You glance in the mirror and see it—your first gray hair. We associate gray hair with aging, so your graying strands inevitably raise an uncomfortable question: If your hair is aging, is the rest of your body following suit? Are you aging way too fast, and if so, what does that mean for your health? First, it is true that graying hair is due to an aging of sorts—but of your melanocytes in your hair bulb. These are the same cells that produce pigment in your skin, says Melissa Piliang, M.
The result is initially hair graying and then whitening over time," she says. This process does not affect the keratinocytes, which are responsible for producing the hair fiber, so there should not be any changes to your hair structure. Gray hair is a natural part of aging, and it's inevitably going to occur at some point in your life.
However, the process may begin earlier for some women than for others due to a variety of factors. Some of them are preventable — but many of them are not. For the most part, you can thank your parents and grandparents for your gray locks.
The primary — and most scientifically-sound — reason for gray hair is in your genes. This is especially true if you go gray before 20 years old, which is referred to as premature graying. If your parents developed gray hair at a young age, chances are you will, too — and there's not much you can do about it.
Race also plays a role in how early your hair turns gray. For instance, gray hair tends to occur earlier in Caucasians but later in Asians. African Americans may go gray later, too, with the average gray strand appearing around 43 years old. Parents love to blame the stress of raising children for their gray hair. And while it's a little misguided to place all of the responsibility on them, stress may actually play a role in how early your hair turns gray.
The correlation between stress and gray hair is a bit more controversial than the role of genes. Though researchers sometimes go back and forth on this one, it's likely that it plays at least a minimal role.
The theory begins in your sympathetic nervous system, which is activated during stress. Whether it's during a fight-or-flight situation like finding a spider in your bed or normal stress like being overworked on the job , the sympathetic nervous system can do permanent damage to cells called melanocyte cells, which are responsible for coloring your hair.
Once melanocyte cells are gone, they're gone for good — and you're left with hair stripped of its color that has turned gray. Read about ways to reduce your stress levels.
As if you needed another reason to reach for fruits and veggies over chips and salsa, poor nutrition can actually cause nutritional deficiencies that may lead to gray hair. Graying is also associated with unhealthy habits, including alcohol consumption and smoking.
Preventing gray hair is just one among many reasons to take care of your body, eat healthy, and kick those unhealthy habits once and for all. Women have a longer growing phase, which means they can grow longer hair. And it could be that as we age, shortened stages of hair growth lead to less pigment—when only a little pigment is produced, we have gray hair, he says.
Another factor: hydrogen peroxide, a natural oxidant. Ultimately, graying is a normal, slow process—and Benabio says that hair-based melanocytes eventually peter out in everyone.
Bank, M.
0コメント