(Katie Hunt/ CNN) — Marie Antoinette’s hair suddenly turned white before the ill-fated French queen was taken to the guillotine to have her head chopped off, according to some historical accounts.
More modern reports refer to hair turning prematurely white in survivors of bomb attacks during World War II, while an Australian airline pilot saw his hair go gray in the months after landing a plane following a failure of all four engines in the early 1980s.
While there’s been plenty of anecdotal evidence suggesting premature graying can be caused by extreme stress — whether this is true and how this happens isn’t widely understood. Now, Harvard University scientists think they have the answer — at least in mice. The group of researchers believe it’s down to the animal’s sympathetic nervous system — which is best known for activating our “fight or flight” response to danger, they say. (…)