How Does Stress Cause Gray Hair?

Gray hair seems inevitable, although some people start seeing it far sooner than others, most everyone gets it at some point. It all comes down to chemical responses in the body damaging the color-producing cells in the follicles. This can be due to physical or emotional trauma, what we call stress, or even physical illness, vitamin deficiency, or environmental factors like smoking and pollution.

What Counts as Premature Gray Hair?

About half the population goes about 50% gray by the time they hit 50 years old, but the age of onset and rate of progression can vary greatly between individuals. If you’re caucasian and can count more than five gray hairs on your head before you’re 20, you’re going prematurely gray. For people of Asian descent, premature graying is considered anything before the age of 25. For those of African descent, you’re graying early if you notice it before you turn 30.

Stress and Gray Hair: The Relationship

Have you ever survived a serious illness or an intense emotional setback, only to find a horde of gray hairs invading soon after? You may not notice grays until they’ve grown in a bit, and by then it might seem like half of your head has gone gray overnight.

Physical and emotional trauma can both contribute to gray hair. This occurs when color-producing “melanocyte” stem cells become overstimulated to the point of exhausting their resources.

A recent study in Nature explains that stress induces bursts of norepinephrine throughout the body, some of which affects the hair by promoting the stem cell burnout. The effect is permanent in most cases, although there are exceptions. Emotional stress in itself can be a trigger, but it’s not the only cause.

Physical Illness

Some illnesses, such as serious viral infections and some autoimmune diseases, can put a massive enough strain on your body to turn some of your hair gray. Although the immune system itself isn’t responsible for the destruction, this graying may be the result of the activation of a heavy immune response. Just as with other forms of stress, the strain it puts on the body isusually the issue. Tests on mice show genetic predisposition may also play a role.

Nutritional Deficiencies

An unhealthy lifestyle that includes poor dietary choices contributes to about 15% of premature gray hair. Nutritional deficiencies have been linked to stress, and its vicious cycle. A diet low in nutrients can increase our stress levels, while stress can alter our metabolisms, causing our bodies to require more nutrients, further increasing nutritional deficiencies.

Vitamin B12 deficiency may significantly increase a person’s chances of prematurely graying, also. A deficiency in copper or iron, too, may cause a person to go gray, as may low levels of zinc, calcium and some other minerals. Low protein intake may also lead to loss of hair color over time. Some deficiency-related graying might be reversible with proper nutritional support.

Environmental Stressors

There’s a lot out in the world-at-large that can also make someone go prematurely gray, too. Did you know that the stress of UV radiation from going out in the sunlight can affect hair? Exposure to pollution can also lead to oxidative stress, which can be visible as damage to the mitochondrial DNA in the hair follicles themselves.

Some lifestyle choices can also contribute to premature graying. Cigarette smoking can increase the chances of going gray by over 2.5 times. Alcohol consumption and an unhealthy body-mass index may also increase a person’s odds of going gray early.

Stress does cause gray hair, but how we define stress is perhaps a little broader than most of us knew. Regardless of the cause or type, if it causes teh body to go on the defensive, it could have an effect. Take care to minimize the emotional and physical stress in your life, even if you're not worried about the grays. Work to keep your body nourished, and avoid environmental stressors as much as you can. Remember, if it’s having an impact on your appearance, then it could also be saying something about your health.

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