Scientists say they discovered why stress makes gray hair

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Years go by and the body changes. It is inevitable: sooner or later all human beings will end up with wrinkled skin and, probably, with the partial loss of one or the other sense.

But perhaps one of the most obvious (and symbolic) signs of old age is in the hair: those white hairs that, without warning, begin to appear.

However, a new experiment conducted by American and Brazilian researchers confirms that not only old age is to blame for gray hair but also stress.

The study – published in the journal Nature – explains why this mental condition affects hair color and reveals a potential solution to curb the dreaded appearance of gray hair.

How did they do the experiment?

It was a casual find. Scientists at the universities of Sao Paulo and Harvard were experimenting with mice when they noticed that, after intense stress, the stem cells that control skin and hair color had been damaged.

Within a matter of weeks, dark-haired mice turned completely white.

The explanation behind this is more or less like this: the pain in the mice caused the release of adrenaline and cortisol, making their hearts beat faster and blood pressure increased, affecting the nervous system and causing acute stress.

This process accelerated the depletion of the stem cells that produced melanin in the hair follicles. And so the hair went white.

“We now know with certainty that stress is responsible for this specific change in skin and hair, and how it works,” Professor Ya-Cieh Hsu, author of research at Harvard University, told the BBC.

The academic said that the damaging impact of stress was “beyond what I imagined.”

“I expected stress to be bad for the body,” he said. “But after a few days, all pigment regenerating stem cells were lost,” he added.

The academic said that once these stem cells are lost, they cannot go back. “The damage is permanent,” he said.

Can you delay the appearance of gray hair?

The finding was surprising for researchers because they were not clear on how stress could really affect our head hairs.

After the investigation, they ensure that it is worth exploring more about this matter to develop a medication that prevents hair color loss due to aging.

Gray hair in men and women can appear at any time after age 30. Aging and genes have been the two factors that, until now, were known to affect their possible acceleration.

In another experiment, researchers discovered that they could block changes by giving mice an antihypertensive, which lowers high blood pressure.

And by comparing the genes of mice that felt pain with those of other mice, they identified the protein involved in causing damage to stem cells from stress.

When this protein – called Cyclin Dependent Kinase (CDK) – was suppressed – the treatment prevented a change in the color of its coat.

This leaves the door open for scientists to help delay the appearance of gray hair by attacking the CDK protein with a medicine.

“Our discovery, made in mice, is only the beginning of a long journey to find an intervention for people,” said Ya-Cieh Hsu.

“It also gives us an idea of ​​how stress could affect many other parts of the body,” he concluded.

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