Split white baby hair strand?

[juliaxena]

This is puzzling to me. I thought gray/white hair was supposed to be stronger than the res of your hair. I literally found ONE gray hair about a month ago and I pulled it out. It was about an inch long and kind of strange. Basically it was split in the middle and the texture was strange plus it went out really easily so I even thought - maybe this was some animal hair that somehow came on my head.

About a month and half later (now) I find a good centimeter long hair on the same spot. White and split in the middle. Texture not what I would expect from graying hair. What is going on? Does it mean once I go gray all my hair will be of this bad quality? Already split while growing out? It is just really confusing.

[lapushka]

Sometimes you can have 2 hairs growing in one follicle. It happens. It doesn't mean the hair is damaged and or split to the root. :) Don't pull it out again, please!

[Anje]

Yeah, husband has follicles with 2-3 hairs popping out of each. Seems to be the norm for some people.

But I don't think gray hairs are necessarily stronger than the rest. Some people report that theirs are wirey, others that theirs are finer. Mine seem to feel exactly the same as the rest. Certainly, because they lack melanin, gray hairs are more susceptible to UV damage, but that's about the only generalization I would make.

[lapushka]

Anje, mine are finer. I thought I had F hair, OMG, those whites! They are truly fly-away material. :lol:

I have the odd follicle too with 2 hairs instead of one. It mostly occurs on my legs and... nether region, but I've had at least one on my head too (it's hard to find if you don't just randomly come across one, though).

[juliaxena]

I could not say it was two folicles. It looked like the split part made a sort of cirle. The hair looked sort of... smashed. But I will take this explanation for now and hope it is true :).

[Alex Lou]

I guess it depends on the texture of gray hair, but I've heard gray-haired women complain that the texture they have is more prone to being too dry.

[Groovy Granny]

My silver and white hair is soft, fine, and curly; it tends to be dry and loves moisture.

I don't think it is fragile by any means as I have no breakage or splits....ever.

[Cg]

My silvers are noticeable because they are 2a among my 1a pigmenteds. Otherwise they have the same [excessive] fineness and appear neither sturdier nor weaker.

It's possible that your unpigmented strand is simply responding to your care routine in a slightly different way from the rest of your hair. That certainly would be normal. Many of us change our routines as white overtakes.

[lapushka]

I could not say it was two folicles. It looked like the split part made a sort of cirle. The hair looked sort of... smashed. But I will take this explanation for now and hope it is true :).

No. I mean, one follicle, 2 hairs in it. I even had (this happened to me only once) one hair follicle with 3 hairs in it, a M looking hair, and 2 veeery F hairs.

[Arctic]

I don't have answer to OP but wanted to chime in, that to my understanding it's typical to have several hairs growing from one follicle (these is called follicular units or FU). iii persons will likely have more hairs per follicle than i persons. When there is only one per follicle (especially if this is true for most of person's hair/follicles - it's normal [againt to my understanding] to have some follicles with only single hair), that is possibly a case of thinned out hair (hair loss). I don't have links to give from the top of my hat but you can google it - I learned about it as I have been reading about different aspects of hair loss.