The folk wisdom that tension and anxietycan turn your hair gray appears to be scientifically valid, according to a new study in mice.

Researchers found that the cascade of fight-or-flight hormones precipitated by stressful events eliminated many of the stem cells responsible for hair color in mice.

This group of stem cells, which have the ability to turn into many types of cells, are found in the base of each hair follicle and give hair its color by becoming pigment producing cells called melanocytes which produce brown, black, red and yellow colors in hair and skin.

The researchers found that stress causes these stem cells to convert into melanocytes en masse, only to drift away from the follicle and break down. This depletes the follicles supply and can mean the next time it makes a hair there arent enough stem cells to give it a color, producing an unpigmented gray or white hair.

After a series of experiments, the researchers narrowed down the culprit behind the destruction of the follicles pigment factories to the fight-or-flight hormone noradrenaline, or norepinephrine which is released by whats called the sympathetic nervous system.

Normally, the sympathetic nervous system is an emergency system for fight or flight, and it is supposed to be very beneficial or, at the very least, its effects are supposed to be transient and reversible, biologist Ya-Chieh Hsu, who led the study, told the New York Times.

This is the first scientific study explicitly linking stress and graying, according to Hsu.

The experiments in mice found that acute stress could wipe out all the melanocyte stem cells in just five days. Early tests suggest the same might be true in humans: When the researchers exposed human melanocyte stem cells to noradrenaline they too differentiated in large numbers.

Hsu told the Guardian the same response may drive age-related greying. There are definitely shared responses between how the melanocyte stem cells respond to stress and how they respond to aging, she said. You essentially lose the stem cell pool in aging as well.

Developing the research into an effective treatment to end graying hair will likely take years, but revealing the mechanism at work could advance our understanding of how stem cells are lost elsewhere in the body one of the hallmarks of the physical decline that accompanies aging.

This is certainly one implication that Im particularly excited about, biologist Christopher Deppmann, who was not involved in the research, told the Guardian. I believe that we have only scratched the surface of whether and how stress and fight-or-flight mechanisms deplete other stem cell populations. Whether or not this is the cause of premature aging remains to be determined, but I wouldnt bet against it.

Like any good study, it opens up at least as many questions as it answers, he added. But it may represent an important stepping stone toward rationalizing and developing pharmaceutical fountains of youth.

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If you're worried about your hair turning gray, don't stress out! - The Hill