Study reveals psychological stress causes hair to grey

Though many people assume that psychological stress causes grey hair to appear faster, experts have debated the connection due to a lack of sensitive methodologies.

Researchers at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons have discovered the first statistical evidence of a relationship between psychological stress and greying hair in humans.

The results were published in the eLife journal. While it may seem intuitive that stress accelerates greying, the researchers were surprised to learn that when stress is released, hair colon can be restored, a discovery that contradicts a recent mice study that claimed stress-induced grey hairs are permanent.

According to the study’s principal author, Martin Picard, Ph.D., associate professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University, “the study has broader importance than verifying age-old speculation about the effects of stress on hair color.”

Picard says, “Understanding the mechanisms that allow ‘old’ gray hairs to return to their ‘young’ pigmented states could yield new clues about the malleability of human aging in general and how it is influenced by stress.”

“Our data add to a growing body of evidence demonstrating that human aging is not a linear, fixed biological process but may, at least in part, be halted or even temporarily reversed,” he added.

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