The quality of the hair on your head depends on what you put in your system. It depends on what you feed your body. It depends on what you feed your hair.
You can have access to the most expensive shampoos, you can have access to the most expensive creams and conditioners. It may be good for you, it may be great for you, it may be detrimental for you depending on how many chemicals they have. You may have access to the best hair treatments in the world. It may be good for you, it may be bad for you, it may be full of chemicals that actually make your hair weaker and weaker.
There’s a balance in everything there’s good hair care and then there’s bad hair care. The most important thing when it comes to your hair is what you feed. Every one of those cells in the human body because your hair at the end of today has its root, in your scalp and what you feed that root results. How your hair looks, how thick it is, the colour of it, how quickly it ages and how quickly it falls.
Hair has a life cycle as well. There’s the growth phase of hair, there’s the rest phase of hair and then there’s the shedding phase of hair. Losing about 100 to 150 to 200 strands of hair every day is not a problem but losing clumps of hair or having thinning hair or if you have premature ageing signs, that your body is giving you that you don’t have the right nutrition going into your system. Or you have the right nutrition going into your system but it’s not reaching your cells. Because you have the wrong exercise, you have poor circulation and then you may have the wrong genes as well.
Genetic Reason
Genes don’t support us because a lot of hair fall. A lot of hair conditions are also genetic in nature, but we can’t just blame our genes all the time. All of us have good genes and all of us have bad genes. In very, very rare cases will it be hereditary but in most cases, we need the wrong lifestyle and the wrong food to trigger off the bad genes. That we all have and lead to poor hair falling hair or disease for that matter.
In the medical world as well doctors look at cancer, diabetes, and cholesterol doctors study the medical history of your parents. If they have it, it doesn’t mean that you will have it too. Your chances are on the higher side which means you got to take more care of yourself.
But it doesn’t mean you have to get the same disease, it means that you have those genes in your body. But if you keep those genes suppressed and you don’t have the wrong triggers that trigger those genes to manifest into a disease or condition. That’s when all the problems begin so when it comes to hair fall there are so many different reasons.
Women and men who try to lose weight drastically through crashed diets, through overtraining start looking older and their hair starts falling. Because you have to understand if you are training and you are under-eating or you’re overtraining and you’re undereating.
You have a nutritional deficiency. How do we know this? A workout needs to make you glow. A workout should make you feel tired but energetic. Because you worked out your body but you’re left with an energetic feeling in your body. Now that’s a good workout.
A bad workout is one where you overtrain, you come home and you have to sleep immediately or you’re sluggish throughout the day or you’re fatigued throughout the day you lose that glow in your face you start looking haggard, you start looking older that’s a bad workout for you.
You’re working out because you’re trying to punish your body to lose weight. You’re trying to punish all of that weight gain with exercise and it never works. You may lose two or three kilos but you end up spoiling your looks, your hair, your skin and your immunity at the same time.
When you overtrain or you lose weight too quickly. Anyone who promises you weight loss of more than three to a maximum of four kilos in a month. It’s going to be done the wrong way the human body can effectively lose weight about two to three kilos in a safe way. Four kilos if you’re completely disciplined.
Maybe you go completely vegetarian, you drop out sugar and all process and you work out the right way. Maybe four kilos but anything more than that is dangerous weight loss for the human body. Because you may be losing weight but your cells 32 to 40 trillion cells in your human body will get affected. Which then affects your heart, your liver, your kidney and your hormones. That is what most women and men who try to work out too hard and undereat have hormonal disorders and never lose that abdominal fat.
The best biofeedback that your body can give you is if you’re having a great workout and a lifestyle but you’re not losing that belly and abdominal fat. There’s something wrong with the way that you train or there’s something way wrong with the way that you eat and the way that you sleep.
You have to keep your nutrition in place, your adequate exercise, your sleep and your stress levels to work together and then losing weight should become easy for you. Let’s go straight into hair fall again people with hypothyroid or thyroid disorders will find that they lose hair. What is thyroid disease? It’s a hormonal imbalance. So you’ve got to fix your thyroid or you’ve got to make your thyroid gland better through lifestyle and nutrition.
There are thousands of people around the world right now, who are no longer suffering from thyroid problems. Because they made lifestyle changes and changes in their nutrition and repaired their thyroid gland and they no longer have those hair fall problems.
People who are on high blood pressure medication, who are on antidepressants and who are also on blood thinners may tend to lose hair far more quickly. Than someone who’s not, this doesn’t mean you dump your medication and get off it’s awareness for you. That you just don’t jump onto medication when you can use lifestyle to control it in a safe way with your doctor in the loop. But the side effects of these medications, cause your hair to thin and eventually fall as well.
Nutrition Deficiency
Nutritional deficiency is the number one reason, if it’s not genetic why your hair falls?
The key vitamins for hair are iron and zinc. Now iron is the factor for low haemoglobin. What’s the purpose of haemoglobin and red blood cells? The purpose is to carry oxygen and the nutrients from the food that you eat. For all of your cells including your hair follicles.
If you don’t have the right number of red blood cells or you have low haemoglobin levels or iron, you cannot transport nutrients from the food that you eat to your hair. So even if you’re having iron-rich foods like dates, nuts, seeds, beetroots, biotin, etc. Unless you have the carriers to carry nutrients to your hair follicles you will have a hair problem.
Zinc And Iron Deficiency
Zinc and iron are found in most lentils, beetroots, lemons, nuts and seeds, almond, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, etc. You can also get it in a natural diet vitamin D. One almost three people have a vitamin D deficiency. Yes! It has a direct connection with hair fall thinning of hair and poor hair growth. Vitamin D although it’s a vitamin is also a hormone.
We have a lot of media that’s trying to sell sunscreen, that tells us to stay out of the sun. Because you will damage your hair, but it’s exactly the opposite ‘weak hair will get damaged in the sun, but if you want to make your hair stronger you got to be out in the sun at a safe time. To increase your vitamin D which in turn will have a dramatic effect on the health of your hair.
Protein Deficiency
The overconsumption of protein can lead to hair fall and of course the underconsumption of protein is the building block of every cell in the human body, including your hair cells. So if you have poor quality protein or synthetic protein or too much protein in your body. You won’t have the right amount of protein or quality to break down into amino acids which do all the magic when it comes to your muscle growth and your hair growth.
Look at your vegetarian sources of protein and if you’re a non-vegetarian. Look at clean non-vegetarian sources of protein if you can find them. Green leafy vegetables, nuts, seeds, fruits, lentils, rajma, chickpea, etc. Your balance diet will give you good quality protein, the combination of rice and the combination of lentils gives you a complete protein that is excellent for your hair. The combination of rice and the combination of rajma which is a kidney bean will give you a complete protein. Which has the amino acids necessary for your hair.
Omega-3 Deficiency
You don’t need to reach out for a bottle of fish oil. You can get high-quality omega-3 in sabja seeds as well also known as sweet basil seeds or the little seeds that you see in falooda. Sabja seeds are rich in omega-3 which breaks down into (ALA) which is Alpha-Linolenic Acid. That is fantastic for your hair, you can also find omega-3 in flax seeds, in walnuts and in oily fish as well eggs.
For all people who eat eggs, you need to get out of that habit of separating the yolk from the white. The white has three grams of protein it’s an incomplete protein. You need the amino acids in the yolk to make it a complete protein. All the magic is in the yolk the vitamins B, the choline the actual protein that helps with your hair growth is in the yolk. If you’re eating an egg eat the whole thing you cannot separate nature.
Vitamin A Deficiency
If you consume too much vitamin A, people who constantly pop these multivitamins or vitamin A tablets. You will have hair fall. Vitamin A and excess are toxic and will make your hair fall, but the right amount of vitamin A in the human body is excellent for hair growth.
What is the function of vitamin A?
Cell growth each and every strand of hair is a cell in your body. If you have the right amount of vitamin A, which you get from your carrots, sweet potato and all of your natural foods your fruits and your vegetables raw you will have sufficient vitamin A.
Biotin Deficiency
Everyone reaches out for biotin today. what is biotin? Biotin is one of the B vitamins, it’s vitamin b7. Very, very, very powerful for your hair. If you take it in its natural forms, and today companies make biotin in its formulations and that also works well for your hair. But if you go on popping by it and tablets and you’re not circulating.
You lead a sedentary lifestyle you’re not sleeping well enough that biotin is going to be a waste of money. You’re wasting your money on a good supplement that can do good for your hair. But because you don’t have the right circulation and you’re sitting too long throughout the day. That biotin becomes a waste of your money and a waste in your body.
Vitamin C Deficiency
If you eat three to four fruits in a day and you have that one or two glasses of raw vegetables and your nuts and seeds you get sufficient vitamin C. For your hair, vitamin C is extremely important for your hair. For all of those who smoke and drink excessive tea and coffee. We need to know that that also depletes vitamin C from your body.
So, technically if we’re eating a balanced diet, we have enough of all the vitamins. If we have bad lifestyle habits like overconsumption of alcohol, overconsumption of sugar and junk food overconsumption of oil, overconsumption of medicines and antibiotics and smoking, etc. Depletes all the vitamins that are necessary for your hair.
You see you won’t find your solution in a cream and a shampoo and a supplement you will find your solution in that one drug called lifestyle.
Stress
Yes! Absolutely there is a connection between stress and hair fall let’s understand how. When you have elevated levels of cortisol which is your stress hormone. Guess what changes in your body testosterone, thyroxine, DHEA, and estrogen are all the hormones required for hair growth.
So stress has a direct impact. You’ll see young people today 25 and 26 with greying hair. This speaks volumes about the stress that they have now this stress could be work stress, financial stress, relationship stress, or emotional stress but one of the biggest stresses is the stresses caused to the human body by less sleep and less recovery posterior workouts.
Your hair has a life cycle there is growth, there is repair and rest and then there is shedding. It goes through that entire lifestyle so if you don’t have the right amount of rest and sleep at night you are going to have poor quality hair growth. Then no matter how much money you spend on supplements, good food and all those creams and all those conditioners it doesn’t matter at all.
Why Do Chemotherapy and Cancer People lose their Hair?
Have you ever wondered why certain people going through chemotherapy and cancer go bald and lose all of their hair? There’s a simple science behind it, in its honest attempt of chemotherapy to kill cancer. Chemotherapy produces free radicals in the human body. Free radicals can go and further kill fast-dividing cells.
Cancer cells are fast-dividing cells so anything that can kill these fast-dividing cells has the potential to kill cancer. Now what happens is fast-dividing cells exist in your bones which is why people’s immunity drops, their white blood cells fall, their lymphocytes, leukocytes, and neutrophils are all that get affected by the side effects of chemo, which is free radical generation to kill cancer.
Another fast dividing cell in the human body is your hair. This is why the first thing that happens is the body sheds all its hair when you go through chemotherapy, certain kinds of chemotherapies.
Free radicals where else do we get free radicals from. The pollution in the air that we breathe, contamination in food sugar, outside eating junk food, free radicals we get because we don’t exercise, because we don’t detoxify. So we accumulate toxins over time which creates free radicals which further kill our fast-dividing cells.
So the more free radicals we have in our body the lower immunity we have, the faster our hair falls, the faster it changes, its colour and it becomes more and more grey that’s what free radicals do.
What is the best solution for free radicals, anything that contains antioxidants?
Antioxidants neutralize free radicals, you can get them in your fruits, you can get them in your vegetables, in your nuts, in your seeds, through your pranayama, through your meditation, through asanas and yoga, through a simple walk, our liver generates a master antioxidant called glutathione.
Glutathione is the master antioxidant of the human body and most people will have less glutathione because of lifestyle, because of medication, because of allopathy, and conventional drugs. Which we may need but at the same time, we’ve got to make sure that we’re replenishing our diet with foods, which are rich in antioxidants.
Let’s go to some of the best home remedies if we have hair fall.
You may have the best conditioner in the world but remember every conditioner unless truly organic and chemical-free has a lot of chemicals that destroy minerals. So your natural conditioner and hair tonic for your hair would be coconut oil, it could also be almond oil, it could also be olive oil, but these oils are rich in minerals, and when we apply it to the scalp of our hair our scalp absorbs these minerals which help to regenerate dead cells or keep alive the living cells.
1. Combine olive oil, cinnamon powder and pure honey
People use their hair as a combination of olive oil, cinnamon powder and pure honey. Honey, you make a mix of this and you rub it into your scalp you keep it for at least three to four hours and you wash it off. You do this about three or four times a week, for at least two to three months. It is believed to arrest hair fall.
2. Apple cider vinegar
Pure apple cider vinegar with the mother culture. You take equal parts of it. Like you take three tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and three tablespoons of water and mix them together. Rub it into your scalp and into your hair to clean your scalp of dandruff. Because when you have dandruff that’s also reducing the health of your hair. So you keep a clean scalp using apple cider vinegar keep it in your hair, for about 30 minutes and you can wash it off.
3. Raw potato juice
Take a potato wash it well, with the skin juice it and the juice will be thick applied on your hair. It dries up forms a thin crust and washes it off after about 30 minutes to an hour. That is a natural conditioner in itself. Raw potato juice, you do apple cider vinegar you, do raw potato juice and within 10 to 15 days people are going to notice a difference. Not only in the colour of your hair it’s going to get darker, but it’s also going to get more voluminous and it’s going to get fuller.
4. Regular yoga
Headstands when you do an inversion and you have blood rush to your head. That’s one of the best exercises for your hair because blood carries oxygen which is required for growth and nutrients from all the food that you eat to your hair.
If people have genetic disorders it’s good to get that checked. It doesn’t mean that you can’t work to keep at least the hair that you have on your head healthy so there’s always something that you can do. But let’s not get stressed when we start ageing too quickly and we start growing there’s always something that we can do to reduce stress.
We can meditate, we can get a hobby, we can work on our relationships, we can work on our own you know method of introspection, in our life to see what we can accept what we can let go of. Believe me, stress is the number one root cause of almost any problem that almost any one of us has today.
The whole idea is to put these things together it’s simple science, your hair needs protein, and your hair needs the right nutrition. Not too much of it, not too little of it. Balanced the right amount for your body so when you start working out the right way and eating the right way and moving the right way and sleeping the right way you’ll find that your hair gets better. It’s as simple as that.
Don’t spend your money on all of those cosmetics outside. Remember health is an inside out approach, not a nice outside-in approach. Like, let’s take an example of a plant you can keep spraying the leaves with chemicals and water every day and it’ll look good.
But slowly it’ll start fading and dying what you got to feed is the root. Beneath the soil and that’s what makes the plant more beautiful, that’s what makes the flower more beautiful, so health is an inside out approach. Whether it’s your skin, whether it’s your hair, what you feed your body is exactly what you feed your hair.