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Stress does turn hair gray, and it’s reversible
- ndr 5y agoVery small n, but nonetheless entertaining: > “There was one individual who went on vacation, and five hairs on that person’s head reverted back to dark during the vacation, synchronized in time,” Picard says.
- qwerty456127 5y agoI've just misread "and It’s IRReversible" and immediately felt more stress because of that X-(
- junon 5y agoMaybe it was a coincidence but at my last job I was so insanely stressed and burnt out. My manager was terrible, treated me like an idiot, and my ideas were stifled day in and day out. I woke up one day and seemingly overnight my beard had a grey patch - almost white, in fact. It fell out in the week after. Almost a year and a half later, after leaving that job, I took the pandemic to really focus on my stress levels and be happier (I am). The grey patch is starting to fade away and some color is beginning to return. Certainly not the stark white that was there before, and definitely not grey either. Idk if I believe it, maybe something else was happening. But it sure seemed stress related at the time. EDIT: I'm < 30 and my family doesn't have a history of grey hair - quite the opposite. Forgot to mention this
- imvetri 5y agoI had few grey hair during my college days, after I joined as programmer, I have a patch of grey on my right frontal lobe. But I was not thinking stress is the cause, instead I believed in my own lie that all vitamins is getting sucked by the brain, and the thinking part of the brain is in the front. :D lol. I used to think that thinking power is super cool, and I'm realising very recently that it is a sign of stress.
- daniellarusso 5y agoQuieting the mind is really cool, but not easy. ;)
- varispeed 5y agoSame here. I started getting gray hairs in the beginning of last year. Then the company switched to fully remote and I no longer have them. I am still stressed from time to time, but nothing like I was when I had to commute, worry about how I look, whether I make it on time, what I am going to eat, where, will I get space at the cafe, will I get the seat at hot desking space, how do I up my small talk game, oh no another awkward silence in the lift, then trying to focus on code while hearing sudden laughs piercing my ears as the lads from marketing are discussing how their evening went and who they "scored". It's was a nightmare. At home, I can even put noise cancelling headphones, for that extra pure silent bliss.
- jzzskijj 5y agoHad the first kid and got quite fast lot's of grey hairs. I was really stressed with having enough time to do my work properly and to handle the daycare deliveries/pickups. The kid got older and needed less of my constant attention, and greying stopped for several years. Then had the second kid and entered again into this constant not having enough time for anything mode. In the last 2 years I've been getting tons of grey hair, again. This time while I am much older, I can cope with the stress and constant tiredness even worse. So I am a firm believer of the theory.
- daniellarusso 5y agoMany years ago I was attending SonicWALL training, having worked for an MSP. My classmate, who was maybe a few years younger, was a lead/owner for his MSP. Completely gray hair and beard. He just looked so stressed, like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
- kowlo 5y agoStress is terrible. Work overloaded me and caused so much stress that I had stress-induced alopecia. My beard fell out in patches, and I had random patches of hair fall out on the back of my head, almost like perfect circles. Besides that, I couldn't really enjoy myself anymore, and I would often spend my non-work time vegetating. Then there's the teeth grinding and all the damage that comes with that. The hair came back, but the damage done to my teeth is not reversible. These are just the physical damages, the damages to mental health are either still on the mend or scarred.
- 300bps 5y agoI’m sorry you went through that. Someone on this site recommended a book years ago - Learned Optimism. They said it would change your life. I read the book and did the work (similar to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and can honestly say it changed my life. I went from catastrophizing just about everything to not worrying pretty much at all. I can’t imagine going back to the stress levels I used to have.
- shostack 5y agoHad severe jaw pain from grinding in my sleep and clenching last year. Largely because of the last administration, but also starting a stressful new job situation and general 2020 pandemic stress. Apparently my dentist was seeing a ton of this. Got a night guard and felt immediately better with some of it. On stressful days I still find myself clenching or biting my tongue but it's a lot less.
- AQuantized 5y agoYour teeth can remineralize given the right conditions and some time. Obviously the aesthetic won't change much, but if you clean your teeth thoroughly 30 mins after a meal, reduce sugar intake, chew sugar free gum for saliva and helping with ph levels etc. it should help.
- ConfusedDog 5y agoYeah. It can happen to kids as young as high school age. I have seen so many Chinese students preparing for their college entrance exams had their hairs turned grey. I'm actually surprised it's reversible, because none of them I knew ever recovered from the grey hair years later.
- hutzlibu 5y agoThat probably tells something about the general stress level they later had.
- thunderbong 5y agoThe important bit - >> Reducing stress in your life is a good goal, but it won't necessarily turn your hair to a normal color. >> "Based on our mathematical modeling, we think hair needs to reach a threshold before it turns gray," Picard says. "In middle age, when the hair is near that threshold because of biological age and other factors, stress will push it over the threshold and it transitions to gray. >> "But we don't think that reducing stress in a 70-year-old who's been gray for years will darken their hair or increasing stress in a 10-year-old will be enough to tip their hair over the gray threshold."
- bradlys 5y agoThe part I’d be interested in is knowing the age when it could begin. I’ve had crippling amounts of stress when I was younger. I’ve even experienced quite a bit of stress in the last couple years. I haven’t noticed a bunch of new gray hairs at either time. I’m wondering if there will ever be any easy to tell differences that will indicate if someone can have gray hair through stress or are immune to this condition. Being put in a stressful condition doesn’t seem sufficient to tell because some people seem to not be affected by this or maybe the stress level isn’t sufficient. How’d to gauge what is stressful enough for one and not for another?
- kator 5y agoStrange because I started turning grey in high school, my hair was "dishwater blond". My grandmother on my father's side said she too started turning grey in school and died her hair most of her life to cover it. Fast forward a bit, my daughter started getting grey hair around 18 years old. We had assumed when she was young it wouldn't happen because she had jet black hair, and that color most likely came from mom's family line. It's interesting that stress can also contribute, now I wonder how much of my grey is stress induced vs genetics! These days I'm almost 98% grey with limited hair loss, my father is 70% grey with substantial hair loss, and my mom is 100% grey with a full head of hair.
- spywaregorilla 5y agoCould also be genetics influence handling and side effects of stress.
- 41209 5y agoThe health effects of stress are pretty insane, I actually had to stop hacker ranking the other day because I noticed my blood pressure would shoot up by about 10 points. No faang offer is worth dropping dead
- sydthrowaway 5y agoMaybe FAANG just selects for people who can handle the stress of Leetcode?
- ClikeX 5y agoThis is exactly why I opposed any sort of leaderboard idea at my previous job. Work can be stressful enough. Let's not make it any more than it needs to be.
- lowdest 5y agoYou can practice until the nerves are gone. I've been doing Leetcode weekly competitions, after a while it's just another timed coding challenge. I've noticed training cardio helps me handle anxiety better, both because I can better handle the physical effects when they arise, and the training itself removes anxiety I'm feeling at that moment.
- 41209 5y agoIt's not just that, it's the fact that you're preparing for a job interview which is already a stressful endeavor. When you add oh my God I need to learn all these new things, I need to solve these algro problems faster, it's just too much.
- yawaworht1978 5y agoDo never, ever let a job or manager affect your stress levels. If you can, seek greener pastures, but more importantly, do not let it affect you. Same for relationship issues. The hair is only one of the affected areas. God knows how bad this is some internal body parts if it leads to binge eating or coping solutions like drinking etc. Not to mention the mind.
- jpttsn 5y agoChronic stress might be bad. A little stress from time to time in life is not that strange. Aspiring to a stress free existence seems unwise unless you’re some particular kind of royalty.
- baby 5y agoAspire to a low-stress life. Yep! Also stressing for the right reasons is good (like going out of your comfort zone).
- hermannj314 5y agoCan you elaborate on how to not let a job affect you in this way? Do you think stress is equally caused by external factors (boss, job) or internal factors (personality, etc.)? I would be afraid of quitting a great job over stress only to find out the problem was inside me the entire time.
- willcipriano 5y agoLeave your LinkedIn as "looking for work", a email every day or two from someone who wants to hire you reminds you that you have other options and even if all this went sideways you'd land on your feet. In this market if your company burnt to the ground you'd likely end up with a short vacation and a raise.
- treeman79 5y agoFirst half of 2000 I was getting calls from recruiters non stop. Multiple per day. I had just started out but had in demand skills. One day the calls just stopped. They didn’t start again for 3 years. The whole dot com crash was quite humbling.
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- hermannj314 5y agoHas anyone found good, long-term methods for stress management? I know I am stressed and I see the evidence - restless sleep, elevated WBC, worsening anxiety. I, unfortunately, haven't found a good routine way to manage stress.
- the-dude 5y agoEmbrace the void.
- kazen44 5y agoturning to philosophy has helped me immensely in managing stress. also, realizing you cannot satisfy everyone all the time, and sometimes trying to change certain conditions which you have no control over is futile.
- saiya-jin 5y agoGood workout, often. Good diet (probably generally less eating, less carbs, light meal in the evening). Enough drinking, pure water is fine. That's a good start in any case
- werber 5y agoFor me, it was accepting that my job isn’t my whole identity and finding a place to work that valued work/life balance and actually has a culture of not overworking. On the personal side, going to therapy, actively removing stressful and toxic people from my life, doing as much physical activity as possible (even walking helps me), and having a bottle of benzodiazepines on hand for worst case situations.
- hycaria 5y agoGet a hobby that requires focus and/or physical effort.
- ClikeX 5y agoIt really depends on what stresses you out, but for me in general. Separate your life and your work if work stresses you out. There should be a clear line where you are at home and decompress. Read a bit into mindfulness. You don't have to do all the exercises. But it's important to become aware of your stress factors. Oh, and the usual exercise and eating healthier. A good workout really relaxes you mentally.
- jhugo 5y agoI'd love to know more about how they were able to sample individual hairs over a period of time even with things like the subject going on holiday between samplings. Do they mark the individual hairs somehow?
- mlok 5y agoI have long dark hair. I can notice this myself. Some of my hairs are dark at the tip, then turn white, then turn dark again nearing the root. That surprised me the first time ! And yes I can count them : easy to spot the white loners in the dark crowd. (You don't need to mark them : they are their own timeline history, if you do not cut them) Empirically I more or less came to the same conclusions than this study 5 years ago.
- wchar_t 5y agoIndeed. One of my friends had quite a few patches of gray hair (he was only about 28 at the time), but found that the patches turned their natural color again in a few years after moving to a smaller company and becoming more health-conscious, diet-wise.
- cableshaft 5y agoSo what does it mean when the hair on the top of your head is still fine but your beard is turning gray. Does that mean I'm half-stressed?
- cmrdporcupine 5y agoIt means you're an expert in Emacs and Unix ("greybeard"). Congratulations! https://gist.github.com/lenards/3739917 https://gist.github.com/lenards/3739917
- cableshaft 5y agoEmpirically untrue, I'm afraid. Unless when I go to sleep I go all Tyler Durden and have an entirely different life.
- mnd999 5y agoI was always curious as to whether this is the mechanism by which silverback gorillas get their silver hair. Being in charge must be stressful.
- strategyanalyst 5y agoI finally know who my spirit animal is!
- dan-robertson 5y agoSee also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Antoinette_syndrome?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Antoinette_syndrome?wpro...
- nsonha 5y agofunny I'm more stressed these days than in my late teen/early 20s but I've actually lost grey hair in the past 10 years. I was in a more polluted city and did not exercise
- KMag 5y agoI thought this was well-known. I went to MIT for undergrad in the late 1990s, and have 3 friends who got white patches in their hair in their late teens/early 20s that went away within a few months of graduation.
- aimor 5y agoI see this in my own beard hairs. I'll have a dark hair with a grey root, but then I'll also have a grey hair with a dark root. I didn't do any research into it, but I always felt like I saw more of the latter when I'd been getting lots of sleep. Other hairy questions I've been curious about: What's the deal with that one long dark hair on my shoulder, and why is there one in about the same place on each shoulder? Why does it feel so good to pluck out some hairs, but other ones give a lot of resistance and hurt? Why do some hairs grow in pairs? Is body hair effective at baffling mosquitos?
- anotherevan 5y agoIn my late thirties I noticed flecks of grey in my hair when I was getting haircuts. It was like that for a few years then went away again and has yet to return (clocked in at fifty last year). I don't recall life being especially stressful at that time. I went through an unbelievable amount of stress in the middle five years of my forties which didn't cause a recurrence. I do have these thick grey hairs in my beard though, that stand out among the thinner, wiry brown ones. Not sure what that is about.
- jansan 5y agoA japanese guy once told me that he worked in a lab and accidentially caused an explosion, not really injuring him but giving him quite a shock. He claimed that when he woke up the next day much of his hair / beard had turned grey. Although he appeared to be an honest guy, I never believed the story. Is there any way that this could actually have happened the way he told it?
- pgreenwood 5y agoYes, it can happen due to alpoecia areata which can be stress related. I had a beard hair turn white almost overnight. I am normally clean shaven but a large section of my facial hair fell out at once and almost immediately grow back white. I think it took a few days but seemed to happen overnight. Also alopecia can tend to attack just coloured hair, so if you're salt and pepper and lose all the coloured you can appear to go white overnight.
- twodave 5y agoMy hair started graying pretty much as soon as I graduated from college. It makes a lot of sense now. Around the same time, I: - bought a house (in 2007, yeesh) - got married - started my first job (which at the time felt like drinking out of a fire hose) Shortly after, my wife and I went through the stress of trying and failing to get pregnant. Then infertility treatments for several months. Then my wife had surgery. Infertility treatments no longer an option, we turned to adoption. 6 weeks later (seriously), we brought home our first child. After that, it was like kids fell into our laps every couple of years. After the second child, I struggled with a pretty severe addiction that nearly claimed my marriage. Since then we've adopted two more. We now have kids aged 12, 9, 6 and 4. Has it been all stress all the time? Not at all. I feel incredibly blessed to be living this life. But the hair (mostly on the sides) hasn't gone back to its normal color either, so I guess either it's genetic or there's an undercurrent of stress I've just become accustomed to. Edit: formatting
- chaosbutters314 5y agohow is adoption? Did you do domestically or international? Any sage advice? I personally rather adopt than have my own kids so I'm just curious.
- hutzlibu 5y agoWhat I experienced with the people I know, who adopted: the most easy for you would be - if the child is as young as possible. Preferably shortly after being born. There are of course many older children waiting for a real home - but in general they all bring their mental baggage with - so this can be really, really challenging.
- twodave 5y agoThere's a special place in my heart for people who choose to adopt older kids. It's not so much mental baggage as it is damage resulting from years of abuse and/or neglect along different axes of the child's life. There's real loss and trauma involved, and there's no way to erase it. The best you can do is help them cope and not take it personally when they lash out at you for what was done to them. These same traumas exist in some degree even with our children adopted as infants. They each have undergone a sense of loss (to varying degrees, for sure) and have spent time questioning the events that led their birth parents to put them up for adoption. There's also a lot of loss after the fact because the typically birth mother does not live a very stable life. Our 4 children only have 1 surviving birth mother between them at this point (we think). One has had to deal with the loss of a birth sibling. These kids have a front-row seat to the reality that life is full of pain. We put a lot of effort into teaching them that there is also an abundance of love available to them.
- sbehlasp 5y agoIt has been a while when i came across few remedies for grey hair and hair loss [https://vedix.com/blogs/articles/premature-greying-of-hair-causes-and-treatment https://vedix.com/blogs/articles/premature-greying-of-hair-c...] i dont know if this is reversible but yes, some of them really helps in slowing down the graying
- BatteryMountain 5y agoMy beard got a nice gray patch during 2018.. near the end of that year I ate 5g psilocybin and over the next 3 months all my gray bread hairs disappeared, and still until today I haven't had a single gray hair in my beard again. Can anyone explain that? Early thirties, no health issues, overall normal body.
- jansan 5y agoMaybe no grey hair is how it is supposed to be and the grey patch of hair was caused by a health issue or stress? I mean, you are only in your early thirties, most people have no grey hair at that age.
- thisisnico 5y agoI had a grey patch at 27, it went away. But it's not true that most people don't have grey hair at that age, most people actually do, just not enough to be super noticeable.
- thrav 5y agoMental lightness. Not sweating certain stuff in the same way. Less unproductive dwelling. All things I experienced after a trip that would account for that.
- sowbug 5y agoIt's more likely the five grams were dried psilocybe cubensis mushrooms, which typically contain less than 1% of psychoactive compounds, so your experience would have involved more like 50mg of psilocybin/psilocin/baeocystin/others. Not trying to diminish the experience in any way -- five grams of magic mushrooms are very likely to lead to an amazing trip. If this assumption is wrong and you in fact did take 5000mg of pure psilocybin, I'd appreciate hearing more detail on that experience.
- BatteryMountain 5y agoYes, I meant 5 gram plant material, not the chemical, sorry about expressing that wrong. The experience was super intense and will probably never do it again. I don't recommend anyone take 5 grams for their first time at all.
- fnord77 5y agoN=14
- throwaway2016a 5y agoI just quit my startup job a couple months ago and like magic I can barely see my gray hairs anymore. Whereas when I worked there it seemed like every month the gray got worse. I'm 36. We may not have risk of falling off a roof or getting shot so I don't want to overstate anything but the stress some of us have from our careers is definitely not helping our health. Combine that with generally sitting in our chair all day and it gets worse. My new job is also a startup but I'm a founder this time and have more latitude to take a mental health break or block out time mid-day to do a workout. Everyone is different but I think quantifiably... based on my gray hair (to come back full circle to the article)... the lack of a steady paycheck is much LESS stressful than the job at a more established company where I got paid well but was pretty much on call 24x7.
- larinzod 5y agoSo it turns out that generations of parents blaming their children for all their grey hairs were actually right? Someone out there is having a vindicating "I told you so" moment.
- amelius 5y agoDid anyone have success with PABA? From Wikipedia: > Despite the lack of any recognized syndromes of PABA deficiency in humans, except for those who lack the colonic bacteria that generate PABA, many claims of benefit are made by commercial suppliers of PABA as a nutritional supplement. The benefit is claimed for (...) and premature grey hair. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-Aminobenzoic_acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-Aminobenzoic_acid
- amelius 5y agoDoes this mean that people with an anxiety disorder (more stress) are more likely to have grey hair?
- thendrill 5y agoPretty much yeh. Gray hairs can be an indicator of personality type too.
- atulatul 5y agoTo reduce the stress a bit and make you smile, here's a P. G. Wodehouse quote: "There is only one cure for grey hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine."
- Gravityloss 5y agosupposedly, if you've had high fever, you can also see it as a streak from your finger and toenails (the part that was growing then).
- mattlondon 5y agoHmm this might explain why I pluck the odd grey hair, only to find that it is only grey at the oldest end, and the newer hair is back to normal colour. So the hair stopped being grey halfway through growing... Less stress?
- thrav 5y agoThis happened in my (31yo) beard, which allowed me to watch it shift grey and back in a short time, and it absolutely coincided with ~3 months of work where I was killing myself, and went away when I took 2 steps back and resumed riding my bike outside a few times a week.
- fernandotakai 5y agoover the past few years, my stress levels have been climbing, never to the point of "turning my hair grey". but then, the pandemic hit + more work related stress and now my beard has a ton of grey hair. also, finding more and more grey hair in my head daily. i always thought it was just... you know, getting older but it literally started appearing all of sudden. it's nice to know it's not "just" an age thing.
- poidos 5y agoI kind of like my gray hairs. I first noticed them (and assumed they were from stress) the summer after high school -- back then, it was a single, stark-white hair that popped up. I was certainly stressed in undergrad and then grad school, but I didn't feel horribly so while going through it, though I do have more than one now. :) I understand the vanity aspect of dying them away, but that never resonated with me -- it seems like one of the few dignified parts of aging.
- hcarvalhoalves 5y agoMy hair started turning gray after COVID infection, I’m 34.
- ezconnect 5y agoWell that explains why I get random white hair on some occasions and seems to go away I was thinking I was getting really old but I am already old and was expecting my hair to turn white.
- aantix 5y agoLooking at stress management from a nutritional lens - get more magnesium. Avoidance of all stress isn't practical, so give your body the nutrients it needs to cope.
- logronoide 5y agoI had a gorgeous curly black hair… that turned gray in a couple of years when my startup derailed. I tried to hide the problems to my family, friends and relatives… but the color of my hair was a very strong signal. A couples of years later I started to suffer of some medical conditions related to the long periods of stressing events in the startup. Stress can destroy your health. Take it seriously.
- soperj 5y agoWonder if baldness is the same?
- benoror 5y agoWondering how is this related to vitiligo [a condition in which the pigment is lost from areas of the skin, causing whitish patches, often with no clear cause.]
- koheripbal 5y agoThat might be related to PABA.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-Aminobenzoic_acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-Aminobenzoic_acid, which is also associated with premature grey hair. Since PABA is produced in the digestive system, it's possible that stress impacts eating/digestion in some negative way?
- GLGirty 5y agoAnecdata, but I've witnessed re-melanizing of formerly gray follicles. My wife tried intermittent fasting after reading some health claims about it. (i.e. autophagy). In the beginning I was skeptical. After a month or so of intermittent fasts, her hairdresser noticed an obvious line of salt and pepper hair that was growing in brown at the roots. I now believe the health claims of fasting have merit, and I hope future research can quantify the degree of benefits.
- pgreenwood 5y agoAbout two years ago I woke up to find 40% of my facial hair gone. It was due to alopecia areata, and I was going through a very stressful period. It mostly grew back but completely white (Funnily I'm left with a narrow black section in the moustache area, so if I don't shave I look like Hitler). Anyway in the last month or so some coloured hair has started to come back, hopefully it continues.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]