Dieting can have a negative effect on hair growth. From my experience it seems that if dieting stresses your body it can cause hair loss. It’s more likely that the stress itself will cause the hair loss than the reduction in nutrient intake. However if you start an extreme diet the reduction in nutrients could also have a detrimental effect on your hair.

The silly thing is, it’s easy to get all the nutrients your hair needs, while also following a weight loss program. Keep reading to find out how.

Areas of dieting you should avoid to prevent hair loss

Crash dieting

Crash dieting is the worst thing you can do for your hair. If you’re going to diet for weight loss reasons, steadily transition from your current diet to your new weight loss diet. If you suddenly make a massive change to your diet and then just as suddenly change again (and so forth), you could have a negative impact on your hair growth. However the effects on your hair might not show for months after you have changed your diet, because the dieting is more likely to slow your hair growth and even turn some hairs dormant – so only once the hairs have naturally shed will you notice your hair looking thinner.

Dieting is only likely to cause immediate hair loss as a result of stress caused by an extreme dietary transition.

Diets that don’t include a full range of nutrients

If you follow a silly fad diet like ‘the apple diet’ or other diets that advise you to eat only a few different foods you may become deficient in vital nutrients required for hair growth. Nutrient deficiency is fairly rare in the West, where food is readily available, but if you follow an extreme diet and you experience increased stress as a result, you might become deficient in some key nutrients.

Diets that include too much of one nutrient

Be careful about eating too much of one thing. For example Brazil nuts are sometimes cited as beneficial for the hair because they contain a mineral called ‘selenium’. Selenium can inhibit DHT, which will help prevent hair loss. However eating too many Brazil nuts could result in a selenium overdose, which in turn may cause a condition called ‘selenosis’ (cite). One of the symptoms of selenosis is hair loss.

Some key factors to consider when dieting

Don’t do anything extreme. Avoid extreme changes in your diet. Don’t take a variety of supplements in the hope you’re getting lots of great nutrients for your hair – different vitamins, minerals and fats interact with each other. You might be taking one supplement that contains a mineral that binds with a vitamin in another supplement you’re taking, making it indigestible. Try to keep supplements down to as few as possible unless you know what you’re doing – otherwise you’re chucking lots of different pills down your throat that could be doing more harm than good.

How to safely diet for weight loss while keeping your hair healthy

Providing you don’t stress your system by crash dieting and you consume a good range of nutrients in good proportions you can easily follow a weight loss diet without harming your hair. Follow these tips to keep your hair healthy while dieting:

Reduce portion sizes while maintaining a good balance

If you’re trying to reduce your calorie intake, eat at the same times and the same foods you would usually eat but just reduce the portion sizes. Don’t cut out carbohydrates for the sake of reducing calories. You need complex carbohydrates for energy. If you reduce the fuel you’ll reduce your energy, which might make you need to snack, which will not help your weight loss attempts. If you reduce your fuel intake and avoid snacks, the increased stress might have an adverse effect on your hair. The answer is to reduce your portion sizes while maintaining a good balance of carbohydrates, fats, fiber and protein.

Exercise

Exercise is possibly the most important factor in weight loss. If you can increase the amount of exercise you’re doing while maintaining your current food consumption levels you will achieve weight loss without needing to change your diet. Exercise also benefits stress levels and circulation.

Don’t miss meals

Eating regularly is important. By missing meals you’re telling your body that food is scarce so it needs to store fat reserves – as a result you won’t lose weight; you could even put weight on. It’s better to eat smaller meals, more regularly, if you find you get hungry regularly. Cut down on sugars and simple carbohydrates that spike your blood sugar levels. Choose complex carbohydrates like oatmeal and sweet potatoes that will provide slow release energy.

Cleanse your digestive system

By avoiding meats and fats in the morning and eating foods that are high in fiber you give your digestive system a break allowing it to cleanse. Try to keep meat eating down to a minimum while dieting. Try to only eat meat every other day or even just once or twice a week. Avoid beef and pork. Go for chicken and turkey. Don’t eat for two hours before you go to bed to let your body wind down. Never eat before bed because your body cleanses at night. Eating prevents cleansing and food eaten before bed will be stored as fat.

Use a hair loss supplement

Although I don’t generally advise the use of hair loss supplements (as I don’t feel they’re necessary – if you follow the instructions in my hair loss eBook you won’t need to take any hair supplements), if you worry that your hair isn’t getting the nutrients it needs, a supplement can put your mind at rest. Take a look at my hair loss treatments page for advice on different supplementation for men and women.

Get the best advice on food for hair growth

If you want to know what foods you should eat to maximize nutrients required for hair growth download my eBook today. I dedicate a chapter to showing you how to eat for hair growth. I give you easy to follow tips that don’t require eating disgusting foods or following extreme dietary practices. I lay down all the best foods that provide maximum nutrients for hair growth in simple to follow tables, charts and lists. I also show you how to cleanse your digestive system and increase the flow of nutrients to the scalp by increasing blood flow to the scalp. In the food chapter I also show you how you can use food to normalize your hormone levels and inhibit DHT levels.

Weight lifting can cause an elevation in testosterone levels. Most body builders know that increasing testosterone levels helps improve power, strength and endurance. This is actually how steroids work. Increasing testosterone has a positive effect on training performance but it can have a negative effect on hair growth.

Testosterone is a male hormone but it is also present (in lesser amounts) in women. Generally speaking the more testosterone in the body, the more extreme the male characteristics will be. If you look at a bull and a cow, the bull is far more muscular and far more aggressive. Both bulls and cows have the same diet. The difference is the bull has far higher testosterone levels.

DHT: a by-product of testosterone

It’s clear that men tend to experience hair loss more so than women. That is because men tend to have more testosterone in their body’s. DHT is a by-product of testosterone. In general, as we age, more DHT is produced from testosterone. DHT seems to cause hair loss and also body hair growth.

Some people’s hair is more susceptible to the effects of DHT than others. Some people’s body’s tend to produce more testosterone than others. Some people will experience more of an elevation in testosterone as a result of starting a weight lifting/body building routine, while others will not experience much of a change. And some people seem to produce more DHT from testosterone than others.

So in answer to your question:

Yes, weight lifting or body building may cause an increased rate in hair loss, IF you are one of the people who is both susceptible to the negative effects of DHT and your weight lifting/body building routine results in an increase in testosterone levels.

From what I know about body building, most people who work-out hard will experience an increase in testosterone but not a massive one. In fact there are many things that cause elevated testosterone levels.

For example, a study discovered that men whose football team won a match had more elevated testosterone levels after the game than the supporters of the losing team. This study shows that the mind is a key controller of hormonal balance and this is one of the key parts of my hair loss eBook.

It shows that it is possible to control your hormonal balance if you are able to take greater control of your mind and your feelings.

In conclusion

It’s my opinion that you don’t need to worry about the effects of body building on your hair, unless you are taking supplements that are designed to increase your testosterone levels. I don’t even need to say that you shouldn’t be taking steroids if you want to be healthy.

If you’re taking steroids and you are one of the millions of people whose scalp is sensitive to DHT you will probably notice an increase in hair loss. Just don’t take them.

However if you’re not taking steroids and you’re working out pretty hard you should be OK, providing you’re following the instructions in my eBook – and so keeping your mind in the right place, keeping your body working at super efficient levels and keeping your scalp clear and free of DHT.

I work out as often as possible – about three times a week and I hit the weights quite hard. I’ve got a pretty muscular body – in fact I’m in great shape – low fat levels, good muscle tone. But I’m highly aware that with exercising and weight lifting you can do things the same way as everyone else or you can use your intelligence to get ahead of the game. And I’m fortunate enough to know about nutrition and how to gain the most benefits from food.

I hope this helps. Thanks for your question.

Chris

Evidence strongly suggests that stress is a major underlying cause of hair loss. Anxiety is a type of stress that comes in a variety of forms. Anxiety at low levels is a common part of daily life for everyone. For example you might feel some very minor anxiety that you’ll be late for work. Or you might fell anxious about affording to pay all your bills this month.

These levels of anxiety are normal and are essential for making progress in life. Without a small amount of anxiety we wouldn’t do anything in life because we would have no worries. However, if you feel elevated anxiety levels in seemingly irrational situations you may have an anxiety disorder or be bordering on one.

Anxiety disorders are quite common but due to the nature of the disorders, sufferers are often too nervous to tell anyone what they are going through.

Anxiety and hair loss

Anxiety doesn’t just make you feel terrible in your mind, it also has a physical effect on your body. There are obvious and immediate physical symptoms such as increased heart rate and nausea but some sufferers may also experience longer term symptoms that occur as a direct result of the anxiety.

Anxiety attacks trigger the ‘fight or flight’ response. This causes surges of adrenaline in the body and gets the heart rate up. Not only does anxiety cause surges of adrenaline, it can also cause prolonged elevated levels of adrenaline and cause hormonal imbalance.

Increased adrenaline production drains the body of essential vitamins needed for the hair and skin. This is one of the reasons why when someone is stressed out, anxious or hasn’t had much sleep, their skin can look greasy and their hair can look lack-luster.

Anxiety and stress also cause increased muscle tension, particularly in the shoulders. This can decrease blood flow to the scalp. Good blood flow to the scalp is essential for hair growth because the building blocks of hair are transported to the scalp via the blood stream.

What can be done to stop this?

You can try all the different hair loss treatments available but until you cure your anxiety, your hair and skin will continue to suffer. If you suffer from higher than normal levels of anxiety it might be that this is the root cause of your hair loss.

If you don’t stop the anxiety you won’t stop the hair loss.

If you want to reduce your anxiety to sensible levels you need to use all the weapons at your disposal to defeat it. To learn how I stopped my anxiety and as a result stopped my hair loss, download my eBook today. With it you’ll also receive my programme of audio files that help you think more positively, thus reducing your anxiety levels, until eventually, anxiety becomes a distant memory.