Legend has it that Marie Antoinette of Austria, the queen of France, after being sentenced to die in the guillotine, woke up with her hair completely white the next morning, learned of the sentence. Was it the stress of knowing about her conviction that made her gray, or is this story part of popular folklore and has no basis in the real world?
More recently, we’ve also learned the story of Eric Moody, the heroic British Airways driver. Even with the failure of all aircraft engines, the pilot was able to plan the aircraft, land and save the lives of all passengers. year after this feat, he said with surprise that all his hair had turned gray.
- Would these stories show that stress changes the pigmentation of our hair or are they just coincidences?Are grays age-related or just life experiences?Read on to find out the answer!.
Hair turns gray because our hair follicles, where our hair grows, stop producing a substance known as melanin, which is the substance in charge of giving color to our hair, of dyeing it to its natural color, in contrast, the degeneration of the melanin- The manufacturing process begins around 30 or 40 years in the white population and 10 years later in the black population.
This means that progressive hair graying is associated with age, however, exceptional cases are those in which, in a short period of time, hair fades at a single stroke, such as those presented in the introduction. otherwise. This something else is the exceptional situation, the stress, which from our mind has effects throughout our body, starting with the heart, because it impairs the heart rate.
For Eric Moody, our brave pilot, a year is a very short period, so stress is a fundamental factor to consider in their history, however, the conclusions must be cautious: the various studies conducted to try to demonstrate this relationship have not produced conclusive results.
In fact, subjecting people to the level of stress that life sometimes throws at us for research purposes is unethical, having replaced this process with stressors that produce a much less acute relationship than a death sentence or the danger of a plane crash. who ended up focusing on more chronic stressors, which are the most common to us, have not found well-established relationships.
There is a condition called alopecia areata that is characterized by sudden hair loss that begins with one or more hairless areas that can be found. This disease was known as “Marie Antoinette syndrome” because what happened to the monarch was not exactly considered an outbreak. graying of the hair, but rather an abundant hair loss, which caused a change of color.
The feeling of color loss that occurs in this case is because the darker hairs are the ones that first fall, so if there were gray hairs before are more visible, this type of alopecia does not occur in a single day, but it takes several weeks to develop.
Stress is considered to trigger this process, but for this process to occur there must be a combination of stress and genetic predisposition, however, the prevalence of this syndrome only occurs in about 0. 2% of the population, and this is a case that needs to be treated with dermatological consultations.
Taking into account all the above, we can conclude that stress also influences our hair if the stressful situation is of such a level that it is evaluated as dangerous for our life, without specifying the relationship that exists or if it exists with stress if the stressors are closer to what is found in our daily life. Less acute and more chronic.
However, living life with the philosophy of being happy with what we have and making the most of our opportunities will always be good for our physical health, our mental health and, therefore, to take care of our hair, gray hair or not.