Hair Growth Vs. Length Retention — What’s The Difference?

To understand hair growth, you need to first understand the stages your mane goes through while growing out. Distributed into 3 stages:

• Anagen is the growth stage that lasts anywhere between 2 to 6 years.
• This is followed by a transitional called the Catagen which lasts about 10 days.
• The final stage is Telogen, which is usually referred to as the resting phase. If you notice white bulbs on the roots of pulled out hair, they belong to the Telogen stage. The natural speed of hair growth is usually half an inch a month — which leads to 6 inches in a year. This is largely affected by race and genetics, which also dictates the normal amount of hair loss for a person — 50 to 100 hair strands each day.

Practically speaking, it is impossible to make your hair grow faster than the speed it will naturally do. Your strands tend to grow with different speeds, so it might seem like your hair's not growing any longer.

Simply put, length retention is nothing but maintaining your existing hair length by taking proper care and keeping breakage to a minimum. Length retention, unlike hair growth, can be controlled by you in easy ways. Also, while you cannot increase the number of strands on your head, keeping your tresses healthy will make them look fuller. Split ends can arrest hair growth or cause difficulty in brushing leading to breakage and loss of length. Regular trims remove split ends which in turn help maintain the health of your hair. Going easy on your tresses with less styling, carefully conditioning it every time you wash your hair and indulging in keratin treatments once or twice a month also help with length retention! Main image courtesy: @deepikapadukone