Humans have two main hair concerns and both motivate researchers to find patches. We are worried about losing our hair and we do not love it when our hair goes gray. We still have no perfect cure for baldness, although there have been important developments in this department. Treat with gray hair is not as problematic as it does not bother you hair dyeing. But there has been a new gray hair development recently, because the researchers at Columbia University have been able to prove that stress actually contributes to transforming gray hair. They also found an amazing antidote that many people will love.
Posted in Elife, the study explains how researchers have proven that stress impacts the color of natural hair. They also discuss how the process can be reversed.
The team examined 14 volunteers, including seven men and seven women and analyzed hair samples using a digital camera, a microscope and a photo scanner. They also used electronic microscopy for two-person hair.
Scientists from Columbia University map the Hair Pigmentation (HPP) model for volunteers and asked them to complete a retrospective stress assessment. Participants created stressful event deadlines, which could then be linked to the HPP.
“Just like the rings in a tree trunk hold information about decades spent in the life of a tree, our hair contains information about our organic history”, explained the author Martin Picard in a statement. “When the hair is still under the skin in the form of follicles, they are subject to the influence of stress hormones and other things are happening in our mind and body. Once the hair grow scalp, they harden and crystallize these exposures permanently in a stable form. “
Picard explained that even though we thought maybe a strand of hair has the same color, this is not the case (as we see in the video at the end of the post). “Under a high resolution scanner, you see small subtle color variations, and that’s what we measure.” These pigmentation changes can then be linked to stressful events.
In addition to proving that stress will effectively promote gray hair, researchers also discovered the unexpected antidote. The holidays can reverse the process.
“There was a person who continued vacation,” said Picard, “and five hairs on the head of this person returned to the dark during the holidays, synchronized over time. Our data add to a growing body of evidence Demonstrating that human aging is not a fixed biological process, but can, at least in part, be stopped or even reversed temporarily. “
The conclusion seems to contradict a recent study involving mice, registry notes. These scientists have shown that stress causes grayade in mice, but the mechanism was linked to a loss of stem cells in the hair follicle. It is a process that can not be reversed.
The authors of this new human study think that their work proves that graying human hair is reversible because a different mechanism is involved as grayade in mice.
Although the holidays can reduce stress and reverse greyness, scientists do not have a miraculous cure to rejuvenate the hair and restore its original color. Picard explained that their mathematical modeling suggests that the hair must reach a threshold before it becomes gray.
“In the Middle Ages, when the hair is close to this threshold because of the biological age and other factors, stress will push it on the threshold and transition to gray,” the researcher said. “But we do not think that the stress reduction in a 70-year-old child that has been gray for years darkened their hair or growing stress in a 10-year-old child will suffice to rock their hair on the gray threshold.”