It has been said, "Your hair is the crown you never take off." And indeed it is true. One's hair is the symbol of beauty and grace that everyone needs to take care of to maintain its health, shine, and strength.
Unfortunately, hair could sometimes lose its luster, shine, and life, and eventually would even turn to gray. To alter the problem, people tend to use colorants and dyes to cover up the change.
But according to experts, doing so can only cause more problems in the end rather than just creating a solution for your situation. Scientists and experts have longed work on several studies to know and understand more about the link of hair dyes to cancer. Researchers found how chemicals found in the dye, especially the aromatic amines, are risky and can cause cancer to animals used for the study, as reported by the National Cancer Institute.
As these dyes can pose a risk to people's health, ditching these artificial dyes, and searching for alternatives to change your situation is the best way to do it instead. One way to do that is to manage your stress, experts advise.
In a study conducted by researchers from Harvard University in Massachusetts, experts were able to debunk the relationship between gray hair and stress. The study revealed that once stressed, people's body tends to produce more cortisol, specifically norepinephrine, also known as a stress hormone.
Norepinephrine tends to cause pigment-producing stem cells to grow prematurely. This, in turn, could alter the hair's color slowly until it completely turns to gray.
"The detrimental impact of stress that we discover was beyond what I imagined," said Ya-Chieh Hsu, Ph.D., the associate professor of stem cell and regenerative biology at Harvard and the lead author of the study. He further shared how strong the impact of stress is on the pigment-regenerating stem cells. According to the expert, just a few days after the exposure, stem cells have lost and weren't able to regenerate colors anymore. The worse is, "the damage is permanent," added.
Aside from stress, gray hair is also caused by other factors such as genetics and smoking, as discussed by Health Line. If genetic factors are what makes your hair go gray, experts say, altering the problem is impossible. But if your graying is caused by smoking, then creating a change in your lifestyle and quitting the habit can reverse your hair situation.
