Parents love to blame the stress of raising children for their gray hair. And while it's a little misguided to place all of the responsibility on them, stress may actually play a role in how early your hair turns gray. The correlation between stress and gray hair is a bit more controversial than the role of genes. Though researchers sometimes go back and forth on this one, it's likely that it plays at least a minimal role. The theory begins in your sympathetic nervous system, which is activated during stress.
Whether it's during a fight-or-flight situation like finding a spider in your bed or normal stress like being overworked on the job , the sympathetic nervous system can do permanent damage to cells called melanocyte cells, which are responsible for coloring your hair. Once melanocyte cells are gone, they're gone for good — and you're left with hair stripped of its color that has turned gray.
Read about ways to reduce your stress levels. As if you needed another reason to reach for fruits and veggies over chips and salsa, poor nutrition can actually cause nutritional deficiencies that may lead to gray hair.
Graying is also associated with unhealthy habits, including alcohol consumption and smoking. Preventing gray hair is just one among many reasons to take care of your body, eat healthy, and kick those unhealthy habits once and for all. Learn about ways to kickstart your journey to healthy eating. On occasion, gray hairs can be a sign of illness, such as thyroid disease or alopecia areata a common autoimmune disorder.
If you have other tell-tale signs, such as balding patches, let your healthcare provider know. However, don't panic — these are rare and little cause for concern. Though the connection is less clear, certain environmental factors may play a role in how quickly you go gray. For instance, pollution and ultraviolet UV rays from the sun may cause oxidative stress, which has been linked to various forms of aging like wrinkles. This can lead to a buildup of hydrogen peroxide in hair follicles that can cause grays.
Finding that first gray hair may be shocking, which is a perfectly natural reaction. While it's important to keep your body as healthy as possible for reasons that go beyond the color of your hair , remember that it's normal to develop gray hair as you age.
Whether you choose to dye your hair or rock the silver vixen look, it's important to do what makes you confident and happy. Maybe because of the stress of being a new mom. My ability to embrace this change is largely because of how other Black women with gray hair have celebrated this transformation, pouring into me with kindness and support.
I've even had a few people question whether my gray streak is actually "real" because it's growing in so "perfectly. Do you think this will change in the future? Why or why not? I don't think my love for my gray hairs will change in the future, as I've never colored my hair besides a temporary purple hair wax that simply magnified my silver strands and have had conversations with different hairstylists on treatments and braiding style I can use to make them stand out even more.
They're here now, and that's OK! I noticed my first gray hair in college. I was horrified and used to pluck them individually. For a while in my 20s I embraced it as sort of a silver fox thing, but by the time I hit my mid-thirties I realized they were just looking dull and frizzy, so I decided to start dying my hair.
For years, I had it colored professionally, but during the pandemic I've been doing it myself using over-the-counter semi-permanent dye, and honestly, I might never go back!
The maintenance is exhausting. I have dreams of cutting it all off and going all gray, Jamie Lee Curtis style. I was around 40 years old when I found my first grays. Honestly, I didn't expect to have gray hairs at such a young age. I color my hair when the grays became really obvious.
I will continue to color my hair for now. Maybe, I'll stop coloring it when I am 70 years old. I've seen older women with heads full of white hair and I think it looks beautiful! I was in my early 20s when I first started noticing strands of gray.
I have dark brown hair so even one strand is easy to find. I thought it was quite novel when I first noticed them.
As the number of grays increased along with my age, I started to consider dying my hair to cover them up. I thought about dying my hair several times, but I have never colored my hair before and so there wasn't a precedent. I think if I had a prior relationship with hair color, I may have been more open to the idea. The idea of having to introduce a new maintenance plan to prevent gray roots from showing is unappealing.
My initial reasonings were simply upkeep and cost, but then, as I entered my 30s, my choice to stay natural unintentionally evolved into a counter-culture statement. I have had many women both friends and strangers comment on my choice and say that it "looked great" and was "inspiring".
And so, this fueled my decision to stay grey and bolstered a sense of pride for "going against the patriarchy that expects me to cover up or fix any sign of my aging DNA. I don't know, but I would be lying if I said I haven't thought about it. I am not married to the idea of staying in one lane for the rest of my life when it comes to hair color.
The most important thing is that whatever I choose, it is something that brings me joy. I first noticed them in my 30s: wiry gray kinks sprouting from the roots of my waist-length dreadlocks. At first, they were a novelty. But as I moved into my forties, not so much!
They started to make me feel old. Back then, the only woman with gray dreadlocks I knew of was Toni Morrison. And she wore them well. But I was too young to look like Toni Morrison! I dyed them black for years. By my late 40s, I was spending almost an entire day at the salon every two weeks just to keep the grays at bay. So, on my 49th birthday, I made an appointment with my stylist, who cut my hair into a TWA teeny-weeny afro , which I planned to grow out into a silver halo of hair.
Now my hair journey has come full circle. Back in when she cut my dreads, my stylist had encouraged me to keep them. And three years ago, she permanently reattached all 80! I am now 72 and first noticed gray hairs in my mid-forties. I was not overly upset, but I had always thought that one of my best features was my very dark brown hair.
My hair is quite thin and fine, but the color was good, so it was an asset. I started to color my grays at home, sporadically, back to my natural dark color. Eventually, I started seeing a professional for single-process coloring. I continue to do that. Of course, the pandemic has limited my visits to the hairdresser, and I have only been able to go in once since February. I am doing at-home touchups and they are working out okay.
I miss my dark hair, but it is not a big deal. I will continue to get highlights for the foreseeable future. If I had thick enough hair to cut it short and look good, I would consider going fully gray, but I am not there yet.
However, I do admire gray hair on other women. My mother had beautiful gray hair with a white streak in the front. Alas, I did not inherit that. When I was around 24 years old. I know, life is so unfair. If I had to describe my relationship with my grays in one word, it would be "non-committal. I'm now in my 30s and I still feel that way. I have been coloring my hair a single-process dye since the grays first appeared. I'm one of those women who goes to a salon because I'm very particular about my color not appearing one dimensional.
However, due to the pandemic and quarantine this year, I let my grays grow out for the first time in my life! It was eye-opening to see how many I actually have, and surprisingly, I was on board to fully embrace them and doing quite well with it.
But then, one day in September, I looked in the mirror and felt 40 years older than I am. So, I scheduled a hair appointment and we're back to brown these days. This summer was a great experiment and it helped me to assess what a full growth period would entail. I also got some very kind feedback from my husband, friends and family, so if anything, now I have the confidence to know that rocking my grays is not the worst thing. Kelly, Merrillville, IN 40's When did you first notice gray hairs?
I noticed my first gray hair at age I knew I would gray early because all of the women on the maternal side of my family grayed early. I have always felt great about them because of my aunts and cousins. They all have beautiful gray and white hair. I stopped coloring my hair when I retired from tour modeling for haircare companies. I have not colored my hair since March of Honestly, even if I did not have the allergies, I would not color my hair.
My gray hair is a sign that I have lived a life. Now that I am halfway to 50, and have settled and have settled into the woman I am, there is not as much stress. Flanagan: So I wanted you to take a look at my colleague Joe here. Joe is technically a millennial. He started to go gray when he was 16, and by 22, it was pretty much gray all over. What happened to Joe? Chwalek: So when individuals gray early in life before the age of 20, it's called premature graying, and this is due to genes.
And we know there's one gene, in particular, that's been targeted called interferon regulatory factor 4, which is important in regulating and producing melanin in the hair. Joe was lucky enough to inherit some genes that predisposed him to developing gray hair early in life.
Flanagan: Obviously, Joe has gray hair on his head. When you go gray on your head, does the hair on the other parts of your body go gray as well? No, no, Joe, Joe! We can picture it. Chwalek: So you can grow gray hair anywhere on your body. Wherever you have hair, the hair is susceptible to oxidative damage and eventually going gray.
Flanagan: So the main cause of going gray is genetics, but what role can stress play? After all, Obama didn't look like this when he showed up at the White House. Chwalek: So it's controversial the role that stress has in hair graying. We know that stress creates oxidative damage in the body, and it's been linked to a lot of premature-aging syndromes.
So it's thought that the stress, that stress causes oxidative damage, which may cause damage to the melanocytes and may cause us to grow gray earlier.
We know that smokers tend to go gray more so than the general population, and again it's felt that it's probably due to the oxidative damage that smoke causes and how it affects the pigment-producing cells in the hair.
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