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Growth and length retention are two different numbers, and a ruler tells them apart: about one centimetre a month is what the root adds, while what you keep depends on everything that touches the strand between trims. This episode gives you the monthly count that separates the two.
It follows the research: the two-to-eight-year growth phase, the study of twenty-two hundred adults across twenty-four ethnic groups, and the Cape Town finding that daily combing can cost Afro hair the equivalent of a haircut. The Johannesburg numbers show combing damage rising with every stroke - at four hundred eighty strokes, worse than frequent braiding - and the care list that protects length: fewer strokes, fewer installations, less heat, trimmed ends, a weekly wash, silk at night, coconut oil around the wash. The notebook closes it: one place on your head, measured straight and dry, once a month.
