Never pull that one gray hair out of your head

Do you know the commandment that you should not pull gray hairs out of your head because you will get more in return? It turns out that you really should not pluck gray hairs, but for a slightly different reason than we thought.

My family splits in two on the gray-hair front. One half goes gray as soon as they get close to 30 years old, the other half retains color until at least 60 years. It is indeed unfair. I often don't come out on top, but on the gray-hair front, fortunately, I do. Additionally, I am naturally blonde, mix in a bit of artificial blonde, and voilà: those gray hairs are hardly visible.

So I do have them, right? There aren't many, but just to be clear. If your strands grow out a bit but one hair stubbornly keeps shining, then you know it's true. There's no escaping that. The precursor is a whiter-than-white gray, which I am quite content with. Even though it may still take double the number of years than I currently have. But what I definitely shouldn't do in the meantime is pull those few gray hairs out of my head.

On average, you lose 159 hairs a day. Yes, this is quite a random number, but it is an average. I personally find it a miracle that I still have hair at all, considering what I sometimes brush off my head. A reassurance: it's a myth that you get more gray hairs from plucking that one hair. Your hair follicles are not connected to each other, so the gray doesn't suddenly jump from one to another.

Here's the thing. Your hair grows in a cycle. If you lose a hair, your hair follicle goes into a sort of rest. It takes about three months before you get a new one back. The point is that after your twenties, your hair comes back a little thinner with each cycle. Every five years, everything even gets completely shaken up, and the duration of your hair cycle changes too. Yes, you thought you only had to deal with one cycle, right? Well, think again. By endlessly plucking, your hair follicle can even become so traumatized that eventually no hair grows anymore or you (the horror) get infections.

So whatever you do, stay away from those gray strands and just get a haircut if it bothers you. In the end, you'll have a much fuller head of hair.

Source: HuffPost