This theory doesn’t seem to be completely out of the blue.
When someone turns gray varies greatly from person to person. One person discovers gray hair before their thirtieth birthday, the other still has the same hair color at the age of sixty. You sometimes hear that stress could play a factor in this. Is that actually correct?
Marie Antoinette
For years, the wildest stories have been circulating about getting gray hair after experiencing a stressful situation. One of them is that of Marie Antoinette. The French queen is said to have suddenly received a white-gray haircut the night before her execution. At the Glamial editorial team, we thought it was time to put those stories aside and delve into science instead.
Norepinephrine
To get straight to the point: getting gray hair due to stress turns out not to be entirely a myth. According to scientists, it is a fight-or-flight response of the body. This all takes place in the sympathetic nervous system, which is very active when you experience stress. “That activation is good,” says a researcher at Harvard University. The norepinephrine that is released ensures that we can respond quickly.
However, the release of norepinephrine also has a disadvantage. This has to do with melanocytes, the cells in hair follicles that determine your hair color. Due to the released norepinephrine, these are lost more quickly. And that means – you guessed it – that your natural hair color is slowly turning to gray.
Genes
Scientists emphasize that graying is mainly due to genes. If your parents got gray hair early on, there is a greater chance that yours will too. In addition, people of African and Asian descent retain their hair color the longest on average. Stress, just like your lifestyle, is an additional factor that can accelerate the graying process.
Returning to Marie-Antoinette
But what happened to Marie-Antoinette? According to scientists, there are three possible explanations for this. First of all, the queen could have contracted the rare autoimmune disease alopecia areata. This disease attacks pigmented hairs, causing them to fall out and leaving white (non-pigmented) strands behind. A less likely cause is that the stress of the situation would have generated a swarm of free radicals in her hair follicles that destroyed the pigment.
Most scientists, on the other hand, suspect that the best woman simply stopped wearing wigs, allowing her real hair color to emerge. Mystery solved!
Source: Scientific American, Gezondnu | Image: Adobe Stock
