Stress Leads To Grey Hair but It Is Reversible

Can stress actually turn your hair grey? A study has found that stress levels can lead to grey hair. Here’s how to manage it.

Stress Leads To Grey Hair But It Is Reversible; Here's How To Manage It

Stress Leads To Grey Hair But It Is Reversible; Here’s How To Manage It

Have you noticed white hair growing out in an otherwise grey-free mane? While the current trend for artificial grey hair amongst millennials is gaining prominence, not all of us are happy with grey hair. Between brushing out knots, and using chemical-based products, there are plenty of reasons why you might be facing hair problems. Is stress one of those reasons? Can it actually turn your hair grey?A study published in the journal eLife suggests that researchers found the first quantitative evidence linking psychological stress to greying hair. While it may seem intuitive that stress accelerates greying, the researchers were startled to learn that when stress is removed, hair colon can be restored, a discovery that contradicts a recent mouse study that claimed stressed-induced grey hairs are permanent._______________________________________________________________________

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Studying Hair To Understand Ageing

Study’s senior author Martin Picard, PhD, associate professor of behavioural medicine (in psychiatry and neurology) at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons said, “Just as the rings in a tree trunk hold information about past decades in the life of a tree, our hair contains information about our biological history. When hairs are still under the skin as follicles, they are subject to the influence of stress hormones and other things happening in our mind and body. Once hairs grow out of the scalp, they harden and permanently crystallize these exposures into a stable form.”

Though many people assume that psychological stress causes grey hair to appear faster, scientists have contested the link due to a lack of sensitive technologies that can properly correlate times of stress with hair pigmentation at the single-follicle level.

Hair pigmentation is documented by splitting hairs. Ayelet Rosenberg, the study’s first author and a Picard lab student, developed a new approach for obtaining highly precise photographs of microscopic slices of human hairs in order to measure the level of pigment loss (greying) in each slice. Each 1/20th of a millimetre-wide slice reflects around an hour’s worth of hair growth.

“If you use your eyes to look at a hair, it will seem like it’s the same colour throughout unless there is a major transition,” Picard said. “Under a high-resolution scanner, you see small, subtle variations in colour, and that’s what we’re measuring.”

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Here’s How Stress Affects Your Hair

For the analysis, the researchers examined individual hairs of 14 individuals. The findings were compared to each volunteer’s stress diary, in which they were asked to examine their schedules and rate their stress levels each week. The researchers saw right away that certain grey hairs naturally return to their original hue, which had never been quantified before.

When Shannon Rausser, the paper’s second author and a student in Picard’s lab, linked hairs with stress diaries, she discovered remarkable connections between stress and hair greying, as well as, in some cases, a reversal of greying with the lifting of stress. Picard said, “There was one individual who went on vacation, and five hairs on that person’s head reverted back to dark during the vacation, synchronized in time.”

The researchers also examined the levels of hundreds of proteins in the hairs and how protein levels changed along the length of each hair to better understand how stress produces grey hair.

When hair colour changed, changes in 300 proteins occurred, and the researchers created a mathematical model that implies stress-induced alterations in mitochondria could explain how stress causes hair to grow. “We often hear that the mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell, but that’s not the only role they play,” Picard said. “Mitochondria are actually like little antennas inside the cell that respond to a number of different signals, including psychological stress.”

As per the study, stress-induced greying was revealed to be produced by an irreversible loss of stem cells in the hair follicle in a recent mouse study, however, the mitochondria relationship between stress and hair colour differed.

But Grey Hair Can Be Reversed

“Our data show that greying is reversible in people, which implicates a different mechanism,” said co-author Ralf Paus, PhD, professor of dermatology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. “Mice have very different hair follicle biology, and this may be an instance where findings in mice don’t translate well to people.”

“Our data add to a growing body of evidence demonstrating that human ageing is not a linear, fixed biological process but may, at least in part, be halted or even temporarily reversed.”

However, Hair Re-Pigmentation Only Occurs In Some

Although reducing stress in your life is a good goal, it will not definitely result in your hair returning to its natural colour.

“Based on our mathematical modelling, we think hair needs to reach a threshold before it turns grey,” Picard said. “In middle age, when the hair is near that threshold because of biological age and other factors, stress will push it over the threshold and it transitions to grey.

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Read Also : 22 Best and Worst Foods for Stress

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Natural Ways To Manage Stress

Meanwhile, there are some techniques you may learn to control stress before it becomes too much. Consider the following ideas:

Do physical activity regularly as it will help improve your sleep, which in turn will better stress management. You can incorporate running, swimming, dancing, cycling or aerobics in your daily routine.
Include healthy foods in your diet. Look for complex carbohydrates, lean proteins, fatty acids found in fish, meat, eggs, and nuts. You can also include antioxidants, vitamin C, magnesium, and omega-3 fatty acids.
Try relaxation techniques such as meditation, yoga, and deep breathing to ward off stress, anxiety, and chronic pain.
Caffeine in large doses can cause anxiety and stress. Caffeine sensitivity, on the other hand, varies a lot from person to person.
Strong social bonds can help you get through difficult times and reduce your anxiety risk. So, spend time with your family and friends.
Listening to music you like can be a good way to relieve stress. The sounds of nature can also be quite relaxing. This is why they’re frequently used in music for relaxation and meditation.