Diet + Exercise: a cocktail for scalp issues?
Diet - not what you think.
If you’re not eating enough our blood sugar can drop dangerously low and we can suffer from something called Hypoglycaemia. This happens when the level of sugar (glucose) in your blood drops below the range that's healthy for you.
The first sign of hypoglycaemia is hunger - when you ignore hunger or do not eat enough the blood sugar does not stabilise which wreaks havoc on our hormones such as grehlin and leptin which regulate hunger. If you’re wondering WTF this has to do with your hair, see below:
A study by The International Journal of Women’s Dermatology found that black women with type 2 diabetes have an increased risk of central scalp hair loss compared to those without type 2 diabetes.
Few of us realise the impact under-eating has on our bodies. Even failing to eat when we are hungry is a major stress on our body. Before you say I’m not diabetic, hypoglycaemia can show the same symptoms as diabetes, such as:
Waking overnight
Waking up with a headache
Experiencing major fatigue and fogginess after a full nights sleep
Night sweats
This is not an exhaustive list and is not medical advice. This information is compiled from personal experience and scientific research papers. We have not covered other possible reasons or underlying health issues here.
In short, eat carbohydrates, followed by a balancing wholegrain or whole food such as potatoes, with protein. This sounds very simple but there is a lot of noise out there suggesting things must be complicated in order to thrive. I like to circumvent that.
On a personal note: I neglected my hair in terms of nutrition for so long 🥴. I used to be a strict raw vegan. I avoided bread like the plague and never consumed animal products. I was so weak and my hair didn’t grow. I discovered my deficiencies after a trip to the drs and realising my diet could provide a great source of nutrients that were brilliant for my hair health, let alone growth.
I say this with such gratitude these days because it was not always so. I struggled with severe insomnia for a year. I barely ate. My hair was thin (can you believe!)
Exercise - over-exercising is as bad as not exercising at all. Initially our bodies perceive exercise as an exogenous stressor, exogenous meaning outside of the body.
However in terms of which type of exercise is best for hair, it’s a mixed bag: all exercise is thumbs-up ‘good’ for promoting oxygen to the scalp, getting everything moving, etc but I personally prefer calisthenics. Lifting my own body weight is hard, but I absolutley love it. That said, I do lift weights too because I understand that bone density decreases as we age, meaning we are more prone to breaks, and in the next 10-20 years I’d like to keep that risk as low as possible.
Scientific research shows that doing weight lifting exercise can delay androgenic alopecia, and increase bone density which in turn keeps hair healthy, research below:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6279907/#:~:text=Exercise%20training%20could%20enhance%20bone,strain%20%5B27%2C97%5D
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352647519300516?via%3Dihub
Allow us to lift the lid and share what we know from lived experience and scientific research: Beyond Curls.