A world-renowned hairdresser has pointed out the dangers of pulling out your gray hair when they appear because you run the risk of creating a bald spot.
Gray hair is caused by the follicle not being able to produce melanin and thus color – a process usually caused by the natural aging process and sometimes by stress.
“Picking can traumatize the hair follicle and you can damage it to the point where hair stops growing,” says Trey Gillen, hairstylist and creative director of education at Sachajuan. Yahoo.
“If you pick serially, repeated ‘picking trauma’ can even lead to infection, scarring and bald spots.”
Gray hair is caused by the follicle not being able to produce melanin and thus color – a process usually caused by the natural aging process and sometimes by stress (stock image)
In 2020, scientists have finally proven what conventional wisdom has been telling us for decades — that stress causes hair to go gray.
However, in a stunning revelation, Columbia University researchers also found that the process can be reversed in hairs that have only recently turned gray.
Reducing stress could prevent gray hair, scientists say, and it is hoped that drugs can be developed to further prevent the unwanted process.
The study found that hairs all over the scalp can reverse graying. It also found that beard and pubic hair can regain their color after they start to turn gray.
Scientists believe that the root of the aging problem stems from changes in metabolic pathways that make proteins in the body.
However, in a stunning revelation, researchers from Columbia University also found that the process can be reversed in hairs that have only recently gone gray (stock image)
These pathways are heavily influenced by hormones produced when a person is stressed, and relieving stress can therefore reverse the process.
An extensive study published online as a pre-print and currently undergoing peer-review for publication in a magazine detailed how hair turns gray.
Scientists plucked hairs from the heads of willing volunteers and created a new imaging technique that detects pigment throughout a hair, from the base to the tip.
Their new method of analysis is similar to the study of growth rings, in which a section is linked to a certain period, the researchers say.
For trees, a year correlates with another annual ring. In hair grows one centimeter every month.
Using this methodology, similar to dendrochronology, where tree rings represent the elapsed years, hair length reflects time and the hair shaft is viewed as a physical time scale whose area proximal to the scalp has been most recently produced by the hair follicle, and where the hair tip can be traced back to weeks to months, depending on the length of the hair shaft,” the researchers write in their report study.
Researchers assessed the amount of melanin — which gives hair its color — and which proteins were present in different parts of a hair.
They expected to see gray hairs at the base because hairs grow from the scalp, not the tip.
However, when they took nearly 400 hairs from 14 people, they found the opposite. Some hairs were gray at the tip but colored at the base.
Scientists plucked hairs from the heads of willing volunteers and created a new imaging technique that can detect the level of pigment in different parts of the hair, from the follicle and base to the very tip. They analyzed the hairs and found that hairs can reverse graying and when a person is stressed, a hair can start to grow without discoloration (stock image)
This, the researchers explain, means that a hair went gray and then, inexplicably, stopped going gray and returned to its normal color.
Using the known hair growth rate, researchers were able to specifically trace when a person’s hair turned gray in recent history.
They found that gray periods corresponded to increased stress levels and that the transition from gray to colored occurred when stress was relieved.
For example, one participant in the study went on vacation and this correlated with a switch from white hair back to colored hair.
The study can’t prove that eliminating stress caused the reversal in aging, but the scientists think it’s the most likely explanation.
In their study, they write: “Our data strongly support the idea that human aging is not a linear and irreversible biological process and can be stopped, at least in part, or even reversed.”
The team of academics, the Picard Lab at Columbia University and in collaboration with Dr. Ralf Paus writes in their study that the proteins found in the hair directly implicate metabolic pathways as the culprit behind graying hair.
They say these pathways are “reversible in nature and sensitive to stress-related neuroendocrine factors.”
“This result provides a plausible biological basis for the reversibility of aging and its association with psychological factors, and also supports the possibility that this process may be pharmacologically targeted,” they add.
However, the researchers say that while graying can be caused by stress, it can most likely only be reversed in hairs that have recently turned gray.
Aging can only be reversed if the impact of stress-related whitening is reversed.
Other factors that come into play in determining when a person’s hair loses its color, including genetics and smoking.
If these factors cause aging, removing stress will not reverse this process.