Have you ever wondered what causes hair to turn gray? You surely have, everyone probably has at one point or another. Grey hair is even more mysterious when you think about the thirty year old with a full head of gray hair compared against a 45 year old that has no gray hair at all. Well, there is reason for this disparity. It isn’t as mysterious as you may think.
Each strand of hair comprises of two components: the shaft (upper part) and the root (lower part anchored under the skin). The hair root is surrounded by hair follicles. The hair follicle is what is responsible for the growth and characteristics of each hair strand. One of these characteristics is hair coloration.
Hair follicles have cells that produce melanin. This is the same substance that gives color to your skin. Melanin has two forms and each form has its own corresponding color. Eumelanin makes hair dark and plaeomelanin makes hair light. When these two substances mix together, an entire spectrum of hair shades can result.
As people age, the cells in each hair follicle that create melanin slowly die off. When the amount of melanin is reduced, the hair begins to turn grey. This is usually a long drawn out process because the average head has over 100,000 hairs and each hair follicle reacts independent of the others. In general, it takes over ten years for your entire head of hair to turn gray.
The age at which you will experience your first grey hair depends upon several things. One important influence is genetics. If your parents’ hair turned gray at an early age, yours probably will too.
Another thing that can cause your hair to turn gray early is your diet. If you eat a proper diet, it might be possible for you to forestall grey hair. The cells in your hair follicles that produce melanin need the proper nutrients to stay healthy and produce the melanin needed for dark hair coloring. This includes nutrients like iron and Vitamin B. Therefore if your diet is filled with low nutrient foods like junk foods, you may go gray much earlier than you need to.
Other unhealthy lifestyle practices can contribute to going gray much earlier than you need to. For example, it is thought that smokers go grey sooner than non-smokers. Smoking reduces the amount of oxygen that is available to the body and to hair follicles and that can be a detriment to health that could even cause your hair to turn gray over time. Medical issues can also cause premature gray hair. Conditions like thyroid problems and anemia can make the hair go grey much faster than it would otherwise. Common cancer treatments like radiation therapy and chemotherapy can kill off healthy body cells, including those that produce hair color, and that could cause your hair to turn gray.
Most people are unhappy with gray hair and as a result, many products have come on the market to combat the problem. However, since grey hair is a biological process, not much can be done other than to over it up with hair coloring and hair styles.
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