Can Gray Hair Protect Us From Cancer?

If this is true, I will never whine again about a few gray hairs…

Today in the New Scientist there was an article I instantly got sort of engrossed in – it was an overview of a study being done on laboratory mice that sees a relationship between going gray and protection against cancer cells.

Image: Sxc.hu

Basically, cells called melanocytes produce the pigments that color hair and their numbers are supported by stem cells. Hair goes gray when the number of stem cells in hair follicles declines.

So, now the news is that Emi Nishimura of Tokyo Medical and Dental University in Japan have figured out why this decline happens.

Here’s an excerpt from the article, below – warning, it’s in total science-ease!

When the researchers exposed mice to radiation and chemicals that harm DNA, damaged stem cells transformed permanently into melanocytes. This ultimately led to fewer melanocytes, as it meant there were fewer stem cells capable of topping up the melanocyte pool.

It took me a bit to dissect, but I think I finally got it…and it’s pretty amazing.

Now, obviously it can’t help with all cancers, but stem cells and melanocytes color our hair, by turning off the division of those stem cells when they’re damaged and would pose a heightened risk of producing cancerous or pre-cancerous cells if allowed to continue dividing.

So what does that mean? It means we have something of a red flag at our disposal – in a sense. If we see a person with grey hair, that means that these stem cells are missing or reduced, which means they have a reduced chance of cancer coming out of these cells.

In short, there’s a silver lining to every silver hair!

(Can you sense me grasping to smell the roses???)