Deep dive
The deep dive starts in the channel and ends at the legal text: the blueprint of the channel below the surface, the protein that cross-links the casting mold, a listing of selenium-bearing enzymes and the exact reach of what EU law puts into words for selenium.
A hair follicle is not an organ with clear outer borders but an infolding: a narrow channel that runs at an angle down from the surface and carries a thickening at its deepest point. Several cell types sit closely together inside that thickening, each with a different task, and their arrangement settles what shape the strand being formed will take.
Looked at from the bottom upward, a fixed order emerges. At the very bottom sits a small cone of connective tissue, threaded with fine blood vessels, which sees to the nutrient supply. Above it comes the layer of dividing cells. Further up follows the sleeve that the next section is about, and only then does the strand proper begin its journey outward.
| Section | Position | Known building material |
|---|---|---|
| Dermal papilla | at the deepest point, threaded with capillaries | connective tissue |
| Layer of dividing cells | directly above it | cells with a high rate of division |
| Inner root sheath | laid in a ring around the strand | trichohyalin |
| Cuticle | outermost layer of the strand | flat, overlapping cornified cells |
| Cortex | beneath it, the largest share of the cross section | keratin filaments |
The order matters because each of these sections firms up at a different moment. What is still soft and pliable at the very bottom has already reached its final consistency a few tenths of a millimeter further up.
The inner root sheath rarely gets much room in accounts of this, even though it dictates the cross section of the finished strand. Its cells hold plenty of trichohyalin, an elongated protein that at first lies about in irregular clumps and is only gradually tied into the cell scaffold.
A family of enzymes makes that connection: the transglutaminases. They join the side arm of a glutamine unit to the side arm of a lysine unit on the neighboring chain. The bond that arises can hardly be undone chemically, and it needs calcium to come about at all. In the inner root sheath it is above all the third variant of this enzyme that has been described.
The result is a rigid tube that firms up earlier than its contents. For as long as the inner strand is still soft, the tube decides what outline it takes on — round, oval or flattened. Further up, shortly before the strand reaches the surface, the sleeve breaks apart again and lets it go.
Unlike many reactions in the body, the cross-linking runs in one direction. Once a bond is tied, it stays until the cell as a whole is broken down or shed. That one-way street is the reason the window in which a cell receives its building blocks is very short and sharply bounded.
Selenium almost never turns up in the body as a free particle. It is put in at a fixed position while a protein chain is being made, by way of a separate, elaborate insertion route that differs from the one used for ordinary amino acids. The proteins that come out of this are called selenoproteins; in humans a two-digit number of them is known.
The listing below names four members that the literature describes in comparatively full detail. None of these names occurs in the authorized wording, and none of them may be read as a statement of effect.
| Protein | Short form | Task described in the literature |
|---|---|---|
| Methionine sulfoxide reductase B1 | MSRB1 | returns an altered form of the building block methionine to its starting state, described among other places on the scaffold protein actin |
| Selenoprotein W | SELENOW | very small protein with a thioredoxin-like fold; its quantity follows intake more visibly than that of other members |
| Thioredoxin reductase 1 | TXNRD1 | puts the carrier molecule thioredoxin back into its starting state after each release of electrons |
| Selenoprotein P | SELENOP | carries selenium through the blood plasma from the liver to other tissues |
Cells that divide at short intervals and put their equipment together anew each time use up more building blocks than resting cells. Where a lot is built, a corresponding amount of repair work comes due — and that is exactly where several of the proteins named above come in. This explains the scientific interest but on its own gives no grounds for any statement about food.
In the European Union, health claims may be used only once they have been reviewed and entered on a list. What gets reviewed each time is the pairing of a nutrient with a subject area, not a product and not a mechanism. For selenium, one wording exists in this subject area, and that wording applies exactly as it stands.
“Selenium contributes to the maintenance of normal hair”.
EU-authorized wording · Regulation (EU) No 432/2012
It refers to the adult population in general and assumes an otherwise adequate supply. It names no enzyme, no cell layer and no span of time.
Three readings are ruled out by that. First, no increase can be derived from the sentence: a higher intake than the usual one is not mentioned in it, and with this trace element in particular the tolerable upper level sits closer to ordinary needs than it does for many others. Second, the sentence does not carry over to other minerals, not even to those found in the same tissue. Third, it does not apply to other subject areas — mood, sleep or concentration are matters of their own with their own review procedures and do not come up here.
Anyone who has read the sections of this page one after another knows the difference between what research describes and what a provider is allowed to write. Allanitium keeps these two levels deliberately apart.
Yes. It is given back here word for word as the list of authorized claims carries it. A rewording would, in legal terms, be a different statement, even if the same thing were meant by it.
Because the content of this trace element depends heavily on where a food was grown. Fixed numbers would feign a precision they do not have. Questions about your own intake belong with a dietitian, a doctor’s office or a pharmacy.
The continuation of an ordinary condition, provided nothing else is lacking. The word expressly does not stand for an increase, a change or a restoration; the sentence does not cover such readings.
The extended edition carries the sections touched on here further, sets two overview tables beside them and gives the authorized wording back in its legal context.
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