My mother in law just gave me a bottle of pills containing a Chinese herb meant to treat hair prematurely graying. I don't mind trying it and finding out it doesn't work in order to keep her happy but I've ran into some reports that it can cause liver damage, but I can't gauge how reliable those reports are. Any tips on how to find scientific research on things like this?
The product is called "Fu-Ti"
Search PubMed there seem to be a few papers around indicating it's toxicity and discussing it like https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22210538
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/sidebar-whats-in-th...
In before the stereotypical MiL jokes along the lines of "of course the pills are pure cyanide" etc.
A few thoughts as someone who has pursued a lot of alternative medicine (successfully, with a very critical eye):
Minerals, like zinc, can build up in the body. Thus they are a means to wind up poisoned. (Too much of anything is not good for you. Even water can kill you if consumed in excess. It gets called water poisoning.)
I was told by people who did their research that B vitamins (particularly PABA) and nutritional support for the adrenals can reverse grey hair. I was going prematurely grey due to a serious health crisis. I had some limited success with this approach in my thirties.
You could try taking zinc supplements to see if that is, in fact, the active ingredient in this super secret mumbo jumbo, minus the part where you expose yourself to god-knows-what.
If you don't actually care about your hair going grey, I strongly suggest you just tell her "No thanks." You shouldn't have to experiment with your own health to appease anyone at all.
Best.
It's not perfect but they have assembled information on quite a variety of substances and scientific trials therof.