What Causes Graying of Hair

Doctor Rassman I want to know something about grey hair. Is grey hair caused by stress or simply genetics?

Probably a little of both. Some people almost never go grey. Some people, even in their childhood years have grey hair. Some have total white hairs (Santa Clause). People with little or no stress get grey hairs. There is no clear cut rule.

Aging has a part to do with it as well. If you think about it from a scientific approach with genetics as a partial cause, we all have a certain programmed destiny of the cells in our body. Environmental factors may alter some of this destiny but the point is that if the hairs go through several life cycles (anagen catagen telogen) over a person’s life some of those hairs may be pre-programmed to fall out and never regrow after an “x” number of cycles. Some may be pre-programmed to turn white or grey after an “y” number of cycles. This may be a simplistic way to view biology but it may help understand the variation and why some may lose hair or have hairs that turn grey.