Does Stress really cause you to have grey hair?

Question

Any can answer, I am just very curious.

Answer 1

Not necessarily. I think it's the loss of pigment that causes greying

Answer 2

Yes I went through a lot of stress this weekend and today I seen a grey hair!

Answer 3

some stressful events seem to turn a person's hair gray overnight.Now a team of researchers has found that severe emotional distress - like that caused by divorce, the loss of a job, or caring for an ill child or parent - may speed up the aging of the body's cells at the genetic level.
The findings, being reported today, are the first to link psychological stress so directly to biological age.The researchers found that blood cells from women who had spent many years caring for a disabled child were, genetically, about a decade older than those from peers who had much less caretaking experience. The study, which appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also suggests that the perception of being stressed can add years to a person's biological age.Though doctors have linked chronic psychological stress to weakened immune function and an increased risk of catching colds, among other things, they are still trying to understand how tension damages or weakens tissue.
The new research suggests a new way that such damage may occur and opens the possibility that the process can be reversed. In the experiment, Dr. Elissa Epel and Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California at San Francisco led a team of researchers who analyzed blood samples from 58 young and middle-aged mothers, 39 of them caring for a child with a chronic disorder like autism or cerebral palsy. Using genetic techniques, the doctors examined the DNA of white blood cells, which are central to the body's immune response to infection. The scientists focused on a piece of DNA, called the telomere, at the very tip of each cell's chromosomes.Like the head of a split matchstick, the telomere shrinks each time a cell divides and duplicates itself.Cells may reproduce themselves many times throughout life to repair and strengthen their host organs, to grow or to fight disease. A chemical called telomerase helps restore a portion of the telomere with each division.But after 10 to 50 divisions or so - the number varies by tissue type and health, and biologists still do not understand the system well - the telomere gets so short that the cell is effectively retired and no longer able to replicate. People born with a genetic disease called dyskeratosis congenita, which causes accelerated shortening of telomeres, die young, usually by middle age, most often as a result of complications from weakened immunity. Change in telomere length over time, in short, is thought to be a rough measure of a cell's age, its vitality.
And when the researchers compared the DNA of mothers caring for disabled children, they found a striking trend: after correcting for the effects of age, they calculated that the longer the women had taken care of their child, the shorter their telomere length, and the lower their telomerase activity.Some of the more experienced mothers were years older than their chronological age, as measured by their white blood cells.
When people are under stress, they look haggard, it's like they age before your eyes.

Answer 4

That's a question that has been asked for years. I do believe it causes grey hair and faster if stressed out though.

Answer 5

Grey hair can happen to anybody at any time, regardless of your stress level. However, stress is the number one cause of hair loss in women. Grey hair is the loss of pigmentation, when your hair no longer produces the pigment needed for color.

Answer 6

It can't help. But here is my honest experience... My uncle had a mortar round explode near him (during Vietnam). Two people nearby died. His hair immediately started growing out grey. After about a year of grey, it went back to dark. He was 19. I don't know if you can say trauma is stress, but I'd call it that. Of course in his older life he went back to grey.

Answer 7

I've heard that, but for some reason my hair is not grey. That is amazing to me because I'm 48 with tons of stress. Not that I'm complaining, mind you.

Answer 8

yepp, it does, a friend of mine lives in new york, and he is in a gang, trying to get out... he goes through so much stress, and has alot of gray hairs.... well, its not alot compared to 40 and 50 year olds, but its alot of gray hair for his age.

Answer 9

hell yes

just look at my parents lol

i cause them lots of stress

Answer 10

Yep, I didn't have any until I got married. Stressfull marriage.