Gray Hair Treatment

There are three major ways to renew your hair colour in order to cover your grey. You can choose to go to your hair salon and have your hairdresser provide a professional hair colouring. This involves washing, bleaching and then adding your colour of choice – none of which is good for your hair. The second choice is to buy a colonisation kit at your local drug or department store. Again, it will normally involve first bleaching your hair and then adding the colour of your choice. And again you are beginning your process by harming your hair. Thirdly, you can choose to purchase a single-chemical colonisation process. This usually works by applying it during your shower, letting it stay on your hair for as long as you want the colour-depth to return, and then rinse it out. This is not nearly so damaging to your hair as the bleaching processes.

The downside to any of these processes, including both the above and most of the other alternatives out there, is that they are only changing the colour of your grown hair and after a week or so you are beginning to have visible growth of your grey hair. After two weeks it becomes noticeable, making renewing your chosen colonisation process necessary, renewing the damage you are causing to your hair. It is not natural and must continue to be used to keep your chosen colour looking natural and keep your roots coloured. None of it is natural and all of it is damaging, more or less, to your hair.

Would not it be nice to renew your original hair colour naturally? There are several herbal tonics and rubs/shampoos out there which say they will restore natural hair colour. You choose any of them at your own risk. However, some are more risky than others. Any natural colour restoration system which depends upon either being a rub or a shampoo sounds more like an artificial dye job. You need to seek out the ones that are taken internally. Tonics and teas would appear to be the most effective of all natural hair colour restoratives - but do they really work?

A word of caution is required here. There are many such teas and tonics available claimed to restore your natural hair colour. However, there is no scientific evidence at the moment that any existing medicine, diet, herb, supplement or natural product such as tonic or a herbal tea can prevent or reverse greying hair. It is not possible yet to revive the dead pigment producing cells at the root of your hair and if you decide to buy any product promising to change the colour of your hair naturally you are most likely wasting your time and money.

Premature gray hair and hair loss are some of the most common known genetic conditions. Restoring lost hair remains to most of us a distant dream. However, there are some existing options for replacing lost hair and several of them may seem surprisingly effective even to the most skeptical hair loss sufferer. The three main methods of hair restoration known today include surgical hair restoration, non-surgical hair replacement and therapies for regrowing hair using pills and topical applications. The main technique of surgical hair restoration today is hair transplantation, whereas wigs, hair system, hair loss concealers and hair thickeners are the most popular aids used to replace the lost hair by non-surgical means. The non-surgical camouflage is obviously the quickest and the least expensive method of replacing lost hair, though not tremendously popular, as many people believe that hairpieces and concealers cannot withstand rain and wind and do not look natural. In spite of this common belief, some of them are extremely resistant to external influences and can appear very authentic. Hair systems and concealers are often the only options of restoring lost hair for people suffering from non-hereditary forms of hair loss such as unpredictable alopecia areata.

Surgical hair restoration happens to be clearly the most expensive method of restoring lost hair but also the most elegant solution. It can only be used in people suffering from hereditary baldness and burn patients. Hair transplant candidates are required to have sufficient hair density at the back of their scalp and many women suffering from female form of hair loss with its typical diffuse balding pattern do not meet this condition. Hair restoration surgery has made great strides in the past twenty years or so with the introduction of the two main techniques used today - follicular unit transplantation and, more recently, follicular unit extraction. These advances in hair transplantation enable the grouping of hairs very close together, which gives modern hair transplants a completely natural look. The main weakness of hair transplant surgery, besides the cost and the pain involved, is the limited supply of donor hair and the need for multiple surgeries to achieve the final change. Furthermore, patients have to commit themselves to the use of finasteride or any other adequate medicinal hair loss therapy for the rest of their lives to prevent further loss of their existing hair.

Hair loss pills and topical applications do not, despite great scientific advances and the discoveries of recent years, provide satisfactory hair restoration results yet. The two most commonly prescribed hair loss drugs, finasteride and topical minoxidil, can be effectively used to reduce hair loss but their ability to regrow lost hair is relatively limited. Their effectiveness generally declines sharply in the later stages of the balding process. There is no existing medicinal or natural hair loss remedy that can deliver adequate visual results comparable to either hair transplant surgery or non-surgical hair replacements such as hair systems and hair loss concealers. Although there are some promising medicinal hair loss drugs currently under development, especially in the area of genetic research, the ultimate pill for baldness is not expected to become commercially available within the next fifteen years or so. Other advances in hair science, such as hair multiplication or the generation of new hair follicles in wounds, also hold out some promise but it seems that hair transplant surgery will in the next ten to fifteen years remain the most complete method of hair restoration.

At some point in our lives we will all experience the onset of gray hair. Contrary to popular belief gray hair is not always related to person’s old age. The first gray hair can occur in our teens but some individuals will not be bothered by gray hair until a very ripe age.

Everybody is different but the pigment in our hair follicles is generated in the same way. The cells in our hair follicles called melanocytes generate pigment called melanin. This gives our hair its characteristic colour. When these melanocytes stop producing the pigment the result is white hair. The white hair blending with your pigmented darker hair gives the impression of gray hair. In reality the gray hair is not gray but white.

The main reason for our hair behaving this way is heredity. If your mom or dad started turning gray at a young age then the chances are you may also suffer from premature graying.  Obviously, age plays a big part in the graying process. The pigment in the hair shaft is generated from the cells at the base of the hair’s root and as we grow older these cells start producing less pigment until they cease producing the pigment altogether and we end up with white hair.

Gray hair can also be the result of a medical condition. If you are deficient in B vitamins or suffer from a thyroid imbalance your hair can also start going gray prematurely. However, the sudden appearance of gray hair is not due to psychological shock or trauma. Studies have shown that if this happens then it is typically caused by telogen effluvium. What happens here is that the pigmented hair stops growing and starts shedding before it effects the growth of gray hairs, giving the impression of hair turning gray overnight. Telogen effluvium causes hair thinning but seldom leads to complete baldness.

Dying hair has become a common fashion these days among women as well as many men. You may use colours to add shine to your hair or to cover your gray hair. You may either use a home colour or go for a professional colour. Professional colours offer solution for a wide variety of requirements, while home colours are suitable for gray coverage and one to two levels of lightening. There is a wide variety or professional hair colours available in the market. Making the right choice may seem quite difficult.

Depending on your requirements, you can choose from different types of hair dyes. The first category is temporary hair dyes, which usually last for 1-2 shampoos. Such hair dyes are good for some occasions such as Halloween. However, they may last longer on blonde hair or porous and chemically treated hair. Temporary hair dyes come in both spray and liquid form. They usually contain FD&C dyes.

Semi-permanent hair dyes are the second category of hair colours. They usually last for 4-6 weeks. You can use them to blend gray hair without lightening the colour of your existing hair. Some semi-permanent hair colours contain only food grade dyes or FD&C dyes with an alkalizer. Some use oxidative dyes with an alkalising agent. Herbal hair dye henna is another form of semi permanent hair colour, which comes in red tones. However, it is not suitable for porous hair. Manufacturers use different ingredients including metals, oxidative dyes and other plant pigments to alter the shade of henna.

Progressive hair colorants are another category of hair colours. The more often you use them, the more colour they deposits on the outer surface of your hair. You need to be careful in using progressive dyes as some of them use lead acetate and other metallic components that can be harmful to your health if used inappropriately.

Permanent hair dyes contain various ingredients. Some use natural ingredients, while some may use many chemicals and concentrations of oxidative dyes. Chemicals like ammonia and monoethanolamine are very common in permanent hair colours and are known to be highly allergenic. Monoethanolamine colour is good for you if your hair is porous and fades quickly. Ammonia can make some hair prone to breakage depending on the other ingredients present in the hair colour.

It pays to have some basic understanding of the ingredients in a particular hair colour before you start using it. Most hair colours contain certain chemicals that may cause several problems such as hair loss, itchy scalp, flaking scalp, rashes and nausea. Such chemicals include various synthetic and toxic or allergenic ingredients. Have a careful look at the labels before you pick up a colour and always use a patch test before applying any such products to your scalp.

Hair loss is similar to gray hair in that it is in the most cases genetically determined and thus very difficult to deal with efficiently. The hair loss treatment options can be, in the first place, divided into surgical and non-surgical therapies. Although there are only a few surgical techniques currently used, the non-surgical spectrum is wide and confusing. Propecia and Rogaine might be the best known medicinal hair loss treatments, while dried fruits of saw palmetto and a Chinese herb, He Shou Wu, also known as Fo-Ti, are the natural ingredients most frequently used in alternative hair loss remedies. Fo-Ti is also frequently used to treat gray hair.

The non-surgical, hair loss therapies can be in principle broken down into medicinal and alternative treatments, whereas when considering methods of application, they can be divided into oral treatments, topicals and others, such as low-level laser therapy or massage. Irrespective of the aforementioned breakdowns, hair growth treatments work either by blocking the activity of dihydrotestosterone, also called antinandrogens, or by stimulating hair growth.

Dihydrotestosterone (DHT) is a biologically-active metabolite of the male hormone testosterone that is held to be the main cause of both male and female hereditary pattern baldness. DHT causes hair miniaturization as the hair becomes finer and thinner with every new hair growth cycle until the hair follicles refuse to produce another hair at all. The exact mechanism by which DHT affects hair follicles is not known, though. Finasteride, better known under its trade name Propecia, is the only clinically-proven and FDA-approved anti-androgen used for treating male pattern baldness. It acts by preventing the creation of DHT in the scalp. Since the introduction of Propecia, many other drugs and natural therapies have emerged claiming anti-androgen activity. Some of them are supposed to work by a different mode of action than Propecia, such as preventing DHT from binding to the receptor sites in the follicle or blocking activity in the androgen receptor itself.

Minoxidil, also known under its trade name Rogaine, is the best-known hair loss medicine amongst hair growth stimulants. It is assumed that hair growth stimulants work by directly stimulating epithelial growth of hair follicles and some of them may also counteract the hardening of the hair follicles but the exact mechanism of their action has never been described. One thing that all hair growth stimulants claim to have in common is their ability to increase the length of the hair growth cycle, thus improving the ratio of hair in the growth phase and to increase the hair’s diameter.

The natural hair loss treatments are in principle assumed to work by the aforementioned modes of action and are often presented as safe alternatives to medicinal treatments. There are not too many hair loss treatments out there that have been clinically proven and independently verified to be effective in treating baldness. Of those few existing, all happen to be medicinal drugs. Natural hair loss treatments have still to live up to marketer claims.

When deciding about the most suitable hair loss treatment option, one should consider approaching the problem from different angles. It is best advised to use a combination of anti-androgen and hair growth stimulant, such as a Propecia/Rogaine combo. Alternative, hair loss treatments, for instance natural remedies, should mainly be considered as a method of fine-tuning this basic regimen in order to achieve additional benefits. You may need to try out several combinations of hair loss treatments to find out for works best for you.

The hair loss industry generates worldwide annual revenues of several billion US dollars, but there seem to be only a few options proven to deliver measurable results. One such option is hair transplant surgery. Hair transplant surgery alone is estimated to make revenues of three billion dollars from the nearly 300,000 hair transplants that are expected to be performed around the world this year. In addition to that, there are billions of dollars to be made annually from the sales of diverse hair loss products. But how many of them really work? One would not be exaggerating to say that 90% of all non-surgical, hair loss treatments are a scam. Having said that, billions of dollars are spent every year wastefully on useless rubbish. One thing is wasting money and the other no less important thing is losing the battle against time while the hair loss continues, most likely becoming irreversible. But how can you tell which product is a waste of time and money without trying it out?

Once you have pinpointed the product you are considering buying, check the independent consumer reviews to get a basic understanding of its effectiveness. Do not use testimonials at the manufacturer’s website. It is best-advised to use references from large independent websites such as Folica, Amazon, GreyHairLoss or RateItAll and crosscheck with reviews at various hair loss forums. Since it is almost impossible to recognise right away who is telling the truth and who is cheating you, you might need to come back and check again here once you have done your research and gained a better understanding of the product and its individual components.

As a second step, you should look at the composition of the hair loss remedy you are considering trying. If you cannot find the list of individual, active substances, ask the manufacturer or its marketer to provide it. If they fail to provide you the required breakdown, consider it a scam. You need to check the stories behind active substances and if you want to get a really good insight into their science, you must verify references to clinical trials and peer studies. This is probably the most difficult and the most time-consuming part of this job.

The third thing you might need to do is to check the manufacturer’s claims. If they sound unsubstantiated and too good to be true or the before and after pictures appear unrealistic, be careful. And lastly, if the product you are looking at is promoted on the web, check on the site and in the whois directory who is behind the website promoting it. If the name of the owner is hidden behind a whois guard, apply a deep discount to your valuation. Any person or company that truly believes in its product will be proud to have its name and address attached to it.

Though these tips may not be exhaustive, they should assist you in assessing the potential of the hair loss remedy you are considering buying and might save you frustration with wasting time and money on useless rubbish. If you have tried certain products already and want to share you experience, there are several places where you can have your word spread and heard by other hair loss suffers, such as the aforementioned Amazon, Folica, RateItAll and GreyHairLoss, to name just a few.

Grey hair at a young age can have various causes, such as vitiligo, vitamin B deficiency, thyroid imbalance, constant and extreme stress, alopecia areata, bad diet, etc. but its greatest trigger is genetics, causing the premature death of pigment-producing cells in hair follicles. When it comes to treating grey hair caused by one of the aforementioned health conditions then the focus should be on tackling the primary reason. In treating genetically determined, premature grey hair, any effective therapy should involve interference with our genes. However, at the moment, no such treatment exists that can halt or reverse the dying of pigment-producing cells called melanocytes. There are some commercial products out there, though, containing vitamins, minerals and a Chinese herb Fo-Ti that are supposed to stop and reverse grey hair but the only evidence supporting the claims made by their marketers refers back to the old Chinese legend of an old villager, Mr He, from one thousand years ago. Vitamins B, namely PABA and folic acid, have been observed to stop greying in individuals with diets poor in vitamins B but they cannot help reverse grey hair in people suffering from chronic vitamin B deficiency, let alone in cases of genetically-determined greying hair.

Therefore, the only available and effective treatment option for premature and age-related grey hair is to cover it. There are two principal colouring options for covering grey hair, which include hair dyes and progressive hair colorants. Hair dyes can be temporary, semi-permanent, demi-permanent or permanent, depending on the durability of their colouring effects. The ability of the pigment molecules to penetrate into the hair shaft determines the stability of the hair colour. Each hair consists of at least two layers, the cuticle, which is an outer protective layer, and the cortex, which is hidden under the cuticle. Permanent hair dye is, as its name says, the most stable of the hair colouring options and the most effective method of covering grey hair amongst hair dyes, as its large molecules get trapped in the cortex of the hair and resist being washed out but it is also the most drastic method of dyeing hair. Hair dyes are popular, especially with female consumers. Men usually look for more subtle options of covering their grey hair as for a man dyeing hair is socially less acceptable. Progressive hair colorants, with their slow and gradual mode of action, seem to be the right product for men.

The marketing of progressive hair colorants is typically targeted at male customers but these products can be also successfully used by women. They colour hair gradually and unnoticeably and only affect your grey hair. They can be applied selectively so that you can leave certain areas untreated to look more natural. Progressive hair colorants are easy to apply, no plastic gloves are needed to apply them (with very few exceptions), and you just have to spread them on your white areas. Their mechanism of action consists of the chemical reaction involving one or two substances from the colorant, which in the presence of atmospheric oxygen produce synthetic pigment on the surface as well as in the pores and for some of them also in the cortex of your hair. As the substance is drying in the air, the chemical reaction begins and lasts until the next shampoo wash. Hence, the longer the substance stays in your hair the better. The downside is that progressive hair colorants have to be reapplied quite frequently, which makes them more expensive compared with the majority of traditional hair dyes. Progressive hair colorants are either metallic based or use organic chemicals.

The occasional controversy surrounding these products results from a wrong understanding of their mechanism of action and the purpose they were designed for. Their aim is not to cover all your grey hair with a single application. For people with more than 50% of their hair white, it is practically impossible to achieve full white hair coverage with these products, no matter how often they apply them. They were designed for people who would like to reduce the amount of their grey and wish to do it discretely and unnoticeably. Frequent shampooing reduces the effectiveness of these products as does exposure to direct sun.

Rogaine was the first medical drug in history approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treating genetically determined hair loss. By now it has been approved and is available as a cure for thinning hair in many other countries of the world. Its sole active ingredient is minoxidil, a vasodilator that was initially used in the form of the oral drug Loniten to treat high blood pressure. Minoxidil is a hair-growth stimulant but its exact mechanism of action is not very well known. Since Loniten has long come off patent, generic minoxidil is widely available in pharmacies at a very reasonable price and in most countries it does not require a doctor’s prescription.

Both Rogaine and generic minoxidil solutions come in concentrations of 2% for women and 5% for men but many experimental, generic hair loss remedies use concentrations of up to 20%. Minoxidil is often blamed for causing negative side effects. Since it has become the most commonly used drug for treating baldness, its side effects are very well documented and they happen to be often largely exaggerated. In less than 1% of patients they include an irregular or fast heart beat, decreased blood pressure, blurred vision, swelling face and ankles, numbness in the hands, etc. These symptoms are directly related to minoxidil being a vasodilator. In addition, minoxidil can cause undesired hair growth on the face and other parts of the body. This is due to its ability to stimulate hair growth. But some side effects that minoxidil is often blamed for are not caused by minoxidil itself. They include inflammation, itchiness and redness of the scalp, dandruff and allergic reactions. These side effects can be attributed to the chemical vehicles used in the solution, such as propylene glycol and isopropyl alcohol (propanol). Many hair loss sufferers have discontinued their minoxidil treatment because of scalp problems, although minoxidil seldom causes such reactions.

Furthermore, many generic, minoxidil based lotions contain supplementary ingredients that are supposed to improve their overall efficacy, such as azelaic acid, retinoic acid, herbal extracts, etc. These substances, especially the herbal extracts, are known to be allergenic to many people. It is recommended to try several different minoxidil based products, for instance, those that do not contain propylene glycol, in order to test their tolerability for your scalp. A more expensive product, e.g. the original formulation, Rogaine solution, is not necessarily a better choice than a less expensive generic mixture. However, Rogaine foam, though relatively expensive, is usually very well tolerated. Anti dandruff shampoos, e.g. Nizoral, can, in the majority of patients, be employed successfully to treat scalp inflammations, itchiness and dandruff caused by the use of minoxidil based topicals.

Given the currently available treatment options it seems that the greying process cannot be reversed. There is no scientific evidence that any existing medicine, herb, dietary supplement or natural product can prevent or reverse greying hair. Several cosmetics and pharmaceuticals companies are working on the discovery of the ultimate cure for grey hair but no satisfactory solution is commercially available yet.

Premature grey hair is often associated with excessive stress, bad diet, vitamin B deficiency, thyroid problems and smoking. The fact is, however, that the number one cause for premature greying hair is genetics. The pigment that determines the colour of our hair is produced by special cells at the root of our hair called melanocytes. It is the lifespan of these cells that determines the onset of the greying process. Once melanocytes die, the hair turns white.

There is no principal difference between a premature and a normal, age-related greying process. It is by virtue of nature that some people will experience their first grey hair in their teens and turn completely white in their early thirties, while others will keep their original hair colour for many decades. If more than 50% of a person’s hair is white by the age of 40, it is considered premature.

There are several commercial products out there that claim to be able to rejuvenate the dead pigment-producing cells and reverse grey hair. Such claims, however, are utterly unsubstantiated. The sad truth is that at this point in time no proven remedy exists that can reverse the greying process. Most of the anti-grey hair products either use Fo-Ti, referring to the centuries old legend of Mr He, who recovered his original hair colour, youthful appearance and vitality thanks to this traditional Chinese medicinal herb, also known as He Shou Wu or use vitamins B (mostly PABA and folic acid) as their main active ingredients, since some forms of premature greying are said to be caused by vitamin B deficiency. However, such products are ineffective for the majority of grey hair sufferers.
 
Therefore, the only option for treating grey hair that seems to deliver guaranteed results is camouflage. Women use various types of permanent, semi-permanent and demi-permanent hair dyes but men usually prefer a subtle and less noticeable change in their hair colour that does not cover all their grey. Such products are usually called progressive grey hair colorants. It is obvious that none of these products can make the dead cells produce pigmented hair and thus they must be used continuously to cover the grey of fresh hair. Although there are some natural hair dyes that claim to effectively cover your grey hair, the products that really work well all use certain chemicals. When deciding about hair dyes or progressive grey hair colorants, you should always consider the potential health risks, as most of them contain substances that can cause poisoning if used inappropriately or can lead to severe allergic reactions. You should always use a patch test before applying any such product and follow the application guidelines in order to minimise exposure to aggressive substances.

Men have been seeking an ultimate cure for hair loss for thousands of years but until very recently all available cures were either cosmetic cover-ups or unsophisticated and harmless vitamin/mineral pills and herbal lotions, with many of them just being scams. It was only with the arrival of finasteride and minoxidil and improvements made in hair transplantation techniques in recent years that the new era began, enabling hair loss sufferers to halt the further progression of the balding process and replace the missing hair on top of their head using the hair left at the back of their scalp. However, to this day no ultimate cure for hair loss exists. There are presently several new drugs and techniques under development but none of these promising therapies is expected to hit the market before 2011.

NEOSH101 is being developed by the US firm Neosil and it is currently undergoing phase IIb clinical testing. NEOSH101 has shown to be a more powerful and faster-acting, hair growth stimulant than minoxidil and it only needs applying once daily. Though significantly improving the current hair loss treatment chances, NEOSH101 is not going to become an ultimate cure for hair loss. The clinical trials seem to be advancing slower than most hair loss sufferers would like and, hence, do not hold your breath for it hitting the market anytime soon. NEOSH101 is mainly expected to replace minoxidil and other, presently used hair growth stimulants.

Another promising field of development is the telomerase research. Telomerase is an enzyme that puts natural caps on telomeres and thus protects them from shortening. Telomerase thereby maintains the genomic integrity. Shortened telomeres are associated with causing the premature aging processes. However, the uncontrolled activation of telomerase can cause tumour. Cancer research is the main focus of the telomerase study but scientists are also looking for other applications, such as anti-aging drugs and drugs against hair loss and grey hair. Although still under development, there are already some products available on the market that seek to emulate the mechanism of telomerase action but they have no scientific backing and should be avoided. Telomerase research could really change the world of medicine but its commercial application might be a good decade away.

Hair multiplication, often called hair cloning or follicular neogenesis, is the next hopeful treatment option being developed. This technique involves extracting the hair follicles from the back of the patient’s scalp, culturing and multiplying them in vitro and injecting the newly-grown, hair cells into the bald scalp. Among several teams of scientists on three continents exploring hair multiplication, the UK healthcare firm Intercytex appears to be the frontrunner. Intercytex reported results of the latest stage of the clinical phase II study of ICX-TRC (a suspension of a patient’s own dermal papilla cells) in March 2008 and they were largely positive. The next release is expected soon. This therapy might hit the market in 2011 at the earliest. The main benefit of hair multiplication would be solving the shortage of donor hair that is the main limiting factor in hair transplantation.

Generating hair follicles in hair-free skin wounds is an utterly new approach to regrowing lost hair. It was discovered accidentally as wounded skin in mice started producing new hair. This technology is currently being developed by the US medical device company, Follica, which licensed this technology from the University of Pennsylvania. Though this method may sound weird it only uses common medical instruments and drugs that have already been approved and thus it might not take too long for it to become available to the public.

This is the list of only a few promising treatments for baldness that are being currently developed but several others are in the pipeline. It appears that becoming bald will soon be by choice rather than destiny.