So it says in the book of Proverbs: “The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness.” In the ancient book of Leviticus, it is declared that, “You shall stand up before the hoary head and honor the face of an old man …” From Islam, we hear: “Do not pluck out gray hair. If any believer grows a gray hair … he will have light on the Day of Resurrection.”
Currently, someone was heard saying, “My gray hair makes me look distinguished.” And the alleged connection between gray hair and wisdom is known far and wide.
There may be some downsides, such as, again from Islam: “Allah … shaped you out of weakness, then appointed … strength, then … appointed weakness and gray hair.” And again from Proverbs: “The glory of young men is their strength: and the beauty of old men is the gray head.”
With all these great plaudits, why would anyone mind getting a bit of gray hair? But the fact is that our culture recoils from both the fact and the appearance of aging. A very large number of people spend hundreds or thousands of dollars covering up gray hair. At least, this was the case in the past.
Now, however, there is a “Granny Hair” movement in which thousands of young people are intentionally dyeing their hair gray. This trend was started around 2010 by young female celebrities. It has been endorsed by hair salons; brought to the population in general; and even has an Instagram hashtag, #grannyhair. There are more than 350,000 postings with this hashtag.
One upside is that some aging celebrities are now gratefully embracing their own naturally graying hair. These include George Clooney, Richard Gere, Barack Obama and Steve Martin. Helen Mirren now rejoices with her gray hair, and even Brad Pitt has become a graybeard.
What is gray hair?
There is a significant difference, of course, between granny hair and naturally gray hair. Granny hair has been artificially dyed, and as it grows out, it will grow with the same natural color it had before dyeing. Real gray hair has simply and permanently lost its color.
For a long time, science has known that each hair on your head is a strand of a protein called keratin, and its color is determined by another protein, melanin, that resides in the follicles from which your hair grows.
There are three types of melanin: brown eumelanin; black eumelanin; and pheomelanin, which is responsible for orange and red coloring. The level of each of the three types determines the actual color of your hair: The more eumelanin, the darker your hair toward the brown or black. And interestingly, the darker your hair, the more hair follicles you are likely to have.
Very simply, gray hair results from the usually gradual disappearance of melanin from the follicles, especially black eumelanin. Until recently, however, science has not known what causes that color disappearance to occur.
What causes gray hair?
There was a long-held assumption that stress is a major factor in graying hair. By 2015, however, research evidence seemed to suggest that stress does not cause gray hair. It was thought that the main factors leading to graying include damage to the skin around the hair follicles, pollutants in the air, chemical exposure, some medications and even climate.
Melanin is produced in your body from the amino acid called tyrosine in specialized cells called melanocytes. It is there, through a complex series of chemical transformations, that melanin comes to be. It was reasoned that any factors that diminish your body’s supply of tyrosine, or the chemical enzymes that enable the conversion, or damage to the melanocytes will likely result in a reduction in melanin production and an increase in gray hair.
These are all at least partially correct thoughts.
It really is stress.
Recently, a group of Harvard researchers published an extensive study in the Nature journal leading to the compelling conclusion that stress does cause graying. Not only that, but they discovered the mechanism that does this. Like many complex questions, the answer is really relatively simple: fight-or-flight — the result of stress, your body’s instinctive defense mechanism, the work of your sympathetic nervous system — leads to graying, and here’s how.
Each hair follicle is a reservoir of stem cells, cells that have no particular function themselves, but that can turn into other specific kinds of cells. In this case, many of the stem cells turn into the melanocytes that color your hair. And you should know that you never get more stem cells than you got for starters.
As it happens, the sympathetic nerve fibers innervate every one of your hair follicles. The researchers discovered that when activated by stress, these nerve fibers release the chemical noradrenaline whose function is to mobilize your brain and body for action. What happens in your hair follicles is that the conversion of stem cells to melanocytes starts happening out of control. That is, under stress, all of your stem cells convert to melanocytes, thus permanently and prematurely depleting the reservoir of stem cells; no stem cells, no hair color.
Can you prevent gray hair?
There is one great way to prevent, or at least postpone, gray hair: Get the stress out of your life.
There are, of course, countless other suggestions you might wish to try in addition to stress reduction. These are things like taking oodles of iron and vitamins — especially B12 — stopping smoking, and stopping drinking alcohol. You may wish to eat more blackstrap molasses, nettle leaf, sesame and seaweed. You should also avoid any processed foods and caffeine. You could massage butter or egg oil into your scalp, wash your hair with a mixture of flour and milk curd, rub your hair with onion paste (which will probably turn it black), or take a teaspoon of ginger mixed with honey.
The list of presumed preventatives from the natural world is endless. This may give you an idea of how long people have been concerned about gray hair, and how universal an issue it is.
One excellent way to help with stress is a treatment I use that activates your rest-and-digest response, the alternative to fight-or-flight. When rest-and-digest is working, fight-or-flight doesn’t stand a chance.
How about the future?
The Harvard research reveals the broad effect of stress on the body in general, organs and tissues especially. It opens the way for research to discover new ways to modulate the damaging effects of stress.
In addition to this work, a study of 6,000 people done at University College London discovered a specific gene related to hair graying, as well as genes for balding and other hair features. Presumably, this knowledge could eventually lead to the development of products to prevent or even reverse graying hair.
In the meantime, I am personally pleased that my entire head and beard have become gray. If nothing else, I don’t have to shave every day. And rightly or not, many people assume that I’ve been around so long that I must have developed a certain amount of wisdom. And so, I invite you to join me in the Wisdom Club and love your hair whatever color it may be.
Bob Keller maintains a holistic practice in Newburyport. He offers medical massage therapy for pain relief, as well as psychological counseling, dream work and spiritual direction. Many patients call him Dr. Bob and accuse him of doing miracles, but he is not a medical doctor nor a divinity. His expertise is medical massage therapy, understanding this miracle we call the human being. He can be reached at 978-465-5111 or rk2name@gmail.com.