Have you been noticing more stray hair than normal on your pillowcase? And on your combs? Some hair fall is natural and healthy. But if your gut is telling you that you’re losing more hair than normal, it’s time to take a look at what you might or might not be doing to cause it. Here are a few things that you may be inadvertently doing that may be keeping your mane from growing.
1. Too Much Vitamin A
An excess of Vitamin A in the body can trigger hair-fall. The recommended daily dosage of Vitamin A is 5000 IU per day, and supplements can contain Vitamin A between 2500 – 10,000 IU. This type of hair-fall is reversible and once the Vitamin A supplement is stopped, the hair should start growing normally.
2. Drinking Too Much Tea And Coffee
Tea and Coffee tend to make the body acidic, and when the tissues get too acidic, in order to neutralize the acidity, they absorb minerals like iron, magnesium, calcium, zinc and phosphorus from the hair follicles, leaving the hair devoid of these. It’s a good idea to limit your tea or coffee to once or twice a day, and bear in mind never to have them on an empty stomach.
3. Binging On Processed Foods
Processed foods aren’t good for health. Especially when they are full of sugar, and other chemical additives. While having an occasional cookie or a slice of pizza won’t cause much harm, bingeing on them is a bad idea. Consumption of too much processed food can make your hair and skin dull and lifeless and is known to cause among other things, hair-fall.
4. Lack Of Sleep
A good night’s sleep is as important for healthy hair as it is for the rest of the body. It’s during sleep that the body does all of its repair and restoration work in all the cells of the body (which includes your hair cells.) Turn off your gadgets an hour before bed time and make sure you get at least 7 hours of undisturbed sleep each night.
5. Protein Deficiency
If your body feels that it’s not getting enough protein in the diet, then the first thing that it shuts down is hair growth. This takes a while to manifest and it’ll be 2-3 months after the drop in protein intake, when you start noticing your hair falling. Legumes, fish, eggs and meat are all good sources of protein that you can include in your diet to prevent hair-fall.
6. Sudden Loss Of Weight
Losing a lot of weight suddenly through crazy diets is not easy on the body. Fasting and depriving the body of nutrients isn’t a great idea. The side effects among other things will include hair-fall. Keeping an eye on your portions, eating healthy wholesome food, exercising regularly and eliminating junk food from your diet is all that is needed to attain a healthy weight.
7. Anemia
Anemia or an iron deficiency in the body can lead to hair-fall. This happens to be an easily fixable cause of hair-fall. You will need a blood test to detect this condition and will need to be put on an iron supplement to bring your iron levels back to normal. Other symptoms of this condition include fatigue, cold extremities, pale skin, headaches and dizziness.
8. Over-Styling
Over-styling and an exposure to different chemicals for hair treatments, can cause your hair to fall out. Braiding hair into tight braids, hair weaves and corn rows isn’t good for the hair and makes the roots weaker over a period of time. So do chemical hair straightening, styling using heat very often, and hot oil treatments. All these aren’t good for the health of your hair and cause the roots to weaken leading to hair-fall.
It’s a good idea to use a detangling conditioner on your hair after every shampoo and letting it air dry. Also, it helps to limit the amount of time the straightening or curling iron come in contact with the hair surface. And these should be limited to no more than once a week.
9. A Lack Of Exercise
Physical exercise isn’t just good for the body, it’s good for your hair too. When we sweat from physical exercise, it flushes out the toxins from the pores along with sweat making our skin fresh and radiant. Likewise, sweating from the scalp opens up clogged pores encouraging the growth of new hair. Exercise also increasing the blood circulation in the body (and the scalp), which causes more nutrients to reach the hair follicles promoting the growth and good health of your hair.
