Gray hair myths and facts

Removing white hair grows more white hair - is one of the oldest redundant myths that exist in the world about gray hair. Removing a gray hair from any part of the body will not cause more of the surrounding hair to suddenly lose pigment and turn gray. Hair turning gray is a part of a biological switch in the body that occurs and is uncontrollable. Pulling it out will just remove the offending hair strand but make no mistake, your graying process, as set in your DNA, has begun. It must be noted that by hair graying, the integrity and strength of hair has not been compromised in anyway.
Hair is a substance that is made up of a protein called keratin. However, not all hair is the same. There are some individuals that can naturally have some quite exotic hair colors, which themselves are not a completely permanent state. This can cause some individuals to change hair color naturally over the course of their lives. This is because of the play of pigment. Skin color is decided by a pigment called melanin, while in the hair, color is decided by eumelanin and pheomelanin. Eumelanin gives hair a dark color while pheomelanin makes it lighter. The balance of these two gives hair its specific color. As the natural aging process reaches a certain stage, the production of eumelanin and pheomelanin stop. This does not stop the production of hair but without its pigment, a transparent tube of hair grows. Because of the fibers and protein lattices in hair, this appears to most of us as white or gray hair.

Having understood the mechanism of hair graying, one can ascertain that there is no reason to believe that plucking one gray hair out will cause a collection of gray hairs to sprout out. If the amount of gray hair that you have is sparse then you should consider plucking them out as a removal mechanism. You should also consider spending a small amount of time in the sun, getting a tan as the amount of melanin in your body will increase, and this will have a corresponding effect on the production of eumelanin in your hair. As time progresses, you might have to consider the use of hair dyes and coloring techniques. This can be quite effective at masking aging and you can gradually progress from temporary to more permanent hair coloring methods. Permanent is a relative term in this sense as the frequency of coloring will reduce with permanent hair color but not the overall graying effect.