A few years ago, scientists revealed that usually an adult has from 80.000 to 140.000 hair on his head, and you can find a similar number on a child’s head (sometimes even more).
Now if we go into details and analyze every single hair, we can notice that they are all formed by two parts: the part that we see and a hidden part that is under the skin. This part is very important because it keeps it attached to our heads. Bald people usually have problems with this part of the hair. Like you know, in the world there are different types of hair colour; the most common are brown and black, but why are there different colours? This depends again on how our hair forms under the skin.
At the base of it is a chemical called melanin, which we can define as the pigment of our body. In fact, it has an influence not only on our hair’s colour but also on the colour of our skin. This particular chemical could be more present in some individuals and in others can be completely absent; dark skins have a lot of melanin while white skins have only a little (in rare cases, a person cannot have melanin, as is the case with albino people). This substance also defends people from the sun; for this reason, it is easier for white people to get sunburned.
The base of the hair, called “follicles,” has a specific number of these pigments, and it can’t create new ones.
When we are in the first years of our lives, there is a lot of pigment in our hair, so it’s for this reason that children or young adults do not have grey hair. The problem usually starts between 40 and 50-year-olds, but sometimes it can start even while people are younger, so when they are 30 to 35 years old,
But why does this happen? Well, it happens because melanin cells start dying, so these cells are no longer useful, and the body decides to expel them, so the hair becomes grey in the first moment, and after a few years, it becomes white. This is why it is common for elderly people to have white hair.
Clearly, not all people get grey hair when they grow up; it depends a lot on the genes of their family. If your parents do not have grey hair, this means that you have more possibilities to have coloured hair. When you become elderly, this can happen in the opposite way: you can have coloured hair, but in your family everyone has grey or white hair. As you can see, the possibilities are so great.
Is there a possibility to avoid graying? Yes, there are some actions that can help our hair. You must follow healthy hair “habits”, One of these healthy habits is eating in the correct way, which means eating vegetables and a lot of fruit, and avoiding long exposure to the sun.
But deep down, we can say that grey and white hair is not bad, so let’s begin to accept us and value our characteristics.
Sources: https://www.research.colostate.edu/healthyagingcenter/2022/03/30/the-science-of-gray-hair/#:~:text=As%20we%20age%2C%20melanocytes%20decrease,creating%20a%20silver%2Dlike%20look.