Grey hair at 18 is unusual but it is not unheard of. It may be something that runs in your family.

Cutting it short can help make it less noticable, but it will still be possible to see if people look at your hair cloaely.

The obvious way to hide it is with hair dye.
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Kevin - The management - keratin.com

Last edited by admin on Sun Jul 30, 2006 4:34 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hi, i was just surfing through the net to try and find an answer to my question and see if i could get help in any way when i found this site. i'm 16 and have come across various white strands in my hair since i was 15.

I've been trying to either stop doing a certain style to my hair or snipping the strands out which is an everyday job so it means that i have to be in front of a mirror each morning for 30 mins which is quite annoying. My friends have decided that it is due to being worried or stressed out though i can't stop that from happening but i am starting to think it is because of my genes which does not comfort me at all.

I have thought of dying my hair but it isn't a thought which i would willingly go for as people and i, myself, admire my hair due to its colour and how it is. If there is a natural way to go about preventing further growth of these white strands that i would be very grateful as my white strands seem to be growing often.

Some white hair in teen years is quite possible - especially if it is something that runs in your family. Unfortunately there is no proven preventative treatment if this is just the normal graying of hair that happens in everyone sooner or later.

Some people take p-aminobenzoic acid (PABA) to combat gray hair as there are one or two reports in the medical literature that this stimulated pigmentation of hair. However, there is no real proof of any effect.
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Kevin - The management - keratin.com

Thanks alot for your reply.

Hi, I'm a 23 year old male and I started getting some grey hairs when I was 13, or maybe even 12, I'm not sure.

I naturally have dark brown hair so these stood out a lot to me; the grey hairs were only individual and not in clumps, and they have less quality than the brown hair strands and do not stay as straight etc, so this meant after a while I couldn't have my hair in a straight centre parting like I used to, and started to have a shorter hair cut when I was about 15. I have kept my hair quite short all the time since apart from a period of about a year between ages 19 and 20 when I grew my hair much longer; to about shoulder length. I found that my hair looked quite nice and went in spirals after about 5 inches in length, though the long strands of grey or greying hairs were visible as I did not dye my hair at this time.

Since I was 15 or 16 and the greys were really undeniably visible, my first solution was keeping my hair moist by putting water on it or wearing hair gel or wax, and this is a good way of making the greys in short hair less apparent. It wasn't until I was about 20 that I started dying my hair approximately every 2 months, and I've been doing that since - I'm now 23 as I said before.

I have only used one brand and type of dye so far and this is only a semi-permanent. I have noticed it is taking less washes to rinse out of my hair now though, so I am considering trying a permanent.

I have a sister who is just over a year older than me - currently 25 - and she has quite a lot of grey hair just like I myself do, though I think she started getting greys a little later, and not so many. Being a girl, she dyed her hair all kinds of colours through her teens anyway, so maybe she didn't notice it as much at that time, and now she dyes it still with whatever her preferred colour is. She claims to me that her gray is just as rife as mine when the dye has nearly ran out of my hair, and I can say from personal experience that I have never really noticed any grey in her hair, and it always looks like regular light brown hair. Her hair shade is a little lighter than mine and is light to medium brown.

Now onto a point that someone made earlier that applies to young guys. When the grey hair percentage is increasing, having moderately long hair can look messy as grey hair is harder to fashion and control and has less substance. Perhaps growing it very long and dying it, then straightening it like women do would give nice quality long hair, so that is a potential option for guys for whom long hair is a practical option. Usually the hair looks neater when shorter though, and I only let it grow a couple of inches long now at most before getting it cut. I have often had the thought "it would be less stressful just to buy clippers and shave my hair short every couple of days", as I don't mind having very short hair and this would be an easy solution. But unfortunately when the hair is very short the greys seem to stand out a lot. So the best option for guys I would say is to have the hair between about 1cm and 6cm long; to keep it short and neat but not too short.

At the moment I'm using a combination of keeping it within those bounds of length and dying it, and it works quite effectively, but I obviously still worry a bit about how it will effect my social life. However, some women do seem to find young guys with some degree of grey hair attractive, including young women. I think on the social side and dating side, the best option for a young guy, (in 20s or early 30s say), with noticable grey hair, is to turn out neat and professional, as many women find a distinguished but young looking professional attractive. The key is to stay as neat and presentable as possible.

I think it is very sad that a 15 year old girl has the problem of gray hairs, however my sister had the same problem and she has been dying her hair since that age, and not just because of greys but because girls tend to like experimenting with hair colours. In my experience she will still be able to dye her hair effectively forever. It's surprisingly easy to just dye your hair and then not think about it for several weeks until it needs doing again, and it is really not a difficult process, and there is no point in procrasinating it and worrying about it. I definitely wouldn't recommend anything as expensive or extreme as laser therapy; leave that to the crazy celebrities. Simple hair dye will work for most young people with 'premature' gray hair right until they are old enough not to care.

hey I'm 15 yrs old and i have had grey hair since i was about 12/13 yrs old plus my big brother who's 18 yrs old started having grey hair about 2 yrs ago. can someone help me. i don't want to dye my hair because it damages the hair and I'm sick of people saying to me did you know you have white hair? or omg your hair's white etc it gets on my nerves and sometimes they even take the mick out of it. being a teen with white hair is pretty hard! i cant live with it anymore! can someone please help me? any advice is appreciated.

I am fourteen years of age and in school i am very nervous because of my hair. I feel like l am not acting myself and am trying to fade into the background so people will not notice all the greys scatered throughout my head l would be really happy to hear of any solution as during your school years people just judge you on your apperance and if your not like everyone than people start mocking you.i have found it good to write down my prolom here because it is very embarcing to talk about it to people you know. l would really apriecaite if ways of stopping or reversing grey hairs. please let me know thanks

Hi Jerry and Bubbles, I'm so sorry to hear about the insensitive comments you get from people at school, they just don't think do they. I originally started this thread back in 2005 (different username here because I just re-registered!!), and my son was bothered by thoughtless comments he had too. Eventually he started dyeing his hair with a semi-permanent, and has also tried blond highlights, which worked well - these both helped a lot. Believe me, I really don't think there's any 'cure' or reversal - if the greying is genetic, the only answer is to live with the grey or dye it! We tried so many routes to 'cure' - but with no success. Jerry, can you talk to your parents about it? - even if it's too embarrassing to talk to friends. I think Raphael's detailed posting (May last year) is really helpful - and again it comes back to hair dye and also keeping hair an optimum length so the grey is less visible. Good luck!

Like, I think a few other people who have posted, I found this topic by searching around on google about premature greying, wondering if there were any other 'young adults' dealing with it as well. Even though this topic is old, I'd like to post my own personal experience anyways.

My father has had a full head of grey hair since I can remember. Keep in mind, he's not exactly an 'old man'. He's had grey hair since he was eighteen. I always thought it was cool. It made my dad more special and it wasn't like he was any less of a person because, so what, he had grey hair.

I never really thought much about it, though, until I was seventeen. I'd been dying my hair for around four years by this time and had recently cut it very short. When it started growing out, one day my friends just started picking out one grey hair...and then another, and another, and another until my hand was full of them. I know, I know. That stupid thing about not picking out your greys? Whatever. I wasn't really worried about that. All I could do was look at the hairs and think...'crap'.

I dyed my hair once after that, and now that it's been a year, I can see the little jerks coming out again. Stronger even this time around. it makes me a little sad, thinking that I wasted all those years dying my hair silly colors when I should have been enjoying my natural hair color. But I suppose that this is my natural hair color now.

Sick of dying it anyways, I'm going to just have to live with it. I'll just have to look on the bright side. I always wanted a unique hair color! And what's more unique in an eighteen year old girl then grey, eh? And what the heck, it's just one more gift from my father.

Gray Hair

I think it is kind of kool to have white hair. I started getting white patches of hair since i was about fourteen and now im 16. A lot of people think that it must bug me to have white hair but i am actually pretty happy about it because it makes me unique. I hope that it turns completely white by the time im 20. I think it is pretty low to dye ur hair in order to hide what makes u unique. I think that it is pretty special just like some people have blue eyes or blonde hair that is how i view my grey hair. I also have dark brown hair like most of the other people i've read about who have gotten white hair