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Does Pulling Out White Hair Lead To More Greying?

What do you do when noticing gray or white hair on your head? Pluck them off? Do you know there is a wives tale that pulling them off will get you a couple more white hair? It sounds a little bit unnerving now, right?

So is it true that plucking gray hairs will multiply the white and gray strands you have, and is it harmful?

There are many ways to treat and cover disturbances following this human-aging sign, like using an SMP procedure, entrusting it to SMP work with grey hair, redyeing your hair, hair implants. What is the most reliable third option to your camouflage of some gray hairs in your locks?

How does your hair turn grey?

Every single hair is bounded by a hair follicle that contains its own follicles pigment cells. These pigment cells take responsibility to constantly generate melanin-a chemical that gives new hair color in its new growth process. Melanin is the key factor that determines whether your skin is dark or fair. Likewise, it also decides how dark or light-colored your tresses are.

As we get older, more and more follicles pigment cells die. Now that there are fewer pigment cells in the hair follicle, its hair becomes lighter or, at some stage, completely transparent in color due to the lack of melanin. This is the procedure that makes your hair turns gray.

While most people will find their first white hair at the advent of their aging (commonly in their 40s or 50s), the elders are not the only ones having gray hairs. Whereas even people in their 20s or younger can find gray hairs on their heads and encounter premature greying. This phenomenon depends on several particular factors such as genes, oxidative stress (an imbalance between antioxidant activity and free radical activity), depression, and some other illnesses.

Does pulling one gray hair cause more to grow in its place?

Because a hair follicle surrounds only one hair, after plucking a strand of white hair, there won’t be more than one single strand that regrows in its place. Mostly, you will find only one hair grow in the same spot. Also, other surrounding hairs are hardly affected until their own hair follicles lose their pigment cells.

In most cases, the new hair will be gray as its predecessor. Although there are still some rare chances that the new hair is darker than the last one, greys generally tend to have a coarser texture than normal hairs and are expected to have a faded color.

Does plucking white hair lead to more greying?

Just the same as the case with gray hair, if you are wondering after you pluck off your white hair, a new white hair will grow in its place or not. The answer is no. An only single hair grows from a single follicle. The already less melanin amount in follicle cells may cause your next hair to turn white too, but you won’t get a couple more of white hair just because you pull it off your head. Just one gray hair will grow back after you pluck one gray hair off.

Moreover, as we know, a white hair’s follicle doesn’t hold active follicle cells anymore, they are no longer producing pigment, and so, your hair will still be white after it grows back.

What happens to the hair follicle after plucking white hair?

We often catch our mother and our grandmothers plucking off their white hairs all the time, and it seems normal that if your hairs turn white, you pull them off, but let’s look into this from a medical science point of view to see if real experts in the expertise would recommend plucking white hairs.

What Will Happen If I Pluck Out White Hair?

A forceful action against the skinhead, in fact, is not recommended in handling premature greying and white hair, according to Dr. Kraleti-an, an expert in dermatology.

Dr. Kraleti explains that this approach to getting rid of gray or white hair will cause damages to the skin of your head on a sliding scale. Normally, you will expect it to grow back after you pluck out some gray hair from your scalp. Of course, after a couple of times, you will find a new hair grow in its place with reduced pigment compared to your other naturally pigmented hairs. That’s when the impact of your hair plucking is not too detrimental for hair follicles to continue processing its recreating and nurturing hairs.

However, if you keep pulling and plucking gray hair off your head from the same follicle, it will cause heavy scar formation and permanent damage to that follicle. It means the cells around the follicle will die, leading to the hair follicle’s shrink. Hence, it will fail to keep on its function of hair reproduction.

As you see, plucking hair is a bad habit in this case. The situation will turn horrible for your look if you have white hairs over many wide areas of your head and often resort to plucking them off as a quick fix for a better look. The side effects might come soon as bald patches, thinning hair, alopecia areata, and more hair loss-caused conditions after this.

Why you shouldn’t pluck white hair

So it turns out pulling off your white hair doesn’t come in handy in any way. Picking it off, you will still get a new hair as coarse as the last one. After all, the point is that the pigment-producing cells to produce melanin for the hair shaft are dead, and plucking the hair off is just by no means effective. You won’t get a couple more white hair, but you won’t get fewer.

The worse thing is you may even cause repeated trauma to the hair follicles because of this. In this case, what is likely to happen is that the cells of hair die. A bald patch, follicle infection, and more can happen.

Side Effects Of Plucking White Hair

On a closer look at risks that plucking grey hair and white hair will cause to your scalp, these are some unwanted hair-pulling caused consequences that may happen:

Hair follicles damages

Continuous acts of pulling out grey hairs can lead to the death of cells around follicles. This will cripple the follicles and put an end to their hair reproduction.

Scalp damages

The surface is your head skin will be susceptible to scars and infections after you pluck your grey hair off. As soon as you get rid of grey hair in this way, you can bring the strand to the eye and see if there is a white bulb at the root of it or not. If instead, you find its root’s tip red, you have separated it from the blood supply, and, likely, the hair will never grow in its place again.

Weeker hair pattern

Another harm that pulling gray hair will do to you is its alteration of hair texture. The hair will grow weaker, being more fragile and coarse. So next time, you may want to carefully cut the hair off instead.

Tips To Prevent Premature Greying Of Hair

We must admit that grey locks are never a pleasant thing, and to people suffering from hair greying at the early stage of their life, it is even more unacceptable. The grey hairs and white hairs add a couple of numbers to our real ages.

Since that you pull your hair off can take a toll on your scalp, you may want to carefully cut it off instead of plucking. Rather than this, what are other feasible ways to prevent the growth of new gray hair and stop them from meddling in your life?

Keep stress away and stay happy.

Many modern people have to battle against long-term stress, anxiety, depression when they are in the age of rat race and high-paced living. Stress has been proved to play a negative role in disrupting neurobiology, accelerating the process of your locks turning grey. It is important to take careful notice of your mental health state and apply soothing approaches to your mind.

You can try Yoga, meditation to keep yourself peace-hearted. Besides, getting enough sleep is essential to keep the stress away. Try setting a timer on time to go to bed and limit time spent on the internet or watching TV to avoid insomnia.

Avoid Chemical-based products and protect hair follicles

Chemicals such as phthalates, ammonia, hydrogen peroxide are warned against using if you are experiencing hair greying because they cause harm to your hair cells leading to your locks losing their pigment.

You can choose herbal shampoos, hair conditioners, hair dyes instead of chemical-based products to repel any bad influence on your tresses.

Watch out for external factors.

The scorching sunlight on a summer day can fasten the color fading process of your tresses. So is pollution. You should wear a hat when going out on a sunny day to protect the inherent color of your hair.

Accept your gray hairs.

Just a couple of gray hairs might not be so big a problem that deserves to get you panicked. If your locks are just a little color-faded, you can consider using some clear gloss salon treatment to enhance the locks’ shiness and charm.

Bottom line

To sum up, hair plucking doesn’t involve making you have more grey hairs or white hairs. When you pluck one hair off, only one hair will regrow from the follicle surrounding it. Moreover, surrounding hairs are completely unaffected by this.

However, if your hair turns gray, one piece of advice for you is that don’t waste time pulling your gray hair off. Plucking one gray hair off and another will grow in its place. In extreme cases, getting rid of greys this way can produce risks to the scalp skin, such as male/female pattern baldness, skin infection, and more. These harms will possibly lead to bald patches appearing on your head.

You can fix your grey hairs in many ways, like using herbal shampoo products or, as a commonly held belief, let it be and leave them with their natural charm.

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