Do Hair and Nails Keep Growing After Death?

It is one of the most repeated facts about death. It is also not true. This article explains why hair and nails seem to grow after death, and why they do not.

Do hair and nails grow after death?

No. A 2007 article in the BMJ, by Rachel Vreeman and Aaron Carroll, reviewed this belief along with six other medical myths. They report that real hair and nail growth requires complex hormonal regulation, and that the regulation stops at death. NPR’s summary of the article adds that growth cannot continue without the nutrients a beating heart delivers.

What does growth need?

Living cells that keep dividing. Live Science reports that fingernails grow about 0.1 millimeter a day in life, and that growing them takes glucose, a simple sugar that fuels the body. After death there is no more glucose, so skin, hair, and nail cells no longer produce new cells.

Why do they look longer, then?

Because the skin shrinks. The BMJ authors explain that after death the body dries out, and the skin around the nails and hair can pull back. That exposes more of the nail or hair that was already there. The contrast between the shrunken soft tissue and the nail makes it look as if the nail grew. They describe it as an optical illusion. The forensic anthropologist William Maples, whom they cite, described it the same way. Pathologist Judy Melinek told Reader’s Digest that the drying of the scalp and the skin of the hands and feet exposes more hair and nail underneath.

Snopes adds a point about how people think. We are used to nails and hair getting longer, not hands and feet getting smaller, so we read the change as growth.

Where did the myth come from?

Partly from stories. The BMJ authors note that the novel All Quiet on the Western Front describes a friend’s nails growing in corkscrews after burial, and that comedian Johnny Carson made a joke about it. Snopes points to the 1959 film The Tingler, in which a pathologist character says nails and hair grow after death. Without knowing that skin retracts, people could easily conclude the dead were still growing.

Is there any truth in it?

Not for every part of the body at the same moment, and BBC Science Focus says that leaves a little truth in the story. But it still calls the idea of long, curling nails and hair growing inside a coffin a myth.

Where can I learn more?

See What Happens to Your Body After You Die? and Rigor Mortis, Livor Mortis, and Algor Mortis.