Disgraced hip hop mogul Diddy shocked a New York City court room on Friday with his stark white hair and beard, displayed to the public only in a sketch.
The court room sketch set the internet ablaze, with some speculating that the stress of his ongoing legal saga, potentially anywhere from 15 years to life in prison, and the undivided attention of the world has turned his hair white.
Diddy is due to go on trial on May 5 and until then he is being held at the grim Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York.
They may not be far off, according to mental health experts. Colleen Marshall, a licensed marriage and family therapist in California, told DailyMail.com that prolonged stress ‘can definitely impact your hair.’
‘His hair turning white can be directly related to stress,’ she added.
Stress triggers the release of norepinephrine, a chemical that plays a key role in the body’s fight-or-flight response.
When under stress for prolonged periods of time, such as six months, the body is continuously exposed to high leves of norepinephrine, cortisol, and other stress hormones, which can lead to long-term changes in hair pigmentation as well as a whole host of other health markers.
But recent research has found that graying can begin at the cellular level within a week. Over the course of just five days, the fur on the backs of mice exposed to extreme stress turned gray. For human hair, the graying process could take a couple of months, but the underlying mechanisms may be similar.
Diddy shocked a New York courtroom after dramatically changing his appearance with his new white hair and white beard as he denied an updated set of allegations against him
The fur on the backs of mice turned grayish-white after they were kept in isolation for five days. The emotional stress caused pigment-producing stem cells to die
Extreme stress can manifest noticeably all over the body: eczema or psoriasis flare-ups, puffy eyes, brittle nails, and graying hair.
To better understand how stress affects changes in hair pigmentation, Harvard University researchers isolated mice for five days, inflicting significant emotional distress.
Over the course of five days, stress triggered a depletion of melanocyte stem cells, which produce pigment in hair. When those stem cells died out, they could not be regenerated, causing all of the mice’s fur to turn gray or fully white.
Chronic stress can lead to the loss of melanocyte stem cells in humans, too, resulting in graying or white hair.
The process in humans generally occurs over a longer period of time.
Mice hair cycles are much shorter than in humans – around two to three weeks.
They experience rapid hair growth and shedding, so changes in their fur pigmentation, such as turning gray, can happen within just a few days.
Human hair cycles are much longer. The growth phase lasts about two to three years followed by six months in a resting phase, which means that changes in hair color, such as graying, take much longer to become visible.
Stress may not cause an immediate change in hair color like it does in mice, but it could lead to gradual changes over the course of months or even years, depending on how intense and prolonged the stress is. Rapid greying could occur when hair naturally sheds and regrows.
The effect that stress levels has on hair also varies from person to person, depending on a range of factors including genetics, age, and the person’s overall health.
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