Scared into being gray?
The notion that a sudden shock can turn hair white overnight has persisted for centuries. It’s the stuff of fairy tales and legends, but it won’t go away. People actually believe that they have a full head of pigmented hair one day, and the next—poof!—they’re stark-raving white. The shock theory comes in because a serious emotional trauma can throw your auto-immune system into a tailspin. This can induce alopecia areata, a genetic auto-immune disorder that causes T cells to mistake hair follicles for a foreign substance. For some strange reason, they only attack pigmented hairs, causing them to fall out. This process may take a few weeks or months, but what’s left is the un-pigmented hair that was always there. Probably more than the person realized. “Suddenly,” they wake up and they’re gray. And maybe that’s another shock!
