How to Get Rid of Grey Hair

This week in her A to Z of Beauty and Style, Jess S talks grey hair and miracle cures… and why there’s absolutely no point in worrying about either.

Dealing With Grey Hair

One of the more common and obvious signs that we are entering our mature age is the fact that for many of us, our crowning glory becomes looking a little less lustrous and a little more seasoned. Salt and pepper hair can arrive very prematurely if your parents passed down the dodgy grey gene. In researching for this series, I am starting to blame my Mum and Dad for everything!

Sometime, maybe in your late twenties, you will be brushing your hair and notice a silvery strand poking out. Say hello to your future. I still recall finding my first grey hair. In fact, I found it along with a dozen others. Horrified, I pulled each one out by the shaft, one at a time. While this is surely one way to get rid of grey hair, your can’t keep this up for a lifetime!

FACT – despite the rumour, if you pull out a grey hair, six more do not come to its funeral.

FACT – If I pulled out all of my grey hair, I would resemble Sinead O’Connor.

Here are more facts on why our hair goes grey

Each hair follicle contains a finite number of pigment cells, which produce a chemical called melanin. It is this melanin that determines your hair colour. As you get older, these pigment cells start to pass away peacefully in their sleep. Which is the only reason I think of why you can wake up with new grey hairs overnight.

“That can’t be right? That wasn’t there yesterday…”

“Nutritional and hormonal factors can affect hair colour as well as stress but, by and large, the predisposition to go grey earlier or later in life is genetic.” Well, gee thanks Cosmo..

There are some things you can do to assist in the slowing down of going grey gracefully IF you prefer to remain faithful to your chosen colour. They include doing yoga (seriously! Is that the answer to EVERYTHING?) stop smoking, eat foods containing copper such as yams and turnips and stop hooking onto refined sugar and white flour. So what are your options for a natural defense? Lets recap.

How To Stop Grey Hair

Give up the cigarettes
Reduce your stress levels
Eat copper-rich foods
Eat more eggs, fish – foods high in amino acids
Cut out the sugar and white flour
Add a multi-vitamin into your daily routine
Try Yoga

Or you can do what I do, and turn to ye olde faithful 4.15 Iced Chestnut and let the box do the talking. That’s right ladies, a simple hair dye is often the easiest path to enlightenment.

But you do not have to fake it. Many folks are embracing their lack of pigment cells and are working with it, producing amazing results!

But if you want to fight the white, cut down on your stress and up your intake of Vitamin B-12. You can always spend a lot of time and appointments visiting the specialists who can check out the function of your pituitary or thyroid glands. Or you can get all Donna Hay-esque and whip up a hearty yam and turnip stew. Or turn to the chemist and get yourself a box of happy. Which is the cheat’s way. Which is MY way.

A Cure for Grey Hair?

Thanks to a team of European scientists, grey hair may soon become a thing of the past… but would you truly want to permanently reverse the aging process that sprouts out of the top of your head?

Imagine all the beautiful white-haired older people you know – now imagine their beautiful older person faces with their young person hair (try not to think of Rupert Murdoch’s bad hair dye job from a couple of years ago as you do this.) According to a new research report published online in The FASEB Journal people who are going grey “develop massive oxidative stress via accumulation of hydrogen peroxide in the hair follicle, which causes our hair to bleach itself from the inside out.”

Most importantly, says the report, this massive accumulation of hydrogen peroxide can be remedied with a “proprietary treatment developed by the researchers described as a topical, UVB-activated compound called PC-KUS (a modified pseudocatalase).”

Whatever that is. The short story is that messy hair dyes may be a thing of the past. (The new research shows the same treatment would work for the skin pigmentation condition, vitiligo.)

Although your first instinct might be yes, when can I get it – would you really want to stop the natural ageing process?

Take a look at these images and use our homepage to tell us what you think…