Like everything from your heart to your skin, your hair will be healthiest if you are following a healthy diet. Hair loss can result from ageing, surgery, radiation, severe illness, drugs, endocrine disorders such as hypothyroidism, sudden weight loss, vitamin and mineral deficiency (especially iron), over consumption of vitamins such as vitamin A and niacin, poor diet, stress, heredity et al. But what we can do here is to provide our body with enough nutrients to support proper growth of hair and prevent any type of loss or premature graying due to any nutritional deficiency.
Stimulating hair growth from within by the food you eat is more important than what you put on your scalp. Some dietary modification is required if you feel that your hair is falling much more than normal. Normal hair fall for an adult is between 30 to 90 strands per day. That means no extreme dieting and no overloading on junk food. Hair is made up of 100 per cent protein, so be sure to eat protein with every main meal.
Eat lots of protein
Adequate protein also helps premature graying of the hair. It is also caused by reduction in the amount of melanin in the hair strands. The body makes this pigment by using the raw materials found in two amino acids, tyrosine and tryptophan. Heredity graying cannot be prevented by nutritional means but adequate protein in your diet will also ensure that you have enough amino acids your body needs to manufacture melanin.
Skin, hair and nail contain some of body’s most rigid protein, and all of them have high sulfur content. For vegetarians, legumes and cabbage are best choices and for non-vegetarians eggs and fish are the good options. Thus, not only enough protein food, but also the kind of protein makes a difference.
Reduce fat intake
You might consider reducing your fat food intake, as it has been observed that, Japanese men eat fewer low fat foods and more of high fat food like red meat and dairy products, they are seeing a dramatic increase in male pattern baldness. To win the war against baldness, we need to beat dihydrotestosterone (DHT), a hormone that halts your hair follicle growth cycle. Some scientists suggest that they are formed in the oil gland and the follicle of the hair. They say that more fat you eat, the more active these glands become. Reducing fat intake becomes mandatory for healthy hair, but it was discovered by Japanese researchers that best defense against DTH may be grape seeds. They observed that when bald mice were treated with grape seed extract, it stimulated their hair growth cycle in a similar manner to minoxidil. Minoxidil is an over-the-counter product and does seem to help slow the hair shedding process for almost all people. So the bottomline is that maybe you are getting bald but it does not harm to include more grape seeds into your diet.
Say NO to sugar
Eastern medicines also say that too much sugar – especially fruit sugar (fructose) – can cause balding on the sides of the forehead. It was found that sugar is often a contributing factor in hair loss, and when sugar was omitted from the diets of certain individual, the hair loss process is either halted or totally or partially reversed. Too much sugar and alcohol has been found to destroy B-complex and deficiency of which may also cause premature graying.
Take a multi-vitamin daily
Deficiencies of vitamin C, copper, and B-complex, have been associated with hair fall, graying and dull-lifeless hair. Thus taking a multi-vitamin every day is also recommended. Besides these, also include foods like wheat germ, oatmeal, mushrooms, spinach, cabbage, beetroot, bottle gourd (doodhi), amla, soyabean, honey, sunflower seeds, alfalfa, and green leafy vegetables in your daily meals. Juice of ginger root has been used naturopathically to stimulate circulation to the scalp. 1 to 2-inch piece of ginger root can be used; it gives a tingling sensation to the scalp.
Lying on slant board for 15 to 20 minutes per day will cause blood to flow to the scalp and improve circulation for hair growth.