Hair loss as a result of stress is all too familiar to many under-the-gun people of both sexes. Now, research reported in Nature details how stress reduced hair growth in mice.
Ya-Chieh Hsu and her Harvard University colleagues learned that higher levels of stress-related corticosterone disrupted molecular signals that regulate hair growth – a result already observed in rats and rabbits. Removing the adrenal glands from mice that had been stressed resulted in almost constant hair growth, with little of the normal alternation between growth and rest phases. What’s more, the growth continued even when the animals aged.
“These results suggested that even the baseline level of stress hormone that’s normally circulating in the body is an important regulator of the resting phase” of hair growth, Hsu told Jef Akst of The Scientist.
Previously, Hsu’s research had pinned down the process through which an increase in norepinephrine triggered by the fight-or-flight reaction to stress caused hair in mice to lose its color within days. “An interesting hypothesis could be that stress is an accelerated aging process,” Hsu said regarding those results.
The link between stress and hair loss seems to support that idea, which Hsu emphasized remains hypothetical. But, for those hoping to maintain a healthy head of hair, minimizing stress looks like a big step in the right direction.