By Rachel Grumman Bender, Self
When you spot that first silvery strand
in your hair, it’s hard not to have a brief moment of panic, followed
by quickly combing through your locks to see if there are any others.
And if it hasn’t happened to you yet, it eventually will. So what
exactly makes hair turn gray? And does stress play a role?
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First,
some background on hair color: Hair gets its hue from melanin, the same
pigment (or lack thereof) that determines your skin and eye color. With
hair, you start to lose melanin as you get older, according to the American Academy of Dermatology, which eventually turns hair gray, silver, or white. “A typical hair on the head can grow for up to about three years,” Angela Lamb,
M.D., dermatologist at The Mount Sinai Hospital, tells SELF. “When that
hair is shed, the germ cells that produce the pigment need to get going
again. As we age, the ability to do that robustly decreases.” Although
it’s not fully understood why hair’s melanin production is affected, research
shows that naturally-occurring hydrogen peroxide can build up in the
hair follicle as we age, which may affect the melanin—essentially,
bleaching hair from the inside out.
But can stress speed up this process? While stress has been known to trigger hair loss,
there’s little research showing that it can actually turn your hair
gray. And it certainly can’t turn it white overnight. The leeching of
color is a gradual process. That said, it’s possible stress has some
influence. “We do not have any good research that stress directly causes
gray hair,” says Lamb, “but we think there is some connection.”
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Jennifer Lin, a dermatologist who conducts molecular biology research
at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, in Boston, explained to Scientific American:
“There is evidence that local expression of stress hormones mediate the
signals instructing melanocytes to deliver melanin to keratinocytes.
Conceivably, if that signal is disrupted, melanin will not deliver
pigment to your hair.”
For
the most part, you can blame your parents for your gray hairs, rather
than stress. “Genetics play the largest role in when you will start
going gray,” says Lamb. In fact, scientists
have identified the first gene responsible for gray hair, IRF4, which
may one day hold the key to preventing gray hair in people who aren’t
fans of the pigment-free strands.
One habit that can cause gray hairs to prematurely sprout on your head: cigarette smoking. A 2013 study
found a significant link between lighting up and turning gray before
age 30. “Smoking and stress can certainly impact hair, but the extent
with which it causes graying is not exactly linear,” says Lamb. Your
best bet? Kick the bad habit if you smoke and keep stress in check. It may not keep the silver out of your hair, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.
