Gray Hair?

[ejalrp]

Has anyone had any luck themselves or seen any convincing studies about the repigmentation of gray hair? I have read the brief abstract of the study posted on using T3 directly on the backs of mice to restore pigmentation but I'm not sure how you'd safely translate that to human usage.

Many years ago I recall reading a study on using mega-doses of PABA but when I tried it, it did nothing and I have a lot more gray hair now then I did then.

 

[tara]

Try search. Eg.

Ibs, Greying | Ray Peat Forum
Dopamine precursors restore hair color | Ray Peat Forum
Tryptophan and white / grey hair | Ray Peat Forum
Repigmentation of gray hair after thyroid hormone treatment | Ray Peat Forum

There are suggestions related to excess serotonin contributing to greying. Possibly also copper deficiency or dysregulation.

 

[ejalrp]

Try search. Eg.

Ibs, Greying | Ray Peat Forum
Dopamine precursors restore hair color | Ray Peat Forum
Tryptophan and white / grey hair | Ray Peat Forum
Repigmentation of gray hair after thyroid hormone treatment | Ray Peat Forum

There are suggestions related to excess serotonin contributing to greying. Possibly also copper deficiency or dysregulation.

None of these turned up when I did a search as I spelled it alternatively as "gray" so thanks very much.

 

[tara]

BTDT :)

 

[thegiantess]

I'm not sure I buy the grey hair bc of serotonin thing. Unless you grayed suddenly, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. The copper thing, maybe. Perhaps there is a genetic lean to the inability to efficiently use or keep copper. Personally, my hair started greying when I was 18 and now at 33, I have a lot. But so does my brother... And both of my parents are in their 50s and their hair is stark white. Like Ted Danson. So, unless we all have elevated serotonin that framework just doesn't make sense. I tried helping my copper a few times over the years and it never made a difference.

 

[kiran]

I remember Peat mentioning something in an interview about topical dilute copper sulfate solution for gray hair. Unfortunately I don't have a reference.

 

[supernature]

Whether the right thing one could do is to use topical solutions, using hormone replacement therapy or the approach should be from the inner environment - outwards is a personal choice, however heres what the author has to say about his experience with whiting of hairs...

GENERATIVE ENERGY - R.P.
CH12 - RESTORING HAIR COLOR

"A Japanese researcher found that each hair color is asso-
ciated with a certain pattern of several trace minerals. When
he removed all the trace minerals, every type of hair became
white. When he added a characteristic pattern of trace miner-
als, associated with a particular hair color, to a sample of de-
mineralized hair, the color which was produced corresponded
to the minerals added, and not to what the original color of the
hair had been. He concluded that people inherit a tendency to
concentrate certain minerals in their hair.
....
I think oxygen wastage is a central event in aging. Just
as a cut potato requires oxygen to make melanin, so do our tis-
sues. Iron tends to keep accumulating in our tissues with ag-
ing, and iron appears to be a factor in wasting oxygen
(especially in age pigment). When oxygen is deficient, iron
becomes very toxic. Copper is involved in a process which re-
stores iron to its non-toxic form.
....
I had some eyebrow hairs that were pure white; when
one matured and fell out, another white one would replace it.
They grow quickly, and have a short life cycle, so they are
nice to experiment with.
I went on a very low iron diet, eating mostly milk, with
some eggs, cheese, and citrus fruit, but with very little meat
for several weeks. I cooked eggs in a copper pan, to increase
my copper intake and to avoid iron absorbed from an iron
pan. I found a source of vitamin A without preservative, and
began using large amounts of that, which I had not done for
several years because of an allergy to the preservative. I in-
creased my doses of DHEA and pregnenolone.

Usually on alternate days, I would rub vitamin A and
vitamin E (sometimes with DHEA), or a solution of copper
acetate, into the skin around the white hairs. Within a few
weeks, the bottom of one of the white hairs had begun to
darken (Figure 1--the hair on the right). Another hair (the
center one) came out a couple of weeks later, and was dark-
ened along about half of its length. The third hair (on the left)
came out two or three weeks later, and was all black except
for 3 millimeters at the tip, which had begun growing about
the time the other two were changing color. It has been about
two months since I stopped cooking regularly in copper (the
taste gets very tiresome), and none of the hairs has reverted to
white."

 

[jyb]

I'm not sure I buy the grey hair bc of serotonin thing. Unless you grayed suddenly, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. The copper thing, maybe. Perhaps there is a genetic lean to the inability to efficiently use or keep copper. Personally, my hair started greying when I was 18 and now at 33, I have a lot. But so does my brother... And both of my parents are in their 50s and their hair is stark white. Like Ted Danson. So, unless we all have elevated serotonin that framework just doesn't make sense. I tried helping my copper a few times over the years and it never made a difference.

You could say the same of hair loss (which seems to be quite independent from greying hair): there is a family influence. However I read it is standard medical knowledge that while it may have a genetic component (the age at which it starts to grey), it could be reversed. I suppose that's true for most problems, you can reverse a lot of problems but it can be a lot harder if everything was against you to start with. I don't know how but I'd like to know. For sure there's dozen of studies about grey hair and how it correlates factors like copper, catalase...so I wouldn't be surprised that it was associated with serotonin too. It doesn't mean it's the good way to think about it though.

 

[tara]

Unless you grayed suddenly, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

I started greying in my twenties, and now have more white hairs than coloured (when it's not artificially coloured).
I have other indicators that I may have had chronically elevated serotonin for decades. Why would you expect it to be sudden?
I don't know enough to be confident that this is a key contributor, but it seems at least possible. There is also a family tendency to early greying, but also to other metabolic issues that may be related to serotonin amongst other stress hormones.

 

[supernature]

I started greying in my twenties, and now have more white hairs than coloured (when it's not artificially coloured).
I have other indicators that I may have had chronically elevated serotonin for decades. Why would you expect it to be sudden?
I don't know enough to be confident that this is a key contributor, but it seems at least possible. There is also a family tendency to early greying, but also to other metabolic issues that may be related to serotonin amongst other stress hormones.

Serotonin could be at least one of the possible reasons for gray hairs, its also controversial isnt it?
When we eat that rises insulin, which rises dopamine and serotonin, etc. the insulin helps to aromatise tyrosine, phenylalanine and tryptophan to make the neurotransmitters so it needs to be elevated first.

Other way to have low serotonin is to forget to eat for a couple of hours, so the blood sugar can fall, which gonna allow glucagon to rises, from pancreas to balance, its gonna shut down the digestion-HCL, bile flow, so the body can run on stress hormones, which gonna lower naturally serotonin, but this gonna feel a lot like a depression.
To balance, the body will rise dopamine and adrenaline. To balance high adrenaline the body will rise cortisol just to balance it off, but high adrenaline lowers blood sugar, which is stress, so the adrenaline is risen again, so the body can maintain its functions.
But when dopamine and adrenaline are risen because of lowered blood sugar that gonna feel really shaky, elevated heart beat and disrupted digestion, which is not good in any case.

So the body makes and rises serotonin, we can supress it with some, but isnt it that to step on the throttle and on the brakes at same time, isnt it that gonna put too much pressure on the transmission?

If one have low dopamine and serotonin thats gonna affects its will to cover the brain needs of energy with sugar, alcohol-acetate, etc. the body will go after the shortest way to rise insulin and dopamine just to maintain homeostasis. So we are ending at the circle again, of maintaining the blood sugar spikes all day, balancing the stress hormone responses.
I assume that positively can affect the whiting of hairs as it letting us deal with body stress hormone responses too often.
I assume the whiting of hairs its the least affected player in this scenareo, at expences of more important body organs and systems.

 

[thegiantess]

You could say the same of hair loss (which seems to be quite independent from greying hair): there is a family influence. However I read it is standard medical knowledge that while it may have a genetic component (the age at which it starts to grey), it could be reversed. I suppose that's true for most problems, you can reverse a lot of problems but it can be a lot harder if everything was against you to start with. I don't know how but I'd like to know. For sure there's dozen of studies about grey hair and how it correlates factors like copper, catalase...so I wouldn't be surprised that it was associated with serotonin too. It doesn't mean it's the good way to think about it though.

Yes, I agree there is a genetic component for hair loss, but the difference I see is that there is a clear connection to hormones and hair loss/growth. For example, in pregnancy hair is thick and full because under the influence of progesterone it doesn't fall out. However, post pregnancy when progesterone falls back to normal levels all of that lovely hair falls out.. Often in clumps. So yes, I think there is a genetic influence to hair loss, and then hormonal environment pulls the trigger so to speak.

However, for greying I don't see that same hormonal influence. Of course my ideas are purely observational and anecdotal, but I know a lot of really unhealthy people who have clear hormonal diseases, but not a grey hair on their heads. For example, a close friend had stage 3 breast cancer when she was 28. She is my age and she doesn't have one single grey hair. Another friend is bipolar, hypothyroid and probably a lot of other things and she has no greys to speak of. Not one. I actually can't think of many people close to me that are healthy and none of them have any greys. Certainly that accounts for something?

 

[nick sam]

I started graying in my 20's and I colored my hair with grey color. I was happy as nobody know my hair turned grey in color everyone thought I did it for a style. lol..

 

[Birdie]

I am getting some gray hairs now. Mostly it's still blonde, but the trend is to gray/whitish.

My mother had red hair in her 60s. My father's (blonde) hair turned white but I don't remember his age.
Reading the article by the Japanese researcher and comparing my nutrition, I think I got the nutrients he mentioned.
Iron has been low normal ever since I started checking it. Now it's too low but that's another topic.

Hormone wise, my menopause started late.

 

[SQu]

I started greying in my early forties but it dramatically accelerated and whitened during the crash I induced when I stopped decades of dieting and went into a downward spiral of estrogen and cortisol that also caused weight gain, muscle and strength loss, worse aching etc. In a nutshell accelerated aging that has taken years to (sort of) understand and begin reversing. The improvements include white eyebrows that first went sandy and are now brown. Hair now steel grey not white. I attributed the first earlier phase of greying to years of zinc tablets which I stopped 3 or 4 years ago. I've noticed darkening after periods of serotonin lowering by tryptophan avoidance, gelatin, sunlight etc. In my case it correlates with better health.

 

[Rinse & rePeat]

THE ROOT OF GRAY HAIR

I have created this thread because I get asked a lot about nettle, and how it restored my natural hair color. I have told of my good results, here and there on this forum, but now I want to talk about other factors that may have played a part in my results. My first hearing about nettle having...

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