PABA can prevent gray hair from appearing

Para-aminobenzoic acid, or PABA, or vitamin Bx (although it is not actually a vitamin, but is part of folic acid) is a natural supplement recognized for protecting against UV rays (supporting healthy skin and hair), as well as for its antidepressant, digestive, energizing, and nervous-system-supporting properties.

If you are looking for supplements that may help prevent hair from turning gray, sooner or later you will come across PABA, or be given its full name, para-aminobenzoic acid. There are even studies showing that, when administered to people with gray hair, it partially or completely restores their original color.

The first study to mention the anti-aging effect of PABA was also the first study to conclude that it was a vitamin. The article was published in 1941 in the prestigious journal Science and was written by Stefan Ansbacher, an American researcher who worked at the Squibb Institute for Medical Research.

To test his theory, the scientist gave his black-furred rodents synthetic food and observed that they had lost the color in their hair. When he added PABA to their food, the animals’ hair returned to its normal color. In experiments with chickens, the birds also failed to grow properly without PABA (which he considered a vitamin) and even died prematurely, although nutritionists rejected this reasoning.

A few months later, another study on PABA was published in the same journal. The author, researcher Benjamin Sieve, wrote that he had restored the color of several dozen human subjects with gray hair by giving them capsules containing PABA. He experimented with different doses and concluded that 100 mg of PABA per day was the most effective dose.

Like Ansbacher, Sieve was not particularly forthcoming about his research, concluding that “in view of the favorable results obtained, I am continuing my experiments with a considerably larger series of cases to establish the optimal daily dose of PABA.” However, he did not publish citations in reputable scientific journals.

Expanding knowledge about PABA

At conferences, Sieve and Ansbacher spoke together several months after their letters were published in Science about experiments in which hundreds of people with gray hair regained their natural color thanks to PABA. The researchers told the scientific media that PABA had no side effects, although they reported that the subjects had more energy, greater interest in sex, and, in some cases, that PABA supplementation resolved their infertility problems.

Cosmetics opinion media have now revisited the studies by Sieve and Ansbacher, tying everything to a preliminary investigation from the last century, in which more than 400 subjects with gray hair regained their hair color one and a half years (less in some cases) after taking PABA regularly. It was also reported that researcher Sieve achieved the best results with a combination of PABA and vitamin B5.

At the end of the war, Ansbacher filed a patent for using PABA against gray hair (US 2403473 A), and the application states that effective doses range from 50 to 600 mg of PABA per day. This article also cites the experiments conducted by Benjamin Sieve, in which 82% of the subjects responded favorably to the supplement’s effects.

In the end, the question is: Is PABA an effective hair colorant? Well, although it seems that two scientists tried to turn the supplement into an exaggeration and profit from it, it may actually work. We are not 100% certain, and we do not know who is likely to prevent their hair from turning gray with PABA and who is not. However, after 1950, the anti-aging properties of PABA disappeared from the scientific radar.

Source

• Science Research: 1941: PABA returns colour to grey hair