Gray hair is something that everyone will face as they get older, some experiencing it while they are still young. However, getting gray hair is not the end of the world. There are plenty of options available that you can do with gray hair.

Causes For Your Gray Hair

Knowing what causes your gray hair can sometimes be as complicated as understanding what causes cancer. While cancer itself might be easy to explain, there are multiple things that can cause it. In the same way, knowing how hair turns gray is simple enough, but there are widely different causes that can be behind your gray hair.

The simple version of how your hair turns gray is really easy to understand: melanin is the name of the cell that gives your hair its color and, when you don’t have any more melanin, you run out of color and your hair goes gray.

However, there are various reasons why you run out of melanin. Age is only one reason and the reason why everyone will turn gray at some point in their lives. If you show signs of aging at a young age, then you will also gray younger too.

Other than that reason for graying, there is also the fact that your hair needs certain things to make melanin. If your body does not have what it needs, your melanin will be depleted faster, and you will gray sooner.

There are other things that can make you get depleted of melanin faster too. Stress is one thing that definitely depletes you of melanin. Prolonged or severe illnesses can cause you to become depleted too. It is possible to start going gray even if you have melanin though.

This is caused by a buildup of hydrogen peroxide in your hair follicles. Just like DHT can attach itself to your hair follicles and can make your hair come out, hydrogen peroxide can attach itself to your hair follicles too. In this latter case, however, instead of falling out, your hair simply gets bleached before it even becomes visible.

Products To Help Your Gray Hair

Whether you are choosing to embrace your gray hair, or you are trying to help postpone gray hair coming out, there are products that you can use for each situation. In fact, some products can be good both for making that gray hair shine and for helping you keep your color for as long as possible.

Either option you choose, you will want your hair to look healthy and shiny. Gray hair requires a little extra care to get that healthy, vibrant look, but it is still simple and entirely possible to get just the right amount of shine.

Showing Off Your Gray Hair

Gray is a new trend in its own right, and there are plenty of products out there to help you show it off. There are more and more hair products out there which are specifically made with gray hair in mind. While all of these are worth at least looking at, some of these are ones that you should get sooner rather than later.

Shampoo And Conditioner

Gray hair has a strong tendency to look yellowish sometimes. This is not a yellowing as in hints of blond, but a yellowish like a person’s teeth when they have been chewing tobacco or something for years. Suffice it to say that this is not something that looks good where your hair is concerned.

This is where shampoo can come in at. Most shampoos that are for gray hair have an undertone of blue or purple. This undertone seeps into your hair when you use the shampoo. Since this is practically on the opposite side of the color spectrum, it counteracts the yellowing and keeps your hair looking cool and crisp.

Conditioners for gray hair work the same way, but the shampoos are more important since they are slightly more effective. However, if possible, you should use both shampoo and conditioner to get the most effect out of them.

As a final note on shampoos, you should always be careful not to wash your gray hair too often. This tends to strip your hair and dry it out. Good shampoos will have things in them that are hydrating for your hair to counteract this, but you shouldn’t rely on this, and you should try not to overdo it.

Hair Oil

Hair oils are less common than some of the other hair care items. This is something you should consider getting for your gray hair though. By the time your hair starts turning gray, it is also most likely losing other things too.

To protect your hair from everyday damage and to keep it healthy, your scalp makes an oil to coat your hairs. Sometimes you will stop making this oil, resulting in hair that is both more prone to damage and that looks dull.

This is where hair oils come in at. These serve to protect your hair, make it look shiny, and can even help regulate the amount of oil your scalp makes. Hair oils that are for gray hair also have the added feature of protecting your hair from UV rays from the sun and things of that nature.

Protecting your hair from the sun is actually the job of the melanin in your hair. However, since gray hair has no melanin, then your hair is not protected from the sun, and it needs your help in this area.

There are hair oils that you can buy but, in a pinch, you can just use an oil that you might find in your kitchen. Coconut oil is a great option for your hair, for starters, as is Vitamin E oil and a couple of others you might have on hand.

Creams And Hair Masks

There are too many different hair creams and hair masks to really go into them. However, these can really give your hair a very nice shine. Gray hair is more prone to problems such as being dry, getting dandruff, looking dull, etc., on top of damage.

There are creams and masks that can deal with all of these problems and more. Your gray hair will appreciate the extra care, especially since gray hair is more porous. These added pores are where the melanin would usually be at, and their presence allows your hair to hold onto the beneficial ingredients of whatever you put on it.

Therefore, gray hair literally gets more out of hair masks and creams than hair does that is not gray. This is all the more reason to use these on your gray hair. You can either buy hair cream or a hair mask kit, or you can look up what ingredients you need to make a hair mask of your own.

Buying a kit will usually give you ingredients that you would not be able to get yourself even if you wanted to. A kit will also save you time, and it is pretty easy to find one that is exactly what your hair needs.

However, making your own does have certain advantages too. You can customize the hair mask’s ingredients depending on your mood and how your hair is behaving on that particular day.

Heat Protectants

Hopefully, you always use heat protectants when you are styling your hair with any form of heat. However, if you aren’t already doing this, it becomes even more important when you have gray hair. Protectants that are made for gray hair will be especially nourishing for your hair.

Heat protectants can do much more than just protect your hair from getting damaged from the heat that you are using on your hair. They also can be used to strengthen your hair and to give it some shine while also helping keep down your frizz so that your hairstyle lasts longer.

Heat protectants most often come in the form of hairsprays. To use a protectant, all you have to do is spray or spritz it on. Certain individual protectants may have more specific instructions, so you should always read the back to verify before you use it.

Helping Postpone Your Gray Hair

Many of the things that can be used to help postpone your graying can also benefit the gray hair that you already have and can make it shiny and healthy. This is a win-win, though it can drag out the transition time that it takes you to go fully gray.

Most of the products that we already looked at fit nicely into helping postpone your gray hair to some extent. The hair masks, in particular, can be a huge help in postponing your grays, especially if you apply one with ingredients that are specifically for reversing gray hair.

As for the other hair products mentioned, anything that damages your hair will only make you gray that much faster. So, anything that strengthens your hair will help to postpone your grays.

Hair Vitamins

There are certain vitamins that are especially needed for your hair. Gray hair should get more of these vitamins to help it stay strong. Fortunately, there are vitamins and supplements that are specifically for your hair.

These hair vitamins can make sure that your hair gets everything it needs to grow. Since one of the things that can make you gray is a lack of the vitamins that you need, any formulas that are for hair will work.

However, there are some vitamins that are not only for hair but for gray hair specifically. Some of these are formulated to try to reverse your gray hair, while others assume that your hair is already gray and do their best to make sure that your gray hair stays shiny and healthy.

Products To Avoid For Your Gray Hair

Just like some products are good for your hair, there are other products that you will want to avoid if your hair is gray. While everyone knows that chemicals are bad for their hair, they are even worse for gray hair.

As mentioned, gray hair is slightly more porous than regular hair is. This is good for holding onto nourishing oils that are in hair products. However, this also means that your hair will hold onto chemicals that might be harmful to it for a lot longer than it should.

When these chemicals are held by your hair right up against your scalp, this is even worse. If you are already aware that you are a little sensitive to certain chemicals, this sensitivity will only get worse with gray hair.

Continued use will damage not only your hair but also your hair follicles and your scalp. The result of the damage might be something as drastic as hair loss, or it might simply make you get more gray hairs in faster.

Some chemicals are worse than others, but even some chemicals that are not harmful for hair under normal circumstances can be harmful to gray hair. For example, sodium dries hair out, but it can dry out gray hair to the point of damaging it.

There are many different kinds of sodium that can be found in hair products. There is sodium lauryl sulfate, sodium laureth sulfate, and sodium hydroxide for starters. Each of these has different properties, but all of them can dry out your hair.

So, if your hair is gray, try to use natural products that are safe for your hair if they bond with it. If you do not know what an ingredient is, then it is more than likely something that comes from a lab.

Final Thoughts

There are so many things that you can do to pamper your gray hair that it would be impossible to go over all the different options. However, hopefully you at least have an idea of where you can start. Gray hair can look amazing if you treat it right.

So, start using some of these things on your hair, and feel free to use them even if your hair doesn’t have a single gray in it.