What causes grey hair? Can it be prevented or treated? 

One of the results of a lockdown during the current COVID-19 pandemic was that all hair parlours were closed down and those of us, why rely on their hair being dyed by professional hair stylists, were confronted with their grey hair again. 
Which made me want to uncover the various reasons why people get grey hair (in my case it was mostly B12-deficiency and stress) and whether grey hair can be prevented and/or treated. 

Hair gets its colour from a type of pigment called melanin. The formation of melanin begins in the fetus. Hair gets two types of pigments: the dark pigments are called eumelanin, and light pigments are called pheomelanin. These two types of melanin pigments blend together to form different types of hair colour. Again, these pigments are positioned properly in the hair follicles. So, when hair starts growing, these pigments are absorbed in the hair to give it a particular colour.

Hair colouration is a systematized process. So, if there is a slight difference in the bodily system, the hair loses its colour which is then called as grey hair. Over the decades, the researchers are working hard to find a real solution for grey hair. Unfortunately, there is no specific remedy yet come out that can provide the ultimate solution against grey hair. On the other hand, people must have a clear understanding on why they get grey hair. It will help them to find out the reasons specific to grey hair. Here are some of the causes of grey hair:

Heart disease: what are the differences between men and women?

Past week there was attention for new documentary called "De slag om het vrouwenhart", made by Hella de Jong, in which she relates about her quest for heart health. She suspected health problems, but wasn't sure why. After having been told her problems were psychosomatic, caused by her parents' traumatic WWII experiences, she wasn't satisfied and kept pushing for more research. Finally she got a massive heart attack while perfoming a stress test in the hospital.

This interview sent me on an immediate flashback to 1985, when my mom felt ill enough to visit the hopital after what was probably a minor heart attack. Her complaints weren't taken very seriously, yet they admitted her to hospital, though without being tied to a heart monitor. It was here she died that same day in the presence of my brother. When listening to Hella's story it seems there hasn't changed much in 35 years.

For a very long time, women were not taken into consideration when research was conducted on heart diseasae. Nor were they taken seriously when they went to their doctors with health complaints. Yet, among women, heart disease has also become the leading cause of death.

Determining heart disease risk in women

Women and men share many heart disease risk factors, but recent studies are showing what previous male-focused studies have not shown: Women also have their own unique heart disease risk factors.

Traditional risk factors common to both women and men:

• obesity
• smoking
• diabetes
• high blood pressure
• family history
• metabolic syndrome – the co-existence of high blood pressure, obesity, and high glucose and triglyceride levels
• high levels of C-reactive protein – a sign of inflammatory disease that can occur along with other cardiovascular risk factors

Some risk factors that relate specifically to women or that can affect women disproportionately include:

• relatively high testosterone levels prior to menopause
• increasing hypertension during menopause
• autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis – more common in women than in men
• stress and depression are more common among women
• low risk factor awareness: lack of recognition of many of the above conditions as risk factors for heart disease is a risk factor in itself

Why does stress make us sick more easily?

Most diseases that we are dealing with nowadays are chronic diseases as a result of poor lifestyle choices that will only affect us later in life. However, we can get sick much sooner when exposed to chronic stress. How can this happen?

Stress is defined as a series of events, starting with a stimulus leading to a stress response known as the 'fight-or-flight' reaction that can affect many body systems.
Physical or physiological stress is mostly short-lived, while psychological or emotional stress can last for a very long time.

Why are multivitamins important for your health?

Sometimes, when your only source of news is from mainstream media, it seems as if taking nutritional supplements is worse than taking medicines. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Especially multivitamins and fish oil can be your cheapest way to top health in addition to a healthy diet. People following healthy diets, are as rare as diamonds and it most certainly doesn't mean following the latest fad diet where you must buy expensive exotic ingredients to be doing it right.

Sadly this is possible when the general public is not being educated properly. Even our national nutritional council (Voedingscentrum) still keeps spouting how you should be consuming artificial margarine instead of real butter as it 'contains extra vitamin D' while butter from grass-fed cows will contain this naturally.

However, there is one truth that is universally embraced by almost everyone: in order to become healthier one has to consumer larger amounts of vegetables and fruits and less heavily processed foods. The sad truth is how most Dutch citizens don't even ingest 200 grams of vegetables and fruit on a given day, a far cry from the recommended 500 grams never mind the optimal 750 grams that is considered to be ideal when you're striving from longevity.

How do you recognize vitamin B deficiency?

Traditional media often run stories about how supplements may cause problems. One of the problems with studies highlighting supplements is they typically use synthetic vitamins, and not whole food supplements. Your body was not made to process unnatural agents, often posing as equivalents to the real thing. The reality is they are frequently not the same and do not provide you with the same health benefits.

Vitamin deficiencies may lead to illness and disease, and contribute to chronic issues such as high blood pressure, dementia and cancer. One nutritional deficiency having the potential to wreak havoc on your health, your cognition and even your respiratory system is a deficiency in vitamin B complex. B vitamins also help your body to detoxify from chronic exposure to pollutants and chemicals.

How to reduce stress with ASMR

Our brain is programmed to stress us. It does that a lot and on just about any subject. Like a lot of behavioral reactions, stress used to be and still is a survival mechanism that our brain used in order to inject alertness when needed. It’s there so we could harness internal resources and spring into action in a matter of seconds when hunted or hunting.

Fortunately for us, we rarely need to spring into action nowadays to avoid a prowling lion. Today, stress is not helpful and is often counter-productive. When stressed, most of us lose focus and are immersed in unpleasant feelings.

In the past, we needed all that “potential energy” when we faced fight or flight situations. It probably saved our lives more than once. Today, this energy still exists in each of us in certain situations; if it is not discharged via some sort of conduit (either physical or of a more neural nature), it slows us down.
That’s why we need to get creative in the way we release stress. We don’t have time to go on a vacation every week; often we even can’t step away from the almighty computer, tablet, or cell phone.

Timing of supplements

We frequently receive the question whether it really matters when to use a particular supplement.
Most supplements come with instructions to ingest them with a meal. This is in the assumption that meal contain fat, as fat will aid with absorption through the gut wall. Whether or not this can be your first meal of the day, depends on how much fat it contains. Especially fat-soluble vitamins, such as A,D, E and K need fat for proper absorption.
A work-around is to ingest them together with a larger amount of fish or krill oil softgels if your first meal doesn't contain enough fat.
Another reason take supplements with a meal, is that taking it by itself, can cause nausea or discomfort.

How to repel mosquitoes

Rarely have people been so upset about mosquitoes as in this past week: a plague of mosquitoes seems to have arrived in the Netherlands and most surrounding countries.
The reason it is possible to have so many blood thirsty mosquitoes swarm around us, is that mosquito eggs incubate in water puddles as small as a rain gutter, cavities on flat roofs, empty plant pots or pet bowls.
In 14 days or less when it is very warm, larvae become fully grown adults, of which the females start searching for blood. The combination of a semi-monsoon in June and sudden tropical heat in July caused a mosquito 'babyboom'.