What is a hair whorl?
The hair whorl is the way that the hairs on our head grow across your head from a single point at the back of your skull. Hair whorls can develop clockwise or counter clockwise (see here) in the USA counterclockwise hair whorls are very rare.
In people with short, straight hair, a single whorl is usually fairly obvious. Clockwise whorls are most common; estimates of the frequency of clockwise whorls range from 51 percent in Japan (Klar 2009) to 65 percent of undergraduate psychology students in the United Kingdom (Annett 1985), 69 percent of Nigerians (Ucheya and Igweh 2005), 74 percent of German schoolboys (Bernstein 1925), 81 percent of students in the United States (Lauterbach and Knight 1927), 92 percent of the "general population" in Maryland (Klar 2003), and 94 percent of newborns in the United States (Wunderlick and Heerema 1975)Counter clockwise whorls go with left handedness, and left handedness, like hair whorls, varies between countries. Left handedness is related to mirror MZ twinning. So are people who are not twins but have counter clockwise hair whorls womb twin survivors? I wonder.
The double hair whorl - what causes that?
The double hair whorl is more common among twins than among singletons.
An article in the Journal of investigative dermatology, no less, described an unusual case of MZ twins, who had different hair whorl patterns.
It seems possible to me that the MZ twin with the double hair whorl had a monzygous twin of his own, lost a long time before birth. These twins did not share a placenta, so the zygote split apart very soon after conception. Over the next few days one of these could have split again, but only one twin made it to birth. Useless therefore to say that this is a genetic effect, when it mechanical - to do with the splitting of the zygote.
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| Very clear with short dark hair |
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| Not so clear on longer grey hair ( this is mine) |
Now research has shown that "double crowns" go with left-handedness, but I am very strongly right handed, so what about that? Well I do think I had an identical twin, lost very early, who never got off the ground but left her mark on my head! It is the MZ twinning in my intrauterine life that has created the double whorl on my head.
That's my theory, at least for the moment.........
Any thoughts, anyone?
This is pretty interesting. I'm left handed, and have something resembling 2 hair whorls. My younger brother is RH, and definately has 2. Our grandad was a LH twin (his sister was RH). I wonder if this is all linked? I've always felt as if I shoud have had a twin- I wonder if my brother should have had one too?
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this I of course had to look at my whorl. (-: I knew where it was but somehow it's not very round and 'only' one. When I looked right it's clockwise, while it's 'supposed' to be counter clockwise because I'm left handed.
ReplyDeleteWe have 6 members of the family .. Mom & 2 kids have double crowns and are all RH
ReplyDeleteI am left handed and have a double crown. What is very strange is I have always felt I was a twin. Interesting but not really prooven to be a fact.
ReplyDeleteI use my right hand but have long suspected maybe I'm not entirely right handed. I have three kids, one of whom is left handed. I and all three kids have double crowns. Mine both seem to go counterclockwise. My kids' go in opposite directions.
ReplyDeleteI have two hair whorls. The one on my right side goes counterclockwise and the one on my left side goes clockwise.
ReplyDeleteNot much available on the net on having two hair whorls going in opposite directions. Does anybody else have same?
My soon to be 2 year old has that. Each going in the opposite direction and so far he's right handed. But his dad is an identical twin and right handed while his uncle is left handed !! 😊
DeleteMy daughter has this. When I had a very early scan they detected two areas in my womb that looked like a developing foetus, but it was too early to be sure as heartbeats couldn't be detected. I was told to come back for another scan in a week. I went back and one of the suspected foetuses had disappeared, most probably absorbed back into the body or possibly the other foetus, which now had a heart beat. My daughter was born with a double crown, one clockwise and one anti clockwise. I will always believe she was a twin.
DeleteI recently discovered at age 39 that I had another crown that had been covered up my entire life. They do go in opposite directions. As a result of the one being covered up, I have had to deal with some very strange side effects...my scalp had hair literally stuck to it and my hair was “weaving” itself. I have now lost 3/4 of my beautiful auburn hair, and now I’m dealing with a follicle issue that has split my auburn hair into one black and one red hair growing out of a single follicle in opposite directions. It has been a nightmare. I never was able to balance my crown chakra, and now I know why. I had all that negative energy literally stuck to my head. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve gone thru since June, and now it’s September. I pray this “ process “ is over soon bc I’m about to shave my head and start over!
DeleteMy 12 yr old son has dbl counterclockwise whorl. Hair stylist says 'oh, he was supposed top be a twin' .... my pregnancy was very rough and bedridden from 4 months on, kept going into early labor and they gave me lots of shots to stop labor. My biological father was a twin, so this article is intriguing. Wish the was a way to know!
ReplyDelete