can hair transplant turn grey

The Shock of Grey Hair

When you spend the time and money to renew your hair with a transplant, you probably imagine a youthful shock of brown or black or vibrant blond or ginger, which can make grey strands all the more shocking.

However, a hair transplant can, indeed, turn grey – largely due to your genetics.

Grey hair is genetic and, as we’ll see, is literally rooted in your follicles’ makeup.

And if you’re thinking that you can get around your own grey hair by getting younger, non-grey hair from a “donor,” think again.

Your scalp will not accept foreign hair follicles, meaning that to have a hair transplant at all, you need enough extra hair elsewhere on your body in the first place.

As such, if your hair is already starting to go grey, you’ll likely have to contend with that in your new hair transplant.

After all,, all hair on your body shares the same genes – i.e. your genes.

How Hair Transplants Go Grey

Grey hair is due to melanin production slowing down.

Though some people have naturally grey hair, most people experience a slowdown in melanin production with age, leading to a person’s natural hair colour giving way to grey.

The two most popular types of hair transplants practiced today are FUE and FUT.

Both involve implanting grafts of hair into your scalp, with buds taking root and natural hair eventually pushing out and replacing the initial grafts.

These grafts often come from other parts of your body (i.e., chest hair, back hair, etc.).

Melanin production is literally “rooted” in the graft; if the transplanted graft comes from a region where your hair has already experienced melanin slowdown and gone grey, the same will hold true for the newly implanted graft.

The graft may not go grey immediately, but the clock is already ticking.

hair transplant turning grey
The process of hair turning grey is mostly genetic

The Truth About Grey Hair

There are a couple glimmers of hope for restoring natural hair color.

For example, platelet-rich plasma has shown some promise in some treatments in restoring melanin and thus natural pigmentation to patients’ hair.

By and large, however, hair that has already begun to turn grey is likely to continue turning grey.

However, just because your hair is grey doesn’t mean that it isn’t healthy.

Grey hair can be perfectly healthy and suitable for transplantation.

Age isn’t necessarily a barrier to successful hair transplants, either, with patients as old as 80 experiencing success.

Transplanted hair can easily be dyed, so all it takes is a hair transplant and a tube of dye to give you the healthy head of hair and vibrant colour you’ve wanted for years.

You do need to make sure that the transplant has fully taken root first and that the freshly implanted follicles are healthy and have plenty of room to breathe.

It is thus advisable that you wait a few weeks after your procedure to make sure everything is okay before you start adding dye.

Still, while grey hair may be a shock at first, there is no reason transplanted and then dyed grey hairs can’t look shockingly good and natural with the help of the latest hair transplant techniques and dyes.