Scientists think they know how stress causes grey hair
The hair color change may be linked to nerves in the fight or flight response system.
Islamabad (Online) - Experts say the graying of hair could be related to our “fight or flight” response. Getty Images
Researchers say they now think they know how stress causes gray hair.
The hair color change may be linked to nerves in the “fight or flight” response system.
Experts say stress is only one factor that can cause gray hair. Genetics also plays a major role.
Sorry Mom and Dad: It turns out you might not have been exaggerating when you told us your children made your hair turn gray.
Stress may play a key role in just how quickly hair goes from colored to ashen, a study Trusted Source published this past week in the journal Nature suggests.
Scientists have long understood some link is possible between stress and gray hair, but this new research from Harvard University in Massachusetts more deeply probes the exact mechanisms at play.
The researchers’ initial tests looked closely at cortisol, the “stress hormone” that surges in the body when a person experiences a “fight or flight” response.
It’s an important bodily function, but the long-term presence of heightened cortisol is linked to a host of negative health outcomes.
But the culprit ended up being a different part of the body’s fight or flight response — the sympathetic nervous system.
Why we go gray
But stress isn’t the only — or even the primary — reason that most people get gray hair.
In most cases, it’s simple genetics.
Gray hair is caused by loss of melanocytes (pigment cells) in the hair follicle. This happens as we age and, unfortunately, there is no treatment that can restore these cells and the pigment they produce, melanin,” Dr. Lindsey A. Bordone, a dermatologist at ColumbiaDoctors and an assistant professor of dermatology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, told Healthline. “Genetic factors determine when you go gray. There is nothing that can be done medically to prevent this from happening when it is genetically predetermined to happen.”
That doesn’t mean environmental factors — such as stress — don’t play a role.
Smoking, for instance, is a known risk factor for premature graying, according to a 2013 studyTrusted Source. So kick the habit if you want to keep that color a little longer.
Other contributing factors to premature graying include deficiencies in protein, vitamin B-12, copper, and iron as well as aging due in part to an accumulation of oxidative stress.
Future research
The new Harvard research is only a mouse study, so replicating the same results in a human study would be necessary to strengthen the findings.
But the Harvard research has implications far beyond graying hair, with the hair color change merely one obvious sign of other internal changes as a result of prolonged stress.
By understanding precisely how stress affects stem cells that regenerate pigment, we’ve laid the groundwork for understanding how stress affects other tissues and organs in the body,” said Hsu. Understanding how our tissues change under stress is the first critical step towards eventual treatment that can halt or revert the detrimental impact of stress.”
