hair loss is more especially following illness, severe emotional
shock, after pregnancy, etc. For unknown reasons white hair seem to have a
firmer hold on the scalp than pigmented ones, so heavy loss usually removes
more dark hairs than white ones and as a result the person is left with more
white hairs.
So even when alopecia areata (a disease of sudden heavy loss of
hair) sets in, the white hairs are spared and thus a person who had a black and
white roof would be left only with white thatch, an inexplicable psilotic
(falling of hair) phenomenon, but even this cannot happen overnight.
BALDNESS:
Probably this is one thing for which man cannot blame woman at
any cost, because it is an inherited trait, especially from one’s father and
other male ancestors and , of course, it also gives a comforting news that it
indicates normal male sex hormone (testosterone) level and uncomforting news is
that no amount of money spent on lotions and barbers can change it. Recently
Dr.Angela Christiano of Columbia University. New York has started working on
the possibility of finding out the gene possibly responsible for baldness after
studying a Pakistani family which has been condemned to generations of
hairlessness, i.e. ALOPECIA UNIVERSALIS complete loss of head and body hair.
DANDRUFF:
True dandruff is not a disease but is the little flakes shed by
the skin of the scalp and the treatment to stop this is either with selenium
sulphide or zinc pyridinethions.
It is said that true dandruff declines in late spring and least
prevalent in summer as per the expert trichologist (Trichology is study of hair
and its studies).
ATRICHIA:
It is an unexplained congenital absence of hair.
THREE STEPS OF HAIR GROWTH:
First there is lanugo which is finely soft and usually
pale in colour. In most cases, it is present only before birth, which is why
small premature babies have a hairy look. This gradually gives way to vellus
a little coarser and longer in length and of course the third stage is the
final longer, darker, coarser hair.
HAIR AND LITERATURE:
Hair of women is supposed to have, and indeed it has, great
attractive power over men and that’s why in most religions women are required
to cover their hair during congregation.
In Byblos in Phoenicia women had the alternative of sacrificing
their virginity to strangers in honour of the goddess Ashtart of shaving the
head and offering her hair.
Chivalric knights of the middle ages dedicated to curtly love
wore the pubic hair of their mistress in their hats as a token of services to
them.
HAIR AND LITERATURE:
Alexander Pope has written a great verse titled ‘Rape of the
Lock’ based on the story wherein Lord Petre cuts off a Lock of Miss Arabella
Fermor’s hair.
Shakespeare writes in As You Like It:
“Rosalind:His very hair is of
the dissembling colour
Ceta
:Something browner than Judas”.
Byran writes in ‘The Prisoner of Chillo’.
“My hair is gray, but with
years
Nor grew it white
In a single might,
As men’s have grown from sudden
fears.”
Eugene O’Neill has written a
play in 1922 titled ‘The Hairy Ape”
VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF
LIFE:
The beauty is hair has no single specific colour or shape, even
in a person, its texture varies from one part of the body to another.It is not
yet effectively proved what Dr. Patrick Dixon claimed in his book ‘The Genetic
Revolution’ wrote “In 1987 I first raised the possibility of permanent hair
colourant….
(with the help of ) hair
follicle (synthetic) virus”.Remarks within brackets are mine.
HAIR AND LANGUAGE:
When you have a good shock, it is easy to switch
and with a high light we can really brighten the face. Does it sound like some electrical circuit
fixed on to your face. No. These are
some of the several terms that hair has given to the English language. Shock is
a thick, bushy mass of hair and switch is hair in a detached tress worked into
a person’s own hair in certain hair styles and high light is a light
streak in the hair.
In fact the various colours,
many hair styles, different textures, several ways of combing at, have all
given lots of words to the English tongue. Let us get into this vast world of
hairy vocabulary.
Hair in different parts of the body are referred to by specific
terms as pubic hair for hair in the region of the genital, mustache for hair
beneath the nose and above the upper lip, beard for hair that sprouts from the
chin, whiskers for that runs down from the head on to the cheeks before the
ears, cowlick for tuft of hair across the forehead, love lock for lock of hair
on forehead.
There are some words for types of combing as; to tease meaning
combing hair downwards near the root to bulk it up; to crimp for curling the
hair tightly.
There are numerous terms for uncombed hair a well, such as
disheveled, rumpled, unkempt, tousled, ungroomed and blowzy.
The array of colours of hair are referred to as titan or
strawberry blond for reddish gold colour; grizzle for gray hair covering;
flazen for pale yellow hair; auricomous for golden hair and carroty for red
hair.
A profusion of terms for different textures of hair covering as
crinite for soft hair covering; xanthochroid for fair hair and skin; shaggy for
loosely hanging lump of hair covering; incanous for short white hair covering;
holosericeous for short, silky hair covering; ciliate for stiff bristles of
hair.
A great many adjectives for types of hair as ULOTRICHOUS for
tight curled hair as that of Africans; Ringlet for single curl of hair;
SHOCK for thick bushy mass of hair;
TRESSES for thick, long flowing locks of
hair; LISSOTRICHOUS for long hair;
BARBELLATE for short and stiff
hair;LEIOTRICHOUS for smooth hair;
EUTHYCOMIC for straight hair; TOMENTOUS for thickly matted hair.
Hair like appearance in several things starting from the sky
above to the tiny seed beneath the ground have also flooded ,English LANGUAGE with words like: VILLUS for hair like
projections in the small intestine; CILIA for hair like threads on a cell;
CAPILLIARY for hair like thin tubes; FRILL or RUFF for attractive hair or
feathers projecting from an animal’s neck; COMA for the hairs on the seed coat
of some seeds; HACKLES for hair on the back of an back of an animal’s neck;
VIBRISAE for sensitive hairs on either side of a cat’s mouth; TRICHOMY for hair like growth on plant
surface;TRICHITIC for hair like minerals in rocks;FIBRATUS for clouds that are hair like in composition;
HAIRY WOODPECKER for
Dendrocopos villosus, a North American woodpecker; HAIRBRUSH CACTUS for
Pachycereus pectenaboriginum, a spiny cactus of Mexico whose burlike fruits
used as combs by the aborigines; CILICE or HAIRCLOTH or HAIRSHIRT formerly worn
by monks made of hair from the manes and tails of horses woven with a cotton
warp; HAIRYTILED MOLE, a blackish North American mole, Parscalops breweri,
which has a short hairy tail;HAIRY WATTLE is a hair like shrub;
Acacia pubescens with yellow flowers;HAIR WORM for small
slender worms of the family of Trichostrongylidae; HAIR TRIGGER for a trigger
that releases the firearm even by a very slight touch; HAIR SPRING, a fine
spiral spring used for oscillating the balance of a time piece; HAIRTAIL for cutlassfish from the resemblance of its
tail to strands of hair; HAIR PIECE for
a toupee; HAIRPIN MEGARON for a free standing megaron (in PreHellenic Greek
Architecture) having a long principal chamber and a semicircular end opposite
the end at which the porch is located; HAIRNET for a cap of loose net made of
silk or human hair for holding hair in place; HAIRPIN BEND for a road that
bends in ‘U’ shape like a hairpin, AHIR STREAK for small dark butterflies of
the family Lycaenidae which have hair like tails on the hind wings; HAIR STROKE
for a fine line in printing or writing; HAIR’S BREADTH, precisely 48th
part of an inch, is called hair’s breadth; HAIR CELL for an epithelial cell
having hairlike processes as that of the organ of Corti; HAIR SEAL for seals having coarse hair without soft
underfur.
When fear causes a hair raising experience we know it is called
horripilation but do you know the words for fear of hair are TRICHOPATHOPHOBIA
and CHAETOPHOBIA.
The habit of breaking off hair with the finger nails is
TRICHORRHEXOMANIA. There is also an ancient art of character reading from the
hair known as TRICHOMANCY wherein the natural waves, whorls and direction of
growth are read for signs. Some animals do shed their hair which is known as
MOULTINC.
The English idioms too seem to convey some intrinsic and long
held views and values about hair as we can see from the following idioms:
1.Against the hair- meaning
contrary to the nature .
2.Both of hair-meaning similar
in disposition.
3.To a hair or to the turn of a
hair-meaning to a nicety.
4.To let one’s hair
down-meaning to behave in free informal
manner .
5.To make one’s hair stand on
end –meaning to terrify.
6.Keep your hair on-meaning
don’t lose your temper.
7.To split hairs-meaning to
argue over petty points.
8.To tear one’s hairs-meaning
to show signs of anxiety .
9.Not turn a hair-meaning not
to show fear .
10.Have a hair-rising
experience.
HAIR STYLES:
Bushy and frizzy hair style is called AFRO; fringe cut hair
straight across the forehead is BANGS; piled up and combed hair is BEEHIVE;
hair that is cut evenly all around the head is BOB; hair that is puffed out
through back combing is BOUFFANT; long hair rolled into a knot or bun at the
back is CHIGHNON: tight parallel plait set close to the head, as is popular
among African women is termed as CONROWS; hair of tight curls and waves if
CRIMPS ; hair cut short and standing stiffly upright is said to be EN BROSS;
hair style with high quiff resembling a ducktail is termed as DUCKTAIL; very
short cut hair like a school boy is ETON CROP; hair gathered at the back like a
cylindrical roll is FRENCH PLEAT; curled fringe hair across the forehead is
FRIZETTE; regular light waves of hair set close to the head is MARCEL WAVE;
Spiky sweep of hair at the center of a bald/shaved head is MOHICAN; Straight
hair with the ends curled inwards shoulder length at the back is called
PAGEBOY; The style of the 18th century women that of hair brushed up
from the forehead and turned back over a pad is POMPADOUR and of course another
18th century style of hair piled high in rolled puffs is called
POUFFE.
HAIR AND NASA
Philip McCroy
who trims hair in Madison, was watching the television coverage of the 1989 oil
spill in Alaska, wherein he saw an otter being rescued. Its fur was saturated
with oil, and he wondered if human hair would also trap it. He then stuffed 5
pounds of hair from his salon into a pair of tights, filled his son’s padding
pool with water then added motor oil. He found that the oil was absorbed on to the surface of the hair and could be
recovered by squeezing the tights out. His idea is being developed by the U.S.
Space Agency at NASA ‘s Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville. Initial
tests have proved remarkably effective – a gallon of oil was absorbed in less
than two minutes.
HOW TO AVOID PREMATURE GREYING OF HAIR
To avoid
premature graying of hair you need pantothenic acid, para-amino benzoic acid
and inositol. All these vitamins belong to the B group so vitamin B must be
more. Juice of amaranth leaves when applied helps to retain hair’s natural
blackness and hence avoids graying of hair. Amla pieces boiled in coconut oil
is also good for retaining blackness of
hair. But the best and cheapest way is to keep the scalp dirt free, preferably
rubbing it with cold water, because this releases heat, activates glands and
increases circulation of blood to the scalp and follicles, this is important
because it is the glands of the scalp which secretes an oily substance called
sebum which is the source of nutrition and which is responsible for giving
luster and blackness to the hair.
HAIR IN MEDICAL TERMS:
TRICHOSCOPY:
It is the
medical inspection of hair. For the common man, the medical world defined hair
as a ‘keratinized threadlike outgrowth from the skin’. The medical importance
of hair is too great to explain in detail here. However let me confine myself
to explain some basic facts and terms and the reason why we
must not cut the hair of our children too short.
TERMS:
AUDITORY HAIR
is an epithelial cell to which are attached delicate hair like processes. These
are present in the ear in the spiral organ of Corti, concerned with hearing and
in the crista ampullaris, macula utriculi and macula sacculi concerned with
equilibrium.
BAMBOO HAIR or TRICHORRHEXIS NODOSA is sparse brittle hair
with bamboo nodes. These are actually partial fractures of the hair shaft which
are caused by an atrophic condition. BEADED HAIR is swellings and constrictions
in the hair shaft due to a developmental defect known as monilethrix.
HAIR BURROWING is
the horizontal growth of hair under the skin causing a foreign body reaction.
GUSTATORY HAIR-fine hair like processes extending from the
ends of gustatory cells in a taste bud.
They project through the inner pore of a taste bud.
KINKY HAIR- short, sparse, kinky hair with poor
pigmentation is a hair disease.
TACTILE HAIR is one that is capable of receiving tactile
or touching stimuli.
HAIR BALL is the mass of hair or concretion in the
stomach, also known as TRICHOBEZOAR (from the Arabic word bazahr meaning
protecting against poison).
Why we must not
cut the hair of children too short? Of all the vitamins that are available in
nature, the most limited is vitamin D and the only natural food within the
common man’s reach in which it is available is milk. Other than this, the only
other way to get vitamin D (available in nature) in an assimilable form is with
the help of hair. Vitamin D is very essential for the growth and development of
all tissues and organs of the body; it is a major factor of calcium metabolism
of the organism.
HOW HAIR PROVIDES THIS?
Each hair is an
accumulation of pigmented (coloured) cells. This pigment is of the melanin type
which has got special affinity for the ultra-violet rays of the sun.The solar
radiations produce important photo-synthetic chemical developments in the hair
cells. The fatty secretion of the skin feeds the hair with the pre-cursor
chemical of vitamin D which is decomposed and recomposed in an assimilable form
in the hair cells with the help of solar rays.
Solar energy is
the most important and freely available inexhaustible source of energy. So we
must utilize it to the optimum benefit for our help. The best way to do that is
to grow and maintain intact hair- a tissue that absorbs solar energy. Normally
parents tend to cut the hair of their children short because they find it
difficult to keep the scalp of their children clean. But they would do well to
remember that the need for vitamin D is greatest during the active growing
period of childhood.
Hair and human superiority
One aspect of evolutionary superiority is that human being
alone possesses the largest hair over head and so on the face, among the whole
animal world.
1 comment:
I was diagnosed of Herpes 2years ago and I have tried all possible means to get the cure but all to no avail, until i saw a post in a health forum about a Herbal Doctor(Dr imoloa who prepares herbal medicine to cure all kind of diseases including Herpes, at first i doubted, if it was real but decided to give him a trial, when i contacted Dr imoloa through his Email: drimolaherbalmademedicine@gmail.com he guided me and prepared a herbal medicine and sent it to me via courier Delivery service,when i received the package (herbal medicine) He gave me instructions on how to consume it, i started using it as instructed and i stop getting outbreaks and the sores started vanishing, could you believe i was cured of this deadly virus within two to three weeks and notices changes in my body. Days of using this REMEDY,couldn't believe the healing at first until i see it as my HERPES get cleared like magic Dr imoloa also use his herbal medicine to cure diseases like, HIV/aids, lupus disease, dry cough, fever, malaria, Lyme disease, acute myeloid leukaemia, alzheimer's disease, blood poisoning, measles, kidney cancer, kidney infections, diarrhoea, epilepsy, joint pain, mouth ulcer,bowel cancer, discoid eczema, eye cancer, food poisoning, fibroid, hairy cell leukaemia, mouth cancer, skin disease, lung cancer, liver disease, penile cancer, parkinson disease, arthritis, breast cancer, bone cancer hepatitis A.B.C, Diabetes, fatigue, muscle aches, anal cancer, asthma, Contact this great herbal Doctor today the father of herbalism. via Email: drimolaherbalmademedicine@gmail.com or whatssapp him +2347081986098. and get cured permanently He is real..
Post a Comment