Education

Taking the Plunge into Trichology | Mark Blake

May 01, 2024

Trichology has never been so in demand. Considering that 50% of people have some form of hair loss or thinning hair, every salon should have a thinning hair expert in the same way they have a colour specialist. I really believe this is the biggest untapped market in hairdressing, and it presents a business opportunity like no other.

Depending on where you train, gaining a trichology qualification can take up to two years. Courses are available through The Institute of Trichologists or TrichoCare. I trained with the former, and it’s the best move I’ve ever made.

Before you take the plunge however, you might want to arm yourself with some trichology facts and figures to get you off the starting block:

Hair can weigh 12-18% more when it’s wet, and wet hair can stretch 30% longer than dry hair.
The entire body has a total of approximately five million hair follicles.

We’re born with all of our hair follicles and we don’t develop any more as we age.

Red heads have approximately 90,000 follicles, blondes 150,000 follicles and brunettes 100,000-110,000.
Hair is the second most prolific cell producer in the body after bone marrow. This means the cells in the follicle are very active metabolically and require a lot of energy for optimum hair growth. To put this into context, you grow between 0.3mm – 0.5mm of hair a day and you have between 100,000 – 150,000 hairs on your head. If all these individual hairs were combined together, you would grow around 36 meters of hair a day – that’s 1Km a month!

It takes around 160 calories to grow one gram of hair, which is equivalent to a 35-minute walk or a 22-minute aerobics class.
When you start a diet, you may experience hair shedding around two months later. This may last for around six months, but it can be longer depending on how restrictive the diet is. Eating a well-balanced diet with the recommended levels of vitamins and minerals may help to reduce hair loss naturally.

It’s thought that most hairbrushes contain around 3500 colonies of bacteria per square inch! Ideally, you should be advising clients to wash their hairbrush once a week, however most people could likely get away with washing it once a month.
After Covid, women were five times more likely to lose hair than men.

The UK creates around 6.5 million kilograms of human hair waste a year.

Studies have shown that grey hair grows slightly faster and thicker than standard pigmented hair
Men statistically recede on the right side more than the left. This means male balding is often asymmetrical.