“Can I turn my Grey Hair Black again?”, “Can I Reverse my Grey Hair Formation?” , “Which Oil / Shampoo should I use to treat greying of my Hair naturally?”! These are some of the commonly asked questions by most of our patients. So let us understand a bit about Grey Hair Formation. Each hair on our scalp is made up of two parts:

• The shaft— the colored part we see growing out of our head
• The root— the bottom part, which keeps the hair anchored under the scalp

The root of our hair strands is surrounded by a tube of a tissue under our skin that is known as the hair follicle. Each of this hair follicle contains a certain number of pigment cells. These pigment cells constantly make a chemical called melanin which gives the growing hair shaft its color of brown, blonde, black, red, and anything in between.

Melanin is the same stuff that makes our skin’s color fair or darker. It also helps determine whether a person will burn or tan in the sun. The dark or light color of someone’s hair depends on how much melanin each hair has. As we get older, the pigment cells in our hair follicles gradually die. When there are fewer pigment cells in a hair follicle, that strand of hair will no longer contain as much melanin and will become a more transparent color — like gray, silver, or white — as it grows. As people continue to get older, fewer pigment cells will be around to produce melanin. Eventually, the hair will look completely gray.

People can get gray hair at any age. Some people go gray at a young age — as early as when they are in high school or college — whereas others may be in their 30s or 40s before they see that first gray hair. How early we get gray hair is determined by our genes. This means that most of us will start having gray hairs around the same age that our parents or grandparents first did.