Glutathione and Gray Hair: What the Science Says

Glutathione is often called the body's master antioxidant, and it sits right at the center of the science of gray hair. Research shows that graying follicles are under heavy oxidative stress, and that people who gray early tend to have less glutathione. Here's what that means for your hair color, what glutathione can and can't do, and how to support your levels.

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Key Takeaways

• Gray and white hair builds up hydrogen peroxide, a reactive oxygen molecule, which damages the pigment enzyme tyrosinase.
• People who gray prematurely have lower blood glutathione and higher oxidative stress, and the imbalance grows with the amount of gray.
• Taking glutathione by mouth raised the body's glutathione stores by 30 to 35% over six months in a clinical trial.
• No study has shown that glutathione restores color to gray hair.

What Is Glutathione?

Glutathione is the most abundant antioxidant your body makes. It's a critical regulator of oxidative stress and immune function. Your cells build it from amino acids, including cysteine.

Can Glutathione Reverse Gray Hair?

No study has shown that glutathione restores color to hair that has already gone gray. What the research supports is a strong link between oxidative stress and graying, and a clear role for antioxidants like glutathione in the body's defenses against it.

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How To Support Your Glutathione Levels

• Protein: your body builds glutathione from amino acids, so adequate protein matters.
• Oral glutathione: the trial below found that it raised glutathione levels in the blood.
• Consistency: levels in the trial rose over months and returned to baseline after people stopped taking it.

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What The Research Shows

Oxidative Stress Inside The Graying Follicle

A landmark 2009 study showed that gray and white human hair accumulates hydrogen peroxide in very high concentrations. The graying follicle had almost no catalase, the enzyme that breaks hydrogen peroxide down, and it lost its ability to repair oxidative damage to tyrosinase, the key pigment-making enzyme. The result is a gradual loss of hair color (Wood et al., 2009).

Lower Glutathione In Early Graying

In a study of people who went gray young, they had higher levels of oxidative damage markers and lower levels of antioxidants, including glutathione, than people without early graying. The more gray hair someone had, the lower their glutathione and the higher their oxidative stress. The researchers suggested antioxidant support is likely to be beneficial (Saxena et al., 2020).

Does Oral Glutathione Raise Your Levels?

In a six-month randomized trial, 250 or 1,000 mg a day raised glutathione levels in the blood. At the higher dose, levels in red blood cells, plasma and immune cells rose 30 to 35% (Richie et al., 2015). That trial was in healthy adults and measured glutathione, not hair color.

Is Glutathione Safe?

Check with your doctor before starting if you're pregnant or breastfeeding, have a medical condition or take prescription medication.

N-acetyl cysteine is often discussed alongside glutathione; see N-acetyl cysteine and hair.

See also: Serums for Gray Hair: What the Research Says About Care, Color & Sun · Copper for Hair: Gray Hair, Hair Growth & Copper Peptides

Frequently Asked Questions

Does glutathione help gray hair?

Graying hair is under heavy oxidative stress, and people who gray early have lower glutathione. Supporting your antioxidant defenses is a sensible step, but no study has shown glutathione restores color to gray hair.

Does oral glutathione actually work?

For raising your levels, a six-month randomized trial found that it did. Effects on hair color haven't been studied.

Does glutathione lighten hair?

Effects of glutathione on hair color haven't been studied.

References

1. Wood JM, Decker H, Hartmann H, et al. Senile hair graying: H2O2-mediated oxidative stress affects human hair color by blunting methionine sulfoxide repair. FASEB J. 2009. PubMed
2. Saxena S, Gautam RK, Gupta A, et al. Evaluation of Systemic Oxidative Stress in Patients with Premature Canities and Correlation of Severity of Hair Graying with the Degree of Redox Imbalance. Int J Trichology. 2020. PubMed
3. Richie JP Jr, Nichenametla S, Neidig W, et al. Randomized controlled trial of oral glutathione supplementation on body stores of glutathione. Eur J Nutr. 2015. PubMed