Hair Anatomy: Structure of Hair and How it Grows?

Getting silky-smooth skin is comfortable and convenient all thanks to our laser hair reduction treatment But let’s talk about the elephant in the room— Unwanted hair.

How well do you know about the structure of unwanted hair? Or the hair growth cycle? If you are wondering why you need to know since you are going to get rid of unwanted hair anyway, we believe it will help you understand how skinnsi’s laser hair reduction works better.

Now that’s something you’d definitely want to know.

The structure of hair and the hair growth cycle is unique for all. This is why some may notice hair reduction in 6 sessions (on average); whereas some may need more sessions depending on the growth and type of hair. So to know a little more about your body hair, let’s deep dive into hair anatomy, hair growth cycle and how our laser hair reduction will work on reducing your natural hair growth.

Structure of hair (Hair anatomy)

1. To begin with, our skin has two vital layers. The upper-thick layer is known as the epidermis, and the lower-thick layer is known as the dermis.
2. Your body hair extends through these layers as it grows and has two main parts— the hair shaft and the hair root.
3. The part of the hair that is visible and sticks out of the skin is the hair shaft, whereas the hair root contains melanin (the hair color).
4. The hair root further widens into a (hair) bulb, which contains stem cells for new hair growth.
5. The hair root is also surrounded by a tissue (hair follicle) that connects the root to the nerves in your body.

Now that we’ve explored hair anatomy and know so much more about the structure of hair, let’s understand the 4 main stages of hair growth.

(P.S- this is IMP if you are planning to get a specific body part or full body laser hair removal

Four Stages Of Hair Growth:

1. Anagen Phase: Also known as the growth or active phase, it lasts up to 30-45 days for arms, legs, and other parts of the body (not the scalp). The longer this phase is, the more active your hair growth will be. Also, at any given point in time, most of your hair (85-90%) is in this phase.
2. Catagen Phase: Once the anagen phase ends, your hair enters a 10-day transitional phase also known as the catagen phase. In this stage, the hair growth stops and the hair bulb is pushed upwards. This phase lasts for 2-4 weeks and leads to the formation of a club hair.
3. Telogen phase: This is the resting stage, where the club hair is gradually pushed upwards and falls out, thus creating a gap. And since the growth has stopped temporarily, the entire structure goes into a resting phase for a certain amount of time.
4. Exogen phase: It’s an extension of the telogen phase, where it’s completely normal for a certain amount of hair to shed while scrubbing or washing your body. It’s also known as the shedding stage.

Although these phases occur simultaneously, your body hair will mostly be in the anagen phase, which is an ideal stage if you are planning to get permanent laser hair removal treatment.

Speaking of which, here’s how skinnsi’s laser hair reduction treatment will work on reducing your regular hair growth:

• At first, the laser emits light, which gets absorbed by the melanin (hair color) present in the hair roots.
• Once absorbed, the light will heat the hair follicle and destroy it by converting it into the resting phase.
• So with every session you take, the resting phase increases, and the growth phase shortens, thereby delaying the entire hair growth cycle to a great extent.

And did you know there are two types of body hair?

1. Terminal: Dark thick hair with roots in the deeper layers of the skin.
2. Vellous: Fine, light-colored hair with roots in the upper layers of the skin.

So if you have dark thick hair (terminal hair), the laser hair reduction will gradually convert it to fine or light-colored hair to reduce the visibility of growth on your skin.

On average, 6 sessions are recommended by our dermatologists to reduce hair growth up to 90%! However, this may vary from person to person and depends on various factors such as gender, ethnicity, health issues and growth cycle. Hence treatments at skinnsi are customized by in-house dermatologists as per your hair type and hair growth to help achieve desired results. Along with this, they are performed by trained professionals under the virtual supervision of our dermatologists.

There you go! Now that you are an armchair expert on hair anatomy with in-depth understanding of the structure of hair and how it grows, why don’t you give our LHR (laser hair reduction) treatment a try? Check out our pricing plans here: https://skinnsi.in/laser-hair-removal. ( P.S - we have super-affordable EMI options too!)

See you onboard! 😁