An antioxidant in vegetables may help keep hair from turning gray

          Developing gray hair is common with increasing age,           although some people want to avoid these hair changes.

• One recent study in mice found that internal and external treatments with the antioxidant luteolin helped minimize hair graying. 
• Future research can confirm if luteolin has similar effects in people, but the study does highlight another benefit of the antioxidant.

Is there anything we can do to prevent gray hairs? Experts are interested in discovering the answer to that question. 

One study published in Antioxidants explored how three antioxidants affected gray hair outcomes in mice: hesperetin, diosmetin, and luteolin. While the antioxidants hesperetin and diosmetin did not mitigate hair graying, luteolin did. 

With confirmation of future research, people may use luteolin to prevent gray hairs in the future. 

This research used mice created to develop gray hair with age in a way that is comparable to how people develop gray hair. 

The authors of this study first explain important aspects of what takes place in these mice when hair turns gray. There are two important types of stem cells in the bulge of the hair follicles: follicular keratinocyte stem cells and follicular melanocyte stem cells. The keratinocyte stem cells experience a decrease in endothelinsTrusted Source, a type of peptide, and the follicular melanocyte stem cells experience a decrease in the receptor for these endothelins. These components are similar to what happens to people’s hair, and this was confirmed via a previous study. 

They note that if experts can find a way to suppress this process, we could potentially minimize hair graying. One potential candidate they were interested in was luteolin, a flavonoid found in plants like parsley and celery. 

For this research, the mice received internal and external luteolin treatments daily for sixteen weeks. Another group of mice received external hesperetin or diosmetin treatments for 16 weeks.

There were noticeable effects for the mice who received external luteolin. First, researchers observed a decrease in cells with a certain marker, which suggested that the luteolin treatment suppressed the aging of keratinocyte stem cells. 

They further observed a lower percentage of gray hairs among the mice treated with luteolin. This and other observations suggested that luteolin helped to fix the signaling problems between the endothelins in keratinocyte stem cells and the endothelin receptors in the melanocyte stem cells, leading to fewer gray hairs. 

In contrast, external treatments with hesperetin and diosmetin did not appear to affect hair graying. 

Internal luteolin treatments also suppressed hair graying. The results suggested that luteolin did so in a way similar to external luteolin treatments. However, the treatment with internal luteolin had a weaker effect than external treatments. 

Researchers also analyzed the effect of luteolin on human skin keratinocytes. Luteolin helped to decrease the transcript expression levels of an aging marker while increasing the “transcript expression level of endothelin-1.” The authors noted that this may indicate that endothelin-1 signaling in keratinocytes is involved in “mediating the effects of luteolin.” 

Researchers also wanted to test how oxidative stress promoted hair graying and if luteolin could offer benefits in this situation. 

They tested wild-type mice that received tert-butyl hydroperoxide, which induces oxidative stress. Mice who received tert-butyl hydroperoxide developed gray hair, but mice also treated with luteolin experienced less hair graying. These results suggest that in the author’s model mice, hair graying may be reduced by decreasing oxidative stress.

The study’s findings support the idea that luteolin may become an effective way to minimize gray hair.