Scientists Discover 'Why Stress Turns Hair White' (bbc.com) 94
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Scientists say they may have discovered why stress makes hair turn white, and a potential way of stopping it happening without reaching for the dye. Researchers behind the study, published in Nature, from the Universities of Sao Paulo and Harvard, believed the effects were linked to melanocyte stem cells, which produce melanin and are responsible for hair and skin color. And while carrying out in experiments on mice, they stumbled across evidence this was the case.
Pain in mice triggered the release of adrenaline and cortisol, making their hearts beat faster and blood pressure rise, affecting the nervous system and causing acute stress. This process then sped up the depletion of stem cells that produced melanin in hair follicles. In another experiment, the researchers found they could block the changes by giving the mice an anti-hypertensive, which treats high blood pressure. And by comparing the genes of mice in pain with other mice, they could identify the protein involved in causing damage to stem cells from stress. When this protein -- cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) -- was suppressed, the treatment also prevented a change in the color of their fur. This leaves the door open for scientists to help delay the onset of grey hair by targeting CDK with a drug.
Pain in mice triggered the release of adrenaline and cortisol, making their hearts beat faster and blood pressure rise, affecting the nervous system and causing acute stress. This process then sped up the depletion of stem cells that produced melanin in hair follicles. In another experiment, the researchers found they could block the changes by giving the mice an anti-hypertensive, which treats high blood pressure. And by comparing the genes of mice in pain with other mice, they could identify the protein involved in causing damage to stem cells from stress. When this protein -- cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) -- was suppressed, the treatment also prevented a change in the color of their fur. This leaves the door open for scientists to help delay the onset of grey hair by targeting CDK with a drug.
Eh, gray is fine (Score:5, Interesting)
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None of the guys I know mind the gray so much as the thinning out.
If I cared about gray hair, dye is easy. I do care about balding. But it's not worth surgery or erectile disfunction to try to fix it.
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" I do care about balding. But it's not worth... erectile disfunction to try to fix it."
Exactly! What's the use of full hair to attract chicks if you can't handle successfully doing so?
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One case here, which means pretty much nothing, but going on one year with Rogaine and Finasteride and 0 noticeable side effects and regained nearly all the hair I lost over the past 5 years (had a receding style hairline when I was 8 years old, so didn't help with that). Though the doctor said I'm probably in the top 5% of results give or take. I'm also not particularly interested in surgery though, could almost buy a new car for what that costs.
Re:Eh, gray is fine (Score:5, Informative)
I quit taking Propecia (Finasteride) after 9 months because it completely eliminated my sex drive. The drive only came back about 25% and now I have to take Viagra to last to the finish line. I've since learned this happens to a significant portion of men who try it. The testosterone reduction is permanent. Don't mess with your hormones.
And it didn't do anything for my hair.
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Difference in treatment (Score:4, Interesting)
but going on one year with Rogaine and Finasteride and 0 noticeable side effects
You indeed got lucky.
Topical minoxidil (Rogaine) *usually* doesn't have much side effects (they are rather rare),
but per-os (systemic) finasterid (Propecia, etc.) is (roughly) a drug that plays on the levels of androgenes (DHT) and thus (very roughly) can slightly fuck up your hormones (libido, erectile dysfunction, etc. in ~1 in 10 patients) and have a whole zoo of weird side effect (moobs) and the jury is still out whether it should have an overall positive or negative side effect on prostate cancer (should reduce some type of cancers according to most studies, but might encourage a few rare and horrible one according to a few others).
Disclaimer: though I *am* a Doctor, I am not specialized in endocrinology nor andrology so take my opinion with a grain of salt - my information might be outdated.
I'm also not particularly interested in surgery though, could almost buy a new car for what that costs.
Nowadays there are simpler and cheaper methods. You don't need full-blown surgery (basically transplanting a whole chunk of scalp: an invasive procedure that requires a plastic surgery specialist and an operating room), you can also transplant individual hair follicle (individual hairs. a special procedure which just requires a specially trained doctor and a clean room - basically it's a procedure which can be done at a doctor's practice).
You could almost buy a (second hand) motorscooter instead of a car.
Disclaimer: one of my friends/colleagues is doing this type of procedure in his doctor's practice, so the information I have might be a bit biased (rose-tinted).
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I'm not even sure how much I care about balding, excepting that I'd have to get used to a change.
Seriously, if your skull has a weird shape then okay, I get it, the hair is important... but beyond that? Bald man are seen as powerful and successful IF they take care of their appearance.
And if you look like a weak schlob, you'll look like that with or without hair anyway.
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Sunburned (Score:2)
I'm not even sure how much I care about balding, {...} Seriously, if your skull has a weird shape then okay, I get it, the hair is important... but beyond that?
Well beyond that, hair is actually efficient at avoiding getting your scalp cooked by the sun, as the top poster reminded.
And trying to spread sunscreen on a few balding spots, in the middle of the remain hair mass isn't very easy (and could get messy).
Basically, you now need to constantly carry a hat with you, instead of relying on the built-in naturally-grown one that Nature gave you.
Re:Eh, gray is fine (Score:5, Insightful)
These things are on the same trajectory - the balding is caused by the conversion of testosterone to DHT via 5-alpha hydroxy reductase which is inflammation mediated. Stress causes cortisol causes inflammation causes aging. Meditation helps reduce cortisol and occasional fasting helps clear out the inflammatory cells. So anybody who wants to slow aging can; it's just that most of them would rather age comfortably than not age uncomfortably.
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As usual, the variations between human beings can amplify or mitigate such correlations as the one the TFA talks about.
Anecdotal:
My father was a life-time hypertonic, working high-risk physical job (construction), smoking and drinking like hell. His nerves were fried constantly since he was a young man. He died at 64 with his beautiful, curly black hair with less than 1% white in it. He also had a six pack until the end.
Me - until 40 or so I looked at least 10 years younger, then in less than two years whit
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As usual, the variations between human beings can amplify or mitigate such correlations as the one the TFA talks about.
Anecdotal:
My father was a life-time hypertonic, working high-risk physical job (construction), smoking and drinking like hell. His nerves were fried constantly since he was a young man. He died at 64 with his beautiful, curly black hair with less than 1% white in it. He also had a six pack until the end.
Me - until 40 or so I looked at least 10 years younger, then in less than two years white hair appeared and spread rapidly. I was divorcing at the time....nowadays the spread of white has almost ceased.
I the last 10 years of marriage I have gone from a full head of dark brown hair to mostly silver/white. During this time I have fathered an extremely premature child (9 weeks early)( who is doing very well now) and sent two older children to college.
My wife loves it though, won't let me color it.
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*gals*, however . . . (Score:2)
Guys indeed don't mind grey much, but are horrified at thinning/losing (speaking as a group average in both cases).
*Gals*, on the other hand, aren't subject to nearly the same level of thinning anyway, but tend to be horrified at loss of color.
Thus my monthly expense for her hair :)
hawk
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What's weird about wearing a hat? Have you gone outside and taken a look at the general public? Most people already wear hats in one form or another - a baseball cap or trucker cap is probalby most common, but you see berets and other kinds as well.
You don't stick out wearing a hat anymore than you stick out wearing glasses.
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Dubious usefulness (Score:5, Insightful)
Usually when you're in the sort of stress that can turn your hair white, you won't be in condition to think about getting pills that stop your hair from turning white.
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Usually when you're in the sort of stress that can turn your hair white, you won't be in condition to think about getting pills that stop your hair from turning white.
You're speaking to a world full of superficial narcissists now, thanks to social media. Try and remember that as you assume people aren't that vain. Injecting toxins directly into your skin to prevent wrinkles is commonplace now, proving that people will do anything to avoid looking old.
And don't forget the unending pressure coming from the Medical Industrial Complex, whose answer for every human problem is a lifetime subscription to a pill bottle. Even your employer promotes this. Whether you are in th
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Note that this is far from something new and unique to the 'young uns'.
Lead makeup, eating arsenic, foot binding, rib-cage deforming corsets, neck stretching. All sorts of very dangerous things have been done in the name of achieving a desired look.
On the balance of things, injecting botulism into the skin is tame by comparison to some other things...
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More useful than the pills would be preventing these stressful situations in the first place. Most of it is bullshit, work related stuff that is just a failure of management or the like. Maybe have a look at that 4 day working week again too.
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Sounds hard. Lets compromise and your work will offer 50% off these pills prior to the start of crunch time.
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Many companies already offer free drugs (mostly caffeine) so it wouldn't be much of a stretch.
One really bad place I worked had free chocolate muffins. I got out of there in six months.
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Look at US preidents (Score:5, Interesting)
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That said... I wonder if you cou
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Clinton, Bush II, Obama. They all went gray in office.
A position that requires a middle-aged man (or woman) isn't exactly a convincing argument here.
I've seen plenty of grey-haired monks too.
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What did Bush II have to be stressed about? He seemed like one of the most relaxed presidents you ever had.
I'm genuinely asking, I'm not an expert on his time in office, maybe there was something I don't know about.
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Re: Look at US preidents (Score:2)
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golf
de-stress
Nope.
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He did a decent job at projecting a relaxed image to the public, but in terms of what the guy had to deal with during his time in office, just off the top of my head and in no particular order:
1) 9/11
2) Katrina
3) War in Afghanistan
4) War in Iraq
5) Great Recession
Some of those he had a degree of control over, others he had no control over, but regardless of the degree to which he had any control, contending with any one or two of those would have already made for a stressful run as President. Contending with
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He didn't seem all that bothered by those things TBH. Maybe he's a great actor.
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I don't think any president aged in office as badly as Lincoln.
They TORTURED mice for cosmetics (Score:1, Troll)
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Habit, taste and convenience trumps empathy and ethics, every time.
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As long as this species kills others of the same species for fun and profit, I guess expecting it to have the ethical level to consider the life of other species valuable is a bit of a stretch.
Re:They TORTURED mice for cosmetics (Score:4, Interesting)
It is a need, indeed. Very good choice of a word, obviously unintentional.
I am going to make me a T-shirt. It will read "I have studied biology and biochemistry. Vegans, fuck off".
It is not a habit, you are being condescending. It is not a convenience either, to chase the game, particularly in hunter-gatherer times. So, why during the 200 000 years of hunter gathering and the 20 000 years of totalitarian agriculture no one figured out that it'd be so much better, cheaper, healthier, easier......to abandon meat and focus only on plants? Could all those half-starving tribespeople and the 95% (farmers) of humans under civilization be so stupid and shortsighted? You think they did not experiment (intentionally or unintentionally when some pest killed their livestock)?
Modded down always to hell, but I don't give fuck. Anyone wants to answer me why the only type of food that can keep you alive and healthy if you do not eat any other type of food is meat? Try eating only plants, or only sugar and see what happens....
Every life form on this planet kills to live. Plants included (not that vegans know that anyway). If you arguing against the Universe I suggest you address your complains to her. Let us know how did it go...
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On Veganism:
It's a philosophy based in animal rights.
So the animals got together, wrote a document --- like the Bill of Rights, perhaps --- and then got us humans to ratify it? When did this happen? 1964, in a Berkeley acid trip?
You people want us to be medicated lemmings eating synthetic lab-created food-like substances. NFW. It was a scam in the 70's and it's still a scam today.
This is all about virtue signalling. Vegans are great at that. "Look at me! I wear plastic, not leather. I eat birdseed masquerading as tuna, and applaud and supp
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Anyone wants to answer me why the only type of food that can keep you alive and healthy if you do not eat any other type of food is meat?
Been vegan for almost 30yrs, I race bikes, won 4 provincial championships this year, just did the Festive 500 in 6 days riding 100km+ five of those days. (It's a global challenge to ride 500km between xmas eve and NY eve, had 2 days to spare as well. Finished about 16th in Canada, and under 3000th globally, with a lot of those people riding in much nicer conditions. I think over 100,000 signed up.)
Kinda think eating plants is working out alright.
More and more findings also show that we've been eating cooked
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The T-shirt you need is this one:
My favourite course at Trump University was the cafeteria!
Trump steaks and Trump wine. Breakfast of champions ... losing their lunch money. And you probably got an easy attendance credit in your biology/biochemistry degree with every steak consumed. Win! Win!
———
The central concept of ecology is mutually assured survival. Death awaits the prevailing monoculture. This applies to plants red in tooth and claw, as well.
The average plant is only in it for the NIM
Killing animals - vegans do it too, and a lot. (Score:3)
they need to consume millions of tons of meat each year, regardless of the fact they live in close proximity to grocery stores that offer isles full of ethical choices.that don't involve the killing of animals.
Huh, you're aware that there are a lot of other members of the Animal kingdom, beside large mammals (and chickens) ?
The kind of large-scale, industrial intensive agriculture method which is behind most of the produce you're referring to in the next isle is also detrimental to numerous animals. They just aren't large mammals like pigs and cows.
But industrial scale agriculture can be detrimental to the micro-organism and smaller invertebrate (worms, lots of insects etc.) living in the soil.
Those can have impa
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They TORTURED mice, not to save human lives but to maybe make it possible to create yet more unnecessary cosmetics. What sort of SICK society tolerates this disgusting behaviour, and why does Slashdot encourage it ?
Instead of asking the largely male-dominated Slashdot crowd, why don't you ask the 50% of the human population who are actually responsible for creating the demand for this "disgusting behavior".
Then maybe we can stop pretending that "sick" society isn't world wide.
CDK Proteins are extremely tightly conserved (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:CDK Proteins are extremely tightly conserved (Score:4, Informative)
Our culture doesnâ(TM)t know how to deal with (Score:5, Interesting)
How about dealing with the problem at its source instead of pumping people full of drugs? We should be teaching people how to be mindful of and manage stress from a young age, but you wonâ(TM)t find breathing exercises or calming meditations in our school curriculum, because people are afraid it will turn all the kids into pseudo-Buddhist hippies.
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...you wonâ(TM)t find breathing exercises or calming meditations in our school curriculum, because people are afraid it will turn all the kids into pseudo-Buddhist hippies.
Unfortunately, doing anything of the sort will get you in trouble for "cultural appropriation" these days. If white people didn't invent it, they can't use it. If white people did invent it, it's racist!
re: culture dealing with grey (Score:2)
As someone whose hair started turning grey at age 18, I really don't believe my situation had anything to do with too much stress. I had no more stress than anyone else my age, dealing with school....
Most likely, it was a hereditary thing, but I was adopted as a baby and don't really know my family history. So anything's possible there.
In any case, I wouldn't want to take drugs to change this, even if I could go back in time and do that. It was a little uncomfortable in my 20's having the premature grey,
Remove stress from life. (Score:4)
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Hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
As this to all medical "breakthroughs" (Score:1)
I can't wait... (Score:2)
... to hear the list of life-threatening side effects of the drug that comes out for this when the ads for it finally hit the airwaves.
*IN MICE*. Not in humans. I am proof. (Score:2)
My entire life is shaped by chronic stress due to the lives of my parents. (Essentially Che Rambo and Witch Misery. Poverty, madness, terror and war are the four pillars of my family.)
And in our family, neither gray hair nor hair loss is any issue at all. People still thought my dad was my brother when I was 18 and he was in his 40s. Now I'm his age, and I don't have a single gray hair, while he has little. Interestigly, the beard hair turned gray quicker on him.)
Explain that.
(I suggest testing on humans...
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You are not "proof", you are a single unsubstantiated, anecdotal data point.
What you say may be true, but what you say is in no way "proof" of anything.
I don't suffer from stress (Score:3)
I don't suffer from stress, I'm more of a carrier.
use dev'ing to pay for mortgage before the grays (Score:1)
Soon, I won't care who fires me for being in my 40's because it will be paid off and college in NC is cheap/good for the kids.
We kill mice for this? (Score:1)
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Either of those conditions carry with them health problems. In the case aging at least, even death.
Also, torturing test subject helps relieve stress in researchers.
CDKs is also involved in cancers (Score:1)
Old age? (Score:2)
So, we're stressed at older years? :(