Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Going Grey

Episode Date: April 25, 2023

Why do people start losing the pigment in their hair as they grow older? Well, it might be one of those things that we don't entirely understand, though there are some new studies that offer some ideas. But that didn't stop people throughout history from trying to find ways to keep their hair from turning grey. Of course, Justin doesn't need any of these methods because he has surprisingly little grey hair for someone his age. As he points out. Repeatedly.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. Hello everybody and welcome to Sabons, a metal tour of Miscotted Medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McAroy. And I'm Sydney McAroy. I left a little gap there to build some suspense, like what podcast are you listening

to? Oh. There's a fun new thing. You can tell though when you're looking. If you're looking, but like if you were just kind of like let it go randomly or hit the shuffle, you know, you wouldn't know what podcast. It's coming up. Can you do that with podcasts? Can you hit the shuffle and just let pot of random that That to me is a level of chaos that even I don't know. I could have scribed to at least at least it's better than those 1.5 speed people we can all agree on that right. I don't have a strong opinion on that. Oh, okay

Well, I will have an opinion that's strong enough for our whole household. Isn't that beautiful? I have no doubt you're capable of that. Said, what's the episode about here on this marital turf of misguided medicine for this week? Well, Justin, recently you were bragging about how little gray hair you had.

I'm not bragging. That sounds like so wild. Just noting that I feel like I was just noting that there are people of my age and younger that are, that I've just noted that their hair is getting gray faster than mine is, that mine is not as gray. And I don't really have any feelings about that.

I don't think it, I'm not dumb enough to think that there's some sign of my being a cool dude living a clean lifestyle or something. I just noted it. I'm sure it's a random spin of genetics, but I just noted. I have no pride in this. You have a less gray in your hair than me, I think. Couldn't, again, doesn't matter. Couldn't, couldn't, couldn't.

I mean, you can't tell, though tell though, because I dye my hair. Whoa. Neil, so child. Well, beauty secrets revealed right here to your husband here on sawboard. Yeah, well, I mean, it was red at one point. It's been brown and blonde and then every shade between brown and blonde. So I think people probably figure that out. Is there being attention?

Yes. Um, I, and I don't dye it. I should say, I don't really care. I don't die it to hide the gray. I like the other colors it is, you know? Sure, I got you. Like I like sometimes to be more brunette and sometimes to be more bonded, depends on what your mood's like, right?

Yeah. You don't feel that way. I just don't really. One time I felt like a redhead, and I was a redhead for that was during COVID. And I just, I had to do different things every day. One time as a young man, I let a girlfriend give me frosted tips and it went so poorly that I never really did anything along those lines again.

Did you ever cool a dye your hair? No, no, I never. Classic 90s trick, cool a dye in your hair. No, never cool't know. I just, you know what I'm like, well, now that I say that, full disclosure, now I say this not because it's interesting, but because I don't, I think during COVID, I did diet like once just to see it change the color, but it wasn't even that different. Like maybe in the sun, it was a little bit redder, but that's it. We did, we used a box color on it, but the problem was,

I don't know, I don't know, I just, you know what I'm like, well, now that I say that, full disclosure, I say this not because it's interesting, but because I don't, I think during COVID, I did diet like once just to see it change the color, but it wasn't even that different. Like maybe in the sun, it was a little bit redder, but that's it. We did. We used a box color on it, but the problem is years is dark enough that we would have had to bleach it and then diet and we weren't going to do all that.

When I was pregnant with Cooper, I don't know if I've told you this Justin, at one point and I was very pregnant, I was far along in the pregnancy and it was hard for me to like bend, bend over without falling and I was examining a patient's feet and so I was down on my knees in an exam room looking at this patient's feet and as I was down there he said well you got gray hairs you shouldn't be pregnant and have gray hair at the same time. What is honestly city? What is still remember that moment? What what is wrong with people? I don't know.

Why would you say that? And you know what? You know what, kills me about that? It's almost never people of art. Like, it's not like, you know, our generation got so into phones that they don't even know. No! It's like the older people who should know better.

They were raised without phones. You should know how to talk to a human being Honestly, I still took care of his feet because that's my job. So just you fix the feet. Yeah, I Stop her chanting says in West Wing. You said you fix the feet. Yep, no matter what Do you know why our hair turns gray Justin get older? Well, okay, I Do you know why our hair turns gray, Justin? Just get older. Well, okay. You lose, you lose some of the pigmentation because your body needs to divert that energy to the final processes of life and stress.

And so you don't have enough energy to also generate the, I don't know, melanin. Is it melanin? So it's related to melanin. You know what's interesting is that we're still kind of uncovering all the root causes of that. It's something that we sort of, there are things in medicine that we understand.

There are things in medicine that we, honestly, we still don't understand. Sometimes we can still treat that stuff, even if we don't understand it. That's a weird thing. Mechanism of action, unknown, but it works. And then there's stuff that's in the middle that we're like, we kind of get it,

but we're still, we know there's more we need to learn. Do you know what is like that? I just read about today, lift, the force of lift, like we don't really understand why it works. Like we don't really understand it. There's like varying schools of thought as to why, like, what's like a plane?

Like, why planes fly? I can't. We don't actually know why. It seems to be going good, but we don't know why. See, this is too, this is too disturbed. I can't, you can't tell me more about this because I will probably fly on a plane again someday. And I don't want to think about the fact.

So, I said the woman who 30 seconds ago was like, we don't know how some of this stuff works, man. We're just putting bills in there. I know for the best. We are all more comfortable in our own areas of expertise, aren't we? I mean, I'm most comfortable talking about Mario. So yeah, I guess.

And with any uncertainty in the field of Mario, you would be more comfortable than I. That's true. If I were to be like, you know, we don't even know if his last name is Mario Mario or what? Like, so there's there is recent evidence. I didn't mean for this to be a timely show. It was really just because we were talking about gray hair the other morning. And I thought we did something heavy last week. This would be a little lighter, right? Like let's just talk about why does our hair turn gray? And what have we done through

history about gray hair? But this is actually kind of recently, um, right? Not intentionally time. No, because, um, we have, we have figured out, so we always knew how to do with melanocytes, which are the cells that produce melanin that's responsible for pigment anywhere. And then hair collar in this case, the operating theory has always been over time. You like run out of melanin, melanocytes. And so you make less melanin in your hair loses its color. There are recent studies that suggest stem cells actually play a bigger role. So you've got all kinds of different stem cells in your body. Cells that basically have the potential to become different things.

The more early the stem cell, the more diverse the kinds of tissues it could become. And then the later along the line, the more targeted it is until it becomes the cell. Whatever it is. Anyway, the problem they think it actually has to do with like, you've got precursor cells, stem cells that are gonna become melanocytes, they're not yet, but that is what they are programmed to be, but they're not mature enough to produce pigment, and they have to move in different places,

like within the hair follicles to interact with the right growth signals, to mature to the point where they produce melanin. Mm-hmm. And over time, they stop moving as much. Okay, I agree. I mean, like, I know this is hard to conceptualize. Is this a wildlife for that to work?

But these cells, as hair is growing, these cells kind of pivot between these different places inside the hair follicle, okay? And again, that's how they mature is by going, you have to go to different places, kind of like you have to go to different levels of school to learn things. If you just stay in kindergarten forever,

like you'd be fantastic at the alphabet and coloring, but like, and I am. Algebra would allude you. Okay. So like you got to go to different places to fully mature. And what they found is that as we get older, these stem cells just get stuck somewhere.

It's actually a place called the hair follicle bulge, if you care about that. And then they, they do. I did know that you tell me it was called the hair follicle bulge, if you care about that. And then they do- I did not tell you to tell me it was called the hair follicle bulge. So like, it's interesting because what that suggests is that the stem cells are still there, which can become the melanocytes, which can produce melanin. So if we knew how to stimulate them to continue to move and grow, our hair would never gray.

Now, I don't know why this- I don't why this. I don't know why we need that necessarily. But it's a new kind of basis for our understanding as to why our hair turns gray. And any time we get a little closer to understanding stem cells that's really exciting in medicine because when it comes to anything that's like genetically programmed and specifically, let's talk anything that's like genetically programmed, and specifically,

what's talking about illnesses that are genetically programmed, stem cells are probably the way we're going to eventually solve some of these issues, right? And so the more we understand stem cells, even if it's just for something as simple as grain of the hair, the closer we are to maybe being able to really tackle some very serious genetic conditions. So that's why it's all very cool. And that's why I'm going to test case. We're going to fix this, maybe we can fix other more important stuff. Well, and that's why doing research that doesn't necessarily

directly correlate with what you're going to do with it. Basic research that you can't see the application yet doesn't is never a waste of time. And maybe you weren't thinking that, but there are people out there who do, because you never know what that next, what you're gonna learn more about and how that might improve the human condition

or just teach us new things, which has a value all of its own. So this was all just published in the journal Nature Less. Wednesday, it was all in mice, by the way. Oh, but still. Well still they can pull it off. Can't think it's so much more to say. Why why isn't Mickey ever gone gray? What because then that would admit that he was aging and if it

admit that he was aging, then eventually he would be passed the like public domain cut off. So you have to say it's eternally youthful. And that way he can continue to deny that he should be allowed into the public domain. Like a God. Like a God. There.

Exactly. So the easy fix for gray hair, if you don't like it, not that you need to fix it, but let's say you want it to be a different color. You just dye it, right? And people throughout time and so we're clear just because I've been tripped up a couple times, we're exclusively talking about dying hair, like dying it, dying your hair. Yeah.

Because it's a few times I've been caught off guard because you're like, if it's a problem, just die it. Like, well, what? What should I eat differently? No, no, no, I'm not saying D I E T. I'm talking about D Y E. Yes, I got it. I got it. And not also, no, I'm not saying D-I-E-T. I'm talking about D-Y-E. Yes, I got it. I got it. And not also don't die, like not die like perish. Don't die there much easier way. Die in your hair a different, using a hair dye to change the color of your hair.

But what else have we done? Because we could look through history. There are lots of examples of different ways people colored their hair, but there are a couple different, like if we look to different sort of medicine traditions, like in traditional Chinese medicine, this is a popular herb I wanted to talk about because it's still being sold today, polygnam multiflorum, or foe tea, if you've heard of FO-TI, foe tea. That is what it is called in popular medicine. I don't know, supplement world and, you know, that's what you would buy if you're looking

for something to buy for this. It is believed to reverse gray and it also is supposed to fight like thinning hair. So like stop hair loss and keep your hair from turning gray. And it has something to do with, I think the effects of hydrogen peroxide on melanocytes and it's able to stop that effect, kind of an antioxidant kind of thing. A lot of things that our soul disupplements are often sort of built as antioxidants, because

I feel like there's only a vague understanding of what we're doing there. And like there are a lot of things that are antioxidants. If that necessarily has any effect in the human body, that might be up for grabs, but there are a lot of things that are antioxidant. It comes in both topical forms when you can apply it to your hair. You can shampoo it in or rub it in, gel it in, whatever, or oral forms. It's all available online. And you'll find tons of supplements that have this.

When I started looking into this, that was sometimes I'll hear about like an ancient treatment and I'll start looking up like, oh, I wanna learn more about it. And all I get are pages where I, like, shopping pages like where I can buy it. And like, I just buy it. Oh, you want the one I'm like, no,

no, we found out about this a thousand years ago. I know, I'm trying to learn about it. I do not want to purchase it. No, no, no, we found out about this a thousand years ago. I know. I'm trying to learn about it. I do not want to purchase it. Because I'm trying to work. Well, I will say that there aren't like a lot of studies. I mean, this is always the theme with anything in the supplement world. There have been some cases of liver failure

as a result of this supplement. So it is something I would be, and I think these were probably cases where people were taking it orally, right? Like I didn't read every single case, but it's hard for me to think that like shampooing it in your head would cause liver failure. There are some things that are topically absorbed and can be dangerous, certainly. It's also present in like some combo pills that have all kinds of like the typical vitamins and minerals that we tell people they need to take to grow hair or strengthen hair. If you see anything that's like strengthen your hair and nails, like all that kind of the

usual supplement stuff. And it also like, it will be very clear on a lot of these that it will make you go grace slower. But that's a hard, like not reverse it, but just like keep it from. Well, and as compared to what? Yeah. Because to compare to other people, you couldn't, because everyone is programmed differently.

Right, yeah, you can't really try. So the only thing you would be comparing it to is how fast you would go gray without it, which is absolutely impossible to know. That's true. Whoa. You would need identical twins, really. And even that, the identical twins would have to be in the exact same lifestyle scenario.

Yeah, like Sun exposure, I would bet has something to do with it. Job stress, like, you know, history of having kids or not or whatever, you know, I mean, like there's all kinds of things that have to be absolutely identical. And even that. So I don't know, that's tough. I would say this doesn't fall under my general guidelines. If something is harmless and cheap and you really want to try it, I generally take a looser approach to that.

But if something is either harmful, possibly harmful, I should say, not everybody, but possibly harmful. And expensive, that's harder for me to endorse. I don't endorse any of it, but I would recommend against it. I don't endorse any of it. But I take a harder line on things that are either possibly harmful or that I think you might get ripped off

because I hate to see people spend their money on something that I think is really gonna help them and it doesn't. There are also other traditions like Ayurvedic medicine provides lots of solutions. Again, and some of this is overlap, like, strengthening hair, growing hair, and also preventing it from turning gray. Not necessarily, a lot of these things don't claim they're going to reverse gray. It's more like keep it from going gray. Or slow it down. Or slow it down.

And there are a lot of like herbal scalp oils, like caster oil, curry leaves, sage, black pepper, onion oil, which I would advise you wash out before you go. These are all getting, give me kind of hungry. I got black pepper, sage, onion, like we got things giving turkey a pair. If you just rub onion oil on your head and go to work though, people are gonna be like,

whoa, what's fire that person? Like maybe some pomegranate instead. Or abuscus. Hanna was listed, but I feel like Hanna's kinda like cheating there, right? Like, well yeah, Hanna would work. Sure, right. In the same way that that spray on stuff

that Ron Popeel used to, it was three initials all, and I remember. No, I know what you're talking about that spray paint for your head. Also some food recommendations. So some things that make sense, like if they start talking about certain vitamins, you know, we may have associated them

with like healthy hair or hair growth, not necessarily hair color. Also, like they recommend things that include catalace. So like sweet potatoes or regular potatoes, non-sweetened potatoes. Do you like sweetened or unsweetened potatoes? Kale pineapple broccoli. And then there's some other things like yoga poses

that can help and rubbing your nails. And then stuff that's like basic, get enough sleep, eat well. Yeah. Stay happy. Don't stress. I can't be happy. Look at my hair. Don't stress.

I'm stressed about my gray hair. Uh, and I want to, like, I don't know that, again, this probably falls closer to our, these are things that, I mean, if you want to eat sweet potatoes, they're delicious. Yeah. I love some sweet potato fries. Yeah. So like, I'd much, I'd be much more comfortable with that.

And we should all get plenty of sleep and be stressed for, I guess. Yeah, easy. Easy. But there's more. I have more ancient solutions if none of this is working for you. But first, we got to go to the Billy and Department. Let's go. The medicines, the medicines that ask you let my God for the mouth.

Hi, I'm Jackie Cation. Hello, I'm Laurie Kimmerton. We do a podcast called the Jackie and Laurie Show and you could listen to it anytime you want it because there's hundreds of episodes. Yeah, I mean, we've been doing comedy forever and we're both quick, so why don't you listen to it? Before we leave this not only terrible business, but this awful world. And find out why we can't because we love it so.

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Reviewing every episode in order. So subscribe to the greatest generation on MaximumFun.org. You'll be doing your part in telling the Star Trek industrial complex that they can't control your mind. I'm out just rewatching this spray on here. It's just really during our break, sitting, I just looking at Rump Appeal Spray. 90s kids, do you remember this? It was a spray, it was spray pay for your head. Y'all, you're too young to remember this guy, rompa peel is an inventor. He did a lot of different

things. And one of his things was just this thing spray paint on your head to cover your balls. But that all it was. I never, I mean, I've never, you see it on TV, and the thing is like the result, the people on TV would achieve, didn't look too bad, but you know that's different than if you saw it in real life. Yeah, I never saw it.

I mean, in texture to it, I believe. There has to be some texture to it. It can't just be that you spray paint your head. Yeah. Because even just looking at it on TV, it looks better than if you spray painted your head. Yes. Please don't spray paint your head. Yeah. Because even just looking at it on TV, it looks better than if you spray painted your head. Yes. Please don't spray paint your head.

That's, there's some advice. Please don't spray paint your head. Thank you. I want to talk about some ancient Roman solutions. Romans were very in fashion. They were very into their looks. No more so than us. That's all humans.

Humans always have been into their looks. Yeah. So blonde hair was fashionable, No more so than us. That's all humans. Humans always have been into their looks. So blonde hair was fashionable, but gray hair was not. So you often would want to do something if your hair was starting to gray. There were specific like dyes that they would use. There was a recipe that was a mixture of ashes, boiled walnut shells and earthworms. I like the walnut shells in there because it's that reminder of this theme

throughout medical history of like, here's like, walnuts are commonly used in cures for head things. They look like your brain. Because they look like your brain. So like, use the walnut thing if it's a head thing because it looks like your brain. The earthworms seems Yucky, they would also sometimes just dip lead combs into vinegar and run that through the hair And then and that would leave like residue

Sure come on old dirty Coming in some just for men. Just for Roman. Oh Did you like that? I don't think so. No. No, I did, yeah. Yeah. Just for Roman, instead of men, just for Roman. Just for Roman.

And it was certainly better than guys over there at Grecian formula. Hey. Because that's Greek. That's Greek. That's like Greek is different than Roman. In fight, yeah. A lot of people tend to think the Greek and Roman are the same.

When you say a lot of people, do you just mean you? A lot of people get them confused very regularly. Which is the Toguan? You know, that kind of thing. Like, I'll say it to myself like that. I know, of course, now. I looked it up. Who doesn't like a good Toguan?

Really? Why restrict it to one ancient culture? Are you gonna talk about greasy formula? That was the one that was the one that was like, when I was a kid, I don't even know. I feel like it's probably not extent anymore greece in formula. I feel like the concept, like the just talking about hair dyes

is almost another, I don't even know if that's a medical thing, but it's a whole other thing. I hair dine, there's so many different types, and we've done so many different things to just physically change the color of our hair, or chemically change the color of our hair. Outside of trying to put something in or on our body that would actually reverse the grain process, you know what I mean? I didn't color that piece of hair. It just stopped being gray.

Yeah. Do you understand what I'm saying? That's a whole other prospect. Yeah. Now, the lead comb in the vinegar was actually really toxic. Sure, of course. Yeah, you don't do that. So that was not particularly popular.

You know, plenty of the elder had to tell you how to turn your gray hair a beautiful different not gray color. He endorsed fermenting leeches for two months. Oh, oh, I bet that's a whole smell. In a lead vessel. Oh, man. Now it's poison. And then you grind them into a paste. Okay, throw them away. Put that in your hair. No. I assume you wash it out at some point. That has got to be a weird two months when you're like, hey, enjoy picking on me now, everybody, because here in a couple of months, I'm going to be

covered in covered in it. You'll watch out here soon. Yeah. Just seven weeks from today. I don't know. Some of these things feel like by the time you went through all this process, you would not care about your gray hair anymore. You'd be like, whatever. This seems like too much trouble. I read some notes as I was reading about different ways of like fighting gray back in the ancient world. Several people made the note that, because hair dye was still popular, like I said, not just if you're turning gray, but just dyeing your hair was very popular back then, that sex workers were expected to dye their hair blonde.

Oh, really? And I would love to dig in deeper. That's not really a medical. That is not relevant to solvones, but it's one of those little things that get popping up in resource after resource after resource Enough that I thought there must be some validity to this. We have fascinating side by the way Someone else who does podcasts just about history or hair dine history or anything like that. That would be a very interesting thing

No more about Fantastic sidebar here Greci and formula was taking off the market and then put back on to replace its active ingredient, which was lead acetate. Well, that's C. Some things never get high. Yeah, it's not everything old is new again, right? There we go.

It's back. It's gone again, but it was back. Well, I mean, I think that's what, with some of these examples that we're talking about, that's why it's so interesting, when you look at a medical history, there are definite times where we found something that worked, but then also realized it was toxic,

but then continued to use it in various forms up into modern times. Like, we act like this is all distant stuff, but, I mean, we were doing this. I mean, we were doing this. I mean, we currently still are probably. I just don't know what it is yet. We'll do a saw-bones about that in a hundred years.

Us, the two of us. The two of us. In a hundred years. We have a plan. I will be 140 years old. We have a plan. In medieval times, there were specific hair dies that, again, I know that's sort of outside the realm

of what I was trying to talk about, but I just enjoyed, like, so if you want your hair darker, add hot water to powdered oak gall and the juice of white cabbage and then rub it through your hair and then put a cabbage leaf on your head, kind of like, like, if you've ever, okay, if you've been to a salon, now I don't feel like this has ever happened in me when I was having my hair colored, but I used to get perms when I was little. Yes.

And at the end of like getting all the rollers and all the chemical and everything that smelled like eggs on your head, they would put a cap over it, like a big plastic cap to just sort of hold everything in place while you were waiting for your perm to set. And this is what I imagine this cabbage leaf is operating as in this instance. There's kids in the hall skid about a guy

with a cabbage leaf on his head. What is the time in the flat circle? Was he right? Was rest and cold right? Is time a flat circle? I don't, I mean, cabbage leaves look like they could fit on your head. So we did it.

Right, like that, we probably didn't need more risk use of that. Why would the, why would the Almighty have made these look like our heads if we were we not to put them on? I told my, I'm just finishing a week of hospital service. And at some point I told my team that it's important

for us to remember that we're all just, you know know simple confused animals doing our best to figure it out and they all looked at me like something was wrong but I think it's important to remember that. Yeah. Our humans were just we're just animals too. We don't know. We're doing our best. Yeah. That cabbage leaf looks like it would fit on my head. Yeah. Is that where it goes? Yeah, you ever see, I watched this video on TikTok of like a gigantic raven, and it loved to put shaped blocks in a shaped pop baby puzzle. And that raven would just get like the star shaped block

and just hammer it at this thing at this puzzle for like five minutes and then eventually through some miracle of alignment, the star, it would get the star shape piece into it. And I watched it, I think that's humans. Like that's, that's us. You got us, Mr. Crow. That's us in a nutshell. Honestly, it feels that way.

Everyone's a while though. We do get that star piece into the puzzle. And honestly, when we get the star piece into the puzzle, it feels miraculous. Yeah. Yeah. And it kind of is.

Yeah, but then the unhappy people are the people who are like, I just saw my friend, another crow, do this. I know you can do it. All you gotta do is put the thing in there and this is usually the way it works is that usually you just put the star. No, that's like a thousand years. That's so long.

It took so long. I had to get out of the toilet, still waiting for this crow to put the block into the puzzle. And I was rewarded for my patience, obviously, but. Now, a common question and we kind of alluded to this in some of the ancient sort of Traditions like the way they would treat this is they would talk about the importance of stress reducing techniques And I think when you get into things like certain yoga poses and stuff. That's what we're really hitting on right mm-hmm

like How do we reduce stress and if if reducing stress is a treatment for gray hair distressed cause gray hair, we think so. Okay. Possibly stress contributes. I'm not going to say that it is 100% root. No, there are lots of reasons that our hair turns gray, but could stress be part of that?

There is some research to indicate that it is possible, yes. Now this is different than, and I think we've talked about this before on the show. We're not talking about those sort of media depictions, like at a movie or TV show, when someone sees something really scary, and then like all their hair turns white. Yeah. Not like that.

I don't think you know what it was confused about that. I don't think I feel like most of our adult listeners have been disabused with that notion. You never know. And if you, hey, listen, I'm sorry that Justin's making you feel bad if that was something you were worried about. Hey, listen, we all got our thing. Don't feel bad.

But some people confuse Greeks and Romans, being able to do that. So there was a study where researchers basically, they had subjects pluck out gray hairs from their head and then measure how long they were. Okay. Hair grows at a pretty reliable pace. Now, of course, there are lots of things that can interfere with that, right? Like that.

Onus and injury and medications and a centimeter a month. Yeah. Same, yeah. Same ish. So. That's the same ish amount. A centimeter a month is the rate that hair grows about that. So if you measure how long a hair is, then you know how long is this hair been growing

and you can kind of chart time over the length of the hair, right? Now, that's not particularly helpful if the whole hair is either gray or whatever your hair color is, right? Now, that's not particularly helpful if the whole hair is either gray or whatever your hair color is, right? Because that's just like, okay, how long you've been growing that hair? What do I take away from this? What they asked for, what they found is that there are hairs out there that are partially gray or that kind of thing. And they were, what they were trying to measure was to see if the hair started turning gray or if it's just a shorter gray hair, you could, if your hair is on the same length, this would be tough.

But if you have a gray hair that's shorter than the average length of your hair, you can kind of chart back in time. I see what you're saying. Yes. Do you know what you can use that gray hair as a marker of time? At some point, the hair started coming in gray. Yes. At some point, the hair started growing gray.

Or rather, that hair in that spot, right? Yes. Because it's not going to be 100 percent. Because some hairs just great at the base or whatever. So what they did is they independently, so they pluck some hairs, and then they independently said, can you make like a list of life events over the last. Now this is retrospective and our memories are often incorrect. But of like the last couple of years, big life events.

And then they tried to correlate stressful life events with a hair growing in gray. And they found correlations. They found many incidents and they talked about like specific things that happened, whether it was like job loss or marriage is falling apart or, you know, loss of a loved one or something that would correlate with the growth of a gray hair. And sort of in a really kind of creative way supported this idea that maybe stress does cause our hair to grow

in gray. Wild that we would like, I don't know how I'll have to say that into it that right, or notice that or get a sense of that being the case and then being able to prove that it's true. No, there are some. Or at least likely. Yeah, no, I think it's really interesting because we probably just more associated it with like in youth, we have less stress and's really interesting because we probably just more associated it with like

in youth we have less stress, and when we're older we have more stress and our hair also turns gray when we're older. But that's also not really true. That's a misconception, right? We have stress all through our lives. There is no time period that is inherently less stressful than any other I don't believe,

as a universal human experience. There has been a study published that started to indicate that maybe we can actually reverse the grain process, because none of this stuff that we talked about, it's not really going to stop your hair from turning gray, right? Unless you just dyed a different color. So there was a study where they looked at, like, again, stressful life events

and was it turning the hair gray? And what they found is that there were hairs that were gray, but actually the new hair growth closer to the scalp was your natural hair color again. So the opposite of what you'd think, right? And what they started to find is like, if people had reductions in life stress, like a period of a vacation or something, that actually some hair started growing in their regular color.

Wow, so it's not, you can maybe reverse it a little bit. In isolated hairs. maybe reverse it a little bit. In isolated hairs. With mice, probably. Yes, but no, these were in people. Okay. So again, all of this is just interesting. I don't think that there's much you can take from this. If what you take away is you should live a less stressful life.

Well, I mean, yeah, but not everything's under our control. But the idea that stress has an impact on the color of our hair and that having less stress would delay hair grain, I think that there's some evidence that suggests that's possible. Again, I don't think there's much that's actionable. We all should speak to find ways to manage our stress to the only thing that's actionable. You should do anyway. So hey, maybe you just take care of yourself. Right. Take care of yourself. Try to have less stress. Like that's good for you regardless. And maybe you get some beautiful, just a macroeuroly level hair tint on the way. That is going to do it for us for this episode. Thank you so much

for listening and hanging out with us. If you, you should know that our music comes courtesy of the taxpayers. It's a song called Medicines that we use for the intro and outro of our program. You can find their music on bandcamp actually and they got some merchandise on there that you can get if you want. So you should check them out. That is going to do it for us for this week until next time. My name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy.

And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright! Maximumfun.org Comedy and Culture Artist Oat? Audience Supported and supported.