Grey Factors

Just the other day......

"Someone as young as mummy trying hard to cover up the greys by dyeing it !  And grandma and Ee Poh have head full of silver ....differs from their old photographs.....why eh ?", lamented Ah Boy over dinner.

Hmmmm....good question my dear son. 

My explanations....

"Hmm.....Getting grey, silver or white hair is a natural process of growing old.  This phenomena happens when the hair follicle or pigment cells reduced or stopped producing melanin.  Melanin gives the hair a colour of brown (for us Asians) and other colours like blonde, red to westerners. 

The dark colour of our hair depends solely on how much melanin each hair contains.

Now...as one gets older, the pigment cells in our hair follicles slowly die.  This reduced the melanin which makes the hair follicle transparent like grey, silver or white. 

So when one continues to age, the pigment cells produce less melanin. Eventually, the hair will look grey or whitish....just like grandma and Ee Poh.

Nevertheless, people can get grey hair at any age. Some greys at a young age - as early as teenage - whereas others may be in their 30s or 40s....just like mummy.  It is determined by our genes. This means that most of us will start having grey hairs around the same age that our parents or grandparents first did.  Look at Kong-Kong, he was all whites...remember ?  That's why mummy also inherits some of  Kong-Kong's genes. 

And you, my dear son....you too inherit mummy's gene and soon develop greys at young age just like mummy. 

I explained to Ah Boy and hopefully he understood. 

The end of my story.  Hah...that's just the intro of today's post.  Actually I wanted to discuss about the dilemma of grey hairs.  And I've no time to do a thorough research on it (exams ma..!).  However. you can get the answers by clicking on the adverts on this website.  Just like what I did.