Why does the hair turn gray and gray hair appear? We are going to break down the article by Robert H. Shmerling, from the Harvard Health Publishing faculty, in which he answers this question that affects a large number of the population, especially as we age. Normally stress is usually the one indicated, and it is partly to blame, but not directly.
From black to gray: these are the reasons why our hair turns gray
You may have seen how a person in a few years has totally changed her hair color going through an excessively stressful situation. State presidents like Barack Obama or football coaches are examples of this.
It can clearly be attributed to stress, but why does it also happen to people who do not have such stressful positions? The Most gray hair is not related to stress, at least not directly. Shmerling details how and why gray hairs actually appear.
The hair follicle fixes the color of the hair
When a hair follicle, the root of our hair, fixes a brown, blonde or whatever color, that will always be our hair color, unless we dye it. As we age those follicles produce less color with the color becoming lighter and grayer.
Stress doesn’t change hair color, but it does make it fall out faster than normal. Baldness does not occur because the hair grows back, but that fall and subsequent birth of a new hair will increase the probability that this new hair will be gray instead of its natural color.
Gray hair at an early age can unmask a disease
The aging of the hair follicles is the culprit that when a new hair is born it comes out with a more grayish tone. We have already seen that stress can cause our hair to fall out more times and when it regenerates, it increases the probability that it differs from our original tone. This occurs at older ages, but What if it happens at an early age?
Some health problems related to the appearance of gray hair They are: vitamin B12 deficiencies; neurofibromatosis (disease related to nerves, bones and skin); hereditary conditions such as tuberous sclerosis; thyroid disease; vitiligo (hair follicles age faster); alopecia areata (hairless areas suddenly appear that, when regenerated, do so with a white or gray color).
Genetics play a key role
Before blaming stress or any of the related diseases, we must take a look at our parents. The inherited genes are the most reliable source of predicting when we will have gray hair, as long as we are not presidents of the government or coaches of an elite soccer team. There the process can be accelerated by stress, as we have already seen.
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