Whey protein is not something new and has been available for hundreds of years to individuals who valued the role of a nutritious diet in achieving optimal health. During the last 15-20 years the value of whey protein has become more widely known, especially in the area of sports nutrition. More recently, whey protein has been singled out as a super-star ingredient for other types of products including ones formulated for weight loss, infant nutrition and immune support.

Whey protein is a high quality protein powder from cow's milk. Milk has two proteins: Casein (approximately 80%) and Whey Protein (approximately 20%). Whey protein is more soluble than casein and also has a higher quality rating. It is often referred to as the "Gold Standard" of protein as it is the most nutritious protein available.

There may be a large difference between whey protein concentrate and isolate. Whey protein isolate is the most pure and concentrated form of whey protein available. It contains 90% or more protein and very little (if any) fat and lactose. Whey protein concentrate has anywhere between 29% and 89% protein depending upon the product. As the protein level in whey protein concentrate decreases the amounts of fat and/or lactose usually increase.

• Repair body cells
• Build and repair muscles and bones
• Provide a source of energy
• Control many of the important processes in the body related to metabolism

The body is able to make non-essential amino acids from other amino acids in the body. However, the body is not able to make essential amino acids and the only way to get them is by eating high quality protein foods. Protein sources that contain all of the essential amino acids are called complete proteins. Whey protein is a naturally complete protein.

Protein needs vary by person depending upon age, weight, sex, activity level and overall health. Athletes and individuals with special medical needs often need more protein than the recommended dietary allowance, or RDA.

Adding whey protein to the diet is a great way to jump-start a weight loss program. Whey protein is a key ingredient in numerous weight loss and meal replacement products and whey protein isolate (with no fat or carbohydrates) is often the preferred choice. Studies have found that individuals who combine diets with leucine rich protein foods, like whey protein, and exercise have more lean muscle tissue and they lose more body fat. As they lose fat their metabolic rate increases and they naturally burn more calories each day. Another way that whey protein helps manage weight is by promoting satiety, or a feeling of fullness. One recent study showed that whey protein was superior to casein, the other protein in cow's milk, in promoting satiety.

Milk is a highly nutritious beverage however, it only contains about 1% of whey protein. In order to get all the benefits of whey protein, you (or anyone else) need to take a concentrated whey protein powder like whey protein isolate.

Whey protein is a soluble, very easy to digest protein. It quickly enters the body to provide the important essential amino acids needed to nourish muscles and other body tissues. This is one of the reasons it is a common ingredient in infant formula and protein supplements for medical use.

The amount of hair and where it grows vary with different mammals. The entire body of the dog, the sheep, the cow, and the horse is covered with a hairy coat. The whale and the hippopotamus have only a few hairs. In humans, hair is not found on palms of the hands or the soles of the feet.

The coloration and pattern of coats in animals serve both as a camouflage for protection against enemies and as an allurement to mates. Fine and transparent, human hair is a vestige of our hairier animal forbears, that probably evolved from the scales of reptiles. The adult human body averages five million hairs, of which 100,000 to 150,000 are on the scalp.

Scalp hairs varies tremendously between races, between individuals of same race, and even within an individual. Mongolians have straight hair simply because their scalp hair has the greatest thickness and the roundest cross-section. In Caucasians the hair is more elliptical and slender; in Negroes it is flattened, resulting in kinky curls. Mongolians, both male and female, have much less public, axillary, facial, and body hair than Caucasians. In Caucasians, true blonds typically have more hair (about 140,000 hair) than brunette (about 105,000) or redhead (about 90,000).

Below your skin is the hair root which is enclosed by a sack-like structure called the hair follicle. Tiny blood vessels at the base of the follicle provide nourishment. A nearby gland secretes a mixture of fats (called sebum) which keep the hair shiny and waterproof to some extent. Secretions from some sweat glands also produce a characteristic odor. A dog can differentiate a human being by the typical scent secreted by these glands. Two sets of glands discharge secretions through the skin. while sebaceous, or oil, glands arise from the walls of hair follicles and produce an oil called sebum that lubricates the skin and hair, Sweat glands, embedded in the subcutaneous layer, are scattered over the body, particularly in the palms and soles. Sweat glands produce moisture called perspiration that reaches the skin's surface through the pores and evaporates to cool the body.

At the base of the follicle is the papilla, which is the "hair manufacturing plant." The papilla is fed by the blood-stream which carries nourishment to produce new hair. Male hormones or androgens regulate hair growth. Pubic and axillary (armpit) hair are particularly androgen-sensitive and grow at lower androgen levels than hair on the chest or legs. In boys, most pubic hair is grown by age 15, followed by the development of armpit hair two to three years later. In girls, too, an increase in androgens at puberty triggers growth of pubic and armpit hair. Scalp hair, not directly androgen-responsive, is influenced by local amounts of a testosterone derivative, dihydrotestosterone.

Hair follicles initially form in utero. No new follicles are created after birth, and none are lost in adult life. The first hair to be produced by the fetal hair follicles is Lanugo hair, which is fine, soft, and unpigmented. This is usually shed in about the eighth month of gestation.

Hair is composed of keratin, the same protein that makes up nails and the outer layer of our skin. The part seen rising out of the skin is called hair shaft or strand. Each strand consist of three layers. The outermost protective layer (cuticle) is thin and colorless. The middle layer, or cortex , is the thickest. It provides strength, determines your hair color and whether your hair is straight or curly.

Three types of hair grow on the human body.

The first postnatal hair is vellus hair, which is fine, soft, usually unpigmented, and seldom more than 2 cm long. Vellus hair remains on the so-called hairless regions of the body, such as the forehead and balding scalp.

At puberty, the vellus hair in some areas is replaced by terminal hairs, which are the long hairs that grow on the head and in many people on the body, arms and legs too. They are produced by follicles with sebaceous glands. In people who have inherited a tendency to baldness the hairs in these follicles gradually become thinner and shorter until they look like vellus hairs.

Axillary hair and male facial hair appear about two years after growth of pubic hair begins. Body hair continues to develop long after puberty, stimulated by male hormones that paradoxically, also cause terminal hair to be replaced by vellus hair when balding begins.

Lanugo hair This is the hair that develops on an unborn baby. It begins to grow about three months after the baby's conception. The hairs are fine and soft, and they grow all over the baby's body. They all grow at the same rate, so the hairs are the same length. Some prematurely born babies are still covered with these downy hairs. Normally they are shed about four weeks before the baby is due to be born. Hair Growth

Scalp hair fibers grow from 100,000 to 350,000 follicles which are reported to occupy the human scalp; however, not all the follicles are productive.[1] In each producing follicle, the duration of the hair's life cycle is influenced by age, pathology and a wide variety of physiological factors. [1,2] The life cycle is divided into the anagen (active), catagen (transitional) and telogen (resting) phases.

The anagen phase is the period of active hair growth where protein synthesis and keratinization are continuously occurring. In normal subjects, this phase lasts for up to five years, although longer durations have been documented.

The cessation of the anagen phase is characterized by a transitory phase known as catagen. This phase lasts for two to three weeks. Following the catagen phase, the hair enters the telogen or "resting" phase. In normal subjects, telogen hhair is retained within the scalp for up to 12 weeks before the emerging new hair dislodges it from its follicle.

During the anagen phase, protein s thesis is the main distinction of the hair bulb. In the telogen phase, the dermal papilla undergoes renewal. It is at this time that structural characteristics can be modified. The new hair should be identical to its predecessor, but with advancing age, and in some pathological states, a strict copy is not maintained. In these circumstances, the hair may become finer and shorter, modifying the esthetic profile. Since these effects occur over several hair cycles, years may elapse before the affected individual recognizes the difference.

Like skin cells, hair grows and is shed regularly. Shedding anywhere from 50 to 100 hairs per day is considered normal. The average rate of growth is about 1/2 inch a month. It is now known that hair grows fastest in the summer, slowest in the winter, speeds up under heat and friction, but slows down when exposed to cold. Hair grows the best between the ages of 15 to 30. But, hair growth begins to wind down sometime between the ages of 40 and 50. Progressive hair loss begins naturally in both sex about age 50, accelerating in the 70s. About 40 percent of Caucasian men lose hair to some extent by age 35.

The range of different types of hair is enormous, ranging from tight wiry curls to ruler-straight. The color and shape of hair vary too. What accounts for these differences?

The type of hair you have is inherited from your parents. We may look back further, and say that it is determined by the part of the world in which your ancestors originated. It all depends on the race, or mixture of races, from which they came. In the very earliest days of human evolution, three basic racial groups of people seem to have existed on this planet. These spread out across the world and became mixed together. They are especially well mixed in countries where there has been massive immigration, such as the U.S.A. over the last few hundred years.

Scientists have identified three basic types of hair in today's human population, and have related them to these three early races: Asian, Caucasoid and African.

The three types of hair not only look quite different, but the differences in their responses to physical and chemical damage can be remarkable.

Asian These are people from the Orient, for example from China and Japan. Their hair is very straight, and always black in color.

Caucasoid The Caucasoid group is the most 'mongrel' of the three racial groups. Modern Caucasoids are very varied, even though they are descended from the same group of ancestors. They range from the fair-skinned people of north-west Europe to the widely varying peoples of the Indian subcontinent. Their hair may be either wavy or straight, and the diameter varies widely too. The color ranges from black to a pale blond that is almost white, including just about every possible shade in between.

African African people originated in Africa. Their hair is black and tightly curled. It tends to be woolly and dry, and is extremely easily damaged by heat or chemicals.

Hair color

Hair color is determined by melanin from your pigment cells. The more pigment granules there are, and the more tightly packed, the darker the hair.

Two kinds of melanin contribute to hair color. Eumelanin colors hair brown to black, and an iron-rich pigment, pheomelanin colors it yellow-blonde to red. Whether hair is mousy, brown, brunette or black depends on the type and amount of melanin and how densely it's distributed within the hair. For example, deep-black African hair contains closely packed melanin in the cortex, a few in the cuticle. Very dark European hair, quite apart from having more melanin granules than lighter or blonde hair, has more melanin per granule. When pigment-producing cells cease to function, the result is the uncolored white or gray hair.

Looking at a hair through a videomicroscope, we can see that hair is actually translucent. Its various surfaces do not react to light in the same way, nor do they reflect it in precisely the same way. A small proportion (5 to 6%) of available light is reflected by the hhair like a mirror. The rest penetrates the hair shaft, where it is absorbed to a greater or lesser extent by melanins.

The melanin is housed inside granules. These melanin-filled granules are scattered through the cortex of the hair. There is no set pattern and so set amount. This is how nature creates so many variations of haircolor from only one natural substance — melanin. All natural hair colors are created from two types of melanin:

When both eumelanin and pheomelanin mix together inside of one melanin granule, it's called mixed melanin.

The natural color of the hair is decided by:

What type of melanin is in the hair

How much melanin is in the hair

How closely packed or scattered the melanin is within the cortex

The type of melanin and the size of the granules determine whether hair will be black, brown, blonde or red.

The amount of melanin and its distribution determine how dark or light the hair color will be.

Gray hair

Gray hair is one of the most familiar signs of aging. The age when greying starts depends on one's genetic inheritance. But in half of all Caucasoid people, half the hairs on the scalp are grey by the age of 50.

The loss of hair color is due to a gradual fall in melanin production in the hair bulb. If you look at the hairs on a greying head you find a full range of color, from the normal shade through to white along each hair, and also from one hair to another. Usually people notice their first gray hairs near their temples. Then the grayness spreads to the crown, and later to the back of the head.

Rapid graying You have probably heard stories about people who are supposed to have 'gone white overnight' following some terrible shock or grief. Treat these tales with caution! A black hair cannot of itself suddenly turn white. Hairs grow for years with pigment inside them, and since they are 'dead' there is no process by which the melanin throughout a hair can be naturally destroyed rapidly (although it may be bleached by sunlight over many years).

Apparent rapid greying may be due to a selective shedding of pigmented hair in a person who has some gray hairs which are retained. Shedding of this kind usually takes several months, but can happen within a few days. If it does take place quickly the effects can be dramatic, since the person's grey hairs may not have been at all obvious until the darker hairs were lost.

Whether stress or shock can cause this kind of hair loss (known as alopecia areata) is unknown.

Premature graying Very rarely, an individual's hair may begin to turn gray at an unexpectedly early age - before the age of 20 in Caucasoids and before 30 in Africans. In some people the cause is a medical condition. More usually it is due to the presence of a particular gene.

Albinism

Albinism is an inherited condition in which there is little or no pigment in the hair. An albino's hair is startlingly pale, either light yellow or nearly white. Albino skin is also pale, even in African people. Where the condition is severe the eyes lack pigment too, and look pink: albino people often have poor vision.

Acquired color defects

Inflammation in the hair follicle, which can occur in shingles, damages the melanocytes and may lead to loss of hair color. So too may exposure to X-rays, though very rarely a deeper color develops. Occasionally white patches form in the beard after dental treatment.

From straightforward styling to elaborate perms, from a temporary tint to a platinum bleach, all these processes depend on changing part of the structure of hair. The stylists and technicians who have to apply them are expected to have a thorough understanding of hair structure, the hair growth cycle and the continuing care of hair. They need a working knowledge of the disorders of the hair and scalp, the chemistry of hair care products and the ways in which they protect the hair, and the science that underlies the various cosmetic procedures.

Styling hair means temporarily or permanently altering its shape. Setting is different from perming in that there is no chemical reaction in the hair. All that happens is that some of the weak hydrogen bonds are broken by water and then re-form in the newly positioned hair as the water evaporates.

A curl can be produced by setting hair on a former such as a curler or roller - that is, allowing wet hair to dry while twisted round the former. (Fixing wet hair into pin curls has a similar effect.) After the curlers or rollers have been removed the hair holds its shape until it gets wet again.

In a perfect world, the hair could be left to dry naturally on the curlers or rollers and then combed out with a broad-toothed comb. But the pace and hurry of modern life makes this a luxury that we cannot afford, and the hair dryer has to be used to speed the process up. Heat is a great enemy to hair, however, and that means that dryers must always be used with great care and on a moderate setting.

Softer, looser styles can be created by brushing and blow drying only, without using rollers. The principle is exactly the same as that of the setting process. The only difference is that the hydrogen bonds re-connect to form the style that has been shaped by the brush.

All hair gradually absorbs moisture from the air, and as the hydrogen bonds break it will in time lose its style - especially in damp weather!

The Perm
The strong disulphide linkages in hair are formed when the hair cells harden into keratin in the hair follicle. These are the bonds that keep the hair shaft in shape. In order to change its shape, the disulphide bonds have to be broken down and re-formed into a different pattern. We saw that changes to hydrogen bonds in the setting process are only temporary. Chemical changes to the disulphide bonds are permanent (hence, the PERM).

The first truly permanent waves became available in 1920. The waving lotion was activated by heat from an electrical device. The early models did not have thermostats, and it was difficult to control their temperature.

Early in the 1940s the 'cold wave' was introduced. This was basically the perming process that we use today. The cold wave had many advantages: the unpleasant heat and weight of the old appliances were completely eliminated, and the hair could be waved closer to the scalp.