My guitar teacher (in high school) is an albino. White hair, very pale skin. He’s 20 years older than me. I have a lot of gray now. Would he?
Does hair need pigment to grey?
Yes. Gray hair is due to the reduction of melanin pigment in hair, but some is still present. Since white hair already lacks melanin, it would have to gain melanin to become gray. Since albinos lack melanin, their hair won’t become gray.
In fact the grey (and blonde ) people can then age and have white hair .
(Perhaps why Gandalf aged from grey to white…)
Their hair turns as white as if they were albino, but as its only their hair, you wouldn’t say the person has turned albino…thats a genetic disease from birth.
BTW Crash test dummies said his hair turned white overnight. That can’t happen, not unless he had bleach spilt on his hair during the crash.
My father was involved in a serious car accident when he was in his 50s - his hair turned white; not instantly, but within a year or so.
My hair went through grey to white by the time I was in my mid 60s, (no trauma) but my beard is still grey.
As far as I understand it, there’s no such thing as grey hair (on humans). Individual hairs may be dark or white, but not grey. A mixture of dark and white hairs will give a grey appearance.
So hair that is naturally white will not go grey.
So what’s up with this hair-turned-gray-from [fright/trouble/trauma]?
Is it “true” beyond anecdote? If so, by what physiological mechanisms?
ETA: My apologies if this is discussed in the cites helpfully provided by Peter Morris, which I have not gotten to yet. [Got to yet?]
Cecil Adams concluded that “the evidence for such stories is often highly suspect” and did not find any recognized cause: Can hair turn white overnight from fright? July 10, 1987.
I’ve read this before, but it flabbergasts me that anyone is writing it. Surely you can pluck some hairs and look at them in isolation. They’re grey. Not on all people, but some people. I found my husband’s grey hairs on the sheets and sink for years before it turned white. Now I find white hairs. And now I’m finding a few stray grey hairs on my own head, and waiting impatiently for them to turn white.
While I accept their explanation of eumelanin and phomelanin, it’s pretty obvious to many people who have gone grey that the production of eumelanin doesn’t “shut off” like a light switch, but slowly turns off like a leaky tap.