8 Facts About Gray Hair Can You Avoid It

8 Facts About Gray Hair Can You Avoid It?

Going gray is not an easy thing to do for any women and unlike men who tend to look great with salt & pepper hair for us women it is just another sign of getting older.
You might decide to embrace going gray gracefully and there are hundreds of groups to join to get great idea and support about going gray.
Or you might decide to rebel against the grayness and instead wash it away.
Look out for products that do not contain harmful chemicals, which can ultimatley be very damaging to your health.

8 Facts About Gray Hair Can You Avoid It?

Whether you sport brown, black, red, or blonde hair naturally, your hair color comes from a substance called melanin, which is made by hair follicles.
The color of your hair depends on the distribution, type, and amount of melanin.

Going grey is commonly explained as a loss of pigment, specifically melanin, in the hair shaft.
Gray hair is also often coarser, thinner, and less manageable than regular hair.

Genes
Natural aging and genetics can play a big part in when you will start to go gray.
The primary and most scientifically sound reason for gray hair is in your genes.
Check when your relatives or parents went gray and see if it matches with your timeline.
This is especially true if you go gray before 20 years old, which is referred to as premature greying.

Race
Race also plays a role in how early your hair turns gray.
For instance, gray hair tends to occur earlier in Caucasians but later in Asians.
Africans may go gray later too, with the average gray strand appearing around 43 years old.

Loss of catalase
Another reason your hair may turn gray is related to its chemical processes.
The cells in your hair naturally produce a small amount of hydrogen peroxide.
Normally, an enzyme called catalase breaks down the hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen.
However, as you get older, you produce lower amounts of catalase, which allows the hydrogen peroxide to build up.
This build-up can damage the pigment-producing cells, leading to gray or white hairs.
In women, greying usually begins right around the temples and then moves toward the top of the scalp.

Smoking
Smoking, on the other hand, has been found to have a significant relationship with developing gray hair before the age of 30.
This makes it one of the most relevant lifestyle causes.

Stress
Stress may play a key role in just how quickly hair goes from colored to ashen.
The long-term presence of heightened cortisol, the “stress hormone”, is linked to a host of negative health issues, one of them being the sympathetic nervous system.
These nerves are all over the body, including each hair follicle.
Norepinephrine, a chemical released during the stress response, causes pigment-producing stem cells to activate prematurely, depleting the hair’s “reserves” of color.

Poor nutrition
Lack of certain nutrients has been found to play a major role in premature greying.
A deficiency in the following nutrients may cause greying: