Here’s a question that comes from our good friends over at Women’s Health Research News. If you get a chance, please go over and check out this great blog by a fellow indy science blogger.
Trisha’s question:
In a previous post you mentioned that gray hair looks gray because it has lost its melanin, which gives hair its pigment. What`s the biology involved with that? What actually causes hair to lose its melanin? And is there anything we can do to slow the process down? And why do my gray hairs seem more kinky and unruly compared to the rest of my hair?
The Left Brain’s Response:
Melanin is a pigment that is naturally produced in the hair follicle and “injected” into the hair fibers as the protein is formed and pushed out of the head. It’s the same kind of melanin that gives your skin its color. There are two basic types of melanin (eumelanin and pheomelanin) that are responsible for every hair color from brown and black to blonde and red.
No one knows why hair follicles stop producing melanin. Genetics mostly. There just gets to be a point where the melanocytes (the melanin producing cells) just stop producing. Thus you get gray hair.
Slowing the process? No one has figured this one out just yet. And the truth is that only the pharmaceutical companies would be looking for the solution anyway. Cosmetic companies focus on things that do not react with your body. I’m not sure if there will be a solution to this problem anytime soon. (By the way, there are products out there like Reminex that claim to restore melanin production but we’ve seen no data to indicate they really work.) Of course you can always dye your hair. Or you can use Verseo Greyban. (It’s not a dye. Not exactly.)
There is no solid data to show that gray hair has a different physical structure that makes it feel more kinky and unruly. In fact, we’ve seen experiments that show if you have people close their eyes they can not feel a difference between gray hair and “normal” hair. Why do people think gray hair is so different? There are probably two reasons: First, we know that as you age, the follicles produce less of their natural lubricating oils. That can make hair feel dry and coarse. Second, gray hairs are just easier to notice because of the color difference. Think about all the hairs on your head that are unruly but they are the same color as the rest of your hair so you don’t notice them.
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Thank you, Brains, for another fascinating and informed myth buster!!! I’m curious, then, what role melanin plays when dying one’s hair. My mother has grey hair, and no matter what she does, the color always seems to fade to a fake blondish after a couple washings. Does a lack of melanin make grey hair harder to dye?
thanks for the great post! I am 32, and my hair is gray. Really, I am more salt then pepper. in my family everyone gets gray hair by the time they enter college. I have been dying my hair myself for years. however, for the last year the new hair is not taking the dye anymore. I can’t imagine going completely gray. is there any specific product that would hold better on the gray hair? or should I look for any ingredient? help :-O
Sometimes after pulling out my hair (trichotillomania) it’ll grow back white or white tipped. What might that be about? I’m only 18… :s
Also they often grow back coarser and kinkier. It’s pretty noticeable too cos the rest of my hair is pretty much naturally poker straight and I only tend to pull along the hairline and now it’s all kinky and weird
I am a 60 year old man with parents, grandparents and greatgrandparents that live to 100 plus or minus 7 years.
Gray hair begins in our family usually in ealy 60′s. Nevertheless, my hair is still about 95% raven black.
DNA I think plays a part, however, good nutrition is paramont. That means little or no SIMPLE carbohydrates. 80-90% complex carbohydrates.
I still do 160 pushups 3-4 times a week among other exercises and people often think me late 30′s to early 40′s. DNA, yes I think it plays a part, but nutrition plays a greater part. Simple carboydrates are a recipe for old age soon! Unfortunately its the diet most of us grew up with and realize too late its an early harbinger of old age. We fed our stomach, but often our eyes, hair, heart, brain etc. have recieved no nutrition because what we eat hasn’t provision for them.
Interesting comments Clark. What proof do you have that nutrition is more important than genetics. It seems that most of the scientific studies I’m aware of suggest that genetics is much more important. Congrats on your ability to do 160 pushups!
What can I use to make my Afro-American gray hair more managable, without dyeing it?
Use a conditioner that contains something like petrolatum. This will help make the hair more manageable.
i am a hairdresser and i believe grey hair is more coarse and more unruly without the melanin. because when you color hair its much softer .so when the color is taken away it is rough .take out one grey hair out of your head and feel it. there is a difference. people constantly complain about it to me.there are hair color formulas made specifically for grey hair and youre stylist should know about them.for african american hairor all hair types use proclaim glossing polish on wet hair will make soft i swear by it!
All I can say is that in blinded testing people aren’t able to tell a difference between the feel of gray hair and non-gray hair. Intuitively it seems like there would be a difference but our intuition doesn’t always coincide with science.
Intuition or science, new gray hairs on my old head tend to stick straight up like an antenna!
Sigh.
Ah yes. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what science tells us. We know how we feel about things.
When the genes for melanin stop being transcribed and translated, there can be no more melanin. Replication , transcription, and translation (of DNA) slows down for many genes as we age. When it eventually stops for something vital, we die. It’s no secret that proper nutrition and exercise slow down the slowing down of the body. The healthier you are, the longer your cells are going to function properly (which a result of efficient protein production). This would be no different, I imagine, for the melanocytes.
One of the best beauty changes I ever made was to let my grey grow out. The trick: get a good haircut. I have gotten more compliments than ever before. I love my hair. I’m in my 50′s but this actually gives me a more youthful look (again, maintain a good cut). My hair is still soft – I see no difference in the grey and the still dark hair. Don’t fear the grey!
I was waiting longer than most of my friends to see my first grey hair–at age 51. My brother who is 9 years my junior began to grey before he was 35 and both of us have/had dark blond hair, but his was overly-curly and mine was straight as string, fine-textured, soft, but it grows in thick and densely–I mean a lot of hair, but each shaft is thin. The first place it showed up was in front of my ears (I guess if I were a guy, you’d say sideburns), which I could just tuck behind my ears and look like I had no grey anywhere. Now, at age 58, the blond is shot-through with nearly-invisible individual grey hairs and in the last couple years I’ve been noticing the texture of just the grey hairs is VERY different from the original hairs: fairly kinky and messy-looking, as it stands away from the combed hairs and does its own thing.
My eyebrows, always neat, never needing plucking are getting bizarre, at the same time: One individual eyebrow hair got so long it hung down and stabbed me in the eye before I figured out where it was coming from. Now, I have more long ones all the time. A few friends also said they’d noticed these “aging” problems nobody ever warned us about. I’d like to hear more about it. I haven’t dyed my hair since my mid-20′s and I’m curious to see how I’ll look all grey before I make a change, but not if it’s going to be all crazy unmanageable and haggy-textured!
Anyway, that’s my personal experience and I’m surprised to hear someone saying that it only affects the color and that the texture does not change. Mine sure did. I could send you a sample if I knew where to send it. Just let me know.
Article on graying hair
While I agree that some of my dark hairs have a wiry texture, they are few and far between. The majority of my brown hair is smooth and shiny. I KNOW that the white hair is of a different texture for a couple of reasons. When you look at the area where I have the fewest white hairs -underneath in the back–they spring out, wiry and curly, from the smooth and shiny browns. They are distinctly different. They also add an undesirable loft to my hair on top and at the sides of my head, where they are enjoying a near majority status. This is very different from the way my hair laid before the invasion. It is very frustrating to deal with because it is not the hair I have had all my life, and I can’t get it to do anything that looks good. I have even thought about trying out a relaxer to help with the texture. And the real joy of all this is–It began before I was 30. I am now 40, and it really contributes to the hag look–not good when you are competing for jobs and trying to look nice. I know some people have smooth gray hair, but that sure isn’t the case with mine. I wouldn’t mind the gray so much if it weren’t for the texture.
So they`re trying to tell me that the white hairs that ARE kinky next to my blonde hair don`t really look like that? K
You can blindfold me and i will pick out every gray hair on my head. Since I dye my hair, I can’t see the “gray hair”…it is kinky, thick, coarse, and wavy on the ends. My hair texture is so different then when I was younger and I spend more time on it now (i’m 45) trying to smooth the cuticle.
I remember see a lady who didn’t dye her long brown hair. The spattering of gray hair on her head stuck out not just because it was gray, but because it kinked out from the rest of the brown hair. It didn’t lay flat like the rest of her hair, it curled at odd angles, and looked like fishing line.
And I wanted to pull everyone of those hairs out of her!!
I don’t mind greying hair, but it is a fact that I can face the mirror with a piece of white printer paper behind my head for contrast and the only wiry hairs that stick out are grey ones. all of the brown ones seem to be properly in place.
So you can say there is no structural difference…but I simply do not have enough evidence to be swayed into believing that.
I have trich too so I know a wiry grey when I feel one! Ha! Ha!
No, no, NOOOOO! Evidentally, the brains have no gray hairs on their heads. Gray hair is most definitely “crinkled” as opposed to the un-gray hair. I have long, sleek, straight hair light-colored hair. The gray hairs coming in are very much wirey and CRINKLED
Those gray hairs even feel thicker. I HATE them. Also, I’ve noticied the same crinkled grays on other people.
I’ve been a light haired strawberry blonde all my life (48 years). My hair does not hold a curl. It is very thin, although I’ve been told there is a lot. My gray hairs are coming in long and kinky…definately noticable to the naked eye. They seem to be MUCH thicker than my blonde hairs, and they come out much easier when I comb my hair. The combing is the way I noticed them in the first place!
I’ll be 55 next month. I have shoulder length silky-straight, brown hair that’s professionally highlighted to hide my (few-but-ever-increasing) gray hairs. Just yesterday I noticed a long, KINKY, THICK gray hair growing in the area behind my ear. I pulled it out & was fastinated by the difference in the texture. I showed it to my husband (who is totally gray) and asked him WHY? He told me to Google it & that’s how I found this thread. Thank you for all the explanations & words of wisdom. At least now I know I’m not alone in noticing a difference & that it’s not just in my head (pun intended!)
Yeah, I find that the texture problem virtually disappears when I have those hairs professionally colored to blend in with the rest of my hair.
When your hair loses its melanin the hair goes from being a round strand to more of a flat and wiry strand, hence the change in texture. It is also why the hair is resistant to permanent hair dyes and perms. It is difficult to get into the new armor -like strand! I have been a stylist and colorist since 1986, and grey hair is our biggest challenge..smiles!
Yes, I thinkg the gray ones ARE different for me too. All scientific studies are not always GOOD scientific studies – and some aren’t so scientific! The study itself should be evaluated. I would like to read the study myself to see if there are other reasons for their conclusions – and a good study will point out these possibilities. Just because participants could not feel the difference when blindfolded, does not mean there was not a difference. Maybe it is an issue that the sensitivity of their tactile sensation was not good enough to tell a difference. When looking at the hair as well, our brain gets more information than from feeling it alone.
I sit and play with my hair when I’m bored. Sometimes I’ll feel a wire-y one and yank it, sure enough, it has a white end (I dye my hair.) I only have about 5% white hairs, so I don’t think it’s a coincidence. They feel different!
What a great blog about beauty, I appreciate all the differing viewpoints and personal sharing about our beauty concerns…I have blonde hair that began to grow in light bronzy brown and has at the temples a platinum patch. I wish the platinum would just spread to the rest of my head and I would look even. I also have grey or white single hairs sprinkled through. Those are quite kinky and feel and look wilder than the rest. The platinum patches are soft and like my ‘good’ hair texture. My way to look better is to streak my hair with a blonde highlighter kit from the drugstore twice a year. This way I don’t damage my whole head of hair and it hides the different patches a little, and looks like I spent some time in the sun. It is a laborious process and takes a few hours, I use the type of kit that has the cap and little crochet hook that I pull the strands of hair through that I eventually apply the lightener mixture to. I even saved the mix packets and only mix up half of it and it lasts a whole year. Why waste I figure…
Not to ramble on too much, I do wonder why I have two kinds of greying or aging hair on my head. And I hope that the platinum spreads!
A bit of an older topic but thought I’d chime in. I’m 30 and have a handful of sparkling silvery white hairs that like to grow near my temples and partline and are easily spotted due to their vivid shine and shimmering. There’s so few that I can pluck them all in less than 30 seconds.
Despite the fact that they actually gleam very prettily, they do seem a bit thicker and stiffer but fortunately not kinky. If they all start growing in that way in greater numbers over the next few years, I might keep them.
I bet if we ran them through a laser micrometer, we wouldn’t be able to find much difference in thickness. Interesting observation though.
I am a 61 year old natural blonde that has always had super straight,
shiny, smooth hair. Just this year it’s like an alarm went off. When looking in the mirror, I see kinky short hairs sticking up. Not that many, but enough to bother me. And the area at the nape of my neck and all around my ears is this new weird, kinky texture that looks totally dried out. I have been moisturing myself to death, trying to figure out what the problem is. I have noticed a couple of people at work my age are having the same problem. Their hair is starting to look like rope, or raffia, with the little pieces sticking up. (Is it a coincidence that we are all 3 blonde?) Now that I know what it is, who has a recommendation on a good product to smooth those hairs down, without greasing up my hair.
I know that I’m a little late to the party but, I have to agree with Susan. I’m 27 years old and have dyed my hair. And I can pick out a gray hair while driving my car without using a mirror simply by feel. They feel like wires and look like kinky crimped hair (and I use a hair straightener on a regular basis).
The only reason I am here is because when I pluck gray hairs from my beard .. they feel completely different from the regular hair. Im 34, but I have a few .. and I’ll tell you .. If somebody blindfolded me and plucked out two individual hairs from my beard, I can tell you which one was was gray and which one wasnt. Its a weird like “popping” difference. The greys seem to come out with more of a “pop” lol that sounds grosser than what I mean .. but I found this looking for answers to why .. but nuffin’
Maybe not everyone gets different texture with their gray hairs, but I most definitely do. I have waist-length hair which means I can look at longer term changes in my hair and the gray ones are much coarser and more wiry than the brown ones. In fact, I’m looking at one right now that is still brown on the end but turns gray a few inches up, and yep, the brown end is fine and smooth but as soon as it turns gray, it is wiry and coarse.
Sometimes I also find hairs that are brown for a bit and gray for a bit and then brown again and this pattern seems to hold. But clearly need more work to do if I’m spending this much time staring at hairs
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