'Pill for Grey Hair' may Not be All That Useful

L'Oreal's plans to develop a pill that can prevent grey hair have been criticized by experts, who say that it could do more harm than good.

Bruno Bernard, head of the Hair Care, Quality and Color team at L'Oreal, first spoke about the cosmetic company's research, telling the Daily Mail that the pill will be based on a fruit extract which his company is not prepared to reveal.

"Ideally you would take [the pill] for your whole life, but realistically we'd encourage people to start using it before their hair goes grey because we don't think it can reverse the process once it has started," he had told the UK paper.

"We have a watertight proof of concept, and we think it will have a market among men as well as women."

However, Dr. Jonathan Zippin, a dermatologist at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, told ABCNews.com this kind of preventative solution to grey hair is "really difficult to prove" because some people never go grey, and others only grey a little bit.

If researchers gave the pill to someone who never got grey hair, there would be no way to know if it was because of the pill or not.

In addition, there are several unanswered questions about a pill that alters pigment, Zippin noted, especially if it would affect the diagnosis of melanoma by making moles look atypical.

In a statement released yesterday, L'Oreal briefly described its research efforts, but made no mention of a pill or the alleged 2015 release date widely reported by several media outlets.

Source: ANI