Grey Hair Can Regain Its Color–If You Relieve Stress

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There’s now definitive proof that hair greying is reversible, albeit rare, in humans. What’s more, stressful life events play a primary role in triggering your hair to turn grey, while relaxation—like a two-week vacation—may help give your roots back their original color.

Grey hair is one of the earliest and most obvious signs of aging. By the time most people reach their 30s, hair begins to go grey, becoming progressively [more] grey with time. It’s generally assumed that once a hair goes grey, there’s no going back, but a team from Columbia University in New York and colleagues suggest this may not be the case.

They found that individual grey hairs may, in fact, regain their color, and stressful events seem to be intricately tied to the [greying] process. Also intriguing, by measuring small changes in hair color patterns, it may be possible to track life events across a lifespan, using the pigmentation patterns like tree rings to mark the dates of stressful events along with periods of significant relaxation.^[i]

Their findings show that hair not only turns grey in response to extreme stress but the opposite is also true—during periods of low stress, grey hair may, in somewhat rare cases, regain its original color.

Once Grey, Some Hairs Regain Their Color

Have you ever noticed a two-colored hair on your head or body? One that’s grey farther down but pigmented with your original color near the root? By studying these types of hairs, which they collected from 14 people of different ethnic backgrounds and ages ranging from 9 to 65 years,[ii] researchers were able to prove that once a hair turns grey, it doesn’t always stay that way.

This reversal of the aging process was perhaps first officially described in 1972 when a case report of white scalp hairs turning black was published in the British Journal of Dermatology.[iii] Anecdotal reports also exist, and there is also the fact that hair greys in a sort of patchwork process, with some hairs seeming to age faster than others.

After tracking down subjects with two-colored hairs, Martin Picard, a mitochondrial psychobiologist, and his team developed a digitization approach to map hair pigmentation patterns along single strands of hair. It turned out that in 10 of the 14 participants, some grey hairs regained their color. This occurred in hairs from the head and body, including pubic hairs, but only among those aged 9 to 39.[iv]

They believe that the greying process may be most reversible in its early stages, while hairs that have been grey for long periods are unlikely to regain their color. The effect is also temporary, as eventually, the hairs will likely revert to grey. Still, the study “quantitatively defin[ed] the reversibility of greying in humans”[v] and showed that the reversal can occur rapidly—and in parallel with times of extreme stress or relaxation.

Stress Can Make Your Hair Go Grey–but Relaxation Brings Color Back

Stress has long been tied to greying hair, if not scientifically then anecdotally. The night before the execution of Marie Antoinette, it’s said that her hair turned white.^[vi] Picard also heard from a surprising number of people who said that their grey hair had turned dark again. “It tells me that what we found in our small cohort and what we documented quantitatively for the first time in this study is probably much more prevalent than we think,” he told TODAY.^[vii]

The study participants identified periods of extreme stress over the last year, and Picard and colleagues were able to pinpoint the segments of hair that grew during that time using the average growth rate of hair, which is one centimeter per month in humans.^[viii] They then compared life events to the strand’s pigment, finding a remarkable correlation between greying and stress, as well as reversal of greying and relaxation.

They described the case of a 30-year-old woman whose hair strands turned grey when she separated from her partner and moved:^[ix]

“Strikingly, the quantitative life stress assessment over the last year revealed a specific 2-month period associated with an objective life stressor (marital conflict and separation, concluded with relocation) where the participant rated her perceived stress as the highest (9-10 out of 10) over the past year. The increase in stress corresponded in time with the complete but reversible hair greying.”

In another case, five two-colored hairs were found on a 35-year-old man’s scalp, and all of them had regained color after initially going grey. The reversal of greying occurred alongside a decline in stress and a one-month period that was the least stressful of the past year—right after the man had taken a two-week vacation.^[x] Given these findings, they believe that “life stress” is intricately involved in hair greying and reversal.

From a biological standpoint, they also found that grey hairs upregulate proteins linked to energy metabolism, mitochondria, and antioxidant defenses, providing a “plausible biological basis for the rapid reversibility of greying and its association with psychological factors.”^[xi]

The Aging Process Sometimes Moves in Reverse

The study provides even more evidence that aging isn’t always a one-way street. In a commentary, Michael Philpott, of the Centre for Cell Biology and Cutaneous Research at Queen Mary University, London, explained, “[T]he latest work suggests that human aging may not be a linear, fixed biological process but may, at least in part, be halted or even temporarily reversed.”^[xii]

It’s simply remarkable to now have proof that hair greying is reversible—albeit rare—and to know that reducing psychological stressors in your life could stave off that salt-and-pepper look, or, in some cases, even reverse it.

Republished from GreenMedInfo.com

◇ References:

[i] eLife. 2021; 10: e67437. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8219384/

[ii] Scientific American. June 22, 2021 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gray-hair-can-return-to-its-original-color-mdash-and-stress-is-involved-of-course/

[iii] British Journal of Dermatology. May 1972 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2133.1972.tb16105.x

[iv] Scientific American. June 22, 2021 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gray-hair-can-return-to-its-original-color-mdash-and-stress-is-involved-of-course/

[v] eLife. 2021; 10: e67437. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8219384/

[vi] eLife. 2021; 10: e70584. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8245124/

[vii] TODAY July 7, 2021 https://www.today.com/health/stress-turns-hair-gray-it-s-reversible-study-finds-today-t224667

[viii] Scientific American. June 22, 2021 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gray-hair-can-return-to-its-original-color-mdash-and-stress-is-involved-of-course/

[ix] eLife. 2021; 10: e67437. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8219384/

[x] eLife. 2021; 10: e67437. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8219384/

[xi] eLife. 2021; 10: e67437. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8219384/

[xii] eLife. 2021; 10: e70584. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8245124/