Eating These Foods Could Reduce Female Hair Loss

Losing your hair — at any age and for any reason — can be incredibly stressful. For many women, our hair links quite closely to our self-esteem and when it falls away we feel a bit bare and self-conscious.

In fact, hair loss, depression, and anxiety are closely linked; women who experience hair loss are more likely to suffer from depression — and women who experience chronic stress and depression are more likely to suffer from hair loss. It’s a vicious cycle. The great news is that there are a handful of nutritional interventions that may help. 

What causes female hair loss?

One of the main reasons that women experience hair loss is due to hormonal shifts.

Most of us know about estrogen but what most women don’t realize is that we also produce low levels of testosterone. As we age and estrogen levels fall, testosterone becomes more dominant — relatively speaking. Even though your testosterone levels will be low, this comparably higher level can lead to what is known as androgenic symptoms, such as hair loss and a change in body composition where you accumulate more fat around your belly. 

This fat around your belly is metabolically active and can instigate insulin resistance. The more insulin resistant you are, the higher your insulin levels rise. High insulin levels lead to higher levels of testosterone and more androgenic symptoms. Meaning more hair loss and belly fat and so the cycle continues.

Luckily, what you eat can also have an impact on your insulin levels. Let’s look at 3 nutrition focus points to minimize these symptoms: 

Choose your carbs wisely

Insulin is mainly secreted in response to eating carbohydrate-containing foods. The answer is not a no-carb diet but rather to focus on the quantity and quality of the carbs you eat. 

Most of the time you should be choosing minimally processed carb foods like whole grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables instead of highly processed carbs like white bread, pastries, breakfast cereals or sugary foods and drinks like soda, chocolates, cookies, and sweets.

These refined carb-containing foods are all very concentrated. They spike your blood sugar levels and, as a result, spike your insulin levels too. The more frequently you do this, the less sensitive your body becomes to insulin, and your insulin resistance increases.

Balance your plate

A great rule of thumb is to use the plate model, which recommends that ¼ of your plate is made up of high-fiber whole grains and legumes, ¼ is lean proteins and ½ is fresh fruits and vegetables.

When deciding on which carb-containing foods to eat, I find it helpful to ask yourself “does my carb-containing food look the same on my plate as it does growing on the plant?”. If it looks pretty similar, then you are on exactly the right track! For example, there are no pastry plants but there are brown rice plants!

Boost your antioxidant intake

Eating minimally processed whole grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables also mean you’ll be getting a good dose of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants in the form of phytonutrients. 

This is really important because antioxidants help to fight inflammation. Inflammation is no good in general, but it is especially bad news for your hair. If inflammation is left unchecked, inflammatory substances called cytokines can promote cell death, which causes the hair follicle to regress resulting in the premature termination of the growing phase. Inflammation can stem from a variety of sources including high levels of belly fat, high insulin levels, getting too much sun, drinking too much alcohol, smoking, and even stressing too much! 

The key to reducing the effect these inflammation instigators have on you is to ‘eat a rainbow’ because each different color represents a different group of phytonutrients which all give varying health benefits.

You can also go ahead and cook with anti-inflammatory herbs and spices like garlic, ginger, turmeric, rosemary, and curry. You may not be using a lot of them in each meal, but if you eat them regularly, it all starts to add up! 

The crux of this message is to choose a variety of whole or minimally processed plant foods as much as possible over their refined counterparts to keep your hormones in balance, insulin levels in check, and stress at a minimum. Whole food diets like the Mediterranean diet are known for their health benefits and can also play a part in preventing and reducing hair loss!

Do you have any questions for Abby? Leave them in the comments below!