So I’ve noticed that I am getting more grey hairs lately. Am I upset, you ask? No way!

Grey is sooo in right now. It’s maturity, it’s sexy, it’s…well, grey is OK!

But my question for this edition of Sunday School is…Why the hell do hairs turn grey in the first place?

According to the website ‘Kids Health for Kids,’

The root of every strand of hair is surrounded by a tube of tissue under the skin that is called the hair follicle (say: fah-lih-kul). Each hair follicle contains a certain number of pigment cells. These pigment cells continuously produce a chemical called melanin (say: meh-luh-nin) that gives the growing shaft of hair its color of brown, blonde, red, and anything in between.

As we get older, the pigment cells in our hair follicles gradually die. When there are fewer pigment cells in a hair follicle, that strand of hair will no longer contain as much melanin and will become a more transparent color - like gray, silver, or white - as it grows. As people continue to get older, fewer pigment cells will be around to produce melanin. Eventually, the hair will look completely gray.

ABC.net’s Dr. Karl adds that, “some hairs will be their normal colour, but some (the ones without melanin) will be completely white. So here’s a great truth - there’s no such colour as grey hair. Grey hair is dark hairs, with the newer white hairs mixed in.”

So now that we know why hair turns grey, is it possible for all your hair to turn grey overnight or is that just an urband legend?

According to Dr. Karl:

So how can somebody’s hair turn white overnight? Easy, they first have grey hair (which is actually the mix of dark hair and white hair) - and then all the dark hair falls out over a few days.

This could be caused by a disease called alopecia areata, where your hair, for no apparent reason, simply falls out. Unlike common balding, alopecia areata is just as likely to happen in women as in men.

Alopecia areata. Well, isn’t that pleasant.

This has been Sunday School. Join me again next week! Maybe I will tackle why people think its ‘gray’ not ‘grey’!

What do you think ‘gray’ or ‘grey’?