Does stress turn your hair gray? In the case of some people the answer is yes, and the effects may also be reversible (depending upon a person’s age), according to a new research study. The study hails from Columbia University Irving Medical Center, with a focus on psychological stress factors manifest as physiological changes.
Gray hair is not caused by a true gray pigment but rather it is due to a lack of pigmentation and melanin. The clear hairs appear as gray because of the way light is reflected from the hairs.
While it may be unsurprising that that stress can accelerate graying, what is of interest with the study is that hair color can be restored when stress is eliminated. This is because hairs under the skin as follicles are subject to the influence of stress hormones. Once hairs grow out of the scalp, they harden and permanently crystallize these exposures into a stable form. By influencing stress hormones, it is possible to vary the degree of pigmentation.
Based on an examination of changes in 300 proteins that alter as hair color is changed, the researchers were able to develop a mathematical model. This model indicates how stress-induced changes in mitochondria could explain how stress turns hair gray.
The researchers hope that by understanding the mechanisms that allow ‘old’ gray hairs to return to their ‘young’ pigmented states, this mechanism could yield new clues about the malleability of human aging in general and how it is influenced by stress.
Hence, it may be that human aging is not necessarily a linear, fixed biological process. Instead, the aging process could partly be halted. Perhaps aging could be temporarily reversed.
The researchers expand upon the research methods and outcomes in a video, which can be found here.
Reducing stress in your life is a good goal and for younger people this may reverse the graying process. However, reducing stress but will not necessarily turn a person’s hair to a normal color.
With hair color and the reversing principle, there is a threshold at which point reversibility appears to stop and this is something age-related . The threshold occurs in middle age. When the hair is closer to the threshold due to biological age, it easier for stress hormones will push hair over the threshold and it transitions to become gray. It is also far less likely that the gray can be reversed.
The current research contrasts with other studies that suggest that stressed-induced gray hairs are permanent.
The research appears in the journal eLife, titled “Quantitative mapping of human hair graying and reversal in relation to life stress.”
