got a surprise....

My hair has such a mind of its own, i've sometimes joked that it is a separate entity ... and a highly capricious one at that.  If it doesn't "want" to be styled in the way i try to do it, it simply won't GO or STAY there.  I don't have the "hair talent" that my eldest sister does, so i usually just give up and let it have its way (thank dog for scrunchies and clips).  ;-)  The other day it decided it wanted to be parted on the other side from the usual;  i went along with that decision.

Then i noticed....  Usually when i let it part itself differently, the non-brown hairs gleam forth in all their glory.  And my grey hairs are not the genteel dark grey that my husband's were in the beginning, no.  They're SILVER -- they practically glow in the dark.  Maybe silver isn't the right word either;  think preternaturally light-emitting vintage-scifi robot platinum!

When the new parting revealed hairs that hadn't been exposed to the light of day since, oh, the last time my mane got the bit in its figurative teeth, there was a truly surprising lack of the metallic glint i anticipated.

How is that possible?!  ...I googled....

There's a surprising lack of scientifically sound information on exactly WHY hair goes grey (or doesn't).  One oh-so-brilliant website proclaims that hair greys because you're OLDER -- why didn't i think of that?!  :-P  The more scholarly ones say that it happens because the two types of melanin no longer go into the hair as it sprouts -- YA THINK?  Of course, the reason for THAT is not mentioned.

On "natural health" sites, there's a huge list of practices and supplements credited with nurturing hair growth, keeping it "healthy" and of the original color.  Beyond saying "X is required for the hormones that encourage growth" though, not much useful information is to be found.  In the comments sections, everybody has HEARD that such-and-such helped so-and-so, but it's just like the seeing of ghosts -- one's aunt's college-roomate's brother-in-law saw one once....

So when i noticed the shortage of silver threads among the brown, the only thing i could do was reflect on what's new in my world -- and THE thing it could possibly be was only obliquely supportable through the literature.  I left the internet and consulted the book that might offer support for my hypothesis.  Even it didn't have SPECIFIC info about grey hair -- just general hair allusions.

A previous book in my collection had hinted that carnitine might influence the color, but in my experience it had no impact;  it might have slowed greying, but there's no way to know.  The people in my family whom i most closely resemble are/were grey-resistant themselves.  And it surely didn't take two or three years for C's follicular benefit to manifest....

No, it HAS to be something i began last fall, because i haven't added (and stuck with) anything else very recently.  It has to be the gelatin.

Again -- though gelatin is actually proven to increase hair thickness, there doesn't seem to be data on its effect on color.  Looking up "hair" in "Nourishing Broth" mostly yields "hair, nails and skin" and doesn't mention the grey at all.

It's been about five months that i've been stirring a tablespoon of Great Lakes gelatin into my morning coffee, pretty much every single day (when i'm out of town i occasionally miss a day).  I had also bought and tried out GL's collagen but i didn't "feel it" the same way, so i only use that a few days at a time when the current gelatin container runs out, to use it up; when the new order arrives i go back to the orange cannister.

I was thoroughly prepared to have to use gelatin for quite awhile -- MONTHS -- before i saw improvements in certain areas, like joints and gut, but i wasn't hanging in there in hopes that i could discontinue touching up my grey!  Consider it just a positive side-effect -- hell, consider it a VERY pleasant surprise!