Do you sometimes have the idea that you are more likely to turn gray from stress? Is that really possible? Senior researcher and epidemiologist Raymond Noordam conducted research into aging and explains how it works.
Raymond Noordam:“The hair condition in which the hair suddenly seems to turn gray due to stress is also called Marie Antoinette syndrome. This French queen would have turned completely gray the night before the guillotine. It's a myth that hair can go gray so quickly. It is probable that a stress reaction caused baldness in the hair with pigment, making it appear as if she had suddenly turned gray.
Hair is made up of skin and pigment cells that are stacked on top of each other, as it were. When a blond hair comes out of a hair follicle, it can no longer turn into a gray hair. As soon as a hair comes out of the skin, it will mainly discolour by the sun."
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“Like the skin, hair needs melanocytes – a type of skin cells – to make pigment. These also determine whether you have light or dark skin. Gray hair contains no pigment. Even if a hair follicle contains only half of melanocytes, your hair will have a gray glow due to less pigment. This does not happen all at once, but is a gradual process.
The speed can also differ per hair follicle. For example, sometimes sideburns go gray faster than the rest of your hair. A Harvard study published earlier this year shows that stress can cause pigment cells to disappear. A specific drug mimicked chronic stress in mice. As a result, the pigment cells disappeared and the mice turned gray.”
“The most famous example of someone who went gray due to stress is former President Barack Obama. In eight years he got a very gray haircut. Stress can accelerate the aging process and that poses many health risks. For example, people with chronic stress are more likely to have higher blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. The more sensitive you are to stress, the greater the chance that you will go gray.
Your lifestyle also plays a role in the aging process. Eating unhealthy foods, exercising too little, sleeping badly, drinking a lot of alcohol and smoking is a deadly medicine and will accelerate it. Finally, your genetic background plays a role. Genes have been found that go together with gray hair. In short:you can go gray due to stress, but your genes and lifestyle also have an influence.”
