Thursday, December 6, 2012

The Connecting Line between Stress and Grey Hair

Many people have researched on the causes of grey hair and apart from genetic and nutritional causes, stress is also considered to be a major reason for rapidly greying hair. Read on to know whether stress pushes greying of hair or not.

Does stress cause grey hair? If you have noticed a few strands of gray hair after going through a stressful period, you might be asking this question. This is always a common concern for persons, especially when they start to grey earlier than their parents who are fifty and older. The best way to answer this question is to look at the connection between stress and grey hair.

First, you need to understand why your hair turns grey.

There are thousands of hair follicles in our head and each one grows or produces a strand of hair. Now, our hair consists of melanocytes and keratinocytes cells. The melanocytes cells give the hair color, while the keratinocytes build up the keratin in the hair. These melanin cells combine to give the different hair colors such as black, blond or brown. When the hair loses most of the melanin cells it will turn gray or white. Although most men and women have silvery hair after age 30, some young people will start to gray from age 13 or 14.

So, does stress cause grey hair to appear sooner than normal?

The hair will lose melanin cells because of many factors. Imbalances in the blood and kidney, severe free radical damage and stress are some of the causes of premature graying. Although, the connection between gray hair and stress has not been established, research has shown that persons who go through stressful periods for two or three years are more likely to have gray hair at a young age. If you are under severe stress, you can start to gray much sooner because the stress hormones will interfere with the melanin production.

Stress in itself can lead to many serious health conditions such as heart problems, sleeping disorders, digestive or stomach disorders and a weakened immune system. Stress is also linked to skin breakouts in the form of psoriasis and acne. All of these conditions can cause hair loss and premature graying. So, it's difficult to say that stress is one of the main grey hair causes. It would be safer to say that an indirect form of chain affect can cause stress to stimulate hair problems.

Like most people, you might have been hearing from a young age that too much worrying and stress can cause someone to gray sooner than normal. At least this was the general belief of our ancestors. So, it might seem strange that there are no scientific findings to confirm the relationship between gray hair and stress.

Since stress is now an innate part of our lives, you should avoid stress-related situations and find the right solutions for gray hair. As you can see, stress is not a direct cause of graying but its diverse effects can stimulate premature growth. Does stress cause grey hair? If you are still looking for answers, you can carry out additional research to know if your grey hair is caused by stress.

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