Not ready to be a silver fox? Sure, you can color your gray hair, but coloring your hair and maintaining the new shade can be time-consuming, expensive, and damaging to the hair itself. While you can’t stop nature from changing your hair color to gray, you can reverse the graying with some simple home remedies.
Hair grows gray naturally, so why not reverse it naturally as well?
First, you need to understand what turns your hair gray. There may be a variety of causes, such as stress, illness, heredity, vitamin and nutrient deficiency, or any combination thereof. But the key issue is a rapid decline in melanin, which gives pigmentation, or color, to the hair. When the melanin molecules separate from each other, the hair takes on a gray appearance. When the body’s production of melanin decreases, the hair turns gray. So to increase your body’s production of melanin you need to fortify yourself inside and out with these home remedies for graying hair.
- Beef up the protein. Be sure to eat protein-rich foods such as lean meat, soy, whole grains, eggs, and cereals.
- Be strong as iron. Each day, eat foods rich in iron, minerals, and vitamins A and B, such as green leafy vegetables, bananas, tomatoes, liver, yogurt, kidney beans, dried apricots, oysters, eggs, and sunflower seeds.
- Take a pinch of salt. Iodine, most commonly found in table salt, is essential for the production of melanin. Add iodine-rich foods to your diet, such as bananas, carrots, and fish. Avoid other types of salts (such as sea salt and kosher salt, for example) and use ordinary iodized table salt instead.
- Mellow out. Stress reduction is an easy home remedy for graying hair. Studies have shown that the link between psychological stress and gray hair is not folklore. Rest, exercise, meditate, and find other ways to relieve anxiety and stress.
- Slather on the butter — on your head, that is. Cow’s milk butter massaged into hair roots helps prevent additional graying. Melt the butter so it is pliable, then spread into your hair and scalp twice a week. Rinse well.
- If you live near a store that specializes in ethnic foods, ask the owner for Indian gooseberry. Cut the fruit into slices and soak overnight in water, then let dry. Set water aside and boil the dried fruit in coconut oil until the solid matter disintegrates. Rub the dusty paste on hair, then rinse with the coconut oil and water mixture.
- Try amaranth if you can find it (your best bets are Indian food stores). The fresh juice of the leaves of this vegetable as well as the grain varieties help hair retain its natural color and prevent it from graying.
- Add curry to your food and your hair. Eat lots of curry in condiments, sauces, or mixed with buttermilk. Boil curry leaves in coconut oil to form a hair tonic. Rub on hair to bring the color back to its original pigmentation.
- Grate fresh ginger, mix with honey, and set aside in a jar. Eat one teaspoon of the mixture every day.
- Mix one tablespoon of table salt (with iodine) into a cup of strong black tea (no milk). Massage into scalp and let sit for an hour before rinsing.
- Make a paste of henna powder, yogurt, and fenugreek seeds (also known as methi seeds). Or use methi seed powder, coffee, basil juice, and mint juice. Apply to hair, let sit for three hours, then shampoo hair.
- Try ribbed gourd, which is said to enrich hair roots and restore pigment to hair. Cut the gourd into pieces, let them dry, and then soak in coconut oil for three days. Boil until there is black residue in the pot, then massage oil mixture into scalp. Rinse and style as usual.
