Have you ever thought of your gray hair and the wiser look it conveys to your friends and colleagues, or noticed the difference when ladies introduce themselves to you? Turning of hair to gray is a momentous event. The hair may be dyed, rinsed or allowed to grow naturally in its spongy, wiry manner but the end line is it has arrived to be with you for long. Research is still on to determine a concrete method to prevent gray hair or other age related hair problems like hair loss.
Health, heredity and environmental factors are considered as some of the factors involved in contributing to graying of hair but the main cause is attributed to aging. It starts when the body stops producing melanin; pigment which is responsible for giving color to the hair. Each strand of hair grows out of a follicle that has cells filled with melanin, called melanocytes. Melanocytes pass melanin to adjoining cells called keratinocytes, which produce keratin the chief component of hair. When keratinocytes wither away, they take away the melanin too. The pigment visible in hair and in the skin lies in these dead keratinocyte bodies. With loss of keratinocytes, the pigment of hair is gone. Also, with a period of time the amount of melanin in the keratinocytes decreases. Gray hair is simply hair with declining levels of melanin. White hair has no melanin at all.
The declining presence of melanin is also supposed to be contributing to the lack of moisture in gray or white hair. As a result, hair becomes lighter in color and its texture gets dryer and coarser. At the beginning of the graying process, colorless strands are produced in a random fashion by the hair follicles. Research has shown that the first gray or white strands generally appear on the temples and the top of head. The reason for this unique activity is still unknown. As they are few in number they are not evident initially.
There is currently no scientific way to detect as to when a particular cell or group of cells will stop producing melanin. In the initial stages of graying, the melanocytes are still present but inactive. Later on, they decrease in number. This natural process of graying can begin as early as our teens. In most people, however, graying first becomes noticeable in their late 30s. Some researchers have shown that gender plays a role in graying. The average male starts to gray around age 30, while women typically began to notice lighter strands around age 35. Genetics are also a contributing factor. In some families, many members develop white hair as early as in their 20s. Lifestyles have also been shown to have their effect on graying of hair. People in high-tension jobs tend to get a gray head faster.
English humorist and author P.G Wodehouse concluded that the guillotine is the only cure for gray hair or even baldness. Loss of hair and its pigmentation has been considered as "the beauty of the aged." At the very least, the first sign of white specks can be taken as affirmation that you are aging normally.
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