STUDY OF HAIR

Press, Volume C, Issue 29633, 2 October 1961, Page 2

STUDY OF HAIR

Scientific Approach Men and women have prob«Wjr worried over the condition of their hair—or its distressing tendency to disappear from the male cranium—for as long as they have worried about anything. But it was only quite recently, said science correspondent, Nick Lloyd, in the 8.8. C. General Overseas Service programme, “Science and Industry,'’ that a scientific approach had been made to the problem* of hair. Today an evec-locreasing number of firms interested in cosmetics were engaging scientists to do research, and the basic truth with which they began on the study of a complicated subject was that we are all dead from the scalp up. “Hair is simply a rod of dead cells pushed up by a livipg root" “The principal material of these cell* is keratin—found ,

also in wool nail, hoof, beak, skin and teeth,” said Lloyd. But although scientists knew that keratin was “a fibrous protein which exists in coiled and straightened form, exhibiting unique elastic qualities,” and had a reasonably clear picture of its properties, they were still not sure of the difference between keratin in wool and in hair, and were tar from having the complete picture. Angle From Scalp “But the scientist does know why some hair is curly and some straight. It is a matter of the angle at which it grows out of the scalp. When hair cells are formed in the root they are in a plastic state and harden as they come out of their little pouch in the skin. “If the pouch points straight up, the emerging hair rod will harden all round at the same time and be straight. But if the pouch points at the outside world at a sharp angle to the scalp the hair rod will harden on the exposed top side, before it hardens on the bottom. Result: curly hair.” It was one of the mysteries of hair, Lloyd said, that although apparently dead, it could regain its lustre in a few days alter being damaged by over-enthueiaetic bleaching or washing. The secret probably lay in sebum, the natural hair lubricant secreted by a tiny gland in every hair root A chemist beading the research team of one big international company had recently broken down sebum into some of its basic constituents, and was at present busy trying to prove whether he had in fact found the fraction responsible for restoring lustre to the hair.