Regrow Your Hair!

In this blog I wanted to talk about strategies to prevent hair loss, maintain it, and even grow back hair.

And as a side note, and side benefit, many of these strategies and interventions will also promote better brain health and cognition as well. I mean obviously, since the brain is right there.

But there is one very important point to note: if the hair follicles are no longer able to produce hair, then natural remedies and even medications like Rogaine will be to no avail. Therefore, you want to start restoring your hair naturally sooner than later. 

So some vanity can often be a good thing for your health.

Anyways, let’s get into the topic.

While hair loss definitely has a genetic component, like around 80% in men, it is not 100%. So that means there is still potential for most people. It is important to note that it is normal for people to lose some hair, like 80 to 100 hairs a day. But more than that indicates a problem. 

Beyond genetics, there can be a lot of different factors that can be a secondary or even a primary cause: Examples are hormones like thyroid and estrogen imbalances, especially in menopausal women, gut absorption and inflammation issues, autoimmune conditions and nutrient deficiencies like low iron and low protein, and various medications. 

Insulin is also a hormone, and very high levels caused by a sub optimal diet and lifestyle keep insulin elevated, which can increase testosterone production in men and women, contributing to hair loss. In fact this is by far the most common cause of hair loss in males and females, called androgenetic alopecia, and is heavily linked to the genetic factors I just mentioned. But still, as a nutritionist I feel a lot can be done with adjusting diet and lifestyle to slow and perhaps even reverse the progression.

And of course don’t forget the concept of circulation. Our hair needs a blood supply to grow. So if someone has less blood supply getting the scalp, that can impact hair growth. Androgenetic alopecia does just that. Basically, due to the insulin resistance, you have imbalances of testosterone at the scalp that turn into dihydrotestosterone, or DHT, which constricts blood flow to the follicles, which causes the follicles to stop growth and they shut down. 

Eating junk foods and poor sleeping habits can be associated with male pattern baldness, probably because they can both promote insulin resistance and significantly reduce healthy blood circulation throughout the body, making arteries stiffer. 

Other factors include toxins in the environment. Examples are from cigarette smoking and too much seafood consumption. The toxins from cigarettes and mercury found in tuna fish can actually highly concentrate in our hair follicles, damaging them, and causing hair loss. There have been case studies documenting this, and removing the toxins, such as daily canned tuna consumption, resulted in hair re-growth. 

And we cannot forget about the microbiome. As a nutritionist I feel this one is also very important when it comes to having healthy hair. There are actually studies showing that fecal transplants can induce almost complete re-growth of hair. Some of the pictures of this are quite amazing. Someone completely bald again regains a full head of hair after the transplant. Basically, in case you don’t know, a fecal transplant is transferring stool from someone healthy to the unhealthy recipient in order to restore their microbiome. 

I admit that a fecal transplant is an extreme case, but a point we can learn from this is how the microbiome can relate to multiple aspects of our health, such as our hair. 

And as a nutritionist I am always emphasizing how the food we eat impacts our microbiome. Check out some of my prior videos to see which foods I feel can have some of the biggest impact on making positive microbiome changes.  

That’s I’ll I got for now, please like and subscribe, and please check out my New Book, “A Practical Weight-Loss Guide For Those Who've Tried Everything: The Mindset, The Science, The Plan, The Power” now available on Amazon. Be well.