--- title: You Asked: Can Hair Go Gray From Stress? description: Can hair grow gray from stress? We look at the research. canonical: https://time.com/4118623/stress-gray-hair/ author: Markham Heid article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-11-19T16:39:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-19T07:42:13.796Z article:section: Health og:title: You Asked: Can Hair Go Gray From Stress? og:description: Can hair grow gray from stress? We look at the research. og:url: https://time.com/4118623/stress-gray-hair/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf63a515c8544f9f6/698865f7196cf418cf038477/unknown1.png?branch=production&width=372&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 372 og:image:height: 209 og:image:alt: You Asked logo og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: You Asked: Can Hair Go Gray From Stress? twitter:description: Can hair grow gray from stress? We look at the research. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf63a515c8544f9f6/698865f7196cf418cf038477/unknown1.png?branch=production&width=372&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # You Asked: Can Stress Cause Gray Hair? > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Health Matters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Health Matters is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The latest health news and expert advice on living well. Health Matters makes the fast-moving world of health more useful, surprising and human, from the latest science and medical breakthroughs to practical ideas for living better. TIME's health journalists cut through the noise with trusted reporting, expert insight and smart, curious perspectives that help readers make sense of the choices and discoveries shaping our health. 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Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=61055185-6134-4606-ab5d-d9cc72225c0a&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Island That Holds the Secret to Long Life [Watch (HLS stream): The Island That Holds the Secret to Long Life](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/orlnwhNb.m3u8) (7:08)  _Published 2014-05-23. Here's how the people of Ikaria, Greece reach old age_ by [Markham Heid](https://time.com/author/markham-heid/) ## Markham Heid Markham Heid is a contributor at TIME. He is the author of The Habit Trap, due out in early 2027. Nov 19, 2015 4:39 PM UTC  by [Markham Heid](https://time.com/author/markham-heid/) ## Markham Heid Markham Heid is a contributor at TIME. He is the author of The Habit Trap, due out in early 2027. Nov 19, 2015 4:39 PM UTC Here’s a media trend you’re guaranteed to notice next November: Lots of outlets will contrast current photos of President Barack Obama to pics of the president at his inauguration in order to illustrate how the stress of the job has aged him—or at least his hair. (George W. Bush and Bill Clinton’s manes got the same before-and-after treatment.) While being the most powerful person in the free world is undoubtedly a stressful gig, these stories don’t mention that pretty much every man in his 40s and early 50s undergoes a similar transformation. “The way people are built, our hair is designed to have color for 45 or 50 years,” says Dr. Tyler Cymet, chief of clinical education at the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine. While there’s some lingering debate about the underlying mechanism that causes hair to lose its pigment, most experts agree it has to do with your scalp’s color-producing cells—called melanocytes—switching off, according to Dr. Adam Friedman, an associate professor of dermatology and director of translational research at George Washington University. For the average Caucasian, that switching off starts around age 35—give or take 10 years depending on your genes. The process begins a bit later for African Americans. Your hair grows, hangs around, and falls out in cycles, each of which lasts anywhere from a few years to a decade, Cymet says. (These cycles don’t align, so some hairs are growing or in stasis even as others are falling out.) Once those first gray strands show up, more and more are going to appear with every new cycle. “Typically, if you’re 50% gray you’re going to be almost all gray by the end of the next cycle,” Cymet says. And yes, stress can play a part in all this. There’s evidence stress may shorten the duration of your hair’s cycles, which would accelerate the spread of gray, Cymet says. Stress also creates systemic inflammation, which can switch off those pigment-producing cells, experts say. “You see very young people with autoimmune disease who have patches of white or gray hair, and that’s because inflammation has turned off those melanocytes,” says Friedman. Long story short, your hair (and probably the president’s) will naturally start graying sometime in your 30s or 40s, depending on your DNA. And if you’re perpetually stressed, the resulting inflammation can speed up your hair’s chromatic transformation. The current presidential frontrunners are all well past their 60th birthdays. Unless a younger candidate makes a push—or a couple prominent candidates stop dying their hair—we’ll all have to go without those before-and-after pics when the next commander in chief leaves office. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ]. Ikaria is a very unique island. The people are not what you would find in other places, they have a different lifestyle, a different way of looking at life. We might seem like we're not getting things done, or we might be moving slowly, but we just move at our own pace and things do get done in the end. Being Ikaria is an identity unto itself. [ MUSIC ] [ FOREIGN ]. [ FOREIGN ] People wanna live long, it's natural. Life is a gift, and people want to enjoy it. [ MUSIC ] Unfortunately, you know, Athens is not a carrier. Athens is a big city, people are crowded, crowding alone is a major stress. It's difficult to live there, connected life. There is a lot of obesity, there is a lot of anxiety. We've started already to be seeing the results of stress. In Ikaria they're not crowded, they have the water right next to them. Just the environment where they live, it's better. [ FOREIGN ] [ INAUDIBLE ]. [ FOREIGN ]. It's the people of Ikaria that make the difference, the people are really for Ikaria. In Ikaria, it's cultural, it's an epicurean culture, they avoid stress, or cope well with it. When they cannot avoid it, they seek small pleasures. They live the day as it comes. So, somehow naturally, they're doing things that we should all be doing. [ FOREIGN ]. I got money from my uncle Giannis. He said to me, come with me for work, for one week and I will give you money, I said, okay. I went first three days, and then I said, I, I quit, I cannot do it anymore. I was waking up at 6 o'clock and working until, four, five and he was saying, come on, let's go, let's go until night. [ FOREIGN ]. [ MUSIC ] [ FOREIGN ]. In the documentaries they show only old people, they don't show nothing else, old people and the nature. They don't show the young people, what are they doing in their lives, you know? [ NOISE ]. I don't think that I would live so many years as them because, with the live that we are doing now it's, it's bad because we drink alcohol so much. We don't sleep good. [ NOISE ] [ FOREIGN ]. [ FOREIGN ]. [ FOREIGN ]. I'm looking forward to the people of Ikaria being able to come together, and work for the good of their island. And I'm also looking forward to the next generation, to see how they turn out and where they're going to be in 20 years time. I think it's gonna be a very interesting journey. We like the tradition of Ikaria, the history, the music, the culture, everything. We like it, and we trying, I think, my generation is trying to keep it, you know, not lose it. What I learn a lot from the older people is their sense of continuity, their strong sense of family, their strong sense of, my children have grown. I've seen my grandchildren, my life is complete, I'm fulfilled. They're not looking for new things. They're enjoying the things that they have in the moments they have. They're not looking for the next one, and the next one before they've actually enjoyed the present one. 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