Gray hair, what can you do about it?

At Skin Actives Scientific, we’ve been thinking about this question literally since we were founded. 

The fact is that it’ s easy in our skin and hair health journeys to become preoccupied with the tell-tale signs of physical aging. Wrinkles, uneven tone or texture, and loose skin are potential indicators that we work against every day. But what about graying hair?

Graying hair is often seen as a dead giveaway for physical aging, even though it starts quite young in some. Gray hair is such a ubiquitous challenge in fact, that it’s the one we are on some level least likely to consider, look at it this way:

Women have been expected to color their hair for so long it’s been turned into an (unfair) social obligation. As the years have passed, the perceived stigma surrounding male hair dye has depreciated, with allowances that dyed hair must appear as though it’s not dyed. 

All of this is a long way of saying that perhaps you don’t notice people around you aging in this way any more. Because doesn’t it seem like the concept of the matronly grandmother and patient, kindly grandfather are a thing of the past?

But people certainly haven’t stopped aging. They just started covering it up.

Can this whole cycle simply be prevented with the right care? Or if it’s already begun, can it be reversed?

Why Is My Hair Turning Gray?

Science tells us that cause and effect govern material reality. Therefore if we see something happening, like in this case: your hair is turning gray, then there must be a reason.

While for many years we’ve heard of people whose hair turns white from shock or gray from stress, science has never found an observable, repeatable connection between those stressors and gray/white hair. Each year we see new data, so while anecdotal evidence of a stress connection remains high, the scientific community is still looking for the kind of experiment that can put stress induced gray into a peer reviewed paper.

Our understanding of the science behind gray hair at this point is biological. 

It comes down to pigment. 

You see, the color of your skin and hair are determined by cells in your body called melanocytes. Melanocytes produce melanin, which create the color of your skin and hair. In your hair, melanocytes are located deep in the root of your hair, past the sebaceous gland but just above the blood vessel that feeds your hair in a place called the “bulb”. Inside the bulb melanocytes are outnumbered by keratinocytes (that word is probably really familiar), on a 5:1 basis. 

Each hair bulb only has a certain number of melanocytes and as they die, your hair loses its pigment. 

As we have learned previously, when we age our body deprioritizes certain cells it sees as non essential. Additionally, cells that don’t receive the nutrients that they require, either from dietary deficiency, deprioritization, or environmental effects die.

So if say, a person begins life with fewer melanocytes in their hair naturally, then those cells may die off sooner, leading to gray or white hair earlier in life. Those born with an abundance of melanocytes may retain their youthful hair color for longer. It’s luck of the draw.

Causes of Gray Hair

At Skin Actives Scientific, we are always coming back to basics. 

Cell dormancy and death occur when a cell is either not getting what it needs, or is exposed to stressors that overcome its ability to function. 

In terms of cell heath, make sure that you are getting the vitamins and minerals that you need, all the way down to your scalp. If your hair is thick already, this may be easier said than done. Your hair care routine is going to be vital for this. Your hair is living at the root, but we spend so much time fussing over the dead part, the part that we see, that we often forget about getting nutrients where they are needed.

Additionally, much of what we do to “take care” of our hair is actually harsh and damaging to it. 

Oxidants can take the form of pollutants, and the sprays and chemicals we routinely bombard our hair with can certainly count. To say nothing of hair color. 

The peroxide treatments necessary to first strip the natural texture from your hair so that it can accept color are exactly the kind of pollutant bombardment that can potentially lead to cell death resulting in gray hair, white hair, or even hair loss.

So, it’s a fact: by nature your hair will eventually start to gray. But if you take care of it, it’s possible to extend the hand you have been dealt longer than you might have lasted on your own. And in addition, you shouldn’t be using harsh chemical treatments that will actually damage your hair further and get you gray faster.

What You Can Do About Gray Hair

Unfortunately melanocytes cannot be replaced once they have died. This is just the scientific fact. Gray hair cannot be reversed. 

However, you can work to get the nutrients that you need to your scalp, preventing the death of melanocyte cells and prolonging the lifespan of your natural hair color.

In recent years a trend has emerged around tangerines for preventing or reversing gray hair. The theory that this trend is based around seems to suggest that a lack of tyrosine in our diet leads to hair graying. Our founder, Dr. Hannah Sivak looked into this theory and doesn’t think too much of what she found:

“Is lack of tyrosine the reason why our hair goes grey? Not really, the problem, as I have discussed before, is the decrease in activity of the enzymes that are involved in defending us from oxidants: methionine sulfoxide reductase (MSR) and catalase. Of course we want tyrosine, and we have it (together with other amino acids) in our hair serum. Also, there is no reason whatsoever why tangerine could help. Unless, of course, it is a powerful source of MSR and catalase (see below) which it isn’t.”

So the tangerine craze is probably worth skipping. If you’d like to hear more from Dr. Sivak, check out her personal blog, here.

Meanwhile, Skin Actives has a wide variety of products to help you meet your scalp’s nutritional needs:

• Double Action Hair Serum - Containing both MSR and Keratinocyte Growth Factor (remember them?), this serum contains the core proteins and enzymes necessary to maintain your hair’s natural health. This serum comes in a twist top bottle for application near the roots, where the serum will do the most good.
• Hair Care Serum with ROS BioNet and Apocynin - If your hair has taken on more than others, consider adding in some extra antioxidants to the mix. This serum has all the enzyme power of our Double Action Hair Serum with our proprietary blend of antioxidants and apocynin for even more oxidant scouring action.
• Sea Kelp Coral - Don’t forget to feed your skin! Happy, healthy skin starts with the nutrients it needs to thrive, and your scalp is skin too. Immerse your scalp in this cool, soothing sea kelp gel to maximize cell health and prevent dormancy or cell death before they happen.

Thanks for joining us for another Skin Actives blog everyone! We’ll have more coming for you soon! But before we let you go, we’d like to share with you a promotion we’re doing this week: 

We all know about the absolutely crazy-feeling world events that are happening right now in Ukraine.

Also, we all know that war is a terrible thing that violently affects the lives of ordinary people. Over a million Ukrainian citizens have already fled to Poland, with millions more displaced by fighting inside the borders of their own country.

This week from Tuesday, March 8th, through noon Friday, March 11th, Skin Actives is donating 10% of our sales to Shelterbox to help with this humanitarian crisis. To be frank, look at this as a site wide sale, but instead we’re taking that 10% we would have marked down, and sending it on to Shelterbox for their life saving work. Or, please consider making a donation to Shelterbox directly in these unprecedented times.

Thank you, as always, for taking the time to read this.

Best,

The Skin Actives Team