After more than ten years of research, a team at New York University Langone Medical Center has discovered why do we get gray hair. The study has been done in mice since they have cells similar to those of the human scalp.

The hair ages, sheds and grows back, but the more this happens, the more they weaken. melanocyte stem cellswhich are the ones contain the pigments that give color to our hair.

They reside in hair follicles. There, they move from one side to another and that movement is what generates the melanin that dyes our hair. when we get old the movement of those cells is weakened until it is blocked, so that stop having color and they go on to externalize the cells but in white and gray tones, what we commonly call gray hair.

Thanks to this study, scientists have discovered that it is possible to extract cells that have lost movement or have diedto transfer them to other follicles that have greater activity, to reactivate cells and that they return to their usual color.

According to Óscar Muñoz, a dermatologist specializing in trichology at the Spanish Academy of Dermatology and Venereology (AEDV), this theory is plausible: “what we know is that these stem cells move in these compartments and some compartments within the hair are more active and others less active and you can try to move those cells so that they are activated“.

When changing compartments, they receive another type of protein that is more conducive to the correct growth and maturity process of the cells. to preserve your color and prevent gray hair.

Still is under studyaccording to experts, it can take years to find the right formula to reverse the aging process of the follicles and the stem cells that inhabit them, but science is on the way to discover how to forget about the dye and the gray hair itself.