Vitamins to Help Hair Growth

In addition to using the Super Grow Laser to stop your hair loss, you might be interested to know that there are also vitamins you can take to help hair growth. Hair loss can be aggravated or even caused by vitamin deficiency, and you should know what you can do to supplement your diet to help stop hair loss.

Hair follicles have a natural cycle they go through, and during the phases of hair growth, the follicles need certain raw materials to be able to do their job. Just like building a house, if you ran out of lumber or nails, the whole process would come to a stop.

What vitamin deficiency causes hair loss

One of the best ways to figure out the best vitamins for hair growth is to take a look at what vitamin deficiency causes hair loss. Then we can understand how to reverse this. There are a number of nutrients the body needs on a regular basis, and a lack of some of these have been found to be involved with hair loss.

These have a definite connection to vitamin deficiency hair loss:

Best vitamins for hair growth

The other side of the coin is vitamins that can help promote hair growth. A lack of these are not necessarily going to cause hair loss, but taking them can help promote hair growth. Of course they are also involved with other processes within the body, and have been linked to faster, healthier hair growth.

These are the best vitamins for hair growth:

You get fantastic results when taking the right vitamins and using the laser at the same time

The best results can be had by using both the laser, and taking the right vitamins at the same time. This gives your hair both the energy and the nutirents to grow thick and full, giving you a healthy, beautiful head of hair you can be proud of.

Using both the laser, and the vitamins gives you an unbeatable combination. This gives your follicles the nourishment from the vitamins, along with the revitalizing energy from the lasers. These two make a complete environment that promotes healthy hair growth and allows you to get back that full head of hair that you want.

Vitamin D deficiency and hair loss

According to research, a lack of vitamin D can actually cause hair loss. Vitamin D is found in healthy hair follicles, and is generally lacking in unhealthy follicles.

What does vitamin D do? Vitamin D does a lot of things, all of them good for the body. But, important to hair loss, vitamin D helps reduce stress and depression. Stress has been related to hair loss, and if you have lots of stress, reducing this is a good thing.

But beyond helping to reduce stress, vitamin D is a precursor to the hair growth cycle. In the liver, vitamin D is converted to calcidiol. This then gets converted by the kidneys to calcitriol, which is the form of vitamin D that is biologically active in the body. This in the body regulates cellular apoptosis (a cycle of cells that are programmed to die, such as in the formation of hair inside the follicle), which helps to regulate the cycle of the hair follicle.

Technically, it goes like this. The cycle of a hair follicle goes from

  1. anagen (growing) to
  2. catagen (receding) to
  3. telogen (resting) phase.

This repeating cycle then starts back again at 1. There are vitamin D receptors in hair follicles. During that growing phase of the follicle, there are a lot of things going on. Many different processes are involved with growing a new hair from the follicle, and vitamin D plays a role. Those vitamin D receptors in the hair follicle have to be fed, particularly in the growing phase. This is why vitamin D deficiency and hair loss go together.

Studies have shown that inhibiting the vitamin D receptors in the follicle can actually cause alopecia (hair loss). If you were to deprive your body totally of vitamin D, you would not have one of the necessary building blocks essential to hair growth.

It is important to note that while a vitamin D deficiency can cause hair loss, the opposite is not necessarily true. An abundance of vitamin D is not going to cause hair growth by itself. Once a hair follicle is totally dead, it no longer goes through the cycle above. The hair follicle has to still be active for either vitamin D or even the laser to do anything to help. This is another reason it is important to stop hair loss early on.

Foods high in vitamin D

Vitamin D is one of the very few vitamins that can be synthesized by your body. This means you can make your own - all you have to do is get some sunshine. Vitamin D is produced in your body naturally when you are in the sun.

But lets say you don't get out that often, and/or don't want to increase your sun exposure due to the other risks involved. There are food that are high in vitamin D. Many of the top contenders are seafood, which is healthy in other ways also. Foods high in vitamin D include

Cod liver oil, not technically a food, but a supplement, is also very high in vitamin D. Remember that vitamin D won't cause hair to grow by itself, but can be a contributing factor if you have thinning hair. So it's good to be sure you have enough of this in your diet.

Biotin for hair growth

Biotin is essential for healthy hair and nails. It is also called vitamin H, which comes to us from German word Haar, meaning hair. No other vitamin is named after the role it plays in healthy hair. That's how important it is.

Biotin is a necessary part of many different processes that take place in the body. Important to hair loss, it is a needed component in cell growth.

This is important because your hair comes from rapid cell growth at the follicle level. At the follicle, hair is generated by cells rapidly dividing and then going into a programmed death, where the cells becomes keratinized (turned into keratin, the main material hair is made of) and get added to the hair.

If you think of a tiny sac of cells rapidly dividing and then marching in line to harden and become part of the growing hair, you have the basic concept of how a hair forms. This is highly simplified, as there are many different things happening to make this occur, but it serves to illustrate the basic idea.

Since this is actually one of the fastest growing areas of cells in the body, biotin, for hair growth, is absolutely essential for this process to succeed.

Biotin deficiency may also play an important part of hair thinning in women. Lots of biotin is required for all the cell growth that takes place during pregnancy, and if enough biotin isn't present, the hair follicles may not have what they need. Biotin supplements are good for women during pregnancy, and for other reasons than just biotin for hair growth.

Hair loss is one of the symptoms of a biotin deficiency.

Folic acid hair growth

Another one of the vitamins to help hair growth is folic acid. Folic acid is important for hair growth for a number of different reasons. Folic acid, or vitamin B9, is essential in many biological functions. Many of these have to do with copying DNA.

Why is copying DNA important in hair loss? Because the root of the hair involves some of the most rapidly dividing cells in the body. Each cell has its own copy of the needed DNA. Folic acid makes sure you get correct copies being generated, meaning that the cells at the follicle do their job and form a new hair. This process is essential for new hair growth.

Remember the cycle of hair growth is growing (anagen), receding (catagen), and resting (telogen). The growing phase is, by far, the longest of these, lasting between 2-7 years. The receding phase only lasts a couple of weeks by comparison. So this growing phase is constantly taking place, with a lot of cellular divisions going on all the time. This process demands folic acid.

Folic acid not only helps your hair grow faster, but also it will be healthier too. Because it operates at the level of cell division, if you have enough folic acid hair growth that takes place has the proper cells doing the proper thing. This has an impact on the health, look, and feel of your hair.

Low levels of zinc can contibute to hair loss

Zinc is one of the atomic elements. It is also one of the most important compounds the body needs, with many processes and functions requiring zinc in various forms. It is involved in over 300 chemical actions that take place in the body.

One important relationship is that low zinc levels allow for more DHT (dihydrotestosterone; your hair's enemy) in the body. More zinc = less DHT; less zinc = more DHT. You could actually be making the laser's job harder by using it to stop hair loss, while at the same time having too much DHT because you haven't got enough zinc in your body.

Another reason it is important to get enough zinc when fighting hair loss is the distribution throughout the body. A portion of your body's total zinc is held in the hair follicles. But zinc is also being used elsewhere, for eyesight, memory, smell and taste, digestion, etc. If you have a zinc deficiency, your body will rob the hair follicles first to make sure zinc is available to processes that are more biologically important. Mother nature doesn't care about your hair as much as being able to see, smell and taste.

But zinc also plays another important role that relates to hair loss. It helps regulate certain hormones, and there is a well known link between hormones and hair loss. Zinc helps stabilize these, and having enough zinc is vital while you are trying to treat hair loss for many reasons.

Foods high in zinc are

Pantothenic Acid and hair growth

Pantothenic Acid, also called Vitamin B5, has been associated with healthy hair growth. It can help prevent hair loss, keep you from going gray, and also is good for your nails. The name of the vitamin comes from the Greek word for everywhere, because it is found in a great many foods.

It has been shown to result in a rapid cessation of hair loss, and for this reason is a very good companion to using the laser. What it does is help to get vital nutrients into the hair follicle, strengthening it; improving its function, and keeping it healthy so the follicle can grow a hair.

Pantothenic Acid is also good for healthy skin, as well as nails. Deficiency is rare, due to the large number of foods that contain the vitamin. But when it occurs, a deficiency can result in hair loss.

While it is found in small traces in a great many foods, don't think that means you're getting enough to combat hair loss. Pantothenic acid supplements can stop hair loss in its tracks in some cases, and is a definite advantage to growing strong, healthy hair.

Inositol and hair growth

Inositol was once considered a B vitamin, but later research showed it is not an essential nutrient. So it's not a B vitamin anymore.

It is used in a number of functions inside the body, the important ones to hair loss having to do with gene expression. Simply put, this means getting the genes to produce the product that they are meant to produce. The product of the hair follicle is largely keratin, which is the main component of your hair and nails.

In testing, a diet with a total lack of inositol was able to produce baldness in laboratory animals. Returning the animals to a diet including inositol resulted in a complete return of the hair. Interestingly, the male animals lost hair at a rate of twice that of the females. So men may need more of this vitamin in reversing hair loss.

Inositol, given along with the other B vitamins, has arrested hair loss in a majority of patients in one experiment. In some cases regrowth of hair was seen within a month. Not bad for a vitamin kicked out of the B family.

Foods high in inositol are:

Niacin and hair growth

Niacin, previously called nicotinic acid, is another B vitamin, vitamin B3. If you've ever taken it, you may have experienced a 'flush.' This red flush comes from the fact that your blood vessels (capillaries) are opening up, increasing blood flow within the body.

This increased blood flow is a good thing for your hair follicles. First, it helps bring more blood to the source of your hair. Second, it can help flush out DHT, which is your enemy in hair loss.

Niacin also is vital in the production of various hormones within the body. As hormone imbalance can be a contributing factor in hair loss, regulating these helps bring a natural balance that favors proper hair growth.