...not gone tomorrow, though. My understanding is that hair, once it's out of the follicle, is finished, so to speak. So if you're seeing it, it can't be changed, except the exterior of the shaft can have slight changes made to it. I'm asking about this because my horsie friends are convinced that feeding Black-oil sunflower seeds (BOSS) will help their horses have shinier coats. Now, I think it possible that a horse's (or any animal) coat may be affected by diet, but if the hair has been clipped and is now growing out, would that be enough time for the BOSS diet to make a change in the hair shaft? That would be a time span of about 2 months.
Charles Livingston
Critical Thinker
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2002
- Messages
- 425
There is a great book similar to Platt's 'Bad astromomy' book called, 'bad medicine'. It describes what you are talking about in regard to people's hair turning white overnight. Cant really happen. YOu are correct, hair is finished once it is out of the follicle, its just dead cells afterall. The diet could affect the portion of the hair that is formed/grown in the follicle after the diet has been introduced, but the hair growing further up the shaft will not change, excepting of course sun bleaching and similar things. For example, if a hair follicle turns grey, say one month after it does, you may have a strand of hair that has pigment near its outer end and is grey down by the root, ie half brown half grey. Sadly, I have more than a few of those.
Rolfe
Adult human female
I'm not sure there's much substance to a lot of this stuff about feeding certain oils to improve the coat. However, it's not quite paranormal - the theory isn't that the hair itself is changed, but that the sebum which is secreted to oil the hair shaft improves in quality with the new oil and makes the coat shine that way.
I'm still not convinced there's a real effect there, though. I suspect the best effects come from regular energetic grooming, which clears out the dead hairs and distributes the sebum down the hair regularly and evenly.
Still, it's not so mad as a lot of human beauty products - smear all these vitamins and collagen and stuff on your skin, why don't you? Someone described that as a bit like trying to repair the Forth Bridge by dropping rivets on it from a helicopter.
Rolfe.
I'm still not convinced there's a real effect there, though. I suspect the best effects come from regular energetic grooming, which clears out the dead hairs and distributes the sebum down the hair regularly and evenly.
Still, it's not so mad as a lot of human beauty products - smear all these vitamins and collagen and stuff on your skin, why don't you? Someone described that as a bit like trying to repair the Forth Bridge by dropping rivets on it from a helicopter.
Rolfe.
Rolfe said:
So then it *might* be possible that even a grown-out hair could appear shinier due to the increased oil, or is it that the increased oil improves the hair shaft in the follicle, but not what's already grown out? There used to be a horse next door to me that just had a yukky hair coat. His owner tried everything but his coat continued to be dryish and not lay flat. I had a horse that had a beautiful coat to which I did very little, only brushed enough to make sure he was clean where equipment was going to go. I've not noticed that much changes in hair except in a superficial way. Whether brushed or not, good hair seems to be good and bad hair doesn't improve. I can see that mud and such would make a noticeable difference, but in my very dry climate, the appearance of the hair coat isn't always improved by brushing as brushing increases the static in the hair and then dirt clings to it causing a messier appearance than previously.
Rolfe
Adult human female
Theoretically - sort of like a conditioner, but applied internally. Also theoretically, improved diet might gradually cause the new-growing hair to be of better quailty.popsy said:
But as you say, a lot of that stuff doesn't necessarily seem to work terribly well when you actually try it.
Rolfe.
