Stress is Making Me Grey

Photos of US presidents when they leave office show men with much greyer hair. This is a milder form of the Marie Antoinette Syndrome where stress causes hair to suddenly turn white. The story is that France's last queen, Marie Antoinette had her hair turn white the night before she faced the guillotine and now research shows stress does cause hair to grey.

Our hair follicles contain melanocytes which produce the melanin that gives our hair color. And Melanocytes are made by melanocytes stem cells or MeSCs in the follicle. With age, we have less of these stem cells but stress also uses them up.

Scientists thought stress activated autoimmune responses or hormones such as corticosterone damaged MeSCs. But when they blocked the hormone corticosterone in stressed mice, the animals' hair still turned grey. So did stressed mice with poor immune systems, however, when they blocked the receptors for the fight or flight hormone, noradrenaline, these mice did NOT grey.

Noradrenaline is in the sympathetic nervous system and our hair follicles contain many of these nerves. During extreme stress, reproduction of MeSCs and the maturation of melanocytes speeds up which sends a large number of melanocytes out the hair follicle so that no MeSCs are left to replenish them. Once this happens, hair is never its original color again. But if you can reduce MeSC reproduction during stress, this loss is blocked. Perhaps one day we'll see a new way to 'color' hair?