Stress does turn hair gray, and it’s reversible
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Stress does turn hair gray, and it’s reversible
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Re: Stress does turn hair gray, and it’s reversible
#2Very 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.
Re: Stress does turn hair gray, and it’s reversible
#3I've just misread "and It’s IRReversible" and immediately felt more stress because of that X-(
Re: Stress does turn hair gray, and it’s reversible
#4Maybe 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
Re: Stress does turn hair gray, and it’s reversible
#5Stress 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.
Re: Stress does turn hair gray, and it’s reversible
#6Yeah. 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.
Re: Stress does turn hair gray, and it’s reversible
#7Maybe 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…
I 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.
Re: Stress does turn hair gray, and it’s reversible
#8The 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."
Re: Stress does turn hair gray, and it’s reversible
#9Strange 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.
Re: Stress does turn hair gray, and it’s reversible
#10Very 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.
This refers to Martin Picard, not Jean-Luc Picard. :)