Champion hair:14 footlong pigtails
Hair typically grows to a maximum length of 5ft (1.5m), but Dae YuQuin, 41, a Chinese woman from Shanghai, has hair 14ft 9in (4.5m)long. She has not cut it since she was forced to shave her head asa teenager because of a scalp disease. Now, 26 years later, ittakes half a day to wash and dry. L’Oreal’s Chinese office trackedher down when her extraordinary tresses featured in a Shanghainewspaper, and now the firm is studying some of her hair.
Miss Dae claims that her secret is to keep her hair in a turban,so that it is not exposed to ultraviolet light or pollution.Although she regularly washes it, she doesn’t use a dryer. Womenwith the longest hair in the world tend to be from China and India,which may be linked with their genetic make-up. A few of Miss Dae’shairs, around 6ft 6in (2m) long, from her hairbrush have been putunder an electron microscope at L’Oreal’s Hair Metrology Laboratoryto examine their structure, from the cuticle on the outside,consisting of scales, to the cortex and then, in the middle, themedulla.
Near the root her hair has scales as normal, but some damage. Inthe middle, at around 3ft (90cm), the scales remain, which isunusual for hair of this length, but they show some signs ofdamage. At the tip, the hair is smooth and free of scales. Theouter cuticle of the hair is missing and the cortex is exposed –typical of split ends. The study reveals that the growth rate forher hair is average for a Chinese person. She has now agreed togive L’Oreal some of her longest hairs, but has refused to providea sample of her scalp to study the roots.
D.Telegraph, 16 Nov 2005.
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