Join me, Danise Keilitz, as I unveil the grace of graying on your terms while navigating the beauty landscape after 50. Imagine a world where each silver strand tells a story of wisdom, and your hairstyle becomes your crown of glory. As we dissect the art of transitioning to gray hair, we'll tackle everything from the perfect purple shampoo to gray blending techniques that keep you feeling as youthful on the outside as you do on the inside. We're not just breaking the old rules about hair length and age; we're writing our own, with professional insight on how to adapt your look to reflect the vibrant person you truly are.
Picture this: You, armed with the secrets to luscious, healthy hair, regardless of its shade. With a touch of professional magic and savvy at-home care, we'll explore how to maintain that sought-after gloss. Softening hair colors, professional touch-ups, and personalized hair care routines – we cover it all. Dive into a discussion full of actionable tips on styling and cuts that celebrate your features and adapt perfectly to age-related changes such as thinness or dryness. Remember, it's not about defying age; it's about embracing it with elegance and poise.
Ever wondered if there's truth behind stress turning your hair gray? Yes, there is, and this episode peels back the layers of this complex relationship. We'll look at how stress, oxidative damage, and hormonal shifts play a role in our hair's pigmentation journey. Plus, we'll quench your curiosity on whether gray reversal is fact or fiction, and at what age the silvering typically begins. With a reminder that personal acceptance shines brightest, I'll arm you with the confidence to either combat or embrace the graying process and do it with style.
Join me, Danise Keilitz, as I unveil the grace of graying on your terms while navigating the beauty landscape after 50. Imagine a world where each silver strand tells a story of wisdom, and your hairstyle becomes your crown of glory. As we dissect the art of transitioning to gray hair, we'll tackle everything from the perfect purple shampoo to gray blending techniques that keep you feeling as youthful on the outside as you do on the inside. We're not just breaking the old rules about hair length and age; we're writing our own, with professional insight on how to adapt your look to reflect the vibrant person you truly are.
Picture this: You, armed with the secrets to luscious, healthy hair, regardless of its shade. With a touch of professional magic and savvy at-home care, we'll explore how to maintain that sought-after gloss. Softening hair colors, professional touch-ups, and personalized hair care routines – we cover it all. Dive into a discussion full of actionable tips on styling and cuts that celebrate your features and adapt perfectly to age-related changes such as thinness or dryness. Remember, it's not about defying age; it's about embracing it with elegance and poise.
Ever wondered if there's truth behind stress turning your hair gray? Yes, there is, and this episode peels back the layers of this complex relationship. We'll look at how stress, oxidative damage, and hormonal shifts play a role in our hair's pigmentation journey. Plus, we'll quench your curiosity on whether gray reversal is fact or fiction, and at what age the silvering typically begins. With a reminder that personal acceptance shines brightest, I'll arm you with the confidence to either combat or embrace the graying process and do it with style.
Welcome to Beauty Beyond 50, where we explore beauty, style and confidence for fabulous women beyond 50. I'm your host, denise Kylitz, and if you've ever walked by a mirror and wondered who that reflection belongs to, well, you were in the right place. As women over 50, our insides still feel like we're in our 20s, but our outside tells a different story. I'm in my late 50s and things are changing. My memory is not as sharp, my tummy is not as flat, and don't get me started about those hairs that seem to grow overnight. In my three decades in the beauty industry, the best moments are when someone like you comes in seeking advice on looking and feeling more confident. So I asked myself why stop doing what I love? That's why I'm here, sharing my 30 years of knowledge. Let's form a community where we can talk about midlife nuances, from hair care to lifestyle choices. Stay tuned for enlightening conversations, expert interviews and lots of laughter. Remember to subscribe, rate and share your feedback. Here's to embracing beauty beyond 50. Let's do this together. Well, hey there. Welcome back to another podcast.
Speaker 1:
As you're probably aware of by now, we have changed our format around here. We are still about beauty and hair and all that, but we are really looking at beauty beyond 50. And it could be 42, but you know who you are. When things start changing, your hair starts getting a little bit more dull, it's turning gray, hormones start kicking in, kids start going to college, things are happening. This is our second prime of our life, right? So we're going to talk about all kinds of things, and today I thought we would start with gray hair.
Speaker 1:
I get a lot of questions about gray hair and let's talk about how to wear gray hair without looking older. I know when COVID was around and we couldn't get to the salon, right, a lot of you might have grown out your gray hair. I know my sister did, a few of my friends did, because they couldn't get there to get their hair touched up, and it actually spawned a movement, if you will, within our industry about how to take women gray and, believe it or not, it's a lot harder than you might think. My sister, after they lifted all of the restraints with COVID, she came to my salon and we she had probably had three inches of regrowth, I think, and she was blonde before, and so we had her. It took about three times, but we did get her gray gray looking. She has since cut her hair off but and she wears it beautifully and she is still gray and there's all kinds of things about going gray. You know, finding the perfect purple shampoo to keep the yellow out, how to keep that tone. We'll make videos and we will make podcasts about that as well. I have all kinds of information on that. But today we're just going to talk about what causes gray hair. What can you do to embrace gray hair? If that's what you prefer to do, then you can look forward to other podcasts and conversations about gray hair.
Speaker 1:
And if you have any questions about going gray or maybe what to ask your stylist how to ask your stylist about going gray reach out to me. You can go over to my Instagram page. I've got two of them D-Kyletts, that's D-K-E-I-L-I-T-Z, or Hair by Denise, and that's hair by Denise, spelled with an A-D-A-N-I-S-E, and you can message me at both those places. I get them directly and I can answer some of your questions about going gray. What to ask for.
Speaker 1:
You do not have to strictly go with highlighting. You can do gray blending. A lot of people don't even know what that is, but I should do a video on that. My mother-in-law I do her hair about every six weeks and we do gray blending on her, and it is just a really nice way of putting a semi or a demi-permanent color on and it just gradually wears off. So you don't have that high maintenance hard demarcation line that you get with permanent hair color. It doesn't cover completely all your grays, in fact it gives more of a blending, but it gives you just that beige tone that really looks good with our skin tone once it changes. Anyway, I'm getting way ahead of myself.
Speaker 1:
So let's get back to the podcast, shall we? Okay? How to wear gray hair without looking older. Yeah, gray hair does not have to make you look old. Have you seen these 20 and 30 year olds sporting gray hair? I tell you, anyway, there's no denying that our hairstyle can play a huge part in how old we look, and you know there used to be lots of rules dictating hair length, meaning the older we get we had to cut our hair short or we definitely couldn't wear long hair, for goodness sakes. But you know the rules don't apply like that anymore. We are going through a lot of like hormonal and biological changes in our bodies and that does affect how our hair looks and how it feels.
Speaker 1:
Have you noticed that it's updating your hair? You don't have to chop it all off, okay, and you don't have to cover every single gray hair that you have on your head. You can actually embrace this change and let your hair color evolve over time and just establish a gentler hair care routine, because, really, what your goal should be is just get your hair looking healthy, glossy, shiny. That's what you want. You want to make sure it looks good on you and with your skin tone, eye color, all that good stuff. My biggest thing would be just open up to new ideas, your hair color and your cut. If it's fresh and it's done for your face shape and your personal style, it's always going to look more youthful.
Speaker 1:
I know that we tend to sometimes hang on to what used to make us feel pretty. Usually, when we were in our 20s and 30s, most of us would say, yeah, obviously my prime, I felt good, but don't continue wearing that hairstyle that you had when you were in 30s or 20s. Okay, you need a fresh hairstyle, because if you're still wearing that hairstyle that you had 20 years ago, I can probably guarantee you it looks dated. Sorry, it's not as hard as you might think to go with gray hair because there's a even. I know the Emmys were just on there's a lot of people rocking gray hair right now. It's not too bad. Have you seen Helen Marin lately? My goodness, she's beautiful.
Speaker 1:
Anyway, let's start with why does your hair turn gray in the first place? Now, there's all kinds of reasons why, but we're just going to look at the top five reasons, okay. Really, the main reason it turns gray is a decline in melanin production. Yeah, there's actually these things in your hair that produce melanin. That's the color of your hair. That depends on if you're brown, blonde, black hair, okay. And there's a decline in the production of these little molecules. That's really why your hair color is turning gray. Scientifically, in layman terms, we can break it down. I could show you all the slides and all that stuff and really give you all the chemical names and all that. If you want that, reach out to me. If you want that, I'll let you know that. But most of us just need to know that it's the melanin in our hair that's decreasing and that's why we're turning gray. Okay, not much you could do about that.
Speaker 1:
Number two reason is genetics, your family history. It strongly influences when and how quickly you will turn gray. If your parents or your grandparents experienced early grain, there's a higher likelihood that you might too. Keep that in consideration. Number three oxidative stress. And what is that? It's like pollution or UV rays. Yeah, it contributes to grain over time. Number four nutrient deficiency. If you're not putting in the proper vitamins in your body, it's going to affect not only all your health but your hair too. So a lack of essential vitamins and minerals like B vitamins, copper and iron, that can really impact your hair health and it can contribute to premature aging or grain Aging too, I guess.
Speaker 1:
And then there's hormonal changes. We're all going through hormonal changes. We're at that age, okay, but especially, like menopause, it can affect melanin production and it leads to gray hair. Again, a lot of this we can't do much about, okay. So we can only control what we can control when. What is that Our mindset, how we rock the gray hair and what are we going to do about it? All right, so as for your haircut, just simple tweaks can be that all that's needed. Okay, you might switch your hair care routine at home, maybe for your hair thinning or if you've noticed that your hair's gotten drier after menopause, which is a thing, unfortunately. You can do some little minor tweaks at home for your hair care routine, but ask your stylist for a softer haircut and we'll get to that in just a second.
Speaker 1:
Number one let's keep your color soft. The key to keeping color fresh as we age is softness, and what do I mean by that? You don't want that solid root to tip color. It's almost always too harsh for us, okay? And what I mean is like if you're doing your hair color at home and you're doing a box color that's what we call it, box color Usually what you find that you're doing at home is you're putting it on your roots, but then you're putting it all over.
Speaker 1:
I mean, I've talked to many, many women that they put it all over all the time because that's what the instructions say to do. Well, those instructions say that because they want you to cover up all your gray and they don't want to hear from you saying that, hey, it didn't cover my gray, so they're telling you to keep covering all your hair. Or if it doesn't say that, and it says just put it on the roots, typically what happens is when you're doing your hair color at home, you can't see the back, so you give up and you just like oh, screw it, I'm just going to put it all over. What happens is, over time, you put it layer on top of layer on top of layer and you come up with this very opaque, harsh hair color that has no dimension whatsoever and that's not how hair looks. Hair has so many different, multifaceted colors in there. Not every strand is the same. So even if you look at someone and they look like they have really dark hair, if you really get in there, their hair strands are not all the same color. That's a long way around saying if you're coloring your hair at home, you should only be doing the roots. Okay, what I used to always suggest is, if you're coloring your hair at home to because of time or convenience or money, about every third time I would go in and have your stylist color it for you. That way they can look in the back and they can make sure everything's being covered, but then also they can break up some of those lines that you've added in there. You know we've all done it.
Speaker 1:
So if you are at the salon and you don't color your hair at home, one thing that you can ask for is to get balayage. That is the new term for painting hair color onto the hair. This is a wonderful technique because it's soft. It makes it look very multi tonal. It's really in right now. It's very low maintenance. You don't really have to worry about getting it done every single time. Now, if you have Full gray coming in, you might go in and get your roots done, but then you get your balayage done like every third time. This skin saves time and money, because it does cost a lot of money to to get your hair color at a salon. If you have a good color is a good stylist, they'll make sure that your hair color is kept soft.
Speaker 1:
Okay, and speaking of the multi tonal hair color, if you see, you know your roots growing in. Don't panic. Actually, darker roots right now Would make your hair color look more modern. I know, can you believe it? Darker roots, especially if they're darker than the rest of your hair color, like if you have gray or if you have dark blonde hair, it actually looks very intentionally done. So keep that in mind. Don't panic the first time you have roots coming in.
Speaker 1:
And also bear in mind that your highlights and your balayage they don't need to be uniformly applied either. Okay, gone are the times, no, there's still out there. Highlights, I mean where, evenly spaced, did it at a Highlights are still around, don't get me wrong. But this balayage and a couple of face framing Highlights that don't even go all the way up to the root, actually that's really, really beautiful right now. I know it's a little bit different than what we've grown up with, but it's a beautiful and it's just.
Speaker 1:
It's low maintenance. It's easier on your checkbook Checkbook. There we go. Do you even carry a checkbook? I Carry a checkbook, all right, it's easier on your bank balance and you have less time in the salon chair. So, hey, there's a lot to love, right. And some more relaxed approach to hair color All right.
Speaker 1:
Number two I know I spent a lot of time on that softer hair color. It's a big thing, right? Number two Avoid severe cuts. And what do I mean by that? A softer haircut. A softer haircut can Instantly lift the face and look incredibly modern. As we get older, that means you want softer, layered styles. You don't really want a blunt haircut. You know, like those blunt bobs. Blunt Bob doesn't have any layering and it could look really severe. As we age, we lose that plumpness in our face and our face shape starts looking a little bit more angular, and so if you have these severe hairstyles with angles, it could really have an aging effect. So softer styling and softer haircuts, lots more layers, especially around the face, and also work with your natural hair texture. This can create like an undone feel. Texture is really in right now and with that texture you you get.
Speaker 1:
Movement makes your hair look thicker. I know when I wear my hair curly, my hair does look thicker than it does when I round brush it out. If you do have hair like that and you want to round, brush it out and still have full hair, don't go overboard with the back combing and your volumizing products, because the last thing you want is your hair to look like a helmet, and if you put too much back combing or too too much Products in there and your hair is not moving around, it starts making your hair look Well too done and it also causes your hair to become dry and brittle, and those are two issues we already have as we get older with our hair. So take a break from the hot tools every now and again too, because, as with the over styling, it can damage your hair, and older hair is really more vulnerable to breakage because it loses its elasticity, like everything else, right, our skin, our hair. I tell you that list just keeps getting longer and longer. So maintaining the healthy condition of your hair is king and we will get to that All right.
Speaker 1:
Number three when you're at the salon, ask your stylist for a toner. You know I had to get it completely all colored. You don't need a root touch up, just ask for a toner. A couple of reasons why Yellow tones in the hair can look brassy in old fashioned. And we pick up yellow tones in our hair just by oxidation, meaning your cuticle is wide open, you're losing color molecules and it turns yellow. It could be caused by pollutants in the air If you smoke things like that. So whenever you're at the salon, ask your colorist just to use a toner. It's going to make your hair look shinier, it's going to add depth and it'll make your hair look brighter, healthier and more vibrant. So if you have yellow in your hair and you want that tone of that cool hair color and cool if you think of winter tones, meaning blue, purple, ac, kind of that's cool, okay in hair terms. So you would want your stylist to use like an ash or a silver, a platinum toner and then you would want to use a silver or purple shampoo at home.
Speaker 1:
But sometimes you don't need to cool down your hair. You might need to warm it up just a little bit. It happens all the time. Say, you've just grown out your gray hair and it took you all this time to grow it out and you're still not. You're like what's wrong with it. It could be that the tone of your gray hair is not going with your skin tone. And it's not like you need to add yellow to your hair. You don't need to have golden hair, you just need to put like a little bit of warmth. And it's just a toner that has just a little bit of warmth, not too cool, not too warm. I always say a nice beige works wonders because it actually blends our skin tone. It really does go with mature skin tone a lot better, even if you're toning your hair.
Speaker 1:
Say you like myself, I have brown hair and I use a beige toner because I need just a hint of warmth to that, even though I have warm tones in my hair. Also, keep in mind that a deeper tone makes your hair look shinier. So what do I mean by that? Brown should be rich in chocolatey reds, and coppers should be deep but not too bold. You don't want it to look cartoonish. And if you're going for gold, colors should be sophisticated and warm. Keep an eye out for brassiness. You don't want brassiness? Okay, and you know what brassiness right is right. And if not, go watch my video on why does your hair color turn brassy. I've got many, many examples. Okay, all right.
Speaker 1:
Number four embrace long hair. Yeah, I said it right. There is no reason why older women shouldn't have long hair. Fashion really has no age limit and women can look absolutely amazing with longer lengths. The only caveat is making sure that your hair quality and the density supports a longer style. What do I mean by that? Okay, I love long hair, love it on me, but my hair is getting thinner and so when it gets to a certain point and it just looks thin, so I find that that collarbone length, it's still past my shoulders. It's not a bob, but it's right at the collarbone. It's still long enough to get up in a ponytail. It's long enough to be I don't know, make me feel like it's long hair. That's about the right length for me to make my hair still feel like it's got some volume. Keep that in mind.
Speaker 1:
But say you want long hair and you've tried growing your hair and it maybe it's finer, maybe it's on the thinner side, like mine. Guess what? There's so many products out there right now. Yes, you can take supplements and it can help promote growth and keep your hair healthy. I know one that I used to take is Vivis Gal. They've got one. You could pick it up, like at Ulta, or they might even have it at Walmart, I don't know.
Speaker 1:
So say you want to try go longer or you just need a little bit more thickness on the sides, like right around our ears. Ask your stylist about tape in extensions. Wow, they make a huge, huge difference. Make sure they're that your stylist certified and putting them in it's a no commitment. It's not going to damage your hair. It's a wonderful way to just add some thickness to the sides and try on if you like longer hair. But, like I said, if you're on the fence that collarbone length is the perfect. In between, get a little bit of subtle layering in there and you can do all kinds of things with your hair.
Speaker 1:
Okay, number five don't assume that gray hair makes you look older, so gray shades can be stereotyped as aging, but a clean looking gray is stunning. Ask your hair stylist for a light, reflective shade. Okay, if you are more on, we call it salt and pepper. Right, salt and pepper. You got the white, white gray and then you've got darker grays. If you're more of the salt side, you might want to go for more of a white or platinum look, meaning you want to use like blue or ash tones, or so you can get more of an edgier gray. It actually will make your hair look a little bit bluish, gray, purple-ish, and that's okay. It's okay, okay. Number six Adjust your hair care.
Speaker 1:
First of all. Healthy hair starts at the root, so taking care of your scalp first is going to pay off. A poor scalp environment can lead to poor growth cycles and the structure of your hair is going to become thinner as a result. It's a thing. So if you've noticed that your hair is thinning or that your scalp feels dry, go to your stylist. Okay, they can recommend tailored solutions, maybe a prescriptive hair care system that's going to help you create fuller, thicker hair. Go to the pros. Don't take it in your own hands or call me. I've been in the industry 30 years, so I can help you.
Speaker 1:
It's also important to choose products that protect the hair against, you know, the damaging free radicals in the air or the sunlight, because these all affect their hair. Have you noticed that gray hair and aging hair tends to be coarser too? This even makes like conditioning and weekly masks even more important. So make sure you're using a lightweight conditioner on the ends of your hair, and then your weekly treatment masks will penetrate and smooth the more porous hair cuticle, and if you're using a quality one, they won't leave your hair limp and heavy. Then you also want to use styling products that has added moisturizing ingredients such as ceramides. That's going to elevate your style and the condition of your hair. You don't want to use anything too heavy and, for goodness sakes, you don't want to use too heavy of a hair spray. You could still use hair spray. Okay, I love me a good hair spray, but just don't make it a stiff hold type hair spray. That's really really out right now.
Speaker 1:
If your hair is not moving with you. You know what I mean. Try to avoid overwashing your hair, because you really want to preserve the strength, the hydration and the color of your hair, especially if you live in a hardwater area. And what this will do is it's going to give a chance for the natural oils from your scalp to move from your scalp down the hair shaft. And yes, as we get older, our scalp produces less and less of this oil, so it takes more and more time. So if you can go a few days between shampooing, that's probably the best. Plus, who likes to wash and dry their hair every day? I hate getting ready. I don't know about you. So that wraps up the gray hair.
Speaker 1:
I thought it would be kind of fun to go on the internet and actually see what people are actually asking about gray hair, and the top questions I came up with, okay, was is gray hair caused by stress? We have all heard that, haven't we that? People who go gray overnight? Now I have heard that, and I've seen that in a couple of my clients that something so stressful has happened that they seem to wake up the next day with a patch of gray hair. Not all their hair turns gray. There's no way that can happen. I'm sorry that cannot happen. Your hair cannot gray from the bottom to the scalp. No, because once it grows out of the scalp, it's actually dead. It's not alive, so the only way that it can turn gray is from the scalp out. Okay, is gray hair caused by stress? Yes, a new study shows that stress really can give you gray hair. Researchers found that the body's fight or flight response plays a key role in turning hair gray. Your hair color is determined by pigment producing cells called melanocytes.
Speaker 1:
While stress is often associated with premature graying, the direct link between stress and gray hair is not entirely straightforward. Here's how stress may play a role. There's three stages of growth in hair. Intense stress can trigger a condition called telogen effluvium, and that's where the hair follicles shift from growing phase to a resting phase and after a few months, affected hairs may fall out and the new ones may grow in with less pigment, resulted in what you may appear sudden appearance of gray hair. But this doesn't, doesn't happen overnight. It happens like maybe two months after the stressful thing happened when you start noticing it. Okay, so same with if you're losing clumps of your hair, same thing. Look back about two months before. Did something stressful in your life occur? That's probably what it's caused from. You know, did somebody die? Did something terrible happen? We don't want to go down that road. But the second thing about stress oxidative stress and we kind of talked about this.
Speaker 1:
Chronic stress can contribute to the oxidative stress, which is just the buildup of stress in the body, and it can impact the melanin why can't I say that word Melanocytes responsible for producing melanin. So chronic stress, and then there's hormonal changes. So stress can influence hormone imbalance and hormonal changes may in turn impact the melanin production, again contributes premature grain of the hair. And then inflammation prolonged stress can lead to inflammation throughout the body, and I don't know about you. Inflammation it's this chronic inflammation in the body that causes so many things. But it also affects the hair follicles because it'll suffocate your hair from growing. Not only will it thin out the hair, but it'll also it could squeeze out the melanin producing cells, which speeds up the grain process Make sense.
Speaker 1:
It's important to note that the relationship between stress and gray hair is complex and it's not experienced by everybody. So more than likely genetic factors, lifestyle choices and overall health play more of a role in when you're gonna turn gray. Here's another question that was out there Can you reverse gray hair? No, there's no scientifically proven way to reverse gray hair. No, if somebody tells you there is run. They're selling you snake oil. So once hair turns gray, it is a permanent change in the body. Now you can slow down the grain process, like with supplements and managing your stress, but I don't think you can. Well, I know you can't reverse the grain process, but research is ongoing and you know who knows what the future is gonna bring? Heck, they might have something AI generated to reverse gray hair who knows? But no, as of right now, you can't reverse it.
Speaker 1:
Here's another question that was out there what's the average age? Most people get gray hair, everybody. This is so widely varied it's really really hard to pinpoint because it's both genetic and it's environmental. But generally Caucasian tend to start grain in their mid-30s, asians in their late 30s and African-Americans in their mid-40s. However, these are just general trends and many people may experience gray hair earlier or later than average. Again, genetics play that significant role. So if your parents or your grandparents experienced early grain, there's high likelihood you're going to as well.
Speaker 1:
Look, it's important to note that grain's just a natural part of the aging process and one of those things we're gonna have to accept. Right, and it's how well we accept it and what we're gonna do with it, whether we wanna go gray and just go with the flow and accept it, or we're gonna fight it till the very end. There's so many different ways to fight it, as if that's your game plan. It's my game plan. You can gray blend, you can touch up, you could do softer hair color, but just being confident in who you are. There's no rules to the game anymore. You can go gray or not go gray. Nobody, nobody, should judge you. The only person you have to wake up to and be judged by is yourself, that person looking in the mirror. So enjoy the process.
Speaker 1:
If you have any questions about gray hair how you should talk to your hairstylist, reach out to me. Like I said, I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, you know. You can go to my website, contact me there. Please note that my website is in the process of changing from salon ownership made easy to Beauty Beyond 50. So you might see things on there that don't pertain to you. That's okay. Thanks for being here, thanks for being a listener, thanks for being in this community and then until next time. Just remember when you know better, you do better. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Beauty Beyond 50. If you've picked up a tip, shared a laugh or felt inspired. I've achieved our goal. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and leave a review. If you loved what you heard, make sure to go over to our YouTube channel for behind the scenes sneak peeks, bonus content and how-to videos. So until next time, embrace your beauty, shine bright and let's continue to redefine what it means to be fabulous beyond 50, because the best is yet to come.
