Q: Why does hair turn grey?
A: Grey (or white) is merely the base 鈥渃olour鈥� of hair. Pigment cells located at the base of each hair follicle produce the natural dominant colour of our youth. However, as a person grows older and reaches middle age, more and more of these pigment cells die and colour is lost from individual hairs. The result is that a person鈥檚 hair gradually begins to show more and more grey.
The whole process may take between 10 and 20 years 鈥� rarely does a person鈥檚 entire collection of individual hairs (which, depending on hair loss, can number in the hundreds of thousands) go grey overnight. Interestingly, the colour-enhancing cells often speed up pigment production as we age, so hair sometimes darkens temporarily before the pigment cells die.
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