A gray hair! Well, sooner or later, it happens to all us, but pretty soon we'll be preventing gray hair as easily as we now prevent tooth decay. Chris Gummer, a senior research fellow at Procter & Gamble told ABC News, someday soon, we'll be postponing gray hair forever with the pop of a pill. According to Gummer, it's all in the genetics--and it all started about four years ago when scientists made an albino mouse turn black. The scientists had created molecules that corrected mutant DNA inside the mouse's hair follicles. Correcting that DNA restored pigment to the mouse's hair.
With humans, it's more complicated. We have about 140,000 hair follicles, each with cells that eventually stop producing pigment as we age. But it's not done all at once. You see a gray hair here, a gray hair there, then the salt and pepper look, then eventually, it all goes gray. For scientists, that staggered pattern is the challenge to keeping the human head gray-free. But if Dr. Gummer is right, it'll only be a matter of time before we can kiss hair dye goodbye!