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Hair is a Four Letter Word When it Grows in All the Wrong Places!

Very few people are completely satisfied with where and why stray hairs grow on their body. All of us cut, tweeze, bleach, shave, clip, wax, and thread the unwanted hairs off our bodies. To help you understand why these hairs grow where you don't want them, we need to start with some new words to add to your vocabulary.

Epidermis – epi- is a medical prefix meaning above or on top of, so the epi-dermis is the outer covering of the body that lies on top of the dermis or true skin. The epidermis has three structures – skin, sebum and hair follicles. Some people think nails are part of this also but we're not going to be talking about nails.

Papilla – this is a medical term meaning projectile shape. You have papillae (plural form of papilla) on your tongue but they do not grow hair. They just stick up or project above the tongue. You also have some finger-like projections in your intestines that have a papillary shape but they don't grow hair either. This term is not exclusive to the epidermis.

Matrix or Germinative Cells – both of these terms refer to tissue that divides and produces new tissue. They are sometimes used interchangeably so you may see one on one drawing and the other on another. In terms of the epidermis, these are the cells located in the bottom of each part of the epidermis and their only function in life is to dive and produce more skin, sebum, or hair.

Pilo-Sebaceous Unit – this refers to the hair follicle (the pilo part) and the sebaceous glands that produce the oil for the health of the epidermis part of your skin. The hair follicle extends from the sebaceous glands down into the dermis and the top of the hair follicle is just below the pore opening of the sebaceous glands. Once the hair leaves the hair follicle, it continues through the oil (sebum) in the pore to the outside world. If it gets caught in the pore and does not continue out of the pore, it is an ingrown hair.

During pregnancy, as the epidermis is formed, the number of hair follicle cells you're ever going to have are formed. This is between 700 - 1000 per square inch all over your body. Now, most of these never produce a noticeable hair but there is the potential for you to have a thick coat of hair just as all other mammals – cats, dogs, horses, cows, etc.

Throughout your lifetime, hair follicle cells produce very fine hairs that are mostly invisible to the naked eye. The obvious exceptions are eyebrows, eyelashes, hair on top of the head, hair inside the ears and hairs inside the nose. Some young children also have a fine covering of peach fuzz hairs on their body as well, that may or may not dissappear during childhood. And, more hairs develop on the body during the adolescent growth period. (This is when the hormones are raging through their bodies and it's kind of a toss-up as to who will survive adolescence – them or us.)

After adolescence, both sexes have underarm hair, called 'axillary', meaning underarm, pubic or genital hair, forearm hair (from elbow to wrist), and hair on the calf of the leg from knee to ankle. Males develop beard, neck and mustache hairs, body hairs both front and back plus upper arm hair (from elbow to shoulder) and thigh hair (from knee to groin). The quantity of hair can vary from male to male but all males develop hair in these areas. Females may develop a little facial hair on the corners of the upper lip and maybe a few hairs around the breast or some thigh hairs but essentially females past puberty do not develop very much in the way of body hair.

Any hormone change or shift during one's life can possibly produce some new and most likely unwanted hair growth. This is more common for females than males. A good example is someone selecting oral contraceptive pills to control fertility. Sometimes females will also get some unwanted facial or body hair as a result. Then, you have to chose between that particular birth control technique and possibly growing more hair. Or, you can switch to a barrier method and have the hair growth stop and possibly even regress.

During pregnancy, it is common for some unwanted facial and/or body hair to show up as well. This is because the hormone levels increase to produce the necessary cellular division and development of the fetus. This type of growth is called hyperplasia which means increased growth by increasing the number of cells in the various body parts of the fetus. This increased hormone level can also affect the mom-to-be. This hair can also decrease after pregnancy and maybe it won't. There's no absolute rule.

As we all approach middle age and our body's metabolism decreases, a situation that starts at the end of adolescence, we start to notice we can't do things as well as we could when we were 18, for example.

Hormone production is part of basal metabolism. As basal metabolism slows down, hormone production slows and this changes the hormone balance in the body. We do not become abnormal in this respect but there are enough changes in these levels that hair can start to show up in new places such as the ears of men and stop growing in other places such as the calf of the leg or axilla or pubic area on both sexes.

Another place where women can begin to grow these unwanted strays is on the face. This can be a small nuisance or a serious problem depending on the quantity of hair that shows up.

If you have an underactive thyroid, you might not have a lot of body hair. Then, when you take the medication to correct the underactive thyroid, you may end up with more hair than before.

Anytime you take a hormone, there is the possibility you can experience a change in hair growth. It may be one you like such as more hair on top of your head or one you're not so fond of such as chin hairs.

Only hormones cause hair to grow. So that means that tweezing, waxing, cutting, etc., do not cause new hairs to grow. What happens is, you have the beginnings of hair growth activity you do not want so you decide to tweeze or wax it. Then, when the replacement hairs come in, if they are darker, you think the tweezing or waxing did it. It didn't. Had you left them alone, they would have turned darker anyway under the hormone influence that started the growth.

Most unwanted hair is not the product of abnormal hormone levels in the body. Even though you may have hairs on your chin and that is not the usual place for women to have hair, that does not mean you need to be rushed to an endocrinologist for a complete analysis. There are three major factors that affect whether or not an individual hair follicle converts from peach fuzz status (no color or length, almost invisible to the naked eye) to terminal status (having color and/or length and noticeable to the naked eye). These are: 1) the hair growing potential on various parts of the body of either sex, 2)your ethnic or genetic history and 3) the susceptibility of an individual follicle to your normal circulating hormones. This is how you can end up with just one hair growing in a location or several. So you can have 5-10-15 hairs at the corners of your mouth on your upper lip and yet not have an abnormal amount of free testosterone (the hormone responsible for hair follicle development) to identify via a lab test. Unless you have a significant growth of facial hair on your chin, neck or beard, you will test as "normal" and have spent money you could have spent on hair removal.