Stress-induced Gray Hairs

Have you ever seen gray hairs on someone? And do they almost immediately blame it on the stress in their life? Well, they could be right! For the first time, researchers have found that key players responsible for the transient flight-and-fight stress response are also involved in permanent stress-induced hair pigment loss. The finding, which was published in the journal Nature, discredited popularly postulated hypotheses regarding stress-induced gray hairs and suggests hopeful pathways to modify the damaging effects of stress on stem cell pools in other organs. Listen to Dr. Ya-Chieh Hsu, an Associate Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard Stem Cell Institute, as she explains how her team zoomed in from the systemic stress response down to the cellular and molecular dynamics of this exciting biology. “Half Mystery” by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under CC BY 4.0.