Healthy-looking hair in itself is a sign of good health and hair care practices. In order to maintain healthy hair, most of us include the right nutrients in our diet. Unfortunately, some people lack proper hair care because they don’t consume enough healthy nutrients. This is mainly due to unawareness, which can cause nutritional deficiency that damages your scalp and hair.
Proper hair growth depends on gender, age, and hormones. Nutritional deficiency and hormonal fluctuations can severely affect your hair’s natural growth. Nutritional deficiency, especially, results in dry, stringy, and dull hair and eventually leads to hair loss.
To promote positive hair health, it’s vital to consume a diet of balanced, healthy nutrients to protect and maintain perfect hair growth. We’ve reviewed 6 of these nutrients below.
1. Protein
Hair is made up of protein, so it’s crucial to include it in your diet for strong, long, and healthy hair. Even a single strand needs an adequate dose of protein to grow. Same as your body, your hair needs the correct food for healthy growth. When your hair follicles aren’t getting protein, that results in dry, brittle and weak hair.
Experts recommend including beef, poultry, fish, lentils, nuts, and seeds in your diet for the best protein intake.
2. Iron
In order to function properly, your body needs iron as an essential mineral. Because of the iron deficiency, some people suffer from causes dull, dry, and thin hair. All this happens when your hair doesn’t get enough oxygen to survive. So where does your hair get oxygen? Well, iron is a powerful mineral because it helps carry oxygen to the roots of your hair, improving its overall strength and quality.
Experts recommend beans, red meat, and lentils in your diet as a source of iron.
3. Vitamin C
Aside from protecting us from cold and various illnesses, vitamin C also helps to grow healthy hair. It strengthens your hair shafts and reduces risk of breakage. Vitamin C acts as a building block for collagen and also helps to digest iron from plant food. Vitamin C deficiency can result in split ends and hair loss.
Experts recommend oranges, broccoli, black pepper, pineapple, strawberries, guava, sweet potatoes, and kiwi fruit in your diet for more vitamin C.
4. Biotin
Do you want to grow out your hair more quickly? Biotin plays a very important role in producing longer, healthier hair. There are many hair care products on the market that have biotin as an ingredient. However, that doesn’t mean that your body doesn’t need additional biotin supplements.
Experts recommend eating dark leafy greens, wild-caught salmon, raspberries, walnuts, and lentils to make your hair longer, thicker, and denser.
5. Vitamin A
Our hair strands become dry when they don’t get enough of an oily hormone called sebum, which is necessary for proper hair development. Vitamin A plays an important role in this process, helping to produce sebum in the scalp. This maintains the moisture in your hair and prevents it from drying out.
Experts recommend a healthy supply of carrots, mangoes, sweet potatoes, and pumpkins to provide enough vitamin A for strong, shiny hair.
6. Omega-3 Fatty Acids
For proper hair growth, your body needs fatty acids. This nutrients helps in producing fatty acids, which provide healthy hair by creating sheen and luster. Omega-3 nutrients prevent itchy, dry, and flaky scalps and help to reverse hair loss.
Experts recommend fish as a source of natural omega-3 fatty acids, including halibut, salmon, sardines, catfish, trout, tuna, cod, and herring. Other sources of Omega-3 fatty acids include shellfish, canola oil, nuts, flaxseed, and eggs.
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