Even if more and more women decide to switch to whites, there will be many who are wondering if gray hair can return to how it once was. Without the use of dye. An American study ignites the hope that hair can regain the original color, but in reality there is no scientific evidence.
Stress-induced white hair
Science has already proven that stress – intense and prolonged – really makes hair white: what you didn’t know is that find your calm it could have the reverse effect, and make our hair regain color. This is what emerges from a study published on eLife, which explains how hair color can be restored by finding calm: “Understanding the mechanisms that allow white hair to regain its original pigmentation could provide new clues to the malleability of aging, and help us understand how it is affected by stress,” stresses Martin Picard, one of the authors.
The study on white hair that can repigment
When the hair is still at the level of the hair bulb it is affected by stress hormones and what happens in our life, both at the level of the body and mind. Once sprouted, they acquire their stable shape, that is, they turn into stems. “Aging is not a linear process, but it can be altered, at least in part, or even temporarily reversed,” says Picard.
The researchers studied the hair of 14 volunteers, thanks to an innovative method that allowed them to capture detailed images of tiny sections of hair and analyze their loss of pigmentation. Each section, about 1/20 of a millimeter wide, corresponds to about an hour of hair growth. The results showed that the most stressed individuals were those with more gray hair, but not only: “One of the volunteers, during the holidays, regained color in five hairs that had turned white from stress,” explains Picard.
The absence of stress alone is not enough to re-pigment the hair
It is important to remember that a hectic life, alone, cannot be responsible for the graying of our hair, and therefore that it is not enough to be relaxed to prevent the appearance of white hair forever. Nor that it is enough to find calm to see your hair return to its original color. Stress, in fact, is a factor that is added to other pre-existing factors responsible for discoloration, such as for example lbiological age.