I am 21 and I have stray gray hairs coming in on my head.
I have been overly stressed lately. I have heard this may be a factor.
Are there any other reasons that could cause this at my age? What can I do to stop it?
Stress doesn’t cause gray hair.
If you’re that concerned about it, get some hair dye. Problem solved. Or keep the gray and be confident that you’ll never get carded.
Y’know, I always thought that I’d be cool with grey hair, and I’d never stress about it.
I got some in my mid-twenties (maybe 24 / 25). Oooo, cool, I thought.
Now I’m 34 and I have quite a few. I don’t look at all grey to the casual observer, but I must say that up close they are very obvious, and people comment. I’d not mind at all if they just said “oh, you’re going grey”, or if I was getting distinguished grey temples or whatnot. Thing is, they comment because I’m going grey in unsightly blotches. One comment I’ve got was, “hey, have you spilled some paint in your hair?” My beard is going downhill fast too.
Anyway, I can live with it. I must say that honestly I haven’t gone grey at the rate I predicted when I first started noticing it. It’s picking up speed now, but I’d wager if you’re anything like me you’ll have another decade where you won’t need to do much about it (unless you really want to).
My dad was totally grey at forty. I think I take after him.
It could be your genes - you’re genetically predisposed to go gray early. It happens.
The only way to “stop” gray hair is to either shave it or dye it.
I’ve had a few since i was 17 or 18 but i kepted my hair buzzed short so no one could tell, that wasn’t the reason though. Now i’m 23 and i own many many more gray hairs that are more easy to see since i spike my hair now. It doesn’t bother me b/c when people point it out:
Someone: Hey, you know you have gray hair?
Slick: Yeah. . . oh hey, did you know you have cellulite?
I usually come out on top and they stop remarking about it.
The reasons for getteing grey hairs early aare genetics and major stresses on the body. My grandmother was extremely ill in her late twenties/early thirties and went completely gray in the sapn of a year. My husband has been grey at the temples since before I met him at 24.
Seeing as you only have a few stray ones, it’s most probably genetics. Hair dye is cheap, if it bothers you. 
There was an old wives’, er, spouses’ tale that if you pulled out a grey hair as soon as you saw it, two would grow back in its place. Obviously not a cure for the grey, but as Abigail VanBuren said when queried on it, “What a wonderful cure for baldness!” ;j (<-- the only icon with hair)
I started losing my hair when I was eighteen years of age. I am now twenty-eight, and only in the last year have I started to go grey at the temples. All I can say is, I hope the grey wins.
“Better turncoats than deserters”
I first noticed a couple of grey hairs when I was in high school. They’re more numerous now (I’m 26), but nowhere close to taking over yet, thankfully. I lay the blame squarely on genetics, since I have a number of relatives who were completely grey in their 30s. Unfortunately, as pretty much everyone else here has said, your only options are dye it or live with it.
A friend of mine has had George Clooney salt and pepper hair since he was 15. He dyes his hair now.
My mum’s best friend (who is now in her mid 50’s) has been grey and dyeing her hair since she was in her early 20’s.
I started going gray when I was12. My hair was pretty much white by the time I was 30.
I remember the first time it was noticed. I was taking a spelling test and the entire room was quiet (you remember how those elementary spelling tests were). Then the little girl who sat behind me (whom I might add I was hopelessly in love with) stood beside her desk pointed to the back of my head and yell as if there were a deadly spider on my shoulder, “You’ve got gray hair!!!”
I imediately shrank to the size of a salamander while everybody laughed and then came over to her desk to confirm that there indeed was solid proof of a folicular manifestation of cooties.
The girl requested to be moved since whatever malady caused my hair to go grey might well be catching. The only people who would ever sit behind me after that were the bizarrely nerdy kids who saw the back of my head as some sort of tonsorial laboratory and throughout class they would mumble things like, “fascinating” or “interesting” or “I wonder if…” and then trail off into silence.
Seriously, I was salt and pepper grey by the time I was in high school and it was long enough ago that dress codes and hair length codes were quite strictly enforced. The school administration decided that my hair color was a disruption so I had to keep it dyed. However the drama instructor had them add the addendum it could be its real color if I was in a play playing an old person.
In my years in high school, I played every grandfather in theater history and some that weren’t written as old became old so I wouldn’t have to dye may hair. (In my adolescent mind I equated dyed hair with womanliness)
However, I was buying booze when I was 16 without so much as a blink of an eye. When I went to college we’d be standing around before class and students older than I would ask me how long I had been teaching this class.
Girls thought it was cool to date “an older man” - When I met their parents, however, even after I brought out my driver’s license to prove their daughters were two years older than I was, they kept a very wary eye on the dirty old man they were convinced was me.
Trust me, you’ll survive grey hair - I did, and so did my dad. He started going grey when he was 14.
TV
As has been previously mentioned, it’s most likely due to genetics. My mother has been fully grey since she was about 25. I found my first grey hair when I was fifteen. Now, at 22, I have a patch starting at my hairline and others scattered throughout which my mother points out with glee whenever she sees them. :rolleyes: I’m expecting to see quite a few more in the next couple years. Of course, I may take longer than she did. What hair my father has (male pattern baldness runs on his side) is still mostly black, except for his beard.
Wow, interesting stories.
FWIW
When I met my husband to be, I was 23 and he was 25 with a distinguished sprinkling of grey at the temples. Now we are fifty-ish and he is more sprinkled with grey but there is still plenty of brown.
There is a 23 year old at my work who has more grey than I do. (I can count my grey hairs on one hand.)
I actually think that grey hair with a young face looks kinda cool.
I’m 29 & have been coloring my hair since I was about 18. Not to cover gray, but to deepen the red. I’m planning to color it back to my natural color soon just so I can tell when I start going gray. I fully intend to keep the gray when it comes, too. In fact, I’m almost excited about the prospect of having silvery hair.
My hair started to go grey when I was about 20. It’s no big deal.