Table Of Content
Apart from age, other factors can determine when a person’s hair will start to change color. The first is genetics — if your parents started to gray at an early age, there is a chance you will, too. It has been shown that graying occurs earlier in Caucasians compared with African Americans. A study showed that the average age of graying in Caucasians is 34 compared with 44 in African Americans. In humans, the purpose and function of hair are debatable, unlike in animals. Hair does, however, serve as an aesthetic tool and a means of nonverbal communication.
Stress can turn hair gray -- and it's reversible, researchers find
“Opt for hairstyles that minimize tension on the hair follicles, such as loose braids, buns or ponytails,” advises Gaboardi. “Avoid tight hairstyles and hair accessories that pull on the hair and handle your hair with care to minimise breakage and damage. Avoid vigorous towel drying and harsh brushing or combing, especially when the hair is wet and more prone to breakage.” If you do want to continue using some heat, a heat protectact and something like a leave-in treatment are both recommended. When there are no more pigment cells in a hair follicle, melanin cannot be produced and the effect is permanent. Stem cells are cells that can turn into other cells that are needed.
6 lifestyle factors that contribute to premature gray hair - WION
6 lifestyle factors that contribute to premature gray hair.
Posted: Wed, 04 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Look to your family to see when graying occurs
In mice, stress can deplete hair-pigmenting cells known as melanocytes, according to a 2020 study in the journal Nature. Melanocytes are produced by stem cells that live in hair follicles. Research from 2020 suggests that graying hair is a permanent effect of stress. Once the melanocyte stem cells are lost, you can’t regenerate pigments anymore.
What color is your tongue? What's healthy, what's not?
Noradrenaline is also the main neurotransmitter of the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for the “fight-or-flight” reaction in response to stress. When graying begins usually is determined by genes, so if your mother or father became gray early, you may, too. If you are one of those people who don't find gray hair distinguished, you can easily cover your gray with one of the many different hair dyes available.
This Is Why You're Going Gray, According to a Hair Expert - GQ
This Is Why You're Going Gray, According to a Hair Expert.
Posted: Wed, 16 Aug 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Special Health Reports
The trait may have evolved partly to help pre-humans stand out from each other and attract mates, and to help regulate body temperature by absorbing or reflecting sunlight. "If you use your eyes to look at a hair, it will seem like it's the same color throughout unless there is a major transition," Picard says. "Under a high-resolution scanner, you see small, subtle variations in color, and that's what we're measuring." 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. It’s an important bodily function, but the long-term presence of heightened cortisol is linked to a host of negative health outcomes.
How Stress Can Affect Hair Loss And What To Do About It
Most people start noticing their first gray hairs in their 30s—although some may find them in their late 20s.This period, when graying has just begun, is probably when the process is most reversible, according to Paus. In those with a full head of gray hair, most of the strands have presumably reached a “point of no return,” but the possibility remains that some hair follicles may still be malleable to change, he says. It causes them to rapidly turn into pigment cells and move out of the hair follicles.
More evidence suggests multivitamins slow cognitive decline
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. 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. Going gray is a part of the natural aging process for some, but can stress contribute to the early onset? To find out once and for all if there's a connection, we tapped some experts.
"Our data show that graying is reversible in people, which implicates a different mechanism," says 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." Hair needs to reach a threshold before it turns gray, Picard said. If strands are about to go gray anyway — perhaps near middle age — a stressful event might push hair cells past that threshold earlier, the study noted. Then when the stress ends and the hair is just above the threshold, it could revert back to dark. To better understand how stress causes gray hair, the researchers also measured levels of thousands of proteins in the hairs and how protein levels changed over the length of each hair.
Studies have cited DNA damage and a buildup of hydrogen peroxide in the follicles as possible causes of this disruption in melanin production. Without melanin, the new hair that grows in has no pigment, which makes it appear gray, white, or silver. "Hair that has already grown out of the follicle won't change color due to stress or any other external factors," board-certified trichologist Helen Reavey says. According to researchers, stress causes the stress hormone norepinephrine to release into hair follicles.
Normally, our hormones change with age, leading our hair to shed more and grow back more slowly. If you’re not convinced that stress changes your appearance, look at these photos of Presidents over their time in office. You can see a similar dramatic change in former President Clinton. All recent Presidents have visibly aged while in the Oval Office more than you’d expect from the passage of time.
Might that also mean someday halting and reverting the march of premature gray hair? “We would expect increasing gray hair as we advance in age, and we see about a 10 percent increase in the chance of developing gray hair for every decade after age 30,” Nichols said. This article covers some of the most common hair dilemmas, from hair loss to greasy hair.
In the study, researchers provoked a stress response in the mice. In response, corticosterone (rodents' equivalent of the stress hormone cortisol) and norepinephrine (a neurotransmitter and hormone) flooded into the follicle. Once in the follicle, the norepinephrine caused the stem cell to transform into a regular melanocyte, meaning it could not divide indefinitely. With the stem cell permanently changed, the follicle no longer had a source of new pigment cells. That strand of hair — or in the mouse's case, fur — lost its source of color.
Having established a link between stress and graying, the scientists then explored several potential causes. They first tested whether immune attack might be responsible for depleting melanocyte stem cells. But stressing mice with compromised immune systems still led to hair graying. The team then investigated the role of the stress hormone corticosterone, but altering its levels didn’t affect stress-related graying.
She has written for Women's Health, Marie Claire, Glamour, and other publications and loves to cover all things skin care, makeup, and hair. At the end of the day, if the color of your hair is negatively affecting your self-confidence and how you feel about yourself, you may want to consider dyeing it. Genetics plays an important role in determining when your hair starts turning grey. Looking at how early it happened to your parents and/or grandparents is a good indicator of when it will happen to you. Low iron (anemia), auto-immune issues, or medication can also make your hair thin out. You might ask your doctor to evaluate your medication and check your levels of iron and Vitamin D (especially if you live in an area with little sunlight or don’t go outside much) and other nutrients.
No comments:
Post a Comment