SST- Ear and Nose Hair for Men

Super Science Thursday.
A new feature will be the SST. A question followed by the best science answers known to mankind. And if I can't find a good answer, I'll just make one up. A new topic will appear each Thursday.

For men-----Why hair will eventually grow out of your nose and ears?

Well actually hair has been in those places all along. Nose hair serves as a filter for the air we breathe in. In a dust storm, we could easily close our mouths. But closing your nostrils is downright hard. So nature built in a little air filter. Ear hair also is designed to keep junk out of the ear canal. Most men just realize that their head holes will become full of hair as they age. We pluck, we trim, we cut, we tweeze, and it just keeps growing back. You can have permanent hair removal done, but most guys won’t. The amount of medical research into ear and nose hair is surprisingly scant, so I’ll just give you my two theories. If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with…..

First theory, the adult body has a certain amount of hair follicles for its entire life. As you age, follicles migrate. Some inner working of the body causes you to lose hair on the top of your head and gravity causes it to migrate south. As it migrates south, it ‘vacations’ in warm, moist places like the nose and the ears. This is similar to going to the beach when you were younger, a wet, warm place to hang out. So the nose and ear are like going to the French Riviera for hair follicles. Only the lucky follicles get to hang out at the beach, until they get attacked by a giant weed eater called a nose hair trimmer. The problem with this theory is that the hair follicles also migrate to your back, which would be more like the dessert. Of course in the US, many old people move to Arizona, Vegas, and Palm Springs. So maybe the hair follicle migration theory makes sense.

Second theory, warm moist areas grow hair better. The nose and the ear are both, so they make fertile area for growing hair. Most plants grow best in warm moist areas, so this makes sense. You can think of back hair as cacti and aloe plants. The warm moist theory postulates hair will always grow in the nose and ears, it just becomes noticeable as we age. It was always present, but our thick head of high school hair distracted people away from focusing on it. Each day our head gets baked in the sun and dries out a little. The warm moist hair just keeps growing along. As we lose hair on our scalp, the hair growing from the nose and ear becomes noticeable. By mid-life, it is far more noticeable because of less competition.

The actual reason of shifting hormone levels isn’t nearly as much fun as making up theories. Any professional research scientist reading this might want to consider writing a grant to study this offensive hair. You can start with my two theories. Until then, I’ll be tweezing away on the forest of hair growing from each nostril.

Some people tweeze, cut, or use miniature weed eaters to attack the hair. A few just let it grow. My grandfather was comfortable enough in himself to just let it go. You reach an age where holding your water till you reach the bathroom is far more important than trimming unsightly hair. Younger people letting it grow can be thought of as ‘nose hair hippies.’