Getting my black hair back

There is a strange sighting of dark thick hair on my forehead. It has covered my whole front scalp. Initially I was confused as I have stopped coloring my head hair decades back while I stopped doing my beared more than three years back.

The changes in my head line made me curious to research the phenomena of getting black hair back in old age. 

Your hair loses melanin, a pigment-producing component that produces melanocyte cells as your age. Melanocyte cells are what give you your natural hair and skin color. The less melanin you have, the lighter your hair color will be. Grey hair has minimal melanin, while white hair has none.

My usual headline look! 

Your hair naturally loses melanin as you age. A study estimates that your odds of becoming grey increase by 20% every decade after age 30. Health and genetics can make some people see grey hair earlier.  

Hair is naturally white at its core. Melanin is what gives your hair the color it has genetically. Hair follicles contain melanin-producing cells that create pigments by combining them with protein keratins.

My entire face and head is scattered with grey hair presently.


A close up shot reveals the re-appearance of black hair.

If you have darker hair like we Indians, you have higher levels of the pigment eumelanin. People with red hair (like red heads) have high levels of the pigment pheomelanin.

Scientific Facts:

It’s a strange phenomena. Scientifically total amount of melanin and the ratio between eumelanin and pheomelanin is unique to you and entirely determined by your genes. It is what gives you your natural hair color.

But this is where it gets interesting. There are several genes that are involved in melanin production and that can, therefore, effect our hair color. These genes switch on and off at different points in our lives - hence the reason our hair changes color as we get older.

Usually, our hair will turn darker because eumelanin production increases as we age (until we go grey, that is). And some because some genes are not switched on until triggered by the harmones first released during puberty, we might not show our true natural hair color until adolescence.

Hair is not only feature to naturally change color as you age - for 10 to 15 percent of people their eyes do too.