Nerding Out on Gorgeous Locks

Healthy Aging

Growing Hair (batteries included)

Our team of nerdy do-gooders likes to focus on keeping you healthy on the inside, so that we can all live healthier, longer lives. This week, we delve into the outer you. Specifically, let’s talk about the battle between gorgeous locks and aging.

How does aging affect my hair?

Trueb et al. provide a great review on the science of hair aging. As they explain, aging can be quite a bully, making our hair thinner, more brittle, less shiny, and grayer (and grayer), until sometimes our hair gives up altogether. As we get older, the following changes happen:

• Hair diameter gets smaller and less dense. For women, hair tends to be at its thickest during our 30s and 40s, after which each hair’s diameter gets smaller, resulting in thin hair. This thinning appears to be primarily driven by menopause and associated changes in hormones. Men’s hair starts thinning even earlier, beginning at around 25 years old.
• Hair gets curvier and more fragile. As we age, our hair structure bends and becomes more fragile, resulting in what we call ‘frizzy’ hair that is more susceptible to breakage.
• We lose our hair color. Pigment-feeding melanocytes in our hair follicles determine the color of our hair. Commo et al. have shown that these melanocytes have a limited number of times they can regenerate. Once they peter out, we are left with no color. This has been referred to as ‘melanin incontinence’.
• Our hair gets less shiny. Lipids in our hair follicles help our hair stay smooth, shiny, and soft. As we get older, however, we can lose these good fats in our hair. Specifically, the amount of lipid-rich sebum that our hair follicles produce declines once we hit our mid-40s and 50s.

With all the science around healthy aging, is there anything we can do about our aging hair?

This science is certainly getting more promising. If we can reverse aging in cells, that should include hair cells, too. Here are a few key targets highlighted by Trueb et al. on what is top of mind among anti-aging scientists as it relates to hair health:

• Restore mitochondrial function (aka, your hair growth batteries). Numerous studies have shown that dysfunctioning mitochondria are key contributors to poor hair quality and growth. Here’s the exciting part: studies have shown that improving mitochondrial function can improve hair growth. More on that later.
• Reduce reactive oxygen species. When mitochondria stop working well, not only do they produce too little hair-growing ATP energy, they also produce too many damaging reactive oxygen species (ROS). The result? Aging hair.  Thus, repairing mitochondria provides a 2-in-1 benefit: more energy, and less ROS.
• Tame microinflammation and fibrosis. While male pattern baldness and senescent alopecia (age-related hair loss) were once believed to be two completely different conditions, there is evidence that they have similar underlying mechanisms, including microinflammation and fibrosis (aka scarring) in the hair follicle that inevitably leads to hair loss. In fact, male pattern baldness has been characterized as a version of accelerated aging. It is not surprising, then, to learn that decreasing both inflammation and fibrosis are being explored as a way to slow down and even reverse hair loss.
• Decrease scalp fungi. If follicles are the healthy roots for our hair, our scalp should be a fertile field for healthy hair. As we get older, our scalp tends to dry up, and a type of fungus called Malassezia, sets in. While zombie-inducing head mold may be the foundation of a popular game and series, the truth is we have already had Malassezia turning our follicles into poor hair-growth zombies. This is why antifungal agents have been considered a part of a healthy hair regime, especially as we get older.

So, while not all of us may have hair long enough to rapunzel, there are a lot of promising fronts being pursued to help us keep healthy hair for as long as possible, especially as we age.