STRESS AGES: While no clear link has been found, scientists believe that stress can lead to more gray in your hair.
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Legend has it that Marie Antoinette's hair turned white the night before she was guillotined. Presumably the stress of impending decapitation caused her locks to lose color within hours. Extremely unlikely, scientists say, but stress may play a role in a more gradual graying process.
The first silvery strands usually pop up around age 30 for men and age 35 for women, but graying can begin as early as high school for some and as late as the 50s for others. Graying begins inside the sunken pits in the scalp called follicles. A typical human head has about 100,000 of these teardrop-shaped cavities, each capable of sprouting several hairs in a lifetime. At the bottom of each follicle is a hair-growing factory where cells work together to assemble colored hair. Keratinocytes (epidermal cells) build the hair from the bottom up, stacking atop one another and eventually dying, leaving behind mostly keratin, a colorless protein that gives hair its texture and strength. (Keratin is also a primary component of nails, the outer layer of skin, animal hooves and claws?even rhinoceros horns.)As keratinocytes construct hairs, neighboring melanocytes manufacture a pigment called melanin, which is delivered to the keratinocytes in little packages called melanosomes.
Hair melanin comes in two shades—eumelanin (dark brown or black) and pheomelanin (yellow or red)—that combine in different proportions to create a vast array of human hair colors. Hair that has lost most of its melanin is gray; hair that has lost all of this pigment is white. At any given time, around 80 to 90 percent of the hairs on a person's head are in an active growth phase, which may last anywhere from two to seven years. At the end of this stage, the follicle shrivels, the keratinocytes and melanocytes undergo programmed cell death (apoptosis), and the follicle enters a resting phase, during which the hair falls out. To begin building a new hair, the follicle factory must be rebuilt. Fresh keratinocytes and melanocytes are recruited from progenitor cells, also called "stem cells," residing at the bottom of the follicle. For unknown reasons, keratinocyte stem cells have a much greater longevity than the melanocyte stem cells, says David Fisher, professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. "It's the gradual depletion of [melanocyte] stem cells that leads to the loss of pigment," he says. Does stress accelerate this demise of the melanocyte population? "It is not so simple," Fisher says, noting that the process of graying is a multivariable equation. Stress hormones may impact the survival and / or activity of melanocytes, but no clear link has been found between stress and gray hair. Suspicions—and hypotheses—abound, however. "Graying could be a result of chronic free radical damage," says Ralf Paus, professor of dermatology at the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein in Lübeck, Germany. Stress hormones produced either systemically or locally (by cells in the follicle) could produce inflammation that drives the production of free radicals—unstable molecules that damage cells—and "it is possible that these free radicals could influence melanin production or induce bleaching of melanin," Paus says. "There is evidence that local expression of stress hormones mediate the signals instructing melanocytes to deliver melanin to keratinocytes," notes Jennifer Lin, a dermatologist who conducts molecular biology research at the Dana-Farber / Harvard Cancer Center in Boston. "Conceivably, if that signal is disrupted, melanin will not deliver pigment to your hair." And general practice physicians have observed accelerated graying among patients under stress, says Tyler Cymet, head of family medicine at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, who conducted a small retrospective study on hair graying among patients at Sinai. "We've seen that people who are stressed two to three years report that they turn gray sooner," he says.
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Add CommentOne scientist from NEWZEALAND in 19th century conducted an experiment of temperature variation effect on hair on RABBIT. He found that at higher temperature as well as high fluctuation in temperature causes
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismore production of MELANINE pigment on skin and keratin in hair's. That means colden countries people are white
Is it possible that when you are under stress, your folicals stop producing the melanin/pigment; just like when stressed you lose or gain weight? I have often thought that. Many of my customers come into my shop, and complain about the hair graying and nobody in their family has gone gray that early, or that much.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would like to know if you take a pill called melancor, would it caused darkening in the skin, since it is a trigger for excreasing melanin? If you pull out gray hairs, would hair grow back there or baldness occures? Is there really something to correct premature graying?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi would like to know if there is a chemical pathway that connects melanin and adrenaline. a recent program about wolves on pbs stated that darker animals are less aggressive than lighter animals. can this possibly be true? if so, what are the ramifications for our "imperialistic" society, as mostly white americans who seem to have behaved aggressively to people with darker skin for most of our history as a country? are we a malignant race pre-ordained to clear the land of other less aggressive beings and take whatever resources we can find for ourselves?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe impact of stress is often a very individual experience. Given that, have you learned whether the their is a correlation between the type of stress, i.e. cognitive, physical, or emotion, and the graying of hair?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you.
Cathi
http://www.controlmystress.com/chronic-stress.html
I am 33 yrs old. Had a relationship for 2 years when i was in my early twenties and by the time my gf and I split up, my hair was turning grey pretty quickly. After we split up, I took it easy and didnt get into another serious relationship for almost 10 years. My hair went back to a dark blond. no kidding. Been in another long term relationship for nearly 3 years and my grey's come back! even worse than before just within the last 2 years! I believe without a doubt, stress or at least your surroundings can cause your grey. I don't know what that means for this relationship...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI will be 51 this year and only had a few, I repeat, a few strands of grey hair. Well, last year the atmosphere at my job began to change and I started stressing and dreading going to work, even moreso this year. Now, seemingly overnight, a multitude of grey hairs have appeared in my hair. I am amazed. I won't fully say that stress is causing my grey hair, directly, but the grey hairs are my body's reaction to stress. This makes their appearance an indirect cause of the what I'm experiencing. Someone in the above posts mentioned that our bodies react differently to stress. I agree.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfrom the article: "Legend has it that Marie Antoinette's hair turned white the night before she was guillotined. Presumably the stress of impending decapitation caused her locks to lose color within hours. Extremely unlikely, scientists say, but stress may play a role in a more gradual graying process."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThose scientists wouldn't be saying that, if they'd been hanging-out with me last year.
Early in 2009 (61 yrs. old, then), my hair was brown, with enough gray present to lighten it to the point where some people perceived it as dark-blond. Late in February, I received some traumatic, devastating, life-changing news... and my hair turned entirely white... snowball-white... virtually overnight. Then, in June of 2009, I was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. I began chemotherapy, and within a few weeks, my hair had fallen-out... ALL of it. After a couple more months, though, my hair started growing back... surprise... BEFORE the chemo was complete. But there was ANOTHER surprise, along with that... my new hair was coming-in BROWN. I started 2010 with hair darker than what it was at the beginning of 2009.