Our hair is made up of two parts – Shaft and Root. The long shiny strings that grow out of our heads is shaft. Root is what keeps the shaft grounded to the scalp.

The root of every hair is surrounded by a hair follicle. Each hair follicle contains some pigment cells. These pigment cells produce a chemical called melanin that gives the hair its colour. How dark or light someone’s hair is depends on the amount of melanin each strand contains. Now you know what makes people’s hair black, dark brown, light brown, golden or red!! It all depends upon the amount of melanin released by the pigment cells. And yes, any other color that you see on people’s hair is cosmetic. ;)

As people grow older, pigment cells in a hair follicle slowly die. When that happens, hair that grows light in color. Eventually, when all the pigment cells die, the hair grows is entirely grey, silver or white. But not all hair turns grey in one day. It takes years for all hair on the head to turn grey.

How early do people get gray hair is determined by genes and also to a large extent by the food they eat. This means we might start having grey hairs around the same age that our parents or grandparents first did.

So better watch out!! Eat healthy food else you might get grey hair sooner than you think.