Published on 12, July, 2020
I have a theory that people with aspergers/high functioning autism are prone to going grey - follicly speaking - sooner than the average person. I have and I know a couple of other people like me who also have gone grey earlier than you'd typically expect.
Perhaps it's stress-related, or dealing with the constant anxiety. It's an admittedly small sample size! Any thoughts?
I went grey very early on, I tell the wife they are highlights and the shade is erotic silver!
Yeah! LOL. It's be the stress, no doubt. Now that my brunette locks are all muddy grey, I've gone bright blue. I kid it's my old lady blue rinse
Yes my mum was autistic and went grey early, me too??
A friend noticed a completely white hair in my head when I was nineteen.
I starter going grey when I was 16. Please add me to your sample
I have a 19 years old autistic son who will be 20 this month. He started to have white hair! He stopped talking in 2017.Dr thinks he may have had a little stroke!
My son is 17 and autistic and has quite a few white hair. Not common for the rest of us in the family.
Could be true, started going grey when I was 28, now 50 and 80% grey but never done anything about it.
My hair is grey (i'm 47) but it doen't make me look older. I look like a teenager and people think i am not a grown up... it's annoying, i try to think it's funny. Actually it's not. People feel embarrassed when they realise my age.... i think i look younger because of my autism.
I used to have really thick and wavy ginger hair, now I'm going grey up the sides and starting to go bald. I do miss my ginger mullet.
I think there may be a correlation, albeit this is a very small sample size based on the people I know and the comments here. I also squint too, and again I think there is a correlation because of known sensitivities to visual stimuli. You may mean there's no proof of a link, which I agree, there isn't yet, but it hasn't been researched (and there's far more important topics to exert our energy on!)
I kept my colour until I was in my fifties. Their may be some sort of commonality between hair fading and going prematurely grey but not enough to prove any correlation. It has also been said that red haired people are over represented in the autistic community as are those with a squint. Once again, not enough to prove correlation but interesting.
You seem to be very similar to me, although I'm 40 so have a few years on you.
i used work with a guy who analysed hair to prove the existence of a certain chemical associated with a disorder. Maybe there could a similar chemical analysis possible for autism whereby your hair returns a chemical spectrum that is only found in people with autism. NTs would have a different hair spectrum. A possible PhD thesis there I reckon :)
It's a really interesting theory.
I started slowly going grey in my early 20s and I'm 37 now and have for quite a few years now had a salt-and-pepper effect going on, although my hair is still mostly brown.
I've also had a grey mallen streak since my late 20s.
That's what I think...
2020 has sent me grey! I had no grey hairs and now loads
It's stress that does it. WE'RE ALL STRESSED OUT! That's why we go grey or white hair earlier than most people.
Don't think there's much validity in the blue eyes and dark hair theory, but at least your early white hair discovery corrobates my theory!
I had my first white hair pointed out by a hairdresser at 12 and was so embarrassed
I’ve always been told it’s the dark hair and blue eye combination as to why our family seems to go white very young something to do with the strength of the colour pigment in the eyes taking away from the hair.
Who knows but it definitely runs in the family!