Do hair grow when someone is dead ?

[theblackalchemist]

here's a simple straightfoward question

please provide me with info if you have more

[Boerseun]

Contrary to popular belief, no. If there's no blood circulating, the follicle will die and the hair will stop growing. So you might say that hair stops growth the moment the heart stops. Nails, too.

 

Check Livescience for more, there's a link on the front page with info on these kinda things...

[Turtle]

The answer is no, hair and nails don't grow after death. However the skin surrounding hair and nails does contract after death which gives the appearance that growth has occured. I'm dead serious.;) :evil:

[Drip Curl Magic]

Super weird.

[moo]

Lol, why is this a poll?

 

If we can change facts by voting, I want a longevity poll... :hihi:

 

I actually had a 4th grade teacher that taught us it does happen, and cited a story about a poet that (alledgedly) buried his sweetheart with some sad poems he wrote for the occasion. Later he decided to get them back, exhumed the body and found the casket full of her flowing tresses, which inspired him to write more poems about her.

 

But in retrospect, that teacher had several strange ideas...

 

moo

[theblackalchemist]

Actually hair does grow when some one dies

though the root is cut of all nutrition but it uses its stored nutrition

it grows till it uses up all the fuel

( sorry i found this info a little late )

[hallenrm]

Actually hair does grow when some one dies

though the root is cut of all nutrition but it uses its stored nutrition

it grows till it uses up all the fuel

( sorry i found this info a little late )

 

That indeed leads to a very interesting question: Do all the cells of a living organism die at the moment of its death. ;) :D :doh:

[Buffy]

The answer is no, hair and nails don't grow after death. However the skin surrounding hair and nails does contract after death which gives the appearance that growth has occured. I'm dead serious.:D ;)

Confirmed by Grissom on a CSI episode so it must be true...

 

I really wanna know, :doh:

Buffy

[moo]

But... but... what about vampires (they're already dead, right?). :)

 

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=994089

Excerpt: "Really classic European vampire mythology makes some amount beard growth a guaranteed event, since the way suspected vampires were discovered in olden times was to dig a body up and look for evidence of fingernail and hair growth after death."

 

:lol: :doh: ;)

 

moo

[ronthepon]

That indeed leads to a very interesting question: Do all the cells of a living organism die at the moment of its death. :doh: ;) :shrug:

If that is a valid question, then how do you define death?

 

Anyway, not all cells die with the organism's death. You'd expect the RBCs, at a minimum, to remain alive for atleast five minutes after someone's head is suddenly cut off.

[hallenrm]

If that is a valid question, then how do you define death?

 

That's indeed the catch! :D

[lemit]

I had always heard very consistent folk tales related by somebody or other whose cousin had actually seen it that hair and nails continue to grow after death. Then when I started reading books on forensic science, I found the same consistency in the belief that hair and nails do not grow after death. Considering some of the things I've learned about forensic scientists in the last few years, I'd give about as much credence to the cousin two counties over.

 

Now, individual living cells are a different matter, according to my training in butchering, but that's been too long ago for me to remember exactly what I learned then. I would guess cells live a while without fresh oxygen the way the whole body does, but that may be a little too much extrapolation.

 

In rereading this, I see that I've taken quite a few words to say "I don't know." Sorry about that.

 

--lemit

[freeztar]

Snopes seems to agree with Turtle's explanation (or vice versa). It makes sense to me.

 

snopes.com: Fingernails Grow After Death

[lemit]

I've wondered about this more than a normal, healthy person would.

 

The loss of blood pressure and flow at death would probably mean that if there is a postmortem mechanism to provide blood to any part of the body, that mechanism would certainly not be feeding blood to hair and nails. It would be sending it to the vital organs. If there is no such mechanism, it still holds that what little blood is located in the area of the hair follicles and nail roots would probably be used up by cells more desperate for the little remaining oxygen and closer to the greater volume of remaining blood.

 

I think, then, that I have to come down on the side of no growth after death. To think otherwise would suggest that there is a, shall we say, Zombie physiology.

 

(Wow! I think I just wrote the beginning of a really bad movie!)

 

--lemit

[carlton-temple]

In France, unfortunately, its frowned upon to go round digging people up just to see if they need a hair cut, so there is not much data available here on the subject. Incidentally, our village cemetery is locked after dark for some reason, presumably "things" have happened in the past.

[lemit]

In France, unfortunately, its frowned upon to go round digging people up just to see if they need a hair cut, so there is not much data available here on the subject. Incidentally, our village cemetery is locked after dark for some reason, presumably "things" have happened in the past.

 

It's pretty much the same in the U.S., which is why the rumors have grown as wildly as the hair and nails they purportedly describe. People haven't had the chance to rigorously test the theory.

 

--lemit