Pill to Prevent Gray Hairs Developed by L'Oreal
Scientists have created a vitamin pill that claims to prevent hair from turning gray. The vitamin pill - which is derived from a secret fruit extract - is to be taken daily in order to keep a user’s natural locks from turning platinum.
Cosmetics firm L’Oreal has carried out years of research in its laboratories, has developed the new drug for over a decade.
Bruno Bernard, L’Oreal’s head of hair biology at L’Oreal, said, “Ideally you would take it for your whole life, but realistically we’d encourage people to start using it before their hair goes grey because we don’t think it can reverse the process once it has started. We have a watertight proof of concept, and we think it will have a market among men as well as women.”
He also said, "People will take it like a dietary supplement. They need to start using the pill before their hair goes grey."
The promised inexpensive drug will not be available until 2015 and it will take another 10 more years before there is proof that it works because it will take that long for the gray hairs to grow back, reports have suggested.
The secret fruit extract mimics a chemical called tyrosinase-related protein 2 or TRP-2. With age, hair pigment cells die due to the lack of the protective TRP-2 enzyme.