A long, long time ago – way back in Spring 2011 – being all silver-foxy was considered a hot new trend. Gals young and old were letting their hair go gloriously gray – or even dying it – and luxuriating in the look. That lasted about one hot, tasty second and then the fashion hierarchy decided that it wasn’t such a good idea and banished grays back to the (dye) bottle and George Clooney’s magnificent head.

And that, in a nutshell is the brief history of gray hair being considered a positive thing. Why the hate? Well, there are a few reasons:

1. Most of us go gray. (no.)
2. Most of us go gray as we get older. (No!)
3. Most of us spend our hard earned dollars (that should be going towards shoes) on salon visits and hair dye (die) trying to fight the fight against gray hair. (NOOO!)

And since we know tantrums (*sob) won’t solve anything, we look to science. Yes. Science.



MSNBC recently laid some serious science news on us revealing that the mad scientists at L’Oreal (Yes… the very same L’Oreal that makes hair dye!) have been secretly pining away, twiddling their fingers together and laughing maniacally as they develop a pill that will keep your lovely locks from going the dreaded gray. Fo realz? Fo realz.

Here’s the gray-hair sciency-bit. In June 2011, the medical journal Cell published a study from researchers at New York University, stating that they had isolated a protein that coordinates pigmentation in hair follicles. This very same protein, according to these NYU-brainiacs facilitates the work of both stem cells that guide the development of hair follicles and an entirely different set of stem cells, called melanocytes, that produce color. And since they’ve succeeded in turning black-haired mice gray by inhibiting the fancy ‘wnt’ pathway (no, we don’t know what ‘wnt’ means), can reversing the process be far off? We think not. Oh, yeah… the researchers also suspect that this could help scientists understand diseases in which melanocytes begin uncontrolled cell growth—in other words, melanoma. (Did you put your sunscreen on today?) So that’s a win-WIN. Right?

But back to gray. According to MSNBC, L’Oreal’s magical pill has been in development for nearly 10 years (Ooo…) but could be available as soon as 2015. MSNBC explains how it’s supposed to work:

The pill contains an undisclosed fruit extract that mimics the chemical tyrosinase-related protein or TRP-2, an enzyme that protects pigmentation production, the company has said. The goal of the fruit extract pill is to prevent oxidative stress, a process that occurs when hair cells succumb to antioxidants and turn gray, L’Oreal officials say.



Does this mean your already gray strands could return to their original hue of blond, brown or black? Um. No. The rub to this whole anti-gray revolution is that you have to ingest the pill for 10 years before your hair goes gray – those of you frantically doing the math can stop when you realize the secondary problem involved here: When exactly does your hair genetically go gray?

Okay, okay… so it’s not perfect. Yet. But it’s progress! And that’s fine by me.