Brussels Sprouts for Healthy Hair Growth

Like the adorable puppies in the Dog's Trust adverts, sprouts are not just for Christmas, they’re for life… especially if you’re currently experiencing hair loss.

While a plateful of sprouts won’t grow your hair back, they’re all part of the dietary mix that can help keep both hair and scalp healthy.

When people lose their hair, they do so for a number of reasons, and while it is the medical products that can help reduce or prevent hair loss and also encourage new regrowth that often make the most visible difference, “lifestyle” issues such as diet and overall health are important, too.

Vitamins and minerals

Sprouts are your friend for multiple reasons: they have high levels of Vitamins C and A as well as dietary fibre and folic acid. They also contain sulphur which is a mineral well known for its role in healthy skin, nails, hair and joints. Some believe that an amino acid found in Brussels sprouts cysteine can encourage hair growth, too.

When people with a hair loss condition visit Belgravia they are often surprised to find that they are asked about such things as their diet, their work/life balance and other things such as whether or not they smoke. The hair loss specialists are trying to paint as full a picture as possible of the client's lifestyle, as multiple conditions are influenced by the way in which people live.

For example, Telogen Effluvium, a generalised all-over thinning of the hair which is more common among women than men, typically kicks in around three months after some sort of upheaval that has upset the body’s status quo or otherwise put the body on guard.

Sometimes this is an easy-to-pinpoint stressful event, or something dramatic at a biological level such as childbirth; postpartum alopecia is a form of Telogen Effluvium. But it can also be a sudden change in diet or a strenuous new exercise regime. In a way, hair loss caused by this temporary condition is a bit like an early warning system from the body that it isn’t happy about something.

People with a healthy, stress-free lifestyle who have fewer “ups and down” than others are therefore less likely to be affected by Telogen Effluvium. Which isn’t to say that it only affects people with “extreme” lifestyles or ones laden with crises far from it. But it’s true that the less the body has to deal with, the less likely the follicles will suffer.

Unhealthy lifestyle

Male Pattern Baldness, and the women's equivalent, Female Pattern Hair Loss, meanwhile, can also be affected by an unhealthy lifestyle and unbalanced diet.

While no one is suggesting that eating too few carrots and smoking too many cigarettes will cause instant hair fall, unhealthy choices can worsen or speed things up somewhat in people who are already genetically predisposed to androgenetic alopecia. Telogen Effluvium is also known to spur these hereditary hair loss conditions on, accelerating existing hair thinning or speeding up the onset of the condition in those with the 'balding gene'.

If you are concerned that you may not be getting the vitamins and minerals needed for healthy hair, whilst in no way a replacement for following a balanced diet, it can be worthwhile topping up by taking a daily hair health food supplement such as Hair Vitalics.

Luckily, these types of subtle tweaks can make a difference, and most conditions can successfully be dealt with through using a personalised hair loss treatment course, which incorporates effective products and formulations tailored to each individual's specific needs. So don’t leave it to sprouts alone to fix any hair loss problems  make sure you get a professional diagnosis and are brought up to speed with all of the options that are available to you.