Health Headlines: Pop a Pill to Get Rid of Gray Hair?

Plus: A man dies of rabies from a donated organ; green tea and coffee may reduce stroke risk; and more health news.

Pop a pill and say goodbye to gray hairs? One new supplement says yes. Go Away Gray, a product that originally launched in 2009 just came out with an “improved version” that now includes copper, calcium carbonate, and gynostemma (a Chinese herb). It can be taken as a capsule or used as a shampoo. The active ingredient is called catalase, which supposedly counteracts the impact of hydrogen peroxide and returns the hair to its natural color—in merely eight weeks. We are skeptical, but the product claims to be organic and natural so trying it can’t hurt, right? [Prevention]

A man died of rabies from donated kidney. The Maryland man received the donated kidney more than a year ago. Investigators say that rabies usually develops within a few months, so this is very surprising. Even more surprising is that this is only the second time rabies has been transmitted by donated organs in the U.S. Also, rabies is very rare in this country, with only one to three deaths a year. [USA Today]

Green tea and coffee may reduce stroke risk. A new study out of Japan says that drinking coffee and green tea can make a small, but positive lifestyle change. The study, published in Stroke: The Journal of the American Heart Association, looked at 83,269 Japanese adults between the ages of 45 to 74. Researchers discovered that people who drank at least one cup a day lowered their stroke risk by about 20 percent compared to those who drank it rarely. [CBS News]

Fourteen French patients are nearly free of HIV due to early treatment, French researchers report in the journal PloS Pathogens. The report supports the idea that early treatment can prevent the disease from taking hold and spreading in the body. The patients were able to stop taking the drugs, stay healthy, and the virus stayed at low levels. [NBC News]