No More Grays? You Don't Say!

In terms of beauty technology, we really have come a long way. However, when it comes to dealing with gray hair, many of us are still using at-home coloring kits or even hair mascara or crayons like our mothers used to. Well hang on -- according to Oprah.com, a change is in the air.

The article is titled Beauty Innovations That Will Happen in the Next Decade, and boy does it fill our hearts with promise.

"Researchers are in hot pursuit of a "cure" for gray hair -- and they're getting closer. A study published last year showed that gray is caused by hydrogen peroxide and other cell-damaging molecules that build up as we age, bleaching color from the hair. The absence of an enzyme called catalase allows these molecules to accumulate, but EXT Life Sciences, a Michigan-based biotechnology company, believes it has found a chemical compound that can restore catalase and thus return hair to its original color.

The company is working to incorporate the ingredient into leave-in conditioners and serums, says co-founder Stanley Terlecky, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology at Wayne State University School of Medicine. And across the Atlantic, L'Oréal's Paris-based hair biology research group recently identified a pair of genes that may determine the longevity of the cells that give hair its color. L'Oréal scientists are hard at work developing a treatment (either a pill or a topical formula) to block the progressive decline in these color-giving cells and stop-or at least slow-the graying process, says group director Bruno Bernard, Ph.D."

Read the whole piece over at Oprah.com, but first -- let's pause and reflect. While some of us might delight at the prospect of banishing our grays for good, there's something to be said for the distinguished look that comes with going gray over time. It would be sad to imagine a world where gray hair was a thing of the past. Are people so unwilling to embrace the inevitable changes that happen to us as we age -- such as growing gray hair?

What are your thoughts? Do you have gray hair? How do you deal with it?