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How the stress of fight or flight turns hair white
- mitfahrener 7y agoMy mother was right. I am baldy because if stress. Although all my maternal uncles were bald as a lightbulb. That probably didn't help.
- leib 7y agoThis article says it causes greying, not balding
- mitfahrener 7y agoHah. Yeah. I read it now.
- mitfahrener 7y agoNevermind, this is about hair turning white. Should have read the article first.
- Kenji 7y agoMy hypothesis is that both stress and depression vastly speed up aging, hair being the least of the problems. It is good to see research about this subject.
- gnulinux 7y agoI'm constantly stressed. Therapy and weightlifting help but don't solve it. I always find something to be stressed about. For years, I was stressed in school, then graduated and started being stressed about being lonely. For the last year, I always thought about how lonely I am, so my therapist suggested me to get a pet. I got a cat. Now I don't feel lonely, but every time I'm not home, I just worry that something bad will happen to the cat. I always worry that he is sick, or jumped somewhere and injured himself. Or that there is a fire in my house and my cat is grilling.
- taurath 7y agoSounds like you have an anxiety disorder to me. Stress is situational. Anxiety is stress when it’s not appropriate.
- TheFiend7 7y agoI experience a lot of what OP describes but obviously am not OP. It's tough though, who wants to take the anti-anxiety medication that we don't really understand every day for the rest of their life? Just for you to eventually not need it? Why would I all of a sudden not need it? Doesn't even make sense. My doctor always tries to get me to take it but it just seems like a bandaid. Granted, I don't claim to be able to fix it myself either, but the last thing I want to do is mess with my brain chemistry more, especially since I'm starkly aware of the arrogance of humanity (i.e. nobody really knows what is actually going on). EDIT: I feel like baby(user comment below) might be on to something. I constantly am in fear of something bad happening and stress about that far more than I stress about things that have already happened. But I do experience both.
- losteric 7y agoimo, some people are clearly in situations where continuous medication is worth the trade-offs... For milder cases, medication can disrupt negative feedback mechanisms. eg Adderall didn't cure my ADHD but a few months at a high dose gave me momentum to build organizational habits and understand what "normal" meant. Now I just take the occasional low dose in response when life gets hectic to stay on top of what matters.
- baby 7y agoWatch this: https://t.co/jI6WJPvoAS?amp=1 https://t.co/jI6WJPvoAS?amp=1 It talks about stoicism, and how accepting what is happening is the path to tranquility, and happiness. It seems like stress is mostly about fear of something that hasn’t happened (and perhaps never will) and lack of acceptance of bad things happening.
- aantix 7y agoMe too. A strong dose of CBD before bed seems to help the forthcoming days. I'm much calmer.
- baby 7y agoI’ve heard that stress can cause a lot of issues in one’s body. Grey hair, diabetes, even cancer? What should I do? Should I drop everything to live a stress-free life in Thailand? Should I do meditation everyday? What are the ways for someone to live a stress-free life :)?
- smallgovt 7y agoDon't stress too much about living a stress-free life :)
- simonsarris 7y ago> Should I drop everything to live a stress-free life in Thailand? That sounds like it would be a really stressful thing to do... You probably have a number of good ways to reflect on your priorities, but its very difficult for someone else to tell you how to reflect on those. Most people can only speak to what worked for them, which depends on where they were before, etc. IMO to start: Wake up way earlier than you have to. (This changed me into a morning person.) When you have 1-2 hours where you can just sit there calmly, drinking coffee, and not be rushed, you feel ten times better. Many mornings me and my wife wake up and just sit by the fire (that we restart to heat our home) and make coffee. Sometimes she will write, or we will both read, or talk, etc, but often we just sit together for a while and relax. Later on, you can work on being ~productive~ in the a.m. too if you please. Invite ritual into your life. Spend a time making your home a place you would want to be. A house is a place for having coffee, having conversation, having memories and symbols that give you feeling or inspiration (pictures, objects), how much of their designs do that? How much yours?
- RandomBacon 7y agoI second waking up earlier than you have to. I started doing this about 2 weeks ago. It's nice not having to stress about rushing in the morning. I used to start my day stressing. In hindsight, that wasn't healthy.
- bathtub365 7y ago
- boromi 7y agoHow can we live stress free lives in an inherently stress driven work environment and life. We are constantly impressed by others more accomplished and drive ourselves to try to attempt to reach their success. This is hard, plus we have social and money issues that drive us to worry. All of these are not easy to solve, and lead to a lot of daily stress.
- flatiron 7y agoHence the invention of alcohol.
- echelon 7y agoWhich, if used sans moderation, causes further aging.
- adrianrocamora 7y agoWe can revisit the stoic lessons from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus. I find them very useful for managing stress.
- paganel 7y ago> We are constantly impressed by others more accomplished and drive ourselves to try to attempt to reach their success. Not sure if this can be applied to your specific life situation but in my case after I had reached 30 years of age I realized that "chasing everyone else" is simply not worth the hassle, and, worst off, that it changed me into a person I didn't like, a "fake" me, so to speak. Mind you, I'm still stressed about money and bills and paying rent/mortgage like almost everyone else, not sure if there's a way of eliminating that, but for me at least it came as a huge stress reliever the fact that I didn't have to "chase" everybody else anymore. If it matters I came to that "realization" that chasing others is futile after I had read a compendium of Stoic writers (there is another HN-er mentioning Marcus Aurelius, and for good reasons), but I'm sure there are also other writers/thinkers that have written about this.
- CalRobert 7y agoTurning 30 stole my head hair, and this explains the grey chest hairs when my kid showed up...
- j79 7y agoAfter my first son, I noticed an explosion of gray hairs. I went 39 years of my life with a few strands of gray on the top of my hair. Two years since my first arrived? Grays all over. And I mean, ALL over (in places I wasn't prepared for...)
- brailsafe 7y agoI gotta know, did it all fall out at the same time or was it just the last few strands?
- CalRobert 7y agoWell, it didn't all fall out, but the forehead kept getting farther and farther back and I recall seeing an image of the top of my head and thinking "god that's awful" and have been shaving it off ever since. I could let what's there grow but... it's bad.
- Eyght 7y agoI wish my hair had gone grey instead of retreating from my head at 21.
- Aperocky 7y agoDoes poor sleep patterns intersect with stress? I don’t feel much stress but between work, side projects and traveling, I feel a bit tired.
- yingw787 7y agoI think it's really important to learn how to laugh. Laugh every today. Laugh at dumb things. Don't get cardiovascular disease or creases in your face or go bald because you're too proud to have a sense of humor. I need to work on this myself.
- ecoled_ame 7y agoI’d rather be bald than laughing & chattering all the time like the rest of them.
- baxtr 7y agoThat actually made me laugh. Thanks for saving my hair
- encoderer 7y agoI am satisfied knowing that I've gone grey raising my daughter and not for some godforsaken software project.
- sarego 7y agoI used to be an easily stressed person. I do get stressed even now but am acutely aware of it affecting the body and mind. I feel that a lot of people don't even know that they are stressed. It used to take many minutes of sitting still for my mind to relax. At that point some of my muscles would automatically relax. Only at that instant would I even become aware of it being tight the whole day.
- geuis 7y agoInteresting article. In my dad's side of the family, we seem to have an interesting inherited trait. We don't really have any balding, but the men (including me) go grey very early in life. I'm turning 40 in a couple of days but my beard has turned almost completely grey by now and I have a lot of grey in my hair. My eyebrows are holding on though. My dad and his brothers were all mostly grey by the end of their 30's as well. Interestingly, when my dad got cancer in his mid 50's and started undergoing radiation treatment, the hair on his chin started growing back brown. By the time he passed away about 2 years after, that part of his beard was his original hair color from when he was young. One hypothesis is that perhaps due to the damage being done from the radiation to healthy tissue encouraged stem cells to migrate back to that area and had the effect of regenerating the melanocytes in the follicles in the area.
- nicholasjon 7y agoSame. I come from a long line of prematurely gray haired folks. I'm 42 and my hair and beard are almost entirely white. I definitely have a problem with stress, though given the number of family members (distant and otherwise) that have the same coloring I suspect there's more to it than just that.
- mickdarling 7y agoIt is not direct heavy constant stress that causes the damage to the stem cell, but the heightened reaction in Fight or Flight scenarios. This was all in the study. Being under constant stress, which is measured via cortisol did NOT cause the stem cell damage. I look young for my age, at 44 I look far younger than my silver haired 43 year old brother. People say I am "chill" and "zen" but I bathe in stressful situations as an entrepreneur and independent consultant all day, everyday. I just don't get excited in high stress moments. I'm the guy in center of the storm when everyone is freaking out. It is certainly both part of my nature and learned, as I have worked on improving that over the years. You can learn to not freak out, and even if it doesn't keep your hair dark and luxurious like mine, you will be better in lots of scenarios.
- mtm7 7y agoThere are a few comments about how to decrease stress. From personal experience, asking "How can I be less stressed?" is like asking "How can I be happy?" There's not really a great answer... but you can look at the things that would make you _unhappy_ and avoid them. So here's "How can I become MORE stressed?" 1. Buy as much nice stuff as you can – it's okay if you go into debt because it'll persuade you to work harder! 2. Since you're so busy, accept that you don't have time to exercise. You can get around to it in the future (once you're rich!) 3. Stay up as late as you can. After all, you can sleep when you're dead. Caffeine is your friend. 4. Be too lazy to make todo lists or mark anything on your calendar. 5. At least once per week, compare yourself to everyone else. It's the only way to judge how you're doing. 6. Do everything yourself. You don't need to hire that tax accountant. You don't need to ask for help. 7. Sell your time to [Company Name Here]. Yeah, they're hard to work for, but they might make you rich.
- rzzzt 7y agoWhen in a TV series, the protagonist has eg. a heart problem, and the doctor says "avoid stress": I get super aggravated just listening to such conversations vicariously. It becomes another burden, a non-elective task of actively working on reducing stress factors that appear in your life by default.
- cuddlybacon 7y ago8. Lookup what your friends did on social media and speculate why they didn't invite you.
- loughnane 7y agoThis reminds me of a CGP Grey Video “How to maximize misery” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LO1mTELoj6o https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LO1mTELoj6o
- no_identd 7y ago>4. Be too lazy to make todo lists or mark anything on your calendar. Ah yes, the ever simple act of 'being' any adjective identity assignment. As someone who had large parts of his hair bleach over night via a superoxidative immune system reaction following extreme stress, lemme translate how you come across here: "Employ free will sorcery to magically shrink your amygdalea, deshrink your hippocampus, transcend depression by magically snapping your finger in one grand act of permanent auto-hypnosis. Don't order food for yourself even if ordering food is often the only thing standing between you either eating something or proceeding to remain in low calorie intake induced parapsychosis which can always potentially lead you to some suicide attempt despite technically having the option of doing so and hence getting food into you to stave off the existential low level hormonal anxiety of not having eaten right for days simply due to lacking the mental spoons to cook food, just ignore the fact that the psychophenomenological experience of the exertion of physical exercise feels vastly different when attempted in an anhedonic, stressed out, anxious & depressed state. Also, ignore the fact that even when you've cut out caffeine of your life for months at a time, it never made a positive difference, as while on the one hand, the high caffeine doses you take represent one of the causes of your long waking periods, on the other hand, high doses of caffeine represent one of the few things which occasionally manage to peirce through the complete slump." I'm down to my absolutely last money, I have no health insurance, every day I read in the newspapers how the government will cut back on social security next and cut future bonuses to companies who don't deserve them, and I feel stressed out as hell, dude. A good quarter of my head has already turned snow white, and I haven't even reached the first quarter of my 30s. If you'd try to shove this load of bullshit advice on me in real life, I probably couldn't even muster the energy to begin expressing just how much I despise this kind of 'advice'. You know what I'd find fucking destressing? People like you, who assert that they speak from 'personal experience', yet don't actually name a single example of said personal experience, would stop trying to play Internet mental health professional and went back to using their armchairs to read books, or even better, went out to socialize more, to build a better capacity for empathy.
- ajcodez 7y agoData point - of my close friends in our 20s the stressed founders were the ones to go bald. It could be genetics, but it’s interesting.
- rzzzt 7y agoI'm immediately reminded of the Crash Test Dummies song: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/crash-test-dummies/mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm https://www.songfacts.com/facts/crash-test-dummies/mmm-mmm-m...
- dang 7y agoThis was discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22123481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22123481