https://www.popsci.com/story/health/stress-causes-white-hair/

In 1902, the British Medical Journal reported an unusual case of rapid hair whitening.

A 22-year-old woman “witnessed a tragedy of a woman’s throat being cut and the victim falling dead at her feet,” according to a physician at the London Temperance Hospital. The next day, the right side of her pubic hair turned white, while the left half remained black.

This historic case study makes for a terribly weird (and rapid) example of an otherwise common occurrence: gray hairs seem to accumulate when we’re stressed. And it’s not just random violence that sends people’s pigment running—college exams, children, and work pressure appear to change our coloring, too. But for millennia, scholars have been relying mostly on anecdotal proof and intuition to rationalize this phenomenon.

To study this vexing relationship, the researchers created an elaborate animal model, which basically involved trying to turn black-haired rats white with lab-made stressors. They tried three different tactics: restraint stress, chronic unpredictable stress, and nociception-induced stress, which is caused by physical pain (or the threat of it). Each successfully turned the rat’s hair white. Perhaps unsurprisingly, nociception-induced stress, which the scientists stimulated by injecting the rats with resiniferatoxin, an analogue of the chili pepper compound capsaicin, worked best and fastest.

Divine Angel said:

https://www.popsci.com/story/health/stress-causes-white-hair/

In 1902, the British Medical Journal reported an unusual case of rapid hair whitening.

A 22-year-old woman “witnessed a tragedy of a woman’s throat being cut and the victim falling dead at her feet,” according to a physician at the London Temperance Hospital. The next day, the right side of her pubic hair turned white, while the left half remained black.

This historic case study makes for a terribly weird (and rapid) example of an otherwise common occurrence: gray hairs seem to accumulate when we’re stressed. And it’s not just random violence that sends people’s pigment running—college exams, children, and work pressure appear to change our coloring, too. But for millennia, scholars have been relying mostly on anecdotal proof and intuition to rationalize this phenomenon.

To study this vexing relationship, the researchers created an elaborate animal model, which basically involved trying to turn black-haired rats white with lab-made stressors. They tried three different tactics: restraint stress, chronic unpredictable stress, and nociception-induced stress, which is caused by physical pain (or the threat of it). Each successfully turned the rat’s hair white. Perhaps unsurprisingly, nociception-induced stress, which the scientists stimulated by injecting the rats with resiniferatoxin, an analogue of the chili pepper compound capsaicin, worked best and fastest.

so, because grey is just a mix of your normal colour and uncoloured strands (white), and you have to wait for the white strands to grow…can’t go grey overnight. (Unless you use bleach). Then you have to wait for the white strands to outnumber the coloured ones as the coloured ones fall out naturally before you actually go white.

My mother says Dad’s hair started to turn grey after K died. He was in his late 20s. She reported it as fairly fast, but she could well have been somewhat distracted and didn’t notice the slow change. I was only about one, and she became pregnant with my sister quite soon after K died.

However you will eventually go grey no matter how pampered your life has been.

Once there was this kid who
Got into an accident and couldn’t come to school
But when he finally came back
His hair had turned from black into bright white
He said that it was from when
The car had smashed so hard

furious said:

Once there was this kid who
Got into an accident and couldn’t come to school
But when he finally came back
His hair had turned from black into bright white
He said that it was from when
The car had smashed so hard

Mmmm…

furious said:

Once there was this kid who
Got into an accident and couldn’t come to school
But when he finally came back
His hair had turned from black into bright white
He said that it was from when
The car had smashed so hard

mmm mmm mmm mmm

Peak Warming Man said:

However you will eventually go grey no matter how pampered your life has been.

yeah they’re going to grey anyway it’s not even ‘flu’ why bother

My father went into hospital for a very serious operation after a yractor crank handle had mixed his intestines up when the tractor backfired while cranking.
His hair when he went in was not grey but it was white when he came out.

roughbarked said:

My father went into hospital for a very serious operation after a yractor crank handle had mixed his intestines up when the tractor backfired while cranking.
His hair when he went in was not grey but it was white when he came out.

Horrible sounding accident.

roughbarked said:

My father went into hospital for a very serious operation after a yractor crank handle had mixed his intestines up when the tractor backfired while cranking.
His hair when he went in was not grey but it was white when he came out.

We need more information to solve this one.
Man goes into hospital with unknown hair colour that was not grey.
Man comes out of hospital with white hair or was that a white hare? we don’t know.

Bubblecar said:

roughbarked said:

My father went into hospital for a very serious operation after a tractor crank handle had mixed his intestines up when the tractor backfired while cranking.
His hair when he went in was not grey but it was white when he came out.

Horrible sounding accident.

The repair job was worse. He had 19 major bowel operations afterwards. He died in the original opweration and the local surgeon walked away to wash his hamds and the visiting surgeon gave his heart a few squeezes and brought him back. It was easy to find the heart because his bowels were on the table next to him. the accident had ruptured the intestines and as a result they were in need of untangling but stuck together because the escaping fluids had aten the protective coatings from them.

So yes, not pretty but quite nasty.

Peak Warming Man said:

roughbarked said:

My father went into hospital for a very serious operation after a yractor crank handle had mixed his intestines up when the tractor backfired while cranking.
His hair when he went in was not grey but it was white when he came out.

We need more information to solve this one.
Man goes into hospital with unknown hair colour that was not grey.
Man comes out of hospital with white hair or was that a white hare? we don’t know.

His hair colour was brown beforehand but for all the time I knew him it was white. You see I was only 13 months old and my sister was born on the same day in the same hospital..

roughbarked said:

Bubblecar said:

roughbarked said:

My father went into hospital for a very serious operation after a tractor crank handle had mixed his intestines up when the tractor backfired while cranking.
His hair when he went in was not grey but it was white when he came out.

Horrible sounding accident.

The repair job was worse. He had 19 major bowel operations afterwards. He died in the original opweration and the local surgeon walked away to wash his hamds and the visiting surgeon gave his heart a few squeezes and brought him back. It was easy to find the heart because his bowels were on the table next to him. the accident had ruptured the intestines and as a result they were in need of untangling but stuck together because the escaping fluids had aten the protective coatings from them.

So yes, not pretty but quite nasty.

Wow. How long did he live after those operations?

e for eaten.

roughbarked said:

Peak Warming Man said:

roughbarked said:

My father went into hospital for a very serious operation after a yractor crank handle had mixed his intestines up when the tractor backfired while cranking.
His hair when he went in was not grey but it was white when he came out.

We need more information to solve this one.
Man goes into hospital with unknown hair colour that was not grey.
Man comes out of hospital with white hair or was that a white hare? we don’t know.

His hair colour was brown beforehand but for all the time I knew him it was white. You see I was only 13 months old and my sister was born on the same day in the same hospital..

Did she come out with white hair? I bet your mum did

Divine Angel said:

roughbarked said:

Bubblecar said:

Horrible sounding accident.

The repair job was worse. He had 19 major bowel operations afterwards. He died in the original opweration and the local surgeon walked away to wash his hamds and the visiting surgeon gave his heart a few squeezes and brought him back. It was easy to find the heart because his bowels were on the table next to him. the accident had ruptured the intestines and as a result they were in need of untangling but stuck together because the escaping fluids had aten the protective coatings from them.

So yes, not pretty but quite nasty.

Wow. How long did he live after those operations?

I was 17 when he died.

Divine Angel said:

roughbarked said:

Peak Warming Man said:

We need more information to solve this one.
Man goes into hospital with unknown hair colour that was not grey.
Man comes out of hospital with white hair or was that a white hare? we don’t know.

His hair colour was brown beforehand but for all the time I knew him it was white. You see I was only 13 months old and my sister was born on the same day in the same hospital..

Did she come out with white hair? I bet your mum did

No. She never went grey but she did go blonde.

roughbarked said:

Divine Angel said:

roughbarked said:

His hair colour was brown beforehand but for all the time I knew him it was white. You see I was only 13 months old and my sister was born on the same day in the same hospital..

Did she come out with white hair? I bet your mum did

No. She never went grey but she did go blonde.

Though that was 27 years later.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/hair-turn-gray-2017091812226

roughbarked said:

My father went into hospital for a very serious operation after a yractor crank handle had mixed his intestines up when the tractor backfired while cranking.
His hair when he went in was not grey but it was white when he came out.

He must have been in hospital however many months it takes for a full head of hair to turnover to new hair. Probably years, actually. Because every coloured hair he went in with stayed coloured. Once the hair is made and the melanin is in it, you can strip it out with bleach or lighten it with sunlight, but it doesn’t just drop off the hair. So for this to have happened, he must have grown a new full head of hair.

buffy said:

roughbarked said:

My father went into hospital for a very serious operation after a yractor crank handle had mixed his intestines up when the tractor backfired while cranking.
His hair when he went in was not grey but it was white when he came out.

He must have been in hospital however many months it takes for a full head of hair to turnover to new hair. Probably years, actually. Because every coloured hair he went in with stayed coloured. Once the hair is made and the melanin is in it, you can strip it out with bleach or lighten it with sunlight, but it doesn’t just drop off the hair. So for this to have happened, he must have grown a new full head of hair.

I was 13 months old at the time. I was told that his hair went grey overnight which I never believed. However, yes he was in hospitals for much of my early life. I didn’t really get to know him until just before he died. I spent much of my early life with friends and relatives in and around Sydney.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6290285/

I remember our old friend Zarkov telling us that his hair went white overnight when his wife was murdered.

My college principal also was supposed to have turned white overnight when his son was killed in an accident. I can’t say this first hand as I had left by then but good friends of mine claim they witnessed it.

Anecdote alert.

I started going grey when I was 14 years old. At that age, I had black hair with red tips when I grew my hair long. I was noticeably grey by 18. By 28 I was seriously salt-and-pepper. At 35, somebody asked me why I had so many hair colours (black and grey on the head, brown, red, black, brown and grey in the beard). By forty, I was silver on the head and mottled in the beard. Now, at 66, my head and beard are both white and most of my body hairs are white. My moustache is white, black and red. My eyebrows are now weakly salt and pepper -like my head when I was 18.

None of this has ever concerned me; you get what you are given.

My mother was dark-brown, then went silver, then white, but still has some dark hairs on her head. I am much whiter than she is. Her mother was white at 70 from dark-haired then silver. Seems for me, it is genetic.

Zarkov, the water powered engine bloke?

sibeen said:

Zarkov, the water powered engine bloke?

Yep. Slightly eccentric, err very eccentric :)

pommiejohn said:

sibeen said:

Zarkov, the water powered engine bloke?

Yep. Slightly eccentric, err very eccentric :)

I never heard about the murder.

sibeen said:

pommiejohn said:

sibeen said:

Zarkov, the water powered engine bloke?

Yep. Slightly eccentric, err very eccentric :)

I never heard about the murder.

Me neither. John Caley was his name IRL.

Michael V said:

sibeen said:

pommiejohn said:

Yep. Slightly eccentric, err very eccentric :)

I never heard about the murder.

Me neither. John Caley was his name IRL.

I only saw him mention it once.

Michael V said:

sibeen said:

pommiejohn said:

Yep. Slightly eccentric, err very eccentric :)

I never heard about the murder.

Me neither. John Caley was his name IRL.

Seems to have a new book in addition to ‘The Death of Clouds’.

https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/6888814

Witty Rejoinder said:

Michael V said:

sibeen said:

I never heard about the murder.

Me neither. John Caley was his name IRL.

Seems to have a new book in addition to ‘The Death of Clouds’.

https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/6888814

Bugger, there’s no Kindle addition.

sibeen said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

Michael V said:

Me neither. John Caley was his name IRL.

Seems to have a new book in addition to ‘The Death of Clouds’.

https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/6888814

Bugger, there’s no Kindle addition.

Ah well, you’re likely saved from reading nonsense.

sibeen said:

pommiejohn said:

sibeen said:

Zarkov, the water powered engine bloke?

Yep. Slightly eccentric, err very eccentric :)

I never heard about the murder.

Ditto.