Grey hair can either make a person look distinguished and worldly-wise, or it can make you look washed out, tired, and yes, I’ll say it: old. Age, after all, is one of the primary causes of grey hair. Conversely then, gray hair is often one of the most obvious signs of aging. In today’s youth-obsessed culture, one of the most common ways to get rid of grey hair is by coloring grey hair.

The Causes of Grey Hair

The substance responsible for people’s hair color is melanin, which is manufactured by pigment cells in the hair follicle and can determine what your natural hair color is. The more melanin a person has in their hair, the darker their hair can be.

A person’s hair turns gray when the pigment cells –or melanocytes- in the hair follicles die, and the amount of melanin in the individual hair strands grows less and less. When this happens, eventually, the hair strand growing out will be transparent or white; it won’t have any pigment at all.

The grey color that some people may get is actually just left over pigment from a person’s original hair color, and is a lot more likely to happen if you have dark colored hair. Individual strands of a person’s hair can turn white at any point in their lives, but generally, people will see their first grey hairs during their late thirties to forties.

One of the most obvious causes of grey hair is age; a lot of older people turn grey because melanin production tends to slow down as they age. Other causes can include heredity, smoking, excessive stress, thyroid imbalance, and vitamin B12 deficiency. Smokers are also said to be four times more likely to go grey than nonsmokers.

Coloring Grey Hair

Sometimes, going grey can be an opportunity for you to reinvent yourself: you can embrace your approaching new hair color and simply let the grey take over, or you can cover up this glaringly obvious sign of aging by coloring grey hair.

You can opt to try and blend the greys in with your natural hair color, go for a new hair color altogether, or even trying turning your grey hairs into highlights for your remaining, darker colored strands.

One of the problems with grey hair is that it can be pretty uncooperative when it comes to hair dyes; the lack of melanin tends to prevent the pigment from the hair dye from sticking to the hair itself. Grey hair is also usually a lot more fragile than their pigmented counterparts, so coloring grey hair is best done by professionals using semi-permanent colors, which are much gentler than permanent color treatments.

How to Get Rid of Gray Hair

Grey hair can be a really cool thing, but if it isn’t your cup of tea, and your hair is already grey, there are options you can try to get your old hair color back. Don’t hold your breath though; none of them offer guaranteed, hard and fast results. Your best bet for keeping the grey away is to dye it.

If you’re really lucky, you might actually have a genetic tendency to get your old hair color back after a period of gray, and won’t have to worry about the causes of grey hair or have to bother with coloring grey it or trying to get rid of it.

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