Shades of gray: What happens to presidents' hair
Aging in the Oval Office: Who did it best?
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Stress can cause hair to fall out more quickly, a dermatologist says
- Replacement hairs use up pigment; when it's gone, hair is gray or white
- Once your hair is gray, you're stuck with it
What do all these men
have in common besides holding the highest office in the United States?
Their hair turned gray during their presidencies.
Why? One word: Stress.
"When people have
stressful situations, what happens is there's a condition known as
telogen effluvium, and all that means is that your hair is shedding more
rapidly than it should," says Dr. Howard Brooks, a dermatologist and
director of SKIN: Cosmetic Dermatology Center of Georgetown in
Washington.
Every time a follicle
loses a hair and a hair grows back, it uses up pigment. When each hair
is replaced, pigment is used. Once the pigment runs out, the hair turns
gray or white.
When Bill Clinton entered
office at age 46, he already had salt-and-pepper hair, but he came out
of his term with a head of nearly white hair.
After George W. Bush's eight years in office, he noted his looks had changed.
"When I go home," Bush said in 2009, "I'm going to look in the mirror and like what I see, except maybe for the gray hair."
As Obama enters his
second term, his jet-black hair is speckled with white. With more issues
awaiting him, doctors say that's just a sign of things to come.
"There's so much
stress," notes Brooks, "That his hair is starting to shed more readily
than it should -- about three to four, five times than it should."
And even though Obama will leave office in his mid-50s, physicians say the gray is something he'll have to live with.
"Usually once you're gray, " says Brooks, "You are stuck with the gray."
Take a closer look at our own president Goodluck jonathan,all black hair now gray hair piling up.More work more stress.E no easy my brother.
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