Why We Turn Gray : Change Occurs in Quarter of Population by Age 25, but Scientists Still Haven’t Gotten to Root of It

You squint into the mirror in the morning, your eyes trying to adjust to the harsh bathroom light. Hesitantly, you take a brush to your hair. And, there it is .

Around one or both temples, perhaps radiating up the side of your head. If you’re male, you might see it at the top of your sideburns.

Gray hair.

Not just a few, but enough to be inescapably--undeniably--noticeable.

Bruno Meglio, 40, a partner in the fashionable Beverly Hills hair salon Bruno & Soonie, remembers the morning it happened to him.

“I can’t tell you the actual day, but it was in April of 1978,” he said. “I just looked in the mirror one morning and there it was, around the temples. This occurred when there was a change in my life and I went into business for myself and noticed a much faster graying.”

No one has gotten to the root of the problem yet, for the process of graying is an aspect of body behavior that has never been thoroughly studied by medical researchers. Nevertheless, graying is known to be a function of a complex system of body chemistry which, among other things, appears to be influenced by many of the factors identified by traditional folk culture. For instance:

--Stress and worry evidently can influence the rate at which people gray.

--There is something to the notion that people gray “overnight,” but it isn’t because the hairs turn color rapidly. It is just that dark hairs fall out, leaving only white ones behind--but it usually occurs over a period of a few weeks, almost never literally overnight.

--Graying patterns in all likelihood are inherited.

--Men and women gray in slightly different patterns. Women gray slightly faster than men.

--Light-haired people don’t gray more slowly than dark-haired people; it just appears that way because apparent grayness is often created by the contrast between white hairs and darker ones. In light-haired people, the contrast is less pronounced.

--Premature graying is a quantifiable phenomenon, affecting a quarter of all people by the time they are 25. Production of the first gray hairs on the head commonly begins as early as age 15.

Meglio, who fits the graying stereotype in a number of ways, agrees with other trendy stylists that graying is becoming a preoccupation of the Baby Boom generation.

“I think that, as far as women are concerned, hysteria is the first reaction,” Meglio said. “There is still a double standard in our society. If a man gets gray, he’s sexy, charming, sophisticated and desirable. If a woman gets gray, she’s none of those things.”

Said Westside salon operator Allen Edwards, “I think people like gray hair less today than in the past. People today are real aware of their health and feeling good. I personally feel gray hair makes you feel old.”

But as much as graying may be a preoccupation in today’s young adults and people in early and mid-middle age, it has never been the focus of a concerted scientific inquiry. The world medical literature includes not one single journal article on the graying process in the last decade.

So a lot of what the experts say about it, they concede, is based on assumption and guesswork.

“It is a subject of enormous curiosity,” said Dr. James Nordlund, chairman of the department of dermatology at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, and one of the few experts on graying identified by the American Dermatological Assn. and the government’s National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases.

“But if you went to the National Institutes of Health (the federal government’s research arm) and said, ‘Look, I’d love to have a grant to study graying of the hair,’ you’d probably get the Golden Fleece Award from that senator from Wisconsin (Democrat William Proxmire),” Nordlund said.

From interviews with Nordlund and three other experts, a picture of the phenomenon of graying begins to emerge.

The process starts deep in the outer layer of the skin, the epidermis, almost to the inner layer of the skin, the dermis. Each of the 100,000 hairs on the head is controlled by a hair bulb, below the follicle at the deepest part of the root system. It is through the hair bulb that a variety of complex substances are channeled, creating each hair, mainly composed of a biochemical substance called keratin.

In the hair roots and in the epidermis, millions of protein-producing pigment cells, called melanocytes, produce chemicals that determine the coloring of hair and skin. Albinos usually have a normal number of melanocytes, but they lack the chemical means to trigger pigment production. In some people, only a small area of skin lacks functionless melanocytes, producing white spots or streaks in an otherwise dark head of hair.

For an albino, said Nordlund, “it’s like a car without a carburetor. There’s plenty of fuel (in the form of the cells) but it is not able to convert it into color.”

The melanocytes, in turn, are responsible for chemistry that colors the hair that takes shape in the follicle and grows long enough, eventually, to be seen. Once hair has been pigmented by the melanocyte’s action, the color cannot be changed because the pigmentation is not just a coating to the keratin body of the hair; it is infused.

The pigmentation chemical, melanin, has two basic components--sort of like the pigments used at custom-mix paint stores. The two basic colors predispose a hair to be dark or light or some hue in between, depending on the proportion of each pigment that is genetically introduced into the hair-making process.

Coloration is influenced by racial and ethnic factors, but virtually no research has been done on the existence or nonexistence of such influences in graying. Because gray is largely determined by white-dark contrast, genetically dark-haired races or groups would be expected to show more discernable graying than races and ethnic groups with a broader range of light hair colors.

The color chemistry changes with age so that even a person who has not yet grayed may find his or her natural hair coloring changing with advancing age. Many people experience a darkening in their coloring--directly attributable to the maturing function of the melanocytes and the varying producting of melanin.

With time, said Dr. Coleman Jacobson, of the Baylor Hair Research and Treatment Center in Dallas, the melanocytes deteriorate and their pigment-producing chemistry begins to shut down. It is a gradual process and, for the period that the melanocyte is still functioning at reduced capacity, the bulb may produce a hair that is gray, or incompletely colored.

As time goes on, though, the melanocyte stops working completely and the hair bulb turns out a completely white product. The process can also be influenced by a variety of diseases that prematurely--and sometimes reversibly, if the disorder is detected early enough--reduce enzyme chemistry and interfere with the pigment cells.

In the vast majority of cases, age and the natural evolution of melanocytes--culminating in their cessation of function--is the cause of graying.

“You can have a heck of a lot of gray hairs and not notice it. Even if you have 50% or 60% white, your scalp can still look dark. You have to have considerably over 50% before it begins to show (decisively),” said Jacobson.

Thyroid disorders are a common cause of premature failure of the melanocytes. Diseases affecting the pituitary gland probably reduce hair coloration, said Jacobson, and even interruptions of hormone production in the testicles or ovaries can bring about premature graying. Diabetes can cause enough of a hormone imbalance to affect hair color, too, as can severe malnutrition. Premature graying has also been associated with a possibly heightened risk of heart disease.

The experts agreed that vitamin and mineral supplements and dietary changes generally cannot influence the process, and in cases of pernicious anemia, a deficiency in Vitamin B-12 may actually influence graying.

Influencing Pigment Cell

Stress and worry, according to the experts, probably exert a tangible influence on the pigment cell chemistry. The mechanism by which stress reduces melanocyte function is not understood, but the evidence that it exists, said Jacobson and others, is substantial.

The shutdown of the pigment cells usually occurs gradually. About 100 hairs a day are lost just from natural attrition. With age, the older dark hairs fall out, leaving a greater proportion of newly-created white hairs. As white hairs gain the majority, the grayness appears to increase. Thus, grayness is an optical illusion created by the mixture of the remaining dark hairs and the newer white hairs.

All of this begins to occur earlier than most people realize. A 1965 study of Australian blood donors, for instance, found that between 22% and 29% of men and 23% and 35% of women have some discernable graying by the time they are 25. As many as 23% of some subgroups of men and 14% of women were completely gray by that age.

Dr. Aaron Lerner, a professor of dermatology at the Yale Medical School, said about 1% of high school graduates may already be perceptibly gray--a classic example of premature coloration.

By 65, everyone has a significant amount of gray hair, even if they continue to appear dark-haired. The 40s and 50s are the ages of intense acceleration of graying for most people.

The phenomenon of turning white in a very short period of time--a matter of days or weeks--does not occur because the dark hair actually turns color, Lerner and other experts said. Turning white can be due to spontaneous loss of remaining dark hairs on the head of a person who has already produced a large volume of white hairs. Since the dark hairs are older, they would be lost first, leaving only the colorless white strands in place.

The head grays first at the temples and on the sides, then on the top. Hair cutters say women’s rear hairlines gray earlier than men’s. Women’s facial hair--fine, soft strands of a type dissimilar to head and body hair--does not gray but men’s beard hair does, though not by any predictable pattern.

Many men notice their chins turn white before the sides of their faces; yet others find cheeks go before chins. As for the rest of the body, there is no set pattern.

And finally, the bad news. The process cannot be arrested, despite the dyes and hair colors, and probably can’t be slowed. It’s physiologically harmless, yet most people don’t like it.

Said Nordlund, summing up: “It’s just a sign we’re getting older.”

Added Jacobson, “I think that, if people live long enough, they will all turn gray and they will all turn white.”