There are documented cases where children’s hair has turned white due to extreme stress or trauma. This phenomenon is often associated with conditions like poliosis and canities subita, the process of stress-related hair graying (or canities subita-like changes) typically unfolds gradually over time, often days to weeks or months , rather than truly overnight, as it involves shifts in hair growth cycles, pigment loss in follicles, or selective shedding of colored hairs followed by white regrowth. In children, this can manifest as premature graying (hair turning white before age 20), which is rare but well-documented and can indeed be triggered or accelerated by Stress as a factor: Chronic or acute stress, from school pressure, family issues, trauma, or even events like war, can speed up oxidative damage to hair follicles, leading to earlier graying.

📖Quran 73:17
So how will you, if you persist in unbelief, save yourself from a Day which will turn the children white-haired?

This can be linked conceptually to sudden shock or extreme stress, like the phenomenon of Canities subita, where intense fear, trauma, or panic can cause hair to turn white rapidly. The verse highlights a scene of intense fear and overwhelming events on the Day of Judgment, where even children, normally too young to experience the full weight of worldly stress, will experience such terror that their hair turns white.

In other words:

• The hair turning white is a symbol of extreme shock, fear, or trauma, which aligns with modern observations that extreme stress can cause sudden whitening of hair.
• It shows that the Quran describes physiological responses to fear and terror 1400+ years before modern science documented such effects.

Reference: Canities subita

The white hair in the verse represents sudden fear/shock, which science today confirms can happen due to extreme stress (even in children), the Qur’an doesn’t give the medical label Canities subita, but it gives the exact description of what modern medicine refers to by that name: hair turning white suddenly due to extreme shock and fear, So the Qur’an, 1400 years ago, described the effect, shock so great it turns children’s hair white, which modern science later recognized and gave a medical name.