For months I have hesitated to post about this topic, because it is something I don’t understand. In late 2008, I began to get a noticeable amount of gray hair. Not just on the sideburns, but throughout my hair. I wasn’t alarmed. I fully expected it. I was at that age where all my friends were getting gray hair.Personally, I could care less if and when I get gray hair. I’m just fortunate to have a thick full head of hair, which many men don’t have at my age.
Then something happened. My diet changed. I lower my carbs – mostly by eliminating grains. I also stopped cooking with highly inflammatory vegetable oils. I was too busy watching my abs come in to see that the gray hair was slowly going away. Today, I have noticeably less gray hair than I did in 2008. And until this afternoon I didn’t have a clue why.
Jimmy Moore just posted Dr. Luan Pho: Gray Hair Isnt A Sign Of Old Age But A High-Carb, Low-Protein Diet. In this guest blog post Dr. Pho states:
Regarding gray hairs, this happens when your body is unable to synthesize an adequate amount of melanin. Melanin is the pigmentation that gives your hair its natural color. In order to make melanin, your body needs a specific non-essential but yet conditional amino acid called tyrosine. Your body also needs tyrosine in order to make dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine, coenzyme Q10, and thyroid hormones. The availability of the needed amount of tyrosine may become deficient due to an incomplete diet low in protein.
As you probably already know, amino acids are the basic building blocks of proteins. There are nine essential and eleven non-essential amino acids. Essential amino acids are synthesized into non-essential amino acids. This fact highlights the delicate balance as to how dietary protein intake acts on the supply of both the essential and non-essential amino acids. Therefore, consuming an adequate amount of protein and supplementation with tyrosine may be the answer to keeping your natural hair color longer.
Tyrosine, where I have heard that before?
A year and half ago after I finished reading the book Primal Body, Primal Mind by Nora Gedgaudas, I reached out to the author with a question on how I could start a coffee detox protocol. She suggested that I take the supplement L-Tyrosine on an empty stomach to curb my craving for the stimulate effect. And I did. These days I consume almost 30% less caffeine than I did back in 2010.
Did my coffee detox experiment trigger a side effect of reversing gray hair? Or was a result of embracing a more Paleo diet? Or something else? Beats me. I’ll be sure to tune into the podcast interview with Dr. Pho on April 4th.
L-Tyrosine
I noticed a similar effect on the whiskers of my cheeks. My beard was turning greyish white, and about the same time I changed my diet to about 90% Meat – Something I continued with for 11 months. I usually shave my beard so it took a while for me to notice the that the grey was going. I must have left the beard to grow for a week or so, because I distinctly remember my surprise at noticing the grey had gone. Not completely, but very noticably! These days I only sport grey on my chin. I wonder though, Melanin is the pigment in the skin. If you can’t produce enough due to lack of Tyrosin in the diet, wouldn’t that make you more susceptible to skin damage/cancer?
@Steve – Looks like you are correct.
http://www.ndhealthfacts.org/wiki/Tyrosine#Deficiency_Symptoms
“predisposition to skin cancer due to a lack of melanin”
Interesting about your beard. Another thing I didn’t mention above is how some people believe copper supplementation helps. The #1 food for copper is beef liver. That is a food I now eat weekly, but never consumed it back in 2008. The plot thickens.
The first thing that comes to mind when I read this is all those slender, otherwise healthy looking vegetarian/vegans who are always rocking a full head of grey hair. I’m thinking yoga instructors and those yuppies who spend hours at the salad bar and supplement section in Whole Foods. Their slim and health conscious-but ALL grey. A lot of the time their hair seems to be frizzy, too.
Another ‘point’ for the meat eating camp!
I’ve never tried beef liver, how do you prepare it??
@Ashley – Interesting comment about vegetarians. I’ll look for it. I tend to think of gray hair as universal.
As for liver, you can start by making pate, which many people find enjoyable. Another idea is to slip it inside chili or meat loafs.
If you like the taste of liver, use this recipe I did for beef kidney. They have similar tastes.
http://criticalmas.com/2012/02/beef-kidney-with-mushrooms-and-garlic/
I can’t say I’ve noticed much difference in grey hair, but then it’s usually covered with toxic dye.
Any thoughts on beef vs chicken liver (both from farmer’s market pasture raised animals).
@Roberta – Everything I’ve read suggests that beef liver is nutritionally superior to chicken liver.
Thanks, Beef liver scares me, but maybe if I hide it in pate with lots of bacon I’ll survive.
@Roberta – It took a few times before I got used to and eventually enjoying beef liver. The first time I had beef liver since childhood it had almost a drug like effect. The next day I went to the gym and had tons of strength.
Please write post if you come across any credible supplementation to regrow hair. I’ve tried everything from rogaine to horse shampoo; nothing works.
@thomas – Danny Roddy is considered an expert in the nutritional field on the topic of hair loss.
http://www.dannyroddy.com/hair-like-a-fox/
my woo meter is hitting red for this post.
there is so much money behind hair growth/loss. it is the golden goose. reversing gray hair has twice the market.
my anecdotal evidence has shown that gray hair forms with age. oh and genetics also plays a part.
my diet is fine, i eat a ton of liver, and i’m getting grayer by the day.
Shane,
Woo meter? MAS is just sharing his experience noticing he has less grey hair now than a couple of years ago.
Take what you want from it, but I’m glad people write about their thoughts and tinkerings with this kind of lifestyle.
@Shane and @Aaron –
My thoughts are that each individual has 2 “gray dates”. The earliest and latest dates that person could go gray. My guess is the doctor can’t reverse gray once that person is past the latest date, but he probably has techniques for delaying the earliest date. That difference may be years or a decade. I doubt it is more than that. Still a cool thought though.
This is awesome. And another potential reason to love the paleo diet
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I have recently found that the best way to prep liver is to marinate it in lemon juice and water for 4 to 6 hours. It comes out so tender!
I’ve been paleo for about a year with great results but still have the gray hair slowly coming in. Maybe I will try some supplementation.
@Shawn – Thanks for the liver idea. I’m heading to the Farmers Market tomorrow to buy some more!
I just had a thin piece of liver this morning. Pan fried in ghee for 2 minutes until only the middle third was still red, smothered in fried onions and lotus root, little bit of butter on top and of course some fresh kimchi on the side. Also salty miso soup to top it off.
The strong flavors of liver require a strong supporting cast!
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@Garymar – I haven’t tried ghee, but I will next time. I added your tip to the post I released this morning.
http://criticalmas.com/2012/02/beef-liver-asparagus-garlic/
Good post – thanks!
I’m 47 and have had about the same amount of grey for the past 15 years – about 5 to 10% of my hair is grey.
The weird thing is that the amount of grey fluctuates. What I think happens is some grey hair falls out and is replaced by my original mid brown hair color. I can accelerate this by vigorous brushing with a high-quality metal and rubber hair brush.
Over the past 2-3 years of 90% pure paleo, I’ve even noticed new hair growing in new places on my forehead.
BTW – There is “male pattern baldness” on both sides of my family…
I do eat *a lot* of animal protein (mostly meat and offal) plus sporadic doses of branched chain amino acids and also broad spectrum amino acids.
It’s been fun to watch my younger colleagues in their early 30s catch up to me with their incipient grey hair…
@Glenn – I too have added BCAA in the past year. Maybe it too has a role? Although my money is on the tyrosine, offal and consuming a low inflammatory diet.
Perfect Health Diet linked to this story about young women today going gray in their 20s. The story speculates that oxidative and emotional stress might be the reason. Also said in the article:
What food is a great source of B Vitamins? Beef liver.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1368239/Why-todays-women-going-grey-25.html
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/beef-products/3469/2
MAS:
Are you still taking tyrosine?
@Chuck – Yes, I started back up a few months ago as a test to see if it improved mood. It actually does help a little.
The grey is “caused” by bleaching from hydrogen peroxide, naturally produced in the follicle. The enzyme catalase neutralizes the hydrogen peroxide, until we run out, which occurs naturally with ageing (and perhaps environmental stress, etc)
So if you can figure out how to increase your catalase levels, then cha-ching!
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/03/02/gray-hair.html
MAS, just out of curiosity, how much tyrosine are you taking?
@Alex – 500mg on an empty stomach in the AM. I may need to increase that depending upon what we learn on the upcoming podcast.
Even if it does nothing for hair, it does improve mood. I tend to find 99% of supplements useless. This one is an exception.
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Beef liver is good….but lamb liver is the #1 source for copper!
@Chris – Good to know. I recently had some Icelandic sheep liver. It tastes better than beef liver – even raw.
I am a vegetarian, and I eat plenty of carbs. My hair was going very gray until this summer, when it started gradually getting darker. No change in diet. So what happened? I have an auto-immune disease that seems to have gone into remission. I always take lots of supplements and eat lots of greens. No meat, no low-carb. I don’t think it has to do with carbs as much as the type of carbs. Processed carbs like most Americans eat are really bad for you. So is meat, it’s really hard on the kidneys. I wouldn’t touch liver with a ten-foot pole, it’s the part of an animal’s body that filters out toxins…and they feed most of our cows trash nowadays, like leftover candy and dead animal parts, stuff cows shouldn’t eat. Plus cows are so stressed that they are flooded with stress hormones when they are killed. Not good for you either.
@Michelle – Toxins are stored in fat, not in the liver. I source my liver only from 100% grass pastured animals. As for the gray hair, I really don’t know. After listening to the Dr. I quoted above in the podcast, I sort of lost faith that he knew what he was talking about.