Why and when a hair goes gray?

[hallenrm]

Observing my body closely, suddenly on day I find a particular hair on my chest turn gray. Suddenly a wart appears from nowhwere.

 

Does the med sci has any answers.:hyper:

[topvip]

it's really very difficult to answer, cause there are many reasons can make your hair grey:

1. as the age goes, you hair will become grey;

2. if you use head too much, work too hard, your hair will become grey;

3. if you like, just dye your hair to grey, it will be grey also.

 

 

 

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http://www.0058.net

[TheBigDog]

it was explained to me that hair goes gray because you stop absorbing the minerals that support hair color. Copper causes red hair. When you stop absorbing copper efficiently your red hair will go gray. I am not sure about the minerals behind the other hair colors.

 

As for warts, stop playing with frogs.

 

Bill

[InfiniteNow]

I imagine cortisol plays a role also. Greater amount of stress very strongly equates with greater amount of gray/grey...

 

Wiki doesn't expressly discuss this, but has some other useful insights:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_hair

 

 

Cheers. :hyper:

[hallenrm]

But, all these factors should apply to all hair, why only to a particular strand?

Are the biochemical processes occuring in our body totally stochastic? If so, the basic paradigm of biochemistry to explain all phenomena in a living organism- as if the processes in the organism body are the same as in a thermostated test tube, has its limitations. It is not the truth we all swear by.:hyper:

[Boerseun]

Apparently, hair goes gray when the stem cells at the hair root die off, and melanin can't be added to the hairshaft anymore. The cells probably die of old age, I guess.

[andrewgray]

Hallenrm,

I have my own theory. This is Andrew Gray. I am 50 years old. About two years ago I got a fungal infection.

 

Now everyone has candida, but I had a bad spot on my colon which grew through into my left lung.

 

How do I know it was fungus? Because I inhaled Nystatin, a powerful antifungal and had a huge reaction.

 

Long story short: I took antifungals for years. I have only one gray spot on my body which is in my mustache. It is now turning back brown.

 

Theory: Hair turns gray because as we age our fungal load increases, including candida in hair folicles. It makes sense, as the hair nearest the digestive tract turns first, and the hair furthest turns last.

Andrew A. Gray

 

modelofreality.org/agray.jpg

[Dr. Nancy Malik]

it was explained to me that hair goes gray because you stop absorbing the minerals that support hair color. Copper causes red hair. When you stop absorbing copper efficiently your red hair will go gray. I am not sure about the minerals behind the other hair colors.

 

As for warts, stop playing with frogs.

 

Bill

 

http://htg.addr.com/didyou.htm claim that "the number of strands of hair on a human head varies with color: BLONDE - 140,000 strands; BROWN - 110,000 strands; BLACK - 108,000 strands; RED - 90,000 strands".

[C1ay]

http://htg.addr.com/didyou.htm claim that "the number of strands of hair on a human head varies with color: BLONDE - 140,000 strands; BROWN - 110,000 strands; BLACK - 108,000 strands; RED - 90,000 strands".

 

That looks like some dreamt up nonsense. I encounter people with thick and thin heads of hair of all colors.

[Mercedes Benzene]

Plus, those "statistics" are completely irrelevent to this thread. :)

[Moontanman]

I'd like to know why, I have been told that i have enough hair to cover several heads. My hair is not only very thick it is also very course. there is hardly any room for scalp, brushing my hair is a real problem. I have to use very strong brushes and or thick flexible plastic combs with wide spread teeth. Afro combs are the only real answer (yes I do have some African ancestors but mostly native American with some Scot and Irish thrown in for fun ) My hair started to go gray when I was in my late twenties now at 53 it's white. I see most people with white hair have thin hair. Mine is thick and course as ever maybe more so now. What causes it to be this way? It was dark brown almost black to start with. I wear my hair long down my back Every controlling bald butt head I know wants me to cut it so bad it's almost funny.

[Boerseun]

I read an interesting article about hair on Wiki when searching about info on hair for this thread.

 

Turns out that hair acts like optic fibre, and transfers UV right from the hair surface to the scalp, increasing the ease of Vitamin D production. Interestingly, Africans, being exposed to more UV, have densely curled hair, and it's been shown that UV can't travel down the hairshaft of tight curls because of the wavelength of UV light. Harsh UV conditions also accounts for their dark skins. Sounds a bit far-fetched, but makes perfect sense if you think about it. Europeans, having lived in much colder climes than their African ancestors, have wrapped most of their bodies in animal skins, exposing only their faces and hair to the elements. This might also account for the lightening (and straightness) of northern European hair, blonde, straight hair having less resistance to UV passing through it.

 

Could this plug in somewhere to greying hair? Could it be that the older a person gets, something happens in the dermis that might make it harder to produce vitamin D from sunlight, so that more UV is required? Which means that as a person ages, the increasing greying of the scalp hair is simply a response to a lack of UV?

 

Could it be that melanin added to the hair in the first place is simply as a sunblock, controlling the amount of UV from travelling up the shaft? Pure keratin with no melanin added, is, after all, simply a grey hair - the melanin is clearly optional. And the ability to add melanin at the cellular level can then surely be turned on or off, in response to the environment?