Salt and pepper and other grey areas around ageing process
Chronic stress has been known to speed up the greying process in your hair, writes Luke O’Neill
GOING grey is part of getting old — and yet so many of us don’t like it one little bit.
Many people, both men and women, dye their hair as they worry that grey hair makes them look old. Hair dye is a multimillion euro business. A recent study concluded that the average woman in her lifetime will spend €50,000 on her hair — with dye a big part of that cost.
This makes the question of why we go grey, and whether we can do anything about it other than squirting chemicals onto our hair, all the more interesting.
Well everyone, there’s been a breakthrough.
Scientists from Harvard have examined the role stress plays in going grey. Chronic stress has been known for a long time to speed up the greying process. Look at what happened to Barack Obama.
It’s also possible the stress and strain that comes as we get older is one reason why we go grey. Researchers found that stress causes nerves in your scalp to pump out a hormone which wipes out the cells that make the pigments that keep your hair naturally coloured.
So it’s a nervy business. Cells called melanocytes make pigments called melanin and this colours your hair. During stress, the nerves kill the melanocytes. It’s a war in there and the result is you go grey. Because stress can be considered a form of accelerated ageing, the discovery has raised hopes for treatments that can slow down or even halt normal age-related greying.
At first, the scientists suspected that stress triggered an immune attack on the hair pigment-making cells, but ruled that out.
Next they considered cortisol, a hormone that rises in response to stress. This turned out to be another red-headed herring. But the researchers didn’t give up.
They eventually showed it was nerves that were sending out the stress hormone (called noradrenaline) that killed the melanocytes.
Why would this happen? Stress-related greying might have come about to provide an evolutionary advantage to ancient beasts, among them our human ancestors.
Because grey hair is most often linked to age, it could be associated with experience, leadership and trust. Perhaps an animal that has endured enough stress to ‘earn’ grey hair has a higher place in the pecking order than would ordinarily be conferred by that individual’s age. You might perhaps call it the George Clooney effect?
Other things that make you go grey include those usual suspects — your genes. You probably know families where the men in their 60s haven’t gone grey. That could be due to certain versions of genes with names IRF4 and Bcl2. Catchy huh?
Smoking, too much sunlight and obesity can give rise to premature greying. Overall, genetics is responsible for 30pc and the environment 70pc, with stress being a significant component of the environmental aspect.
The experts have even figured out the order in which greying happens for the different types of hair on your body. First to go is nose hair, then hair on your head, your beard, body hair and finally eyebrows.
Scientists think these findings represent an important stepping stone toward developing a fountain of youth. Any new approaches to slow down greying would certainly be a gold mine. And a group of French scientists have made a chemical that protects the pigment-making cells and is currently undergoing tests.
Leo Varadkar doesn’t seem to have gone grey during his time as Taoiseach. Whoever the next Taoiseach is would do well to watch this space...