Hair follicle tests are some of the most effective ways to catch people when it comes to drug use.
Since you’ve found this article, you’re probably wondering if you’re going to be one of them. The question, Can a hair follicle test go back 6 months? is common and worth understanding properly before taking the test.
If you’re about to undergo screening yourself, you might be trying to remember what your recent history with drugs looks like and what the test is likely to reveal. Read on for some helpful details and discover why there’s no need to worry.
Can a Hair Follicle Test Go back 6 Months?
The foundation of hair follicle drug tests is that they’re particularly effective at finding evidence of drug use. While other methods can only detect recent use, hair testing can uncover use much further back in time. Drug metabolites leave the blood within a matter of hours, for example, so they’re not much help.
Drug detection tests simply look for evidence of drug use within our bodies, which means they’re designed to look for certain things. In the case of hair follicle drug tests, they’re screening for many different drug metabolites that become trapped in your hair each time you indulge. Through a peculiar quirk of fate, it just so happens that the way our hair grows is ideal for storing these drug metabolites long-term.
How Does a Hair Follicle Test Work?
Chemicals enter our bodies from the food we eat and what we drink or are created through natural processes. When we take drugs, the various chosen chemicals flood our system and are dealt with in much the same way as any chemical foreign to the body. They’re treated as toxins, eventually filtered from our system and removed.
While the chemicals circulate in our body in search of receptors in our brain, they get everywhere else, too, including your hair sample. Drug use isn’t exact in its application; we simply choose a method of ingress and let the drug and our body do the rest. This method of flooding our system and crossing our fingers allows drug metabolites to find themselves in most of our cells through passive diffusion.
The cells responsible for hair growth are no different, except drug metabolites get mixed in with the nutrients required to power the process of follicle creation. This means each hair follicle contains the drug metabolites that were in your system at the time of drug use. The process of hair growth is well understood and serves as a perfect platform for drug detection.
How Long Do Drug Metabolites Stay in Hair?
The length of time drug metabolites can be found in hair follicles varies depending on a few factors.
Drug metabolites are minute and become fully encased within the core of the hair follicle itself, meaning they’re more or less safe from normal outside influence. Whether they can be detected depends on everything from the thickness of your hair and UV exposure to the level of your drug use.
In other words, due to a range of external influences, the length of time they’re detectable will vary.
A common rule of thumb is that a drug metabolite will stay within your hair for at least ninety days. Test examiners usually cut a lock of hair no longer than 1.5 inches for this reason, as that’s generally the length of time it takes for the hair to grow that long. However, there’s no reason traces of drugs can’t be detected within a hair sample double or even triple that age.
Drug tests must work to an agreed-upon industry standard. Scientific methods often work off a basis of common ground so that results are more easily quantifiable and understood. So, while it’s uncommon for tests to scrutinize the full extent of the history that’s potentially available, it doesn’t mean doing so would be impossible.
Concerning Hair Samples
Drug metabolites won’t show up in a hair follicle drug test result until a few days of passing hair drug test. This means a hair sample taken from somebody after they’ve recently taken drugs won’t show any evidence of it, as hair is slow to grow.
Otherwise, if you’re a regular user, the sample you provide will almost certainly contain all the evidence required to form a positive result. These results are often extensive and detail everything from the type of drug used to the frequency of use and when it was taken. Suffice it to say that if you don’t take steps to strip the metabolites from your hair, you’re going to have some explaining to do.
A Reliable Detox Shampoo
The complexities of hair sample drug testing aren’t necessarily important to know or even to understand so long as you’re aware of how to beat the test. Fortunately, passing a hair follicle test is as simple as removing the evidence from your hair. This is where Mike’s Macujo Method comes in.
Regular shampoos don’t permeate hair follicles to reach drug metabolites, and neither does anything else if you want to avoid the bleach hair look. Our products do, so getting the hair follicle test results you need is as simple as washing your hair with one of our hair-cleansing shampoos.
Rather than worrying endlessly about what’ll happen if you fail the test, trust in us like so many thousands of people before you. This is one problem with a simple solution. If only everything were so easy, huh?
Mike’s Macujo Method for Easy Hair Cleansing
We’re in the business of helping people with their backs against the wall. We don’t believe judging what people do in their free time is ethical, and we have developed products to ensure their choices don’t negatively affect their lives. Life is hard enough without having to deal with an invasion of privacy like a drug test.
If this article helped you answer the question, “Can a hair follicle test go back 6 months?” then we’re happy to have helped. If you have other questions regarding drug detection or hair tests in general, we’re here for you!