Is it possible to scare someone hair white

The hair can't actually turn white overnight, because all the hair is "dead", and the only way you can make its colour change is with dyes. Hair gets its colour from a chemical called melanin, which is pumped in by cells at the base of the hair follicle.

As your hair goes grey, these cells at the base stop making melanin. So some hairs will be their normal colour, but some the ones without melanin will be completely white.

In the case of Marie Antoinette syndrome-like symptoms, your body would stop normal hair pigmentation. As a result, though your hair would continue to grow, it would be gray or white in color. There are other possible causes of premature graying or whitening of the hair that might be mistaken for this syndrome.

Consider the following conditions:. Marie Antoinette syndrome has been historically portrayed as a being caused by sudden stress. In the cases of Marie Antoinette and Thomas More, their hair color changed in prison during their final days.

However, the underlying cause of white hair is much more complex than a single event. In fact, your hair color changes are likely related to another underlying cause. Over time, chronic stress may lead to premature gray hairs, though.

You may also experience hair loss from severe stress. If you notice premature grays, you can mention them to your doctor at your next physical. Premature gray or white hair is certainly a cause for investigation. Martin Samuels at Brigham and Women's Hospital said that the slow motion feeling is part of the body's "fight or flight" response, where your brain will only let you focus on a perceived threat.

As adrenaline and other drugs flood the system, they can make a person hyper-focused on the danger. After being scared, a person will sometimes be described as looking as "pale as a ghost. When faced with a threat, the body will instantly start sending blood to vital organs and muscles to help with either a potential fight or flight.

You're not aware of it. Eventually most people lose all their hair entirely. There was only a primitive understanding — if any understanding — of the immune system.

Fear, shock or grief, on the other hand, were something people could wrap their brains around, which probably explains why emotions play a huge part in most of the stories about hair turning white overnight. According to a paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, the first documented case of sudden hair whitening was in the Talmud in 83 A.

The victim was a year-old boy who was appointed chief of the main Israeli Talmudic academy. In later years, the phenomenon was attributed to Marie Antoinette , whose auburn locks supposedly turned ghostly white the night before she lost her head to the guillotine and to Shah Jahan of India after his favorite wife died he went on to build the Taj Mahal in her honor.