No More Bad Hair Days: Nutrition For Your Hair and Nails

I’ve been binge watching Forensic Files, my favorite crime documentary series (bear with me here). Recently they aired a number of episodes solving cases where the victims were poisoned. In every case they test the victim's hair to create a timeline of when the poisoning began and what type of poison was used. Turns out, hair reveals all!

You see, when you ingest anything, your body has to find something to do with it. So naturally when you ingest something the body doesn’t want or need (like poison in my extreme example) it will try to expel it. The body does this in a few ways:

• Sweat
• Urine and feces
• Diarrhea
• Vomiting
• Through your hair and nails. Which makes sense considering they grow out of your body.

This works for everything you eat and drink. In fact, scientists can even track the countries and cities you’ve visited just by testing your hair and sourcing the origins of the water you drank. Amazing.

Having “good hair” isn’t just a genetic thing. Genetics do play a role, but in the end what you put into your body is what you grow out!

Imagine planting vegetable seeds in a plot of soil, but that dirt was polluted with trash and chemicals. It’s no shock that once the vegetables grow they would look and taste unpleasant and have little to no nutrient value.

Much like vegetables root and grow in soil, your hair and nails grow from a root in the bottom of a follicle in your scalp, fingers and toes. If you’re not feeding your body the good stuff, you can’t expect to grow anything of value. You reap what you sow.

Your hair and nails need a well-rounded diet in order to grow strong, healthy, and quickly. If your hair is weak and your nails are flimsy, try improving what you ‘feed your soil’ with:

Water

When you drink a lot of water, you go to the bathroom a lot. Your body is flushing out the water it doesn’t need! Your body also expels water through the hair and nails and it does a world of good for it. So drink up!

A Well Balanced Diet

Eat plenty of fibrous, micronutrient filled vegetables to give your body the right dose of vitamins and minerals that are important for healthy hair and nails.

Protein makes up a very large percentage of your hair and nails. Keep that protein coming!

Clean up Your Nutrition

There is no shortage of reasons to increase the amount of whole foods you eat and cut back on processed food. Healthy hair and nails are no exception.

Like anything with nutrition, you get out what you put in. Happy hair day, team!