There's a question I've had for a while, but I don't know if anyone can answer this. I just want to see if someone else has heard something like this, or it's just an urban myth.

You see, many times I get people telling me that if I dye my hair this much I'll have gray hair by the time I'm 30. And they proceed to give me examples of people that had had this happen.

But I also think that if someone has noticed a rapid increase in gray hair after dying it, it may be partly due to the fact that most of the time her hair is covered with colour, so any gradual graying will not be apparent, until when she gets some of her natural hair colour again.

I haven't seen any articles on the subject, so I don't know if there has been proven to be a connection. I suppose hair dye should affect the root of the hair to cause such a change in the hair consistency?

Just want to see if anyone has any knowledge/opinions/personal experience on the matter. I only have a couple of gray hairs, that aren't really visible and which I'm pretty sure where caused by stress, so I don't really worry about that, but I thought it'd be an interesting topic, since all of us here dye our hair.

I'm pretty sure that's a myth. People also tell you you'll go bald from dyeing hair which is also untrue (unless you damage your scalp).

I happen to have loads of grey hairs but it's hereditary. I haven't bleached my hair for over a year and I've got more greys during that time.

I think you're right about people not noticing their greys because they're covered up. As far as I'm concerned there's no correlation.

So, I suppose it's like I thought, probably just misinformed people (that probably don't like unnatural colours much either) trying to scare us with their supposedly well-founded knowledge, with the excuse of warning us.

Although I think it's a really popular misconception around here, along with the "you'll go bald if you put hairdye on your scalp for years" which everyone seems to believe, even hairdressers seem to believe it. Actually, everyone seems to believe that if you dye your hair letting dye touch your scalp, the chemicals seep in your scalp and damage your hair/scalp long-term (some people believe it damages your organism/brain too). Hence the gray hair myth I suppose. If they think dye causes everything, why not that too?:p That's why many women only do streaks and never let dye touch their scalp.

Huh. Well most unnatural dyes are veggie-based with cream conditioners, aren't they? I can't possibly see why that would cause long-term damage. Metallic-based dyes, on the other hand (I think these are usually "natural" looking colors) might cause some stress to your hair or scalp, but I'm pretty sure it would take a very long time in order to endure that much damage. Still, your hair wouldn't necessarily turn grey; I think it'd probably fall out before that happened.

Ah, when I said hair dye, I meant to include bleach in that. Although people tend to think that to get unnatural colours you'll have to damage your hair way more than a simple bleach job done by someone who wants to turn blond. They probably think the bright colours are a result of some radioactive chemical.