Can Chemotherapy cure grey hair?

Now before you gasp in horror, we're not advocating you undergo chemotherapy as an alternative to hair dye! No, instead, we're considering a story posted on a forum in Australia which claims that following chemotherapy treatment for cancer, one guy's hair grew back in his natural colour, without a grey in sight! He was previously totally grey, and until undergoing chemotherapy had never experienced hairloss.

Certainly an interesting story, but not one that has much grounding in science unfortunately...

Chemotherapy causes hairloss because the chemicals target rapidly growing cells, which include the unhealthy cancerous ones, as well as healthy hair cells for example. This means that during chemotherapy, hair growth and production can be effected and these effects can be partial or total, temporary or permanent. Chemotherapy and the ensuing hairloss will be different in each individual person and in fact, whilst I've met people with an almost immediately restored head of hair following chemotherapy, I've also met individuals with limited growth five years later. What's more, scouring the internet, this success case seems isolated and there seem to be more stories of chemotherapy removing the pigmentation and actually causing greyness. Your Doctor will be the best person to tell you what to expect, so it's worth talking it through with them to see how specific dosages and target areas will affect the outcome.

In the meantime, it seems a few people may be able to expect additional stimulation resulting in increased pigmentation in the hair following chemotherapy (a very small silver lining), but I'm not sure they'll be using it as treatment any time soon!

Victoria x

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