Solving A Biological Puzzle: Find How Stress Causes Grey Hair

When Marie Antoinette was at then captured during the time of French Revolution, her hair reportedly turned into white overnight. In recent history, John McCain has experienced severe injuries that are as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War -- and has lost colour in his hair.

For a long time, anecdotes have also connected stressful experiences with the phenomenon of hair greying. Now, for the first time, it has been known that Harvard University scientists have discovered that exactly how the process has recently played out, stress has activated that nerves that are part of the fight-or-flight responses, which in turn causes the permanent damaging to the pigment-regenerating stem cells in the hair follicles.

The study has published in Nature and has advanced scientists' knowledge of how the stress can also impact our body.

Senior Author Ya-Chieh Hsu who is the Alvin and Esta Star Associate Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard has said that everyone has an anecdote for sharing about how the stress has affected their body and particularly in their skin and hair and the only left tissues we can see from the outside. He also added the he wanted to understand that if this connection is true, and if so, how stress leads to changes in diverse tissues. Hair pigmentation is such an accessible and tractable system for starting with -- and besides, we were then genuinely curious for seeing if stress indeed has lead into hair greying.

By: Prerana Sharma
Content: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200122135313.htm