Stress has been blamed for causing gray hair for ages and researchers have now discovered the specifics of this relationship. The stress response activates the fight-or-flight response which can cause irreversible damage to pigment-producing stem cells in the hair follicles known as melanocytes.
The recent study, published in Nature, investigated the effects of stress on the melanocyte stem cells of the hair follicle of mice. Melanocyte stem cells produce the pigment cells responsible for coloring the hair, skin, iris and other regions of the body.
