Grey Hair

[mycauldronisleaky]

So bit of a general question. I am 31 and I have noticed the grey creeping in round my temples and my neck line. However today I discovered one looooong grey hair.
Does anyone know if to have a grey hair it has to be a new hair that has lots its colour or if you can have hair that just loses colour?

It's got to be a new hair, I thought!

Well that's what I thought. But my hair is about halfway down my back, this was totally grey... so I've been working on it for a while or hair just loses colour. Google wasnt much help so I turned to mumsnet!

That's how mine started, one long white hair here and there, now all around he temples so 1/4 head nearest scalp is mixed longest bit mainly old colour. Luckily I have blonde hair or it would be more noticeable.

Hair fades a bit as you get older but doesn't suddenly go white for the whole length!

Pretty sure!

That's what made it so weird! The odd grey hair around the hair line, yes fine. This was one singular long totally grey hair. I checked I couldn't see anymore haha

I'm pretty sure some of my hair has just lost colour. I have shoulder length hair with roots about 3/4 inches long that are far whiter than I like, but there a few full length pure white grey hairs, I'm sure the colour has just vanished from those strands

I've a mix of dark brown and grey/white and some of mine are white all the way through (I have long hair) and some sort of fade out half way down..so I assume they started going grey later at a different stage of growth!

Mariella Frostrup said that when she was bereaved a streak of her hair quite suddenly went white when she was a teen.

In general I always thought you just lose pigments in strands and it grows out, and can dull.

Apparently one of my uncles went white overnight during WW2.

Thanks for the replies! Quite interesting to see the different answers.