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Gray hair is a sign of a long and healthy life
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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Hair color gives you the opportunity to look into the future and learn everything about your own health, scientists say. And wild boars helped them conduct this unusual study. It was discovered that gray hair is a sign of a long and healthy life. However, there is not so good news for redheads. People with red hair have more cell damage than others. Spanish scientists say the reason is that too many antioxidants are spent on the production of red pigment, which, instead of cleaning the cells, work to maintain it.
Given that all higher vertebrates, including humans, have the same types of melanin in their skin, hair, and feathers, these findings add to the scant current knowledge of the physiological consequences of pigmentation. The researchers looked at two types of melanin, the pigment that gives hair and skin its color. Eumelanin is the brown and black pigment, while pheomelanin is the bright red and shades of chestnut. Unlike eumelanin, pheomelanin requires a chemical called glutathione to impart its color.
Glutathione is an antioxidant, meaning it can stop the chemical reaction of oxidation. Oxidation reactions cause free radicals, which in turn damage cells. The goal of the study was to find out whether red hair really “eats” this antioxidant, making the body vulnerable to the effects of free radicals. And so it turned out. As for gray hair, due to the lack of melanin in it, the body does not have to suffer from free radicals, since the unoccupied antioxidants successfully cope with their task.
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