Why Does Hair Darken With Age?
Jo Haywood started her career in hairdressing 10 years ago, having trained at Sassoon as an apprentice, she now works at Luke Ormsby. She is very much a Hairdresser behind the chair, and now shares her knowledge on Salon Business with regular articles.
In this blog post, Jo talks about ageing hair, and why it darkens.
So many times, a client has sat in my chair and sooner or later says, ‘ I don’t know why my hair is so dark, I used to be really blonde as a kid you know!’ To which I never know what to reply. I believe them, I’ve seen it happen to children I know as they grow up and get less and less blonde- but why?
Not knowing the answers to these kinds of questions makes me feel like I don’t know as much as I should about hair. I worry my clients’ faith in me waivers a little when I nod and nervously chuckle without really saying much at all. So, let’s get down to the facts and find out the answer, feel confident in our answers and show our clients that we really do know our stuff.
As we know eumelanin and pheomelanin are responsible for the colour of our hair. Where the eumelanin is responsible for the depth of our hair and the pheomelanin for the warmth of our hair. What I didn’t know is that the pigment genes that the melanin is linked to can be turned on or turned off. Certain things can activate or deactivate the pigment genes, age, hormonal changes, stress, nutrition etc.
With hormonal changes being one of the biggest causes to affect the pigment genes, it’s no wonder your hair would change colour in your adolescent years. The process of growing up from a tot to a teenager comes with lots of changes within the body, one of these could be the turning on or off of the genes responsible for melanin. Puberty is a given for hormonal chaos to strike! Giving the genes another chance to be altered, affecting the colour of your hair.
So, it’s true and scientifically proven that hair does change colour over time, and now you know why!
Is there another reason you think this can happen? Or a way of preventing it? Reach out and let me know in the comments.
Jo Haywood x
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