Researchers prove that there is a link between stress and hair whitening. They also discovered a way to combat this phenomenon.
To say that one is “growing gray” means that one is worried. Science proves the validity of this expression. In the magazine Nature, researchers show that stress can accelerate the appearance of white hair. Their results were obtained by conducting an experiment on mice.
White mice in just 4 weeks
Researchers from the universities of Harvard (United States) and Sao Paulo (Brazil) injected mice with a solution reproducing the effect of stress on their organism. After 4 weeks, the coat of the animals turned completely white. The teams repeated the experiment several times and came to the same conclusion each time: there has a link between hair whitening and stress.
Cells unable to make pigments
Cell analysis explains the causes of this phenomenon. Hair color is linked to melanin: this pigment is produced by melanocytes, differentiated cells, produced by melanocyte stem cells. When the mice were given the stress-inducing drug, their melanocyte stem cell counts dropped. According to the researchers, anxiety accelerates the maturation of stem cells and makes them unable to regenerate pigments.
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The researchers conducted another study in parallel to understand the precise action of stress on hair color. First, they identified a protein linked to the action of stress on stem cells: cyclone-dependent kinase (CDK). Next, they tested a drug used for high blood pressure. It was found to be effective in suppressing the protein and preventing whitening of the mouse coat. “These discoveries do not constitute a treatment against white hair, tempers Professor Ya-Cieh Hsu of Harvard University, on the website of the BBC. Our discovery is only the beginning of a long work to find a way to act in humans.”
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