Raechele Cochran Gathers, MD How Fast Does Your Hair Grow?
Growing out your hair can seem to take forever. When you’re watching and waiting for your hair to grow, it can seem like it’s taking a ridiculously long time to get to your hair growth goals. All hair grows, just at different rates and at different densities. Is the hair of African Americans any different? How fast does black hair grow?
Black Hair Growth Rates
For most mere mortals, hair grows anywhere from 4 to 6 inches per year. Interestingly, your race does seem to play a role in how fast your hair grows, but this varies, and is not an across the board rule. On average, African hair seems to grow about 4 inches per year, while Asian hair grows about 5.8 inches per year. Caucasian hair seems to grow at a rate between these two.
Keep in mind that black hair will probably grow anywhere between 4 to 6 inches per year. It’s a spectrum; and since African Americans are a mosaic of many different types of people (African, European, and Native American, in many cases), African American hair growth is arguably somewhere in between Asian, Caucasian and African hair growth averages.
Black Hair Growth
Just because your hair grows between 4 to 6 inches per year doesn’t mean that you’ll have that much length retention at the end of a year.
How much length you retain depends on:
- Hair growth rate
- The length of the anagen growth phase (which can be anywhere from 2 to 7 years)
- Hair retention (keeping your ends from snapping, splitting and breaking off)
Hair Growth Factors
Besides your race, your hair growth also depends on age, nutrition and general state of health. How well you care for your hair influences how much length you can retain.
To grow longer hair, you must focus on:
- Improving overall health
- Treating any deficiencies, vitamin D or biotin, for instance.
- Adequate hydration
- Treating ongoing health issues that may cause excessive shedding
- Reducing inflammation on your scalp
Check out these tips on Growing Longer Hair Faster
