Everybody gets some gray hair eventually. No matter your ethnicity or gender, as years goes by you’ll eventually start to notice more and more of the shiny gray-silver strands popping up all over your scalp. But why? why do you get gray hair? what causes gray hair? and can you do anything about them?
Here’s everything you need to know about gray hair, what causes it and what you can do about them!
Now that we’ve established that pretty much everyone gets gray hair on the long run, we can go into the specifics of gray hair.
For starters, what exactly is gray hair anyways?
Well, to properly explain what gray hair is in the first place, we need to break down the hair in our heads in two different parts: the root and the shaft.
Every root of every hair in your head is surrounded by a tiny tube of tissue called a hair follicle, and each hair follicle contains some pigment cells. These pigment cells produce a chemical substance called melanin, substance responsible for giving the growing shaft its respective color, be it blonde, brown, red or anything in between.
The more melanin the pigment cells produce, the darker each hair will be.
As you get older, the pigment cells that give the hair shafts their characteristic color start to die.
Fewer pigment cells in a hair follicle translate into less melanin, which translates into less color for that particular strand of hair. The hair strand will gradually lose its color until it just outright starts growing out completely gray.
Now we know how that sounds and there’s absolutely no need to panic. This won’t happen to your entire hair overnight! As we said before, it’s a gradual process, so don’t go to sleep fearing you’ll wake up with a full set of gray hair on your head!
From the first moment you spot some gray hairs on your scalp, it can take up to more than ten years for your entire hair to turn gray. And that is if it ever does, because graying stops on some people after some strands, leaving them with a mixture of their natural hair color and some silver strands.
So, now that we know that gray hair is caused by the death of the pigment cells in our hair follicles, what causes their death in the first place?
Well, that’s a tricky one because graying hair, just like baldness, is multifactorial, meaning it is and can be caused by a number of different factors. Let’s break down each and every one of them:
Aging: We’ve been pretty obvious about this one on this blog entry, but aging is the biggest culprit when it comes to graying hair. Most people spot their first gray hairs in between the ages of 30 to 40 years old, with up to 50% of people having 50% gray hair by the age of 50, a rule dermatologists call the 50-50-50 rule.
That being said, there are some cases premature gray hair. Cases where a person starts growing gray hair around the ages of 20 and 30 years old can be considered premature graying depending on the person’s ethnicity.
Ethnicity: We said before that everybody gets gray hair regardless of their gender or ethnicity, and we stand by that statement, but ethnicity plays a huge role on how soon you start getting some gray on your hair. Caucasian people tend to start going gray at their mid-30s, Asians at around their late 30s and African-Americans at around their mid-40s.
Stress: Now this one may sound a little bit like a cliché, but bare with us. Stress has not been directly linked to graying hair just yet, but it has been linked to a whole lot of hair and skin issues. So stress turning hair gray isn’t out of the question yet.
Lifestyle: Believe or not your lifestyle has a huge impact on how fast you get gray hair. Afraid you might start getting some in the near future? Consider eating healthier and getting into a training schedule. Smoking also plays a part when it comes to getting gray hair at a faster rate.
So there you have it! Now you know where gray hair comes from and some of the possible reasons why you might be getting some. But one question remains:
What can you do about it?
Well, there’s only really two options:
The first one is to embrace the gray! gray hair can look attractive given the right look and style, so don’t instantly shy away from your gray hair.
The second one is to dye your gray hairs, and we have just what you need! At Ease from Premier Products is a safe, long-lasting, water resistant touch-up coloring agent which instantly and discreetly covers gray hairs with ease. It’s available in black, brown and red!
Got any other question for us? Feel free to give us a call at our toll-free number 1-800-756-8585. We’ll be more than happy to help you with any other burning questions or doubts you might have about getting gray hair!