Asians tend to have a straighter, thicker hair, and one of the main causes of this is genetics. You either born with it or you don't; there is no way to modify it. The only ways to alter your hair are with a flat iron or a perm. These alternatives are not always the most beneficial and healthy for your hair.
According to a talk presented here last week at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics, a single genetic variant may explain why East Asians have thicker hair fibers than other populations. The discovery is part of a wave of newly found genes that determine what individuals look like.
The average diameter, or thickness, of Asian hair is from 80 to 120 µm, compared to 65 µm in Caucasian hair and 55 µm in Black hair. The average diameter of Hispanic/Latino hair tends to fall between that of Asian and Caucasian. Caucasians have the highest hair density among the ethnicities studied.
Asian hair: Usually straight, Asian hair ranges from dark brown to black and grows perpendicular to a person's scalp. At . 55 inches per month, this is the fastest growing type of hair. Asian strands are round, with a lower density than African or Caucasian hair.
While Asian hair tends to be more coarse than other types, those of Asian descent can still experience thinning hair. Androgenetic alopecia and female pattern hair loss are common types of hair loss among Asian populations.
Caucasian hair usually appears thicker since it is more difficult to see through the scalp than other ethnic hair types. However, Asian hair is the thickest and coarsest hair of any ethnic group.
More than 90% of Han Chinese, 70% of Japanese and Thai people, and 60% to 90% of Native Americans carry the “thick hair" version of the gene. Meanwhile it's almost nonexistent in people of African and European descent.
Middle Eastern, South Asian, South American, and Native American. These varying races have something in common– thick hair.
The reason Asian hair tends to be thicker is that it has around 10 layers of cuticles. Cuticles are the small areas around the inner protein structure of your hair–they are there to protect those proteins.
Many Asians have naturally straight hair, but there is a significant group of us who do have naturally curly or wavy hair! However, because it's the norm to see straight and sleek hair, curly haired boys and girls tend to think that their hair is some kind of unruly straight hair that isn't behaving.
There are racial differences, however, in the incidence of male pattern baldness. The highest rates are found among Caucasians, followed by Afro-Caribbeans. Chinese and Japanese men have the lowest rates. For some unknown reason, this form of hair loss is does not occur among Native Americans.
Asian and black skin has thicker and more compact dermis than white skin, with the thickness being proportional to the degree of pigmentation. This likely contributes to the lower incidence of facial rhytides in Asians and blacks.
Sweden. Livings standards, healthy lifestyles, geography, and diet are the primary factors why people in Sweden have the healthiest and beautiful hair.
Most people of East Asian descent have thick, straight hair. This corresponds with a SNP (rs3827760) in the EDAR gene which is involved in hair follicle development. The ancestral allele of this SNP is the A-allele. The G-allele is the newly derived allele that leads to the thick, straight hair.
Traditionally, Asians have been thought to age more gracefully than Caucasians. The resistance to aging in the Asian patient was credited to the thicker dermis of Asian skin that contains greater collagen and the darker pigment that protects against photoaging.
On average, Asians shed fewer hairs a day but there is evidence that Asian women have an increased likelihood of experiencing more overall thinning hair than their Caucasian or Afro-Caribbean counterparts.
The cuticle is the outer layer that protects the individual hair. The many layers on an Asian hair are also more dense and wider and thicker than on Caucasian hair. That gives the hair an illusion of being really shiny and silky.
“It is usually dark brown or black, has the thickest diameter of any of the ethnic groups and, moreover, is one of the strongest types of hair, with a capacity to grow to a greater length than that of other races - often over 40 inches,” he writes.
In Korea, people like to wash their hair every day because of environmental pollution (fine dust, gas emissions, etc). Whereas people in America generally tend to wash hair every 2-3 days due to the common perception that it's much healthier for your hair.
Individuals of African ancestry, for example, are more likely to have curly hair due to the oval shape of their hair follicles. Additionally, the Keratin Associated Protein (KAP) cluster genes, responsible for the structure of keratin fibers, have been found to have variations in many African populations.
H. Harris, publishing in the British Journal of Dermatology in 1947, wrote American Indians have the least body hair, Chinese and black people have little body hair, white people have more body hair than black people and Ainu have the most body hair.
Japan, Spain and Sweden are widely known for having people with healthy hair, but there are also other countries like India, France and Russia that are also known for helping people keep their hair natural and not messing with any artificial coloring.
Genetic studies found that hair thickness in Asian populations is linked to genetic variations. Fujimoto et al observed a correlation between a nonsynonymous single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in ectodysplasin A receptor (EDAR) gene and hair thickness in Asians in a genome-wide analysis.
In straight type, thin hair was judged most attractive, whereas in wavy type, hair with mean diameter received the highest attractiveness judgments. In conclusion, there was considerable variation in age, health and attractiveness perception of hair with regard to effects of hair diameter, type, and color.