A cure for gray hair is on the way?

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In summary, there is a study that shows immunotherapy drugs may cause hair repigmentation in cancer patients, but the doctors do not consider this a safe or desirable treatment for gray hair. There is also a case where a different drug, secukinumab, has been shown to restore hair color in a patient with plaque psoriasis. However, this drug is not specifically meant for hair repigmentation and has mild side effects such as upper respiratory tract infections. More research is needed to determine if these drugs can be used for treating gray hair and if they can be made safer for use in healthy individuals.
  • #36
petrichor2 said:
Gray hair is a problem if you don't like the look

If the reason you don't like it is that there's a social stigma about looking that way then the stigma is the problem to be fixed.

petrichor2 said:
and indeed it isn't really attractive for the majority of people.

Citation needed.

petrichor2 said:
Women who find gray hair attractive are usually the kind of women who look for old rich men to take care of them and this is your "experience".

Ridiculous sexism.

petrichor2 said:
Of course we all get old at the end but as I said before gray hair can appear in any age and it isn't that rare to find children/teenagers with some gray hairs.

And the fact that grey hairs can occur in youthful, fit people doesn't make you stop and think that perhaps there's nothing wrong with grey hair at all and that it's just something pushed by certain groups within society...?

petrichor2 said:
It isn't about looking young at age 70, It is about preventing from those really bad genes from ruining your look and make you look much older than what you are.

Citation needed that age of hair greying is correlated with genetic disorders. This is a science forum, you can't just yell out "bad genes" and expect a knee jerk reaction of agreement.

petrichor2 said:
And no, there is no any kind of psychological benefit from denial and telling yourself that it looks good, It kind of remind me those "fat acceptance" women who try to convince themselves and others by force that their fat body is attractive while it is obviously not for the great majority of the population and they can't just convince people that they are attractive.

More ridiculousness, driven by your unwarranted assumption that grey hair automatically is widely regarded as unattractive. Even if it were there is certainly psychological benefit to being content with one's appearance. That isn't denial at all. As for the fat acceptance movement I think you've completely misunderstood their point, which is that there is a great diversity in attractiveness (more than is pushed in most media) for different people and we should acknowledge that. Being overweight adds the extra factor of health, which grey hair does not have.

petrichor2 said:
So would you want to date with a fat woman with a completely gray hair or a woman with athletic fit body with vibrant hair color?.

Again this is a science forum; terribly constructed arguments are not going to fly here. Attempting to conflate the idea that grey hair is an absolute factor in attractiveness and a factor in health with personal preferences in partners, then setting up a terrible false dichotomy.
 
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  • #37
Ryan_m_b said:
Can't speak for mfb but I think it's absurd from the POV that it's driven by a ridiculous cultural standard. If a man or woman wants to alter the colour of their hair in any way simply because they'd like it to be that way then more power to them, I have absolutely no problem with individual choice and it's not my business. However social stigmas that enforce the idea that it's wrong not to do so I have a serious problem with. Particularly when it fosters a sense that completely harmless changes to one's body should be thought of as a disease.

Turning the question around; why do you think it's important to hide or prevent grey hair?
What do you mean by "enforce the idea that it's wrong not to do so"?, having noticeably gray hair make look worse and anyone who actually loves and care about his look (and not just to be attractive to some gold diggers) will probably not like having gray hairs. It isn't a "stigma", gray hairs aren't attractive and the great majority of men who claim that this is attractive wouldn't date women with gray hairs and the majority of women who claim it is attractive wouldn't think it is attractive on them.
The answer to your question is simple and obvious, gray hairs don't look good and personally i don't want to have them cause of this.
 
  • #38
petrichor2 said:
The answer to your question is simple and obvious, gray hairs don't look good and personally i don't want to have them cause of this.
Yes, there is a social stigma to gray hair. Choosing deal with that by changing your hair color is a reasonable course of action. Cosmetics are an existing safe, effective and inexpensive approach to accomplish this. Personally, I do not consider cosmetics to be worth either the expense or the hassle. It is easier not to worry about what other people think.

A drug-based approach would need to be effective, less expensive, less hassle and at least as safe in order to entice me to use it.
 
  • #39
Ryan_m_b said:
If the reason you don't like it is that there's a social stigma about looking that way then the stigma is the problem to be fixed.

It isn't a "stigma" to think that some attributes are unattractive. would you think a woman with a completely gray hair is attractive? or what about a woman without hair at all?...

Citation needed.

Lets test it with my previous question, would you think a woman with a completely gray hair is attractive?

Ridiculous sexism.

Its not sexism its a fact. Its very common for women to look for older men and its not cause of "daddy issues" as some people say(this whole theory is just sick) it is all about money, a young person will probably have much less money than someone old and is much more likely to "take care" of all of the financial problems of the woman than someone young and good looking that know that his attractiveness isn't related to his money.

And the fact that grey hairs can occur in youthful, fit people doesn't make you stop and think that perhaps there's nothing wrong with grey hair at all and that it's just something pushed by certain groups within society...?

Nobody "pushed" the fact that gray hair don't look good. It is simply a something that the great majority of the population feels whether they admit it or not.

Citation needed that age of hair greying is correlated with genetic disorders. This is a science forum, you can't just yell out "bad genes" and expect a knee jerk reaction of agreement.

Nobody mentioned "genetic disorders". The genetics that make somebody's hair to go gray early is bad and is a problem that should be fixed.

More ridiculousness, driven by your unwarranted assumption that grey hair automatically is widely regarded as unattractive. Even if it were there is certainly psychological benefit to being content with one's appearance. That isn't denial at all. As for the fat acceptance movement I think you've completely misunderstood their point, which is that there is a great diversity in attractiveness (more than is pushed in most media) for different people and we should acknowledge that. Being overweight adds the extra factor of health, which grey hair does not have.

Most people including you and everybody else who "accept" gray hairs don't actually like it or think it is attractive. Why do you think that it is much much less acceptable for women to not dye gray hairs?, cause they wan't to ACTUALLY look good and not just having a look that say: "I am an old guy with a lot of money and I will financially support any woman that will date me", and if this is exactly what you want than why hiding it and talk as if gray hairs really look good?. There is no psychological benefit in trying to lie to yourself and ignoring the truth and this is denial and the exact thing the "fat acceptance" are doing, being fat isn't attractive and if it was attractive they obviously wouldn't have to try and convince people that they are attractive, someone might be attractive DESPITE being fat but this is a completely different thing and it isn't common. And I am not talking about health at all.

Again this is a science forum; terribly constructed arguments are not going to fly here. Attempting to conflate the idea that grey hair is an absolute factor in attractiveness and a factor in health with personal preferences in partners, then setting up a terrible false dichotomy.

I am just making an example of how it isn't common to really think that gray hair is attractive, and you probably already know it yourself cause you probably never saw anyone(including yourself) that think gray hair is really attractive and make somebody look better. And as i said before i am not talking about health.
 
  • #40
petrichor2 said:
...this article mention many cases of hair repigmentation cause of some drugs and also talked about the case with the 14 people on the immunotherapy drugs.

There is a comment by Linda Russell on QUORA (https://www.quora.com/What-drugs-can-darken-grey-hair) focusing on the essentials:

"Seriously, if there were safe drugs to darken hair, you’d see advertisements all over TV and in magazines. I looked at the linked article, and I think, really? I sincerely doubt you’d find a doctor to prescribe cancer drugs on the faint chance — 14 people out of 52, slightly greater than a 1-in-4 possibility— that your hair will darken. And, if you did find such a doctor, insurance wouldn’t pay for it; I expect the cost would be beyond most people’s ability to pay.

If you don’t like gray hair, dyes are cheap and convenient nowadays. But, honestly, gray hair is not a disease, or a personal failing, and — despite what the advertisements try to imply — darkening your hair won’t make a major difference in your lifestyle. If you can learn to live with / accept gray hair, you save a lot of time and money that would otherwise be spent on hiding it.
"
 
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  • #41
Lord Jestocost said:
There is a comment by Linda Russell on QUORA (https://www.quora.com/What-drugs-can-darken-grey-hair) focusing on the essentials:

"Seriously, if there were safe drugs to darken hair, you’d see advertisements all over TV and in magazines. I looked at the linked article, and I think, really? I sincerely doubt you’d find a doctor to prescribe cancer drugs on the faint chance — 14 people out of 52, slightly greater than a 1-in-4 possibility— that your hair will darken. And, if you did find such a doctor, insurance wouldn’t pay for it; I expect the cost would be beyond most people’s ability to pay.

If you don’t like gray hair, dyes are cheap and convenient nowadays. But, honestly, gray hair is not a disease, or a personal failing, and — despite what the advertisements try to imply — darkening your hair won’t make a major difference in your lifestyle. If you can learn to live with / accept gray hair, you save a lot of time and money that would otherwise be spent on hiding it.
"
I never said that there is a safe and cheap drug for gray hair, I said that there is many example for drugs that done it and proved that it is possible to restore pigmentation to gray hair with drugs. 1 out of 4 is actually great chances especially if we consider the fact that at least some of the remaining 52 patients didn't had gray hair or noticeable amount of them(In fact one out of 10 people over 60 don't have gray hairs) so they couldn't notice and report those effects. some of them might even notice some darkening but didn't bothered to report on that. There was a 75 years old woman who took some drugs(don't remember which one) who got her hair color back but only mentioned it to her doctor after 3 years and her results where from completely white hair to a brown hair without noticeable gray hairs in the picture.

Dyes are a nice safety net in case i will go noticeably gray(for now i have one gray hair on my head and two others on my facial hair) but it is much better to simply cure it and stop the gray hair completely. It doesn't matter how you want to define gray hair, it is an unwanted condition(for most people at least) and there is no reason to "accept" it if it is damaging your look and you care about your look. you basically tell me to give up on my looks and being indifferent to it. I can do the same thing and tell you to be indifferent to your smell and hygiene, you can stop wasting money on shampoo/soap and worm watter and doing/paying for laundry for your clothes and simply "accept" your natural body odor which is just a natural thing...
 
  • #42
And just to make it clear, I am not the only one who talks about a cure for gray hair cause of those drugs that restored hair color in some of the patients who took it. the research i showed here with the man who experienced both hair growth and repigmentation due to secukinumab who mentioned that "Hair darkening and regrowth after administration of some drugs suggests that hair whitening and thinning caused by the aging process might be reversible" which is a too careful estimation cause there are already safe(and even FDA approved) durgs for restoring hairs like finasteride(FDA approved) and dutasteride which is more potent but only approved for hair loss in japan and south korea.

there is also a reaction from some scientists to the case with the immunotherapy drugs that restored hair color to 14 patients:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/dth.12560
which is title is "PD1 inhibitors and hair repigmentation: A desirable new side effect" and say that "there are increasing clues that it may be pharmacologically possible to restore natural pigmentation to graying hair".

There will be a cure for gray hair(and way before the time we will have flying cars...) but what i want to figure out is how close we are to this and how much time it will take more or less before there will be a safe drug that actually works in a significant portion of the people.
 
  • #43
petrichor2 said:
just look at how you reacted to the men in your work that dyed their hairs, I bet you don't think it is absurd when women at any age dye their hairs in order to hide gray hairs.
What exactly makes you sure you know my reaction to something?
I don't react at all. I don't care if people dye their hair or not.
 
  • #44
petrichor2 said:
It isn't a "stigma" to think that some attributes are unattractive. would you think a woman with a completely gray hair is attractive? or what about a woman without hair at all?...

Yes to both questions but that's not the point. The onus is on you to demonstrate that there is a widespread belief that grey hair is less attractive at any age. The vast majority of men, at least in my culture, don't bother dying their hair and I have never, ever heard a woman (or gay man) say that they wouldn't find someone attractive if they were grey or greying. It's very likely there are some people like that but you're making out like the entire world is objectively revolted by grey hair, which is nonsense.

petrichor2 said:
Lets test it with my previous question, would you think a woman with a completely gray hair is attractive?

What exactly is this supposed to test? All else being equal hair colour is not a factor in attractiveness to me, at least not beyond a minor consideration.

petrichor2 said:
Its not sexism its a fact. Its very common for women to look for older men and its not cause of "daddy issues" as some people say(this whole theory is just sick) it is all about money, a young person will probably have much less money than someone old and is much more likely to "take care" of all of the financial problems of the woman than someone young and good looking that know that his attractiveness isn't related to his money.

It is absolutely ridiculous sexism to posit that women will only date men with grey hair for financial reasons. You're tarring half of the planet as people so shallow that they either would not be attracted to a partner with grey hair or would only be with them for money. Complete rubbish.

petrichor2 said:
Nobody "pushed" the fact that gray hair don't look good. It is simply a something that the great majority of the population feels whether they admit it or not.

Cosmetics and media companies have been pushing for a very long time that any sign of aging is unattractive, the techniques being to use intensive advertising to make potential customers feel like if they don't use the products they are ugly.

petrichor2 said:
Nobody mentioned "genetic disorders". The genetics that make somebody's hair to go gray early is bad and is a problem that should be fixed.

You literally said "bad genes" so either admit that you were wrong or provide a citation?

petrichor2 said:
Most people including you and everybody else who "accept" gray hairs don't actually like it or think it is attractive. Why do you think that it is much much less acceptable for women to not dye gray hairs?, cause they wan't to ACTUALLY look good and not just having a look that say: "I am an old guy with a lot of money and I will financially support any woman that will date me", and if this is exactly what you want than why hiding it and talk as if gray hairs really look good?.

More sexist nonsense repeated verbatim.

petrichor2 said:
There is no psychological benefit in trying to lie to yourself and ignoring the truth and this is denial and the exact thing the "fat acceptance" are doing, being fat isn't attractive and if it was attractive they obviously wouldn't have to try and convince people that they are attractive, someone might be attractive DESPITE being fat but this is a completely different thing and it isn't common. And I am not talking about health at all.

Hilariously you are the one in denial here and seem to be having trouble with basic reading. You're also stuck on this idea that there is an objective universal beauty standard, rather than beauty being something mostly down to cultural values and upbringing.

petrichor2 said:
I am just making an example of how it isn't common to really think that gray hair is attractive, and you probably already know it yourself cause you probably never saw anyone(including yourself) that think gray hair is really attractive and make somebody look better. And as i said before i am not talking about health.

If you use the word "cure" you're automatically invoking a discussion around health. And I have no idea where you're from or how poor your socialisation must be if you don't believe people can find grey hair attractive.[/QUOTE]
 
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  • #45
Thread closed. The very long thread about the "cure" for gray hair has gone on long enough.
 
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