Stress does turn hair gray, and it’s reversible

My hair started turning gray after COVID infection, I’m 34.

>Any sage advice?

Probably more than you want haha.

We adopted domestically via a local agency. Our first 3 were adopted at birth, and our youngest was in and out of foster care for 5 months before his mother decided to make an adoption plan. This route is more costly than going through foster care (which can be more or less free), but much less than what some of our friends ended up paying to adopt internationally.

I would personally advise anyone adopting in the US to investigate what kind of special needs support (whether it be through Title IV-E or other programs) is available. MANY of these children have latent (if not immediate) mental health issues stemming from substance abuse (especially alcohol) that isn't always apparent at birth.

Our 12 year old struggles immensely with any kind of abstract way of thinking (including most mathematics), and our 9 year old only learned to read last year really. Neither are classified as special needs, but they really should be. The psychiatric and therapeutic care they require can be expensive, even just for reaching a diagnosis.

By the time we adopted our younger two we became a bit wiser and had them evaluated at birth. They're both classified as special needs under Title IV-E, which grants them free medical care (including things like speech/cognitive/occupational therapy and corrective surgeries, all of which we've used multiple times).

When I first discovered talk around "mindfullness" I at first cynically dismissed it as new age pap - but many of hte techniques for calming and focus do work. They don't work overnight - it takes practice and effort, but I have found it worth it.

Meditation/introspection in general is a good thing and something we don't value, especially in the days of constant notification bombardment from all our devices. That's why I'm really enjoying the new focus features Apple is building into all of their platforms with the recent betas. It's pretty presumptuous to assume everyone should be at our beck and call (and vice versa). Time to return to more asynchronous communication and reset expectations as a society!

> Infertility treatments no longer an option, we turned to adoption. 6 weeks later (seriously), we brought home our first child.

Holy SHIT. I thought 9 months was a little short to get used to the idea of having a kid and becoming a parent, I would have had a damn BREAKDOWN if I only had 6 weeks!

Kudos to you my guy. Absolute unit.

I was 27, My mom died recently, I had a new job that was insanely stressful, I was a landlord at the time in a duplex and barely knew what I was doing (lived in for 1 year), learning how to live on my own stress, my long term girlfriend cheated on me, and this was (the one) to me at the time. Everything culminated into me being so ridiculously stressed out. I stopped doing cardio, I started powerlifting and gained a ton of muscle and fat. Started Binge drinking again on weekends. One day I woke up with A bald patch and a White patch on my beard.

It's been 1.5 years and I'm still recovering from the trauma. My white patch is mostly gone, still a few stragglers, and my bald patch filled in completely. I started to lose fat, eat healthier, calm down my drinking again, reduce my lifting, increase cardio. I had a bad month with work from home and stopped taking care of my health again, had a bunch of random greys come back in a few concentrated spots. Treated myself better and they started going away again... Some of the hairs were half white-half brown (Brown at the stem). I know you read the science that once it goes white you're done, but it's 100% not true for everyone.