Lifestyle Choices

The type, the length of growth, thickness, thinness, straightness, and curl of your hair depend on your inheritance, but the condition of your hair depends on the internal state of your body, which feeds the papillae that produce it. For hair to be beautiful, the cuticle and the cortex have to be strong. It has always amused me when I hear hairdressers arguing about whether or not diet has anything to do with the beauty of hair, because it does, as any farmer knows well. Not only can you change the look of an animal’s hair by altering its diet (and that goes for the human animal too), you can also tell a great deal about its internal condition by examining its hair. If you have a sheep that is poorly, its coat shows it. Horses, dogs, and cats are given special vitamin and mineral supplements to improve their coats for shows. But only recently has this aspect of hair care even begun to be looked at for human beings.

What occurs in each hair follicle depends on the current nutritional state of your bloodstream and on adequate oxygen reaching the cells. So true is this that when you put someone on a poor diet, you will detect detrimental changes in the hair bulb even on the second day of the regimen. In a study of people placed on a protein-free diet for fifteen days, researchers have found that hairs plucked from their heads and then analyzed microscopically showed significant changes in color, texture, and structure—damage that took some time to correct.

About the worst thing you can do for your hair is to go on a crash diet or live on typical Western fare, high in refined carbohydrates, processed foods, and white sugar. Both upset the vitamin and mineral balance in your body, and adequate vitamins and minerals are vital to hair.

Iron

Hair’s most important mineral is probably iron. If you are anemic, iron- deficient, your hair will tend to be brittle, lusterless, and hard to manage. It may also be thinner than is normal for you. For iron-deficiency anemia is a condition often implicated in excessive hair loss. If you have any of these hair difficulties, it is worthwhile having a serum iron test (which measures the total amount of iron in your bloodstream) and a total ironbinding-capacity test (which gives the ratio of blood iron to the blood’s total capacity to hold iron). A normal ratio is about 1 to 4. If yours falls somewhere between 1 to 5 and 1 to 7, then your hair would probably benefit from iron therapy. Your doctor can arrange these tests for you. And it is important to remember, whether or not you take iron supplements, that vitamin C enhances iron absorption by helping ferric iron to be reduced to its ferrous form; also, iron is best absorbed when calcium is present in sufficient quantities.

Sulfur

Another important mineral for hair is the “beauty mineral,” sulfur. It keeps your hair glossy and smooth. Sulfur is one of the constituents of keratin. When it is supplied in adequate amounts, your hair is strong. Eggs are particularly rich in the sulfur-containing amino acids and are excellent hair food. Other natural sources include cabbage, dried beans, legumes, fish, nuts, and meat.

Zinc

Research has established that a zinc deficiency is commonly the cause of hair damage in animals. It is probably true of humans as well and is certainly one of the factors contributing to the hair loss that women on the Pill or estrogen therapy experience, since the hormones reduce zinc levels in the body. But the Pill can have other effects detrimental to hair too. It lowers blood levels of vitamins B12, B6, and B2, increasing your body’s need for these vitamins as well as folic acid, vitamin C, and the trace minerals zinc and iron. If you are an estrogen taker and your hair is giving you trouble, it may be helpful to take supplements of these nutrients.

The B Vitamins

The B-complex vitamins are particularly important to hair health and beauty. Deficiencies of biotin, folic acid, pantothenic acid, and PABA can lead to a loss of color, and there has even been some success in reversing the graying process by giving supplements of these nutrients— particularly megavitamin doses of PABA. One researcher claims to have restored color to graying hair in 70 percent of cases.

A lack of any of the B complex can result in hair troubles and losses. Vitamins B₁, B2, and B12 are particularly important in invigorating lackluster hair, dandruff, scaling, redness of the scalp, and hair loss. Vitamin C is important too, because it maintains the health and strength of the capillaries supplying your hair-producing follicles with nourishment. If your levels of vitamin C are too low, this results in perifollicular hemorrhages, in which these capillaries break and bleed, which results in improper nourishment to the papillae.

How fast your hair can grow depends on adequate, but not too much, protein, since more than adequate amounts can deplete your body of the minerals it needs. The widespread notion propounded by many glossy magazines that if you eat lots of meat and drink milk several times a day, you will have strong and beautiful hair is simply untrue. It is the right balance of nutrients that is most important. The condition of your hair is greatly affected by medicines that you take—and I don’t just mean antibiotics and sulfa drugs, although these two are common culprits for causing trouble. But aspirin, the Pill, diet pills, tranquilizers, thyroid pills, cortisone, anticancer drugs, and even cold remedies are a common cause of brittleness, dullness, breakage, and loss. Hair follicles are ultrasensitive to hormones. If you are taking a birth-control pill and having trouble with your hair, you might consider asking your doctor to try another brand to see if it improves, as well as taking supplements—or better still, use another form of contraception, such as a diaphragm.

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