We recently answered a question from Gauhar about the best way to treat gray hair. As a follow up, here’s a story about new way to treat gray hair that may cure it forever. 
Hair color breakthrough
According to this reference, shampoo researchers say that you’ll be able to wash the gray out of your hair within the next few years. Dr. Bruno Bernard, head of L’Oreal’s hair biology research team explains that hair turns gray when melanocytes, pigment-producing cells, stop working properly. Bernard and his fellow researchers have found that these non-functioning cells lack a certain enzyme known as TRP-2 and they’re planning further studies to determine how to reactivate this enzyme’s action on hair follicles. If successful, this treatement could allow us to keep our hair color for longer, or maybe even restore color back to gray hair.
If you want to read more, here’s a more detailed discussion of Bruno’s theories on hair biology.
The Beauty Brains bottom line
This is cosmetic science at its finest – solving hair care problems with innovative technology. But unfortunately this technology certainly won’t be cheap! And because you have to wait for your hair to grow out to see a difference it’ll take a while to see a change. We wonder would it take to convince a person to use a product like this that is very expensive and that could take weeks or even months before it really shows results. Would it be word of mouth from a friend? A review from a beauty mag or website? Maybe some kind of legitimate references from an independent authority? Or, in extreme cases would it even take a prescription from your doctor?
What would it take for you to use a product like this? Leave a comment for the rest of the Beauty Brains community.
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The only way I could be convinced to use it is if it also CHANGED my hair color. I’d rather be grey then the very boring brown I am naturally. But I’m sick and tired of being a bottle blond as well. So if it could make me a natural blond or return the red I had in my hair as a kid, I’d use it no matter what the cost, but if it kept me this flat, boring shade of brown, then I’d skip it.
It would likely take all of the above options: endorsement from a trusted friend, consistent positive writeups in beauty magazines, and, of course, and endorsement from the Beauty Brains.
This’d be cool — especialyl since I could do it myself at home in an easier manner than the henna+indigo that’s usually such a trial for such a VOLUME of hair.
And going to a salon to get the henna put in always involves convincing them NOT to put it on my temples (I love grey temples).
I’d love to be able to do it at home however I want. A little judicious application of vaseline, and I could get that damned Lily Munster streak I want so bad!
What about the research that showed that graying was caused by buildup of peroxides? Sounds like we still don’t completely understand all the processes, and it’s more than likely a lot more complex than switching a single trigger.
Of course not. I believe there are a variety of different mechanisms that cause gray hair. Some gray hair is caused by the melanocytes getting misaligned. They still work but the dye doesn’t get injected into the hair.
Then there was the recent research that said getting gray hair is the result of a natural process that protects us from cancer.
Complicated indeed.
When I was about 5 in the late 60′s I remember seeing a woman with long gray hair and thinking how beautiful it was and how I couldn’t wait to get mine!
At 28 I got my first gray hair but in my mid 30′s my hair which had always been fine but thick and healthy began thinning – not sure if it’s breakage or death of folicle.
If some one could truly solve hair breakage – and I suspect it’s an inside out process not topical – I’d be interested.
Besides that it seems so many products ~do~ react with the body even if that is not the intent so I just wouldn’t trust even the ‘experts’ until the stuff had been used for years and studied thoroughly.