Me and my grays were skeptical about the claims of The Inkey List Amino Acid Anti-Gray Scalp Treatment (£15), which promises to ward against the development of gray hairs. Turns out, I wasn't the only one. "When Mark first showed me I was like, 'Come on, there's no way,'" says Laxton. And while I haven't been trying it long enough to see results (clinical trials showed white hair reduction by as much as 56 percent when used regularly for four months), the technology behind the formula is quite interesting.
"We've called it 'amino acid' but you should almost think about [this treatment] like an antioxidant," explains Curry. "There's a group of cells under the skin that are responsible for the pigmenting of the hair as it grows through. The reason why whites and grays start to come through is that free radicals in that part of the scalp interfere with the cells that cause the pigmentation."
"The amino acid treatment really is just about controlling the level of free radicals in the scalp, so you get more pigmentation that comes through — because that's the only thing that's stopping it," Curry adds. "There's no other biological reason that you start getting white hairs." There is a caveat: this treatment is meant to stop those first white hairs we see. "Eventually, as you get older, you're going to go fully gray, and there's no stopping it," says Curry.