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Gray hair. Some consider it the beginning of the end. Others gracefully accept its arrival as a public token of wisdom. Still others view gray hair as a reflection of stress and worry, though there is no evidence to support this concept.
Health, heredity and environmental factors all affect when your hair begins turning gray. But the predominant cause is the normal course of life called aging.
It all begins when your body stops producing the color-producing substance called melanin. Each strand of your hair grows out of a follicle that has cells filled with melanin. These melanin-filled cells are called melanocytes.
At the beginning of the graying process, follicles produce colorless strands in a random pattern. For unknown reasons, the first gray or white strands usually appear on your temples and the top of your head.
Your existing hairs don't actually "turn" gray — they grow in this way. Every day, hairs fall out and new ones replace them in a normal process of shedding. At any given time, about 85 percent to 90 percent of your hairs are actively growing, while the rest are in a resting state.
Typically, one strand grows for two to four years. It then naturally enters a resting state for about two to four months, after which it falls out and is replaced by a new growing hair. On average, most people lose approximately 50 to 100 strands of head hair a day.
Although it may seem like you "went gray overnight," in reality the gray strands become more noticeable in the normal course of shedding. Darker hairs normally hide the graying strands when they first come in.
Despite the lack of funded research into the role of genetics and gray hair, medical experts have been able to find a relationship between graying and the environment and graying and lifestyle choices. They have also shown a relationship, to some degree, between graying and illnesses and conditions.
Smoking. A 1996 British Medical Journal study reported that smokers are four times more likely to go gray at a young age. Why is not clear.
Illnesses. Sometimes, the arrival of gray hair can be a sign of an underlying health problem. Werner's syndrome, a disease that mirrors the symptoms of aging in people as young as 20, can spur the premature growth of gray hair. Pernicious anemia, a disease marked by a vitamin B12 deficiency, is sometimes associated with decreased melanin production. Any illness or condition that causes your hair to fall out may reveal graying strands formerly hidden by your original hair color or sheen. For example, slow-growing or new gray wisps may become more obvious if you are coping with alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease that causes hair to fall out in small patches. Other examples include thyroid disease and vitiligo, a condition of unknown cause in which melanocytes are lost or destroyed, perhaps because the immune system "misfires" and attacks normal skin. If the scalp is involved, areas of white hair may develop.
Drug treatment and alternative medicine. Several drugs can cause growing hair to stop its growth cycle and fall out. For example, drugs such as lithium (used to treat manic depression) and methotrexate (used to treat some forms of arthritis and cancer) can contribute to hair loss, revealing more gray strands. Interestingly, some cancer patients, whose gray hair falls out as a result of chemotherapy, experience regrowth of the lost strands in their original color. This phenomenon suggests that melanocytes that are producing less melanin can be stimulated to make more, although how this occurs remains mysterious.
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