Is the saying 'white with fright' literally true.?

Question

Is it possible to go to bed with dark hair and wake up with white hair because of shock or trauma?

Answer 1

My mom once told me Barbara Bush did that.

Based on the information I found (below), It sounds improbable.

As Quoted:
Dear Cecil:

We have a question that has been plaguing us ever since "Ask Andy" declined to answer it some 30 years ago. Can hair turn white overnight from fright?

We recall reading somewhere that during stressful events the few remaining dark hairs in a salt-and-pepper head can loosen and come out so that a person appears to be very much whiter. Is this true?

We have been let down before, Uncle Cece, so please come through for us. --Susan K., MD, Los Angeles, and NWB, Seattle

Cecil replies:

I'm not saying you lack initiative, doc. But if this question had been bugging me for 30 years it might have crossed my mind to head down to the library.

Doing so would have turned up a delightful essay on the subject by J.E. Jelinek, a dermatology professor at NYU. Overnight graying or whitening of hair has been reported for centuries, Jelinek says. For almost as long as doctors have been arguing about whether it actually occurs, and if so, how.

The hair of Thomas More, for one, is said to have become entirely white the evening before his execution in 1535. Henry of Navarre, later Henry IV of France, supposedly went suddenly white following his escape from the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572.

But the evidence for such stories is often highly suspect. Legend has it, for instance, that Marie Antoinette's hair turned white the night before she was beheaded.

Several writers clearly state, however, that in fact her hair had lost its color long before. (One claims it turned suddenly white following her failed attempt to flee France in 1791.)

Even in modern times reports of rapid graying often turn out to be secondhand or to have originated with doctors who examined the patient months after the supposed event.

The problem with sudden whitening, of course, is that hair is dead tissue. So you'd think it would be incapable of becoming entirely white until it grows out from the roots, a process that takes weeks.

Still, as you say, there does seem to be one way that hair can appear to turn gray in a very short period of time. What happens is that a condition called "diffuse alopecia areata" may occur in somebody with a mix of normal and gray hairs.

Alopecia can result in sudden, substantial hair loss. For unknown reasons it seems to affect mostly pigmented hairs, leaving white ones untouched. The impression one gets, therefore, is that the patient has become suddenly gray.

The sequence of biological events resulting in alopecia is not well understood, but it's thought emotional stress can contribute to it. Wherefore, chill. If you're male you're probably going to lose all that hair eventually, but no sense hurrying the process.

--CECIL ADAMS

Answer 2

No darling white with fright refers to the skin turning pale when you have been shocked or had a trauma and usually can wake up cancer in some people but has for hair it goes white gradually you go grey 1st and it just gets whiter from there

Answer 3

No it isn't possible to wake with White hair, but that isn't what "white with fright" means. It means that your skin tone gets very pale. This happens in some situations in response to psychological trauma. It is an autonomic response that causes the peripheral blood vessels to constrict - shunting blood to the central circulation making you very pale

==============ADDED
Just discovered that the phrase has two different connotations

1. Skin turning pale <- possible
2. Hair turning white <- not possible (not overnight)

I see that the usual suspects are answering questions on things that that know nothing about. Ignorance abounds here on Answers.

Answer 4

I've never heard this story ever before. He was only twelve when it happened so it doesn't mean much. I don't think he even remembers what even happened that day after all the drugs rotting in his brain. It's pretty gangsta to be playing with a 9mm at the age of twelve though.

Answer 5

Yes, I have a male friend that lost his brother in an auto accident and apparently the stress he had from it affected more than just his heart. When he woke up the next day, he had a quarter sized patch of hair on the side of his head that had gone completely white. I've read of others who have had all of their hair turn white, but I don't know what this is called or what causes it.

Answer 6

No, it's not possible, because the hair that you see is actually dead. The only living part of your hair is the root that is below the skin.
So the hair that's visible can't change colour overnight, but there have been anecdotal cases of people getting a bad shock and from then on, their hair grows white...

Answer 7

I know someone who went to bed with brown hair and woke with white after a particularly shocking experience. He was 22 then, and his hair has been white ever since.

Answer 8

Yes it is One of my distant relatives helped slaves get to freedom in the underground railroad. There was a slave who had gone back to get his son I believe it was. Anyway my relative was hiding him and there were a group of people that terrorized him and set his house on fire, they held him captive for several days before he could convince them that he did not know anything about the slave....when his wife saw him when the men let him go his hair was solid white. It had been a very dark brown sprinkled with gray before his capture.

Answer 9

Yes, there have been many reported episodes of people's hair turning white due to trauma, and also cases of people losing their voices. Assume there is some rare condition with a long latin name to describe it, but dunno wot it is.
You just reminded me of a silly poem I read when I was little;

"You are old Father William", the young man said,
"And your hair has turned to white,
It's because you persistently stand on your head,
At your age, do you think this is right?"

"In my youth, young man", Father William replied,
"I feared it might damage the brain,
But now I am perfectly sure I have none,
Why I do it again and again!"

Answer 10

Yes, and it refers to the complexion rather than the hair. In caucasians and other light skinned races, much of a person's coloration comes from the flow of blood within the fairly translucent skin. When we are suddenly frightened, one of our body's defense mechanisms is to rapidly redirect much of our blood supply to those organs and muscles that would be necessary to escape from danger - specifically the heart, lungs and muscles (to enable us to run away quickly). This means that the supply of blood to skin surface areas is quickly reduced, and this causes us to suddenly appear very much paler than we were before we were frightened. So we become "white" with fright. You can see the same thing happen in someone who passes out, as their blood flow is redirected to internal organs to help keep them alive when they have lost consciousness.

Peace,

Radical Geezer