Bad Habits That Make Your Hair Thinner
Even if youre trying to lose inches from your middle, chances are you never want to hear the word thin in reference to your hair. But if youve been shedding more than usual, its not too late save your strands.
Many aspects of our lifestylefrom what we eat to how we style our hairaffect the strength of hair fibers, says Alan Baumann, MD, a Boca Raton-based hair transplant surgeon and physician specializing in hair loss. And thats good news: Thicker hair is just about making a few simple tweaks to your lifestyle. Here, the 10 worst strand saboteurs, and how to get them out of your routine for good.
Other Reasons Your Hair Might Be Thinning
While the above causes of hair thinning are common, the two most likely reasons for hair thinning are age and stress.
The Correlation Between Age and Hair Loss
Aging affects the entire body, including your hair. As you get older, your hair will naturally change in color and texture . Hair follicles’ life cycle shortens over time, and genetics and medical conditions can worsen hair loss. Menopause also plays a significant role in female hair loss.
Effects of Stress on Hair Health
While some stress is good, too much can be detrimental to your body’s health. Stress is known to inhibit healthy hair growth and worsen thinning. When you’re stressed, your body produces different hormones that produce various symptoms, including headaches, upset stomach, and hair loss.
The hormones interfere with the hair growth cycle, which worsens shedding. Sometimes, stress affects your immune system, which in turn attacks hair follicles.
Tips About How To Wash Thinning Hair To Prevent Hair Loss
Even if it sounds basic, there are a few mistakes that many women make when washing their hair, actions that lead to losing hair. Maybe you consider it would take too much time, and you want to keep it quick, but, in reality, taking extra time to cleanse your hair will pay in the long run.
To stop thinning hair from falling, and keep it looking its best, consider how you wash your hair using our tips. Consequently, this list will help you learn about the most impactful factors that make your hair fall and break.
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Make Sure You Have Enough Protein In Your Diet
Hair mostly consists of keratin protein, which is produced using amino acid building blocks obtained from your diet.
To maintain a constant protein supply for your follicles, eat some with every meal, whether its poultry, lean meat, fish, eggs, nuts or beans. If you eat a plant-based diet, you may be more prone to thinning hair as some amino acids essential for healthy hair and micronutrients are often difficult to obtain in sufficient quantities without taking a vegetarian-friendly supplement.
Do not skip meals, as this puts your body into survival mode so that the supply of protein and nutrients to hair follicles is reduced.
How To Stop Hair Thinning And Prevent Balding
Unless youre rocking a shaved head, you most likely want to maintain a full head of hair. But unfortunately, hair thinning and balding has become a common problem these days.
Some factors that can contribute to or lead to thinning hair or baldness are genes, untreated medical conditions, poor nutrition, vitamin deficiency, exposure to harmful ultraviolet rays and living in a highly polluted area.
Severe physical or emotional trauma, post-pregnancy hormonal changes and chemotherapy also can cause hair thinning and balding.
Even styling your hair can lead to thinning hair and bald patches over time. Continual use of hot styling tools, frequent shampooing, vigorous or frequent brushing, and using a lot of hair products can all lead to breakage and thinning hair.
Although you cant reverse balding that is related to genetics, you can protect your hair from damage that may eventually lead to thinning. If youre already dealing with thinning hair or bald spots, these home remedies also promote hair growth.
Here are the top 10 ways to stop hair thinning and prevent balding.
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Indian Gooseberry Would Help
Indian gooseberry has an anti-inflammatory action on the scalp that helps with thicker hair growth. It also reduces scalp infection and exfoliates the scalps to unclog the follicles. Take a teaspoon of powdered Indian gooseberry and mix it with coconut oil. Heat the mixture until it starts to boil and strain the oil. Use this oil to massage on your scalp before going to bed. Shampoo as usual in the morning using a mild product.
Using Products To Hide Your Scalp At The Part
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How To Prevent Thinning Hair And Hair Loss
You can’t always prevent baldness or thinning hair, but you can take care of your health to avoid problems that might cause hair loss.
Some of the factors that can contribute to or cause hair loss, thinning hair, or baldness, are are at least partly under your control. While you cant rewrite your genetic code if baldness runs in your family, other issues that lead to hair loss, from untreated medical conditions to poor nutrition, can be remedied.
Avoid Hair Loss With Good Nutrition
Poor nutrition, including vitamin deficiencies and not getting enough protein, can cause hair loss. Fad or crash dieting can have the same negative effect as eating a diet based on junk food. Ensure proper nutrition and healthy locks by eating:
- A wide variety of fruits and vegetables each day
- Plenty of protein vegetarians should be sure to get enough non-meat forms of protein like beans, nuts, cheese, and low-fat dairy products
- A reasonable amount of calories each day based on your height, weight, and nutritional goals
Bring Health Conditions Under Control
A number of health problems, including thyroid problems, some infections, and chronic stress, can cause hair loss. To try to prevent hair loss from these factors, you can:
Take Care of Your Hair
Heres how to be kind to your hair:
See Your Doctor for a Diagnosis
10 Surprising Things That Cause Hair Loss
Pay attention to your hair it can be a clue to a health issue going on inside your body that needs attention.
How To Take Care Of Thinning Hair
If you’re currently experiencing hair loss, be as gentle as possible with your hairand yourself.
Hair loss is a major problem for men and women across the globe. In fact, according to a 2014 survey by the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery, as many as 320 million people in the United Statesthat’s more than one in five Americanssuffer from hair loss, and not all of them are classified as “elderly.” There are many reasons why a person can start losing his or her hair. The most common cause, however, is androgenic alopecia, also known as male or female pattern baldness, notes Andrew Fitzsimons, a celebrity hairstylist and the NatureLab Tokyo brand ambassador. “Androgenic alopecia is hereditary, so some people are simply more prone to hair loss than others,” he says. “Other causes of hair thinning include serious disease, extreme stress, traction alopecia , adverse reactions to certain medications, and even stressful events, like childbirth.”
No matter the cause, thinning hair is distressing on more than just a physical level. “Our hair is so intrinsically linked to our mood and identity that losing it can really affect someone’s day-to-day wellbeing and self-confidence,” explains Anabel Kingsley, consultant trichologist and brand president for Philip Kingsley. While treating thinning hair doesn’t involve quick fixes, there are plenty of solutions experts rely on when it comes to caring for thinning hair. Here, they share some of their go-to strategies.
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And Here’s What You Can Do To Fix It:
Ok, so now you know what triggering the hair loss, here’s how to deal with it…
Recognise the problem
Hair loss doesn’t happen fast, our strands grow in cycles, which means it can take up to 3 months for hair to fall out after a trigger has caused it. “If you notice excessive daily hair shedding for longer than 3 months, see a trichologist or your GP, there could be an underlying factor that needs to be addressed”, Anabel advises. “Very importantly, try not to panic. Telogen effluvium is almost always self-eliminating and hair will start to grow back as usual once any internal imbalance is put right”.
Change up your diet
1) Get More Protein
“Hair is made of protein, making adequate daily intake of protein rich foods essential. Include at least a palm sized portion of protein at breakfast and lunch .” Anabel recommends.
2) Complex carbohydrates are essential
“They provide our hair with the energy it needs to grow. Snack on a healthy carbohydrates if longer than four hours is left between meals as energy available to hair cells drops after this amount of time.”
That being said, Anabel explained that if you are losing your hair because of something other than diet, like stress or an illness, changing what you eat will not remedy it.
Take a supplement
Anabel recommends looking out for the following ingredients: Iron, Vitamin C, Vitamin B12, Vitamin D3, Copper, Zinc, Selenium, and the essential amino acids, L-Lysine and L-Methionine.
Head message = more than self-care
Whats Actually Causing Your Thinning Hair
The first thing to know about hair loss is that its actually a bit complex. Your hair grows in three stages, SELF explained previously. These include a growth phase from a root in the hair follicle, a transitional phase when the growing stops, and a resting phase, after which the hair falls out and the follicle takes a break before growing another hair.
Its totally normal to lose between 50 and 100 hairs a day, according to the American Academy of Dermatology , which you might notice on your pillow in the morning, on your hairbrush, or in the shower. If you go a few days without showering, you might notice more than a single days worth of hair in the shower, which may be a little disconcerting, but is still totally normal.
Youre born with about 100,000 follicles on your scalp, and youll never gain or lose any, the AAD says. However, as you age, some follicles may stop growing hair and you may experience hair loss . When and how this happens is influenced by a bunch of factors, including our genetics and the natural hormonal changes we experience as we age, Shilpi Khetarpal, M.D., dermatologist at Cleveland Clinic, tells SELF.
Once you know what youre up against, there are some easy ways to help manage thinning hair at home or with the help of an expert. Here are the top tips we learned from dermatologists and hair stylists on how to protect your hair and restore some of its fullness and shine.
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Treatment For Hair Loss
Most hair loss does not need treatment and is either:
- temporary and it’ll grow back
- a normal part of getting older
Hair loss caused by a medical condition usually stops or grows back once you’ve recovered.
There are things you can try if your hair loss is causing you distress. But most treatments are not available on the NHS, so you’ll have to pay for them.
No treatment is 100% effective.
Dont Forget Conditioners And Volumizers
Applying conditioner after shampooing your hair is essential to maintaining healthy locks. Conditioner is a vital hair-care step that adds moisture to help replenish hairs sheen and natural oils lost during shampooing. And volumizers work like a splint to strengthen each strand of hair, plumping it to provide more volume per strand.
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Consider Using A Caffeinated Shampoo
If you dont already use a caffeinated shampoo, consider switching to one. Caffeine applied directly to the scalp has two beneficial effects. It relaxes smooth muscle fibres surrounding the hair to improve blood flow. More importantly, it also inhibits the enzyme, 5–reductase, which converts testosterone into dihydrotestosterone within scalp hair follicles and which is associated with male and female pattern hair loss.
A growing body of evidence supports the effects of caffeinated shampoos in stimulating hair follicles, and Ive certainly noticed a dramatic improvement in hair thickness since starting to use one. Just two minutes contact with the scalp during shampooing allows the caffeine to penetrate into hair follicles, where it remains for up to 48 hours after washing.
Leave-on caffeine solutions are also available and have been shown to increase the cross-sectional area of scalp hairs by 10%.
Drinking caffeinated beverages such as tea or coffee does not have the same effect, as the caffeine must penetrate into the hair follicles itself to inhibit 5- -reductase.
Check Medications With Your Doctor
Some medicines for conditions like heart disease or those used to lower lipids can affect your hair. Talk to your doctor about if any of the medications you take interfere with hair growth or loss, and ask for advice on how to help counteract negative effects. Some of these medicines can cause shedding of finer fibers, Dr. Bergfeld says. Also, when women stop hormone replacement medication, they should expect a fair amount of hair loss.
Theres no one who has the hair at 60 or 70 that they had at 15, Dr. Bergfeld says. Thats why its important to take care of your hair as you age.
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