Have you ever looked at old people’s hair? most of their air are either white or grey. It is a common knowledge that our hair turn white when we get older. There are also some exceptions, such as me, I am only 18 and I already have a lot of white hair. Why do these things happen? What cause our hair to turn white and how can we prevent it?
At the base of the hair follicle, there are cells called stem cells. It was responsible for replenish the keratinoctes and melanocytes. melanocytes stems produce melanin, which colored your hair. Our hair color actually depend on the combination of melanin, Brown or black and yellow or red. The number of melanocytes stems decrease when you get older. when most of the melanin were lost, the hair will appear grey or silver. In the end, the hair lost all of its melanin, then there will be no color on the hair, so it become completely transparent. But the transparent hair appear white in our eyes. LiveStrong
Age isn’t the only cause of white hair, genes are big factories. That is the reason why many young people also have white hair. There is a thing in our genes called melanogenic clock, it knows when our parent’s hair turned grey, and we will follow them. If you have grey hair since you were young, your children are very likely to have grey hair at young age. other factors such as lack of Vitamin B12 intake and stress can also cause the hair to turn grey before it supposes to be. In 2009, a Japanese study find a thing called genotoxic stress, which can damage DNA by deplete the melanocyte stem cells. This is not the daily small stress that everyone has. Study found out that normal people’s melanocyte function decrease 10-20% every 10 years after age 30. By age 50, 50% of the people will be half grey. gaizupath todayifoundout howstuffworks
There are ways to slow down the process of hair turning grey. Consume enough vitamins such as B12 can help you to prevent grey hair. Eat the food that contain Iodine can also help prevent the grey hair, such as fish, bananas and iodized salt. Also, don’t be too stressful, try to relax sometimes. Have hope in life even when you are desperate. Think of your beautiful hair! stylecraze
Its funny that you wrote about how our hair turns white, because I already have grey hairs and I’m only 18! Even though I am so young, I realize that this is a genetic thing because my dad also has grey hair and he has had it since he was a teen. I know I will be dying my hair eary.
I found this blog super interesting because my sister gets grey hairs, when my mom still has yet to get one! My sister’s melanogenic clock definitely follows that of my dads, because he developed grey hair at an early age. I would be interested in learning more about animals, and if their melanin levels are affected the same way as ours are, because my dog is only 3 and is already starting to get grey. Interesting blog thank you for sharing!
Here’s an article that relates dogs grey hairs to humans, which i found interesting!
http://www.petplace.com/article/dogs/dr-debras-faqs-and-posts/ask-dr-debra-common-questions/do-dogs-get-grey-hair-like-people-do-when-do-they-get-it
This article pertains to my lifestyle most directly. As a 19 year old male, I find my hair slowly but surely graying. It is outstanding to find out that something can be done! I’ll definitely stock up on some salmon and bananas. Sesame seeds seem to do the trick as well! https://beautyhealthtips.in/best-natural-home-remedies-to-get-rid-of-gray-white-hair/ I have no problem with the silver fox look, but that time should come with age and wisdom. It was also interesting to find the correlation between stress and premature white hairs. Stress has been linked to a multitude of diseases. It is very important to minimize it in our daily lives. https://yoga.com/
This article caught my eye because I had one of my close friends growing up start having grey hair young. Plus his dad was relatively young too with grey hair and he looked like one of the bottom pictured guys. I always wondered why people got grey hair so early. I knew stress can play a big factor in it. I found this article that did a little better job of explaining how stress can affect your hair. http://www.webmd.com/beauty/hair-health-11/hair-stress-effect
The fact that the 150,000 strands of hair on your hair can turn a different color because the presence of stress is crazy.
I remember learning about this in biology but I actually forgot why our hair is white, so thank you for reminding me. I think that this is one of the coolest, yet weirdest things that our body does. It is neat that there is melanin in our hair that makes it colored. This article suggests that scientists do not even know why we stop producing melanin at a certain age. They also found that, “gray hair follicles still contain melanin’s building blocks, melanocytes and melanosomes, though not melanin itself.” I find this to be very interesting how parts of it can be there and present, but not the actual melanin. That is for gray hair. White hair is a little bit different because it contains no melanin at all, whereas gray can contain a little bit. Gray hair comes before white hair usually. Thank you for sharing this very interesting topic!
All I knew about grey and white hair before your blog was that the protein in the hair was no longer there. I now understand that melanin is responsible for your hair color and it is no longer there and isn’t replenished as you get older. This was a very informative blog and I learned alot. Here are some quick factson grey hair.