Your hair and nails reveal your health. The biggest favor that you can do to your skin is to nourish it with minerals and vitamins. The skin is highly susceptible to stress and malnutrition. Nonetheless, vitamins and minerals help improve skin health and enable natural skin recovery. If you do not get sufficient vitamins and minerals regularly, your skin will suffer.
Iron Deficiency Anemia and Zinc Deficiency
One of the reasons behind hair loss and nail conditions is iron deficiency anemia. Iron deficiency leads to damaged hair and brittle or spoon-shaped nails. Zinc levels in patients with iron deficiency anemia appear to be low.
In severe cases, zinc deficiency causes hair loss and nails to be brittle and easily cracked, too. Nevertheless, you can compensate for these deficiency types by consuming food sources which contain both iron and zinc.
Among those sources are legumes and red meat. Try also eating dried nuts to recover from zinc deficiency!
Not to excrete iron and zinc in the urine, you should stay away from diuretic teas and medicines as much as possible. If this is not possible, you should take these minerals in the form of additional nutritional supplements by consulting your doctor or your nutritionist.
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Essential Fatty Acid and Dietary Protein Deficiency
Amino acids in protein are essential components of strong hair and nails. If you do not get enough protein, you will develop protein deficiency. Eventually, protein deficiency will end up causing hair loss and weak nails among others. To avoid this, you should eat 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of your body weight per day.
Collagen is the main structural protein that exists in various connective tissues. Lack of collagen results in the common signs of thinning hair and brittle nails. Amino acids in collagen help to build hair proteins and strengthen the skin that contains your hair roots. Collagen and hyaluronic acid together make up the matrix, which makes the skin, hair and nails smooth, firm and elastic.
Cell membranes contain essential fatty acids. We need essential fatty acids to achieve healthy hair, skin and nails. They maintain hydration and manage oil production. Consume healthy ingredients in adequate portions. You can find omega-6 fatty acids in walnuts, eggs, sunflower seeds and avocado oil and omega-3 fatty acids in salmon, sardines, canola oil, chia seeds and in mackerel.
Hormonal Imbalance
There are various possible causes for imbalanced sex hormone levels (estrogen and testosterone levels), such as extreme stress and hyperglycemia. On the other hand, if you experience hair loss and brittle nails, you may be suffering from imbalanced sex hormone levels.
The thyroid gland is responsible for producing thyroid hormones, which are necessary for cells to function properly. Thyroid hormones help to regulate many body functions. However, if thyroid hormones do not function well and lead to low thyroid levels, you can get coarse and cracking skin as well as hair loss.
There are various possible causes for a hormonal imbalance. Here are common causes of hormonal imbalance: diabetes, hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, thyroiditis, Cushing syndrome, injury or trauma, stress, eating disorders, adrenal insufficiency and medications.
You can consider receiving treatment from your doctor or nutritionist for your hormonal imbalance. They will use metformin to help control blood sugar and levothyroxine to manage hypothyroidism.
Poor Digestive System
Studies involving antibiotics and bacteria-free mice indicate that gut bacteria could cause hair loss. Microorganisms function to break down food via enzymes. After microorganisms breaks down food, micro-nutrients come out of food and one of those micro-nutrients is biotin.
Biotin is a vitamin and if you do not get sufficient amounts of it, it can cause hair loss and skin disease. There are gut bacteria that can produce biotin. Some other bacteria can break biotin down to make it available for consumption.
Weak nails can be a sign of poor gut health. Through a healthy gut, you are able to absorb vitamins, minerals, amino acids well from the nutrients from your diet.
Here are the steps to hinder hair loss and weak nails and to maintain a healthy digestive system: Chew properly, have a good amount of stomach acid to break food down properly and plenty of enzymes. Amino acids from protein make up enzymes and you need to consume enough protein every day to provide the structural material to make enzymes.
Stress
Brittle, peeling nails and thinning hair or hair loss are common side effects of stress. You may even develop nail habits or tics just because you are in stress or nervous. When you are in such stress, the level of the body’s stress hormone (cortisol) increases. Following this, your body will produce much more oil than needed.
Oily skin is not the only problem that stress causes. Stress can also negatively affect the barrier function of the skin. This leads to water loss and to a decrease in the ability of the skin to heal itself after an injury. If the body is under stress, it can stop growing hair and focus on recovery and healing. If you experience hair loss, your hair may not grow back as much, if at all.
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- healthy-and-fit-life.com
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- theactivetimes.com
- outlookindia.com
- kidney.org
- huffingtonpost.co.uk
