How To Take Care of Graying Hair
Whether you feel your grays are the new blonde, stripes of earned wisdom, or an appreciation of your natural beauty, your gray hairs are a powerful expression of a new you — and with this great power comes great responsibility.
Caring for your gray hair presents unique challenges you may have never faced, but it is nothing you can’t handle. Eat a well-balanced diet, supplement with vitamins and minerals, and use hair care products that understand your maturing hair’s biology and love your locks as much as you do.
Why Does Hair Turn Gray?
Your hair does not turn gray. All hair is white before you were born, and the hair follicle pigmentation that eventually forms is called melanin.
Melanocytes are melanin-producing cells located in your follicles that are responsible for your hair color. Several age-induced biological mechanisms contribute to the graying process, ranging from melanocyte stem cell defects to melanocyte death in your hair follicles.
Each of the hair bulbs in your follicles has an inventory of active and dormant melanocyte cells. After your hair's growth phase, your follicles regenerate and recruit inactive melanocytes to replace the depleted ones. When these inactive melanocytes run out, melanin production grinds to halt — your follicles no longer have a store of pigmentation to draw on, and your strands grow out white.
How to Care for Gray Hair
It can be difficult to embrace your steely new look when your hair’s underlying texture is wiry and brittle.
Your hair’s physiology evolves in lockstep with its shifting color. Hormone fluctuations cause your follicles to shrink, creating locks that are not only whiter, but finer. For years your scalp and tresses were kept moist and healthy by oil-producing sebaceous glands posted around your follicles. Now these glands produce less sebum, contributing to a dry environment for your scalp and graying hair.
There are several things you can do to take care of your graying hair.
For Healthy Hair Eat a Healthy Diet
Your body synthesizes vitamin-A, biotin, iron, protein, zinc, omega-3 fatty acids, and other nutrients to create your hair. As you age, your body struggles to retain these nutrients.
Eat foods loaded with antioxidants and proteins, including beans, Greek Yogurt, eggs, spinach, salmon, avocados, and carrots, to generate thicker, smoother hair.
Supplement With Vitamins to Boost Your Shine From Within
If your diet fails to deliver your hair the nutrition it needs, supplement it with Better Not Younger’s Significant Other Hair Fortifying Vitamins. Packed with vitamins A, B, and C, zinc, and other nutrients, these delicious gummies vitalize your roots and give your gray hair unsurpassed shine.
Relax Your Style and Protect Your Tresses
Although your gray hair may be coarse, this does not mean it has a broader diameter or thickness. Gray hair shafts are generally narrower (finer) than melanin-rich hair, but they can feel rough and wiry because of a compromised cuticle structure that is easily damaged.
Your fragile graying hair requires a delicate touch to ensure smoothing and restorative efforts are not undermined by damaging styling techniques. Stay away from techniques or styles that can strain your follicles and trigger hair loss, including taut ponytails, tight braids, and tightly wound rollers.
Safeguard your pewter locks from high-heat styling tools with Better Not Younger’s No Remorse Heat Protection & Taming Spray. This lightweight taming spray is made with avocado oil to soften your hair while safeguarding it from the excessive temperatures of hairdryers and flat irons.
Gently Cleanse Your Hair While Fortifying Your Scalp
Your gray strands have a thinner cuticle layer than hair with natural color. Your cuticle is a system of shingle-like cells that protect the outermost layer of your hair.
A thinner cuticle allows increased moisture loss and damage from UV rays, humidity, or sulfate cleansers and conditioners. Sulfates push their way beneath cuticle cells diminishing your hair structure, exposing your locks to breakage or split ends. Harsh sulfates also strip natural lipids from your scalp and interfere with sebum production, leading to redness and inflammation.
Use Better Not Younger’s lightweight Wake Up Call Volumizing Shampoo to gently wash away impurities while buoying moisture retention and balancing scalp oil production. To treat dry or damaged hair, use Better Not Youngers Low Suds Repairing Shampoo with ingredients to slow free radical damage and strengthen your graying strands against environmental stress.
Focus on Your Follicles
The hormonal changes that lead to gray hair also result in weaker, drier hair, and reduced follicle function. Healthy hair starts with the scalp. For stronger, thicker hair, it is essential to treat the skin on your head with as much care as the skin on your face.
Use New Dawn Activated Charcoal Scalp Cleanser to scrub away follicle blockage while revitalizing and deep cleaning at your roots. This cutting edge product exfoliates while drawing out impurities and soothing your dry, irritated scalp.
Brighten Your Silvers
Ultraviolet damage from the sun, tobacco smoke, pollution, hard water, and chemicals can tint your grays to yellows and further damage your tender cuticles.
Wearing a hat, avoiding smoke, and keeping out of the sun are great ways to prevent brassy hair and unwanted yellow tones. To eliminate them, steep your mane in Better Not Younger’s Silver Lining Purple Butter Masque to create supple, pliant hair.
This creamy masque is loaded with vitamins, folic acid, green coffee, avocado, and mango — plus murumuru and cupuaçu butters that lock in moisture and boost your scalp’s natural moisture and elasticity. Optical agents diminish yellow hue intensity and brighten your hair’s silvery tones.
Better Not Younger Helps You Take Care of Your Graying Hair
Embracing your steely locks can be a powerful form of self-expression, which is why it is vital to know the right way to protect and maintain them.
Take care of your graying hair from the inside with a healthy diet and nurture it on the outside with Better Not Younger’s shampoos, scalp cleanser, scalp serum, and Silver Lining Purple Butter Masque.
Our quality hair care solutions reflect our belief that beauty is not defined by age. To see for yourself, check out our entire haircare selection on our product page.