As we get older, generally by the age of 50, our hair begins to turn gray or silver in colour. Some people rock the salt & pepper look, while others try to conceal the shades of gray by dying it with artificial colours. But the vital question is: why did our hair turn gray in the first place? To know that, first we need to understand what actually determines the colour of our hair.

Your hair is divided into two parts: the upper part known as the shaft, which is the coloured part we see growing out of our heads, and the lower part called the root, which keeps the hair attached under the scalp into a little sac called the follicle. Every hair follicle in your head contain cells called melanocytes that produce a very special chemical called melanin, which gives your hair its colour of brown, blonde, black, etc. The shade of someone’s hair depends upon the amount of melanin each hair has, meaning; the more the melanin, the darker the hair.

But as we get older, the melanocytes begin to die and lose its ability to produce melanin. The reduction of melanin over a period of time alters the colour of hair from dark to gray and eventually when there is no melanin left in your follicles, it starts to push out white hair.

This is how the hair losses colour with age, but age is not only the factor responsible for it as people can get gray hair at any age. Yes. Some get it when they are young, some get it in school, and some lucky fellas don’t get it even when they are way beyond their 30’s. How early or late you get to see your first strand of gray hair is determined by your genetic factors. This means that most of us will start having gray hair around the same age that our parents or grandparents first did.

Is there anything you can do to stop your hair from turning gray?

Medically speaking, there is not much you can do about it. But scientists believe that to prevent hair from going gray, they will either need to prolong the life of the melanocytes in the hair follicles or increase the melanocytes stem cell reservoir in the upper region of the hair follicle, so that they continue to replace lost pigment cells.