Has anyone EVER seen something like THIS ? ( hair follicle )

[Preston]

Taken with a digital microscope .
I want to know if anyone had something like that on their hair .

 

[The Gardener]

That bulb is part of the follicle that was shed out along with the hair. It's totally normal.

 

[jones89]

omg if I saw that coming out of my head I would be worried. But yea it's totally normal.

 

[cuebald]

I get a bulb on the end of my shed hairs, but nothing anywhere near that big. that's massive. (or is it just a very small hair?)

 

[Preston]

That bulb is part of the follicle that was shed out along with the hair. It's totally normal.

This is NOT the bulb , I've never seen anything like it .
And I've certainly seen LOTS of them with 3 effluviums .

And BTW a dermatologist on another forum said it was a "sebaceous plug " ( best translation I can make , don't know if it's the correct term ) .

So I was wondering if attacking sebum could improve my treatment .

I get a bulb on the end of my shed hairs, but nothing anywhere near that big. that's massive. (or is it just a very small hair?)

Shorter hair yes but a thick and terminal one , that thing is huge .

EDIT : Adding pics of the same hair .

- Underneath that thing is the bulb , here :



- It completely killed the hair :

 

[The Gardener]

I don't believe that sebum can "kill" hair.

 

[Preston]

I don't believe that sebum can "kill" hair.

Well , I've got a problem with that believing part .

Here the evidence suggests otherwise . The root is very thin (while the rest is thick ) and looks like a freakin labyrinth , plus the fiber looks clearly damaged .
And I've seen this with other hairs that had hard sebum on it .

 

[The Gardener]

I think the "tweaked" hair looks more like the result of a damaged follicle. Damaged either by DHT, or perhaps just random genetic flaws from ageing. I think most of us have had hairs that come out looking tweaked and bent like that on occasion.

I also don't disagree with your doctor calling that bulb a "sebacious plug". It might very well be. I could totally envision a scenario where sebum does build up in the pore, and in the follicle, and perhaps get hard. In fact, I have had facial (beard) hairs that were ingrown within the pore... and when I shaved and the skin was breached, I could literally pull the ingrown hair out, and it looked bent and very similar to the one you display. But.. It wasn't the sebum "killing" a hair.

In a nutshell, I don't disagree with your assertion that the tweaked hair is damaged. I agree.

I just have never heard any viable story where sebum kills hair. In fact, I've read many a piece suggesting that sebum killing hair is a myth.

 

[Ian Curtis]

How big is that thing?

 

[bigentries]

Here the evidence suggests otherwise . The root is very thin (while the rest is thick ) and looks like a freakin labyrinth , plus the fiber looks clearly damaged .

Except from the sebum part I notice that when I pull a hair from my chest the root looks like that.
This are thick, long terminal hairs. And I'm not losing any body hair.