Your body will go through many different changes as you age. Some of these changes include skin wrinkles, change in your body weight and decreased vision and hearing. One very common and visible sign of aging that nearly everyone will display at some point is gray hair.
Time Frame
Your hair can turn grey at any age, points out Jeffrey Miller, associate professor of dermatology in Penn State's College of Medicine. The process of going grey generally starts in your 30s, but even teenagers can get grey hair. The Library of Congress reports that your chances of going grey increase as you age. Once you reach 30 years old, your chances of developing grey hair go up by 10 to 20 percent during each subsequent decade. The University of California-Irvine reports that by the age of 50, half of all Caucasian people have grey hair.
Formation of Color
Hair gets its color from the pigment melanin, reports the Library of Congress. As the hair grows from the follicle, melanocyte cells produce and add the melanin to each hair. Professor Miller explains that the type and amount of melanin produced by the melanocytes, which is determined by genetics, produces your natural hair color. The darker your natural hair color is, the more melanin each hair contains.
Theories
Scientists have several theories regarding why hair turns grey with age. Professor Miller explains that each hair goes through a three-stage cycle of growth before naturally falling out. As you age, these cycles grow shorter and the melanocytes stop working as effectively, adding less melanin to your hair.
The Library of Congress reports another theory from Dr. Desmond Tobin of England's University of Bradford. Dr. Tobin states that hair follicles have biological clocks that first slow, then halt, melanin production. Genetics determines the “clock” length, so you will likely begin to go grey when your parents did. A theory presented by UC Irvine proposes that as you age, your melanocytes may stop functioning or actually disappear.
Prevention/Solution
Professor Miller explains that there is no way to reverse the greying process. Although some patients who receive radiation treatments have regained darker hair after treatment, this method is not used to treat grey hair. Not all patients who undergo radiation therapy experience a change in hair color, and scientists do not know why some do. For now, the only way to treat grey hair is by using commercial hair dyes to darken your hair back to its natural color or to whichever color you choose.
Misconceptions
Folklore or "old wives' tales" often point to stress as a reason for greying hair, particularly the stress of having teenage children, reports the Library of Congress. However, if grey hairs begin to sprout when you have teenage children, the timing is just a coincidence and more likely related to your age. If you have a child at age 18, for example, you will be 31 when that child reaches her teen years and therefore in the decade when most people begin to go grey.
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