Gray hair has minimal melanin, while white has none. Some people see grays a bit sooner due to health and genetics. Here, we break down some of the most common myths about treating gray hair and explore other ways you can choose to manage your hair color instead.
At its core, hair is naturally white. Your hair follicles contain the cells melanin uses to create the pigments, which combine with protein keratins. Melanin loss in hair is naturally occurring, especially after your 30s. The precise rate of hair color loss is largely dictated by your genes, though. If your parents experienced premature graying, chances are that you may see the same.
As melanin production slows, your hair turns gray, and then white when melanin production has completely stopped. Premature gray hair before your 20s and 30s is most commonly hereditary. Talk to a doctor about the following possibilities. If your diet lacks certain nutrients , it could very well affect melanin production in your hair follicles. Vitamin B is the most common culprit, with folate , copper , and iron deficiencies increasing your risk, too.
Dietary supplements may help these deficiencies and you might see your natural hair color start to grow back after several weeks. Still, you should check with your doctor before buying any supplements.
They will run blood tests to see if you actually need them. Hormone fluctuations can also play a role in graying hair.
Managing such medical conditions could, in theory, help restore melanin and your natural hair color over time. Still, there are websites that continue to tout natural remedies and market products that promise to help restore your natural hair color. And while carrying out experiments on mice, they stumbled across evidence this was the case. Pain in mice triggered the release of adrenaline and cortisol, making their hearts beat faster and blood pressure rise, affecting the nervous system and causing acute stress.
This process then sped up the depletion of stem cells that produced melanin in hair follicles. In another experiment, the researchers found they could block the changes by giving the mice an anti-hypertensive, which treats high blood pressure. And by comparing the genes of mice in pain with other mice, they could identify the protein involved in causing damage to stem cells from stress. When this protein - cyclin-dependent kinase CDK - was suppressed, the treatment also prevented a change in the colour of their fur.
This leaves the door open for scientists to help delay the onset of grey hair by targeting CDK with a drug. Another subject, a year-old woman with black hair, had one strand that contained a white segment that corresponded to two months during which she underwent marital separation and relocation—her highest-stress period in the year.
For now, the next step is to look more carefully at the link between stress and graying. Picard, Paus and their colleagues are currently putting together a grant to conduct another study that would examine changes in hair and stress levels prospectively—which means tracking participants over a specified period of time rather than asking them to recall life events from the past. Eventually, Picard says, one could envision hair as a powerful tool to assess the effects of earlier life events on aging—because, much like the rings of a tree, hair provides a kind of physical record of elapsed events.
Diana Kwon is a freelance journalist who covers health and the life sciences. She is based in Berlin. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. Discover World-Changing Science. Get smart. Sign up for our email newsletter. Sign Up.
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