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Grey hair has long been treated as an inevitability. You either cover it, embrace it, or spend a suspicious amount of time blaming one stressful year for the silver strand that appeared overnight. But lately, the conversation around greying has started to shift. Instead of only asking how to hide grey hair, more people are asking whether it can be slowed before it fully takes hold.
That question is at the center of a new wave of haircare products focused on pigment support, scalp health, oxidative stress, and early intervention. Arey is one of the brands leading that conversation with a system designed to support hair from the inside and outside, through a topical scalp serum and a daily supplement. The promise is not quite as simple as “reverse your greys,” but the science may be more interesting than most of us realize.
To better understand what is actually happening when hair turns grey, we asked Dr. Julian Sass, a cosmetic scientist, to break down the biology behind greying, how much of it is genetic, what stress and nutrition may have to do with it, and whether products like Arey can realistically help support pigment before it is fully lost.
In Conversation: The Science of Slowing Grey Hair
How much of greying is predetermined by genetics, and how much might be influenced by things like stress, nutrition, inflammation, or overall follicle health? How much can lifestyle or products realistically influence? The majority of what happens to our skin and our hair is driven by our genetics, namely caused in part by a depletion of melanocyte stem cells. If both of your parents went grey in their 40s, there’s a good chance it will happen to you as well. However, external factors can definitely influence when that greying starts to happen, whether earlier or later.
Can stress really make your hair turn grey, or is that more of a beauty myth? The relationship between stress and hair greying is something that has a lot of anecdotal evidence, but remains insufficiently studied. In humans, we know that stress accelerates biological aging as measured by telomere length, and some preliminary studies on animals show that stress can contribute to depigmentation of the hair.
A brand like Arey is built around the idea that you may be able to slow grey hair when you start early. From a cosmetic science perspective, does that concept make sense? Can grey hair actually be reversed, or is it more accurate to say that early greys may be supported before pigment loss becomes permanent? When looking at products from a purely topical perspective, the most compelling evidence from the chemical companies who make “anti-grey” ingredients does suggest that supporting early greys before the pigmentation becomes permanent is a conservative and reasonable expectation. However, the efficacy does depend on how much the melanogenesis in the hair bulb has slowed. In some cases, where the greying has just begun and melanogenesis has only just started to slow, topical products have been able to help repigment the hair strand or at least keep it from getting worse.
Arey’s To The Root® serum is positioned around supporting melanocyte stem cells and reducing oxidative stress at the scalp. How realistic is it for a topical serum to influence the pigment environment at the root? It is entirely possible for a topical product to influence the pigment environment at the root, and clinical studies on peptide technologies and other active ingredients in this realm have shown visible results, mostly when used consistently for three to six months. The most realistic result for topical products is to keep new greys at bay and keep current greys from becoming more grey or white. SHOP TO THE ROOT HERE
Arey’s Not Today, Grey™ supplement includes ingredients like B vitamins, vitamin D, iron, selenium, copper, PABA, Fo Ti, and black sesame. Which of these have the strongest scientific rationale when it comes to hair pigment, follicle health, or premature greying? Fo Ti has been most extensively utilized for helping greying hair retain its natural pigment, and the other ingredients, such as B vitamins, vitamin D, iron, and others, have shown the most benefits when someone is deficient in those compounds. SHOP NOT TODAY GREY HERE
For someone who is already significantly grey or fully white, what are the limits of products like Arey? Is the benefit more likely to be hair quality, density, shine, and scalp health rather than visible repigmentation? You are correct. For people who are significantly grey or fully white, products like Arey are unlikely to provide any benefits to the hair outside of the quality of the hair.
Arey says The System was tested in a 6 month, randomized, double blind, placebo controlled study on people who were less than 25 percent grey. As a cosmetic scientist, what does that study design tell us, and what questions should consumers still ask before deciding how meaningful the results are? This study design is very much seen as the gold standard for people who work in clinical studies. Their studies looking at a control or placebo group, a serum group, a supplement group, and a serum plus supplement group clearly show that the supplement and serum combo does absolutely help to repigment grey hair, with a shown decrease of 13 percent after six months. However, that number is an average across a study. Some people will perform better and some will perform worse.
The questions consumers need to ask are whether or not that decrease is worth six months of consistent product and supplement use, as well as how they will document their results, as a 13 percent decrease may be difficult to see if you look at your hair every day. SHOP THE AREY SYSTEM HERE
Bottom line, what is the most honest promise in grey hair science right now, and what should consumers be excited about versus skeptical of? The most honest promise is that topical products can help keep any current greys from getting significantly worse, and a regimen of topicals plus some supplements can help to repigment the hair. However, that benefit, which was 13 percent with topicals and a supplement after six months, may not be enough for some who are beyond 25 to 30 percent grey, or people who expect more drastic results in a quicker timeframe. In those cases, dyeing or embracing the grey is going to be a much better path forward.