Hair Care 101: Best Practices to Nurture and Protect Your Hair
Have you always longed for long, lustrous, healthy hair? Well, you’re definitely not alone! Beautiful, gorgeous locks seem to be on everyone’s wish list! Attaining healthy hair and optimal hair growth calls for a ton of care, patience, dedication, knowledge and effective hair care techniques.
Understanding the Basics of Hair Health
It’s true that your genes dictate how your hair is! Alongside, factors, like – stress, sun exposure, hair styling products play a part as well.
Maintaining healthy hair can be a big challenge. Dietary modifications, dealing with stress and using the right assortment of hair care products – there are several factors to take in to account.
Whether you are trying to deal with hair thinning, hair loss or hair damage; or simply want to maintain the health of your hair, here are a few tried-and-tested techniques that trichologists advocate including in to your hair care regimen.
Why Hair Health Matters
The health of your hair reflects on your overall general health. Healthy, luxuriant hair signifies that your general health is good and your body is functioning at prime condition.
If your hair is unhealthy and dry, it’s a sure sign that you may need to intervene – alter your diet, integrate supplements in to your regimen, work on your hair care routine and thus promote overall health and well being as well as your hair health.
What’s more, a head of healthy hair is pivotal to both your physical as well as psychological well being. Care, dedication and consistency promise you healthy, vibrant hair always! So, when you pay attention to the health of your hair, you are ensuring general health along with great self confidence.
Here’s a round-up of proven techniques that promise to nurture your hair growth and promise healthy hair. Let’s dive right in and track down the powerful secrets!
Nutritional Requirements for Healthy Hair
It is essential that you nourish your scalp and hair from the inside out; a healthy, wholesome diet ensures that you have good, luxuriant hair.
A host of factors influence the health of your hair – age, genetics, hormones, amongst a few others; however, what you eat is something that is in your control. Integrating vital vitamins and minerals, healthy fats and loads of protein is absolutely essential.
The hair is chiefly composed of protein; thus eating adequate amounts of protein is critical for good hair growth. Healthy fat provides hydration to your hair, making it look glossy. Vitamins and minerals protect and prevent damage, thereby keeping the hair healthy.
Eat a rainbow assortment of foods and you’ll soon be on your way to sporting gorgeous locks!
Vitamins and Minerals Essential for Hair Health
- Biotin – Biotin boosts hair growth and makes your strands strong.
- Vitamin D – vitamin D plays a pivotal role is activating hair follicles which are dormant.
- Vitamin E – a powerful antioxidant, vitamin E fights oxidative stress which is responsible for hair loss.
- Iron – A deficiency of iron triggers massive hair loss; thus taking a supplement will reduce hair shedding notably.
- Vitamin C – A powerful antioxidant, vitamin C boosts collagen formation, promising you stronger hair.
- Omega 3 fatty acids – Omega 3 has potent anti-inflammatory effects which fight inflammation which may be causing hair loss.
Discuss with a trichologist and understand which supplements are necessary for you and follow the dosage prescribed by him.
Best Foods to Promote Hair Growth and Health
- The preliminary step to achieving gorgeous hair is eating the right food.
- Make sure you eat loads of protein, leafy greens, fruits, fresh vegetables and whole grains – include them into your daily menu plan.
- Additionally, adding ‘happy hair foods’ to the menu will yield remarkable benefits – flax seeds, spinach, carrots, mangoes and kidney beans.
- If you don’t eat sufficient amounts of protein, the hair goes in to ‘rest’ mode. Older hair fall out, new ones are resting and not growing, thus you will have hair loss.
- Healthy fats are also linked to shiny healthy hair. Eat plenty of nuts, they guarantee to keep your locks thick and lustrous.
- Have a green smoothie daily, the iron in spinach, coriander, parsley, celery and moringa promise to stop hair thinning and hair loss.
The Impact of Hydration on Hair Health
- Water brings in all the water-soluble vitamins and minerals to the hair root, thereby nourishing and feeding the scalp and stimulating hair growth.
- One strand of hair is made up of 25 % water. Thus, when you have large amounts of water, your hair will look healthy and glossy.
- Good hydration ensures that the ends of your hair won’t split or turn brittle. Poor hydration makes the hair look unhealthy and will stagnate growth as well.
Why Choose Us?
FAQs
If your body is disordered or imbalanced, the first place it’ll show up in is your hair! Routine whole body check-ups are crucial to identify if there is a disease or an underlying medical condition or a hormone imbalance or dietary deficiencies. These take a toll on your general health and will greatly affect the health of your hair too; treating the condition will help reinstate the health of your hair. You need to stay on top of your general health, so as to ensure your hair is healthy, strong and beautiful!
Stress is the biggest culprit for unhealthy, tired-looking hair. It affects the body in more ways than you can imagine. When you are under immense physical stress, such as pregnancy, a long drawn out chronic illness, being hospitalized, or dealing with a loss in the family or are facing a stressful event such as a divorce, it triggers teleogen effluvium – profuse hair loss and poor hair growth. Dietary changes, lifestyle alterations and adhering to a good hair care regimen helps cope with the situation well. What’s more, when the stress reduces and life starts to get back to normal, hair shedding stops, hair growth occurs and your hair becomes healthy again.
Regular exercise promotes good blood circulation, and this benefits your hair follicles significantly. Daily workout, a protein packed post workout snack and plenty of water – and you are on your way to healthy, beautiful hair!
Experts recommend discussing with a trichologist to get yourself a customized hair care routine. If you are suffering from unhealthy and dull-looking hair, hair thinning, excessive hair fall, hair loss, or balding, it is absolutely advisable to meet with a doctor to diagnose and treat your condition. There is a whole host of treatment options available – topical applications, vitamin and mineral supplements, diets, oral medications, non invasive procedures and hair transplantation. Discuss your options with your doctor and embark upon your hair restoration journey!
One of the preliminary steps in diagnosing hair fall and hair loss involves monitoring the iron levels in the blood. Iron insufficiency causes anemia and is directly responsible for poor hair growth and hair thinning. Low levels of iron are linked to female pattern hair loss, alopecia areata and telogen effluvium. An insufficiency of the mineral makes the hair dull, weak and brittle too. When you supplement your diet with iron, the strength and thickness of the hair increase appreciably.
Vitamin D is metabolized by keratinocytes, which synthesize keratin, which is responsible for keeping the hair strong and healthy. When the levels of Vitamin D in your blood are low, the keratinocytes in the hair follicles, can’t manufacture keratin and thus fail to facilitate good hair growth, subsequently resulting in hair loss. Hence, you must incorporate a vitamin D supplement in to your dietary regime.
Smoking causes hair loss and makes your hair look very unhealthy. Smoking reduces oxygen in the blood – nicotine constricts the blood vessels and this reduces the amount of oxygen and nutrients that your cells receive. Smoking also increases oxidative stress and inflammation radically, resulting in excessive hair loss.
Getting a good night’s rest is absolutely vital for a thick, gorgeous mane! Sleep deprivation puts your body under immense stress; and stress causes profuse hair loss. Furthermore, sleep deprivation makes you crave sugar – a lack of sleep causes a spike in the hunger-stimulating hormone ghrelin which in turn makes you consume sugary foods. Bingeing on sugar adversely affects healthy hair growth.
