I’m in my late 30s, and I feel like my nose hair has gotten longer and my ears have started having random hairs growing. Maybe they’ve always been there but I feel like I would have been aware of them earlier. I’m fortunate that I still have a full head of hair, but obviously some individuals bald as they get older. Why the different trends?
In: 25
Mostly it comes down to genetics being messy and no gene having a specific role. Genetics is literally just a bunch of goo randomly changing and whatever happens to work fairly well stays around.
As a result of this, there are many cases where one gene will control an important factor like the amount of energy being pumped into reproduction, but it will also control other relatively unrelated things like the amount of hair grown in your nose.
So as you get older and you are no longer pumping as much of your energy into trying to make babies, you also happened to go through other changes that are not directly related to making babies. Like developing thick bushes of nose hair.
As people age, their body’s hormone levels change. Some hormones can make hair in the nose and ears grow more, while others can cause hair on the head to recede. It’s just the way our bodies respond to these hormonal shifts as we get older.
I vaguely remember high school anatomy class teaching me that some hairs are programmed to grow a bit and then fall out to start over (eyelashes, eyebrows, nose hair, etc.) while some hairs are programmed to grow indefinitely (hair on your head). Sometimes as we age, some hairs decide to switch programs and grow much much longer than they used to.
This might not be 100% correct but I think it’s on the right track.
Male pattern baldness is caused by a combination of testosterone (or really testosterone precursor hormones) Wich is toxic to hair follicle cells, combined with poor circulation that develops in many people as they age, stopping repair cells from traveling to effected areas.
That’s why alcohol use/nicotine use causes baldness, because they’re both vasoconstrictors that stop blood flow.
Also in my late 30s. When I was younger it was face and chest. Now I gotta trim my nose, ears, eyebrows, and all around my neck. Otherwise, almost all of said hair just mentioned will try to connect.
I think the follicles on our heads decide to pack up and move to a new town.
Testosterone causes body hair to increase and scalp hair to decrease (if genetically prone) The more years of testosterone the more it happens.
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