If you’ve been following me for a while then you probably know that I have been following a particular eating program along with intermittent fasting. There’s so many pluses about this in terms of food control. That’s where I seem to struggle the most. It’s definitely a plus to work on specifically scheduling when you eat and trying to be very stringent about that.
Also with this type of eating you have to recognize nutritional aspects of your meals and be able to respond to those deficiencies or deficits as quickly as possible. Mineral deficiency is a given in most diets, especially with intermittent fasting and restricted food items.
The Connection Between Intermittent Fasting and Hair Loss
With intermittent fasting one of the side effects of extended fasting can be hair loss. This can be devastating because you seemingly don’t have a lot of control over that. I did not start losing hair until I was nine months into intermittent fasting. But when it started falling out, it was a scary thing.
Looking into that hair drain or combing and brushing my hair was definitely cringe worthy. Thankfully, I have quite a bit of hair. But even as we age we tend to start losing hair a little bit more than we did in the younger years of our life.
After about two months of losing quite a bit of hair I was determined to make it stop. I knew a few things that could affect hair loss but I decided to do some research.
Protein Plays a Huge Part
One of the things I found and I was definitely not surprised about is how much protein plays a part. Every other diet that I’ve used before was higher in protein than I have been consuming with this particular eating plan. Once I read that, I immediately started adding more protein.
But there were a number of other items that also could contribute to hair loss.
Here’s a list of some of the things to look for to make sure that you are including in healthy amounts. Many of these can be covered by a very good natural-based supplement. More on that in just a moment.
Look for These Nutritional Items
- Vitamin A
- Vitamin B’s
- Vitamin C
- Vitamin E
- Iron
- Selenium
- Zinc
- Collagen with Biotin
Of this list one of the items I was surprised to learn about was Iron. I don’t think I ever heard that it helped with hair before but I certainly have started adding iron to my supplements 2 to 3 times a week and it has definitely helped.
My Results
So what else have I changed in my diet and in my supplementation to help reduce the hair loss? Here are my results:
Within two weeks I saw a huge reduction in hair loss due to the following:
- Immediate increase in protein
- Change to a stronger more focused multivitamin vitamin that included many of the items listed above – especially Selenium which was missing out of my previous vitamin and the B vitamins. Mine only had one or two of the B’s.
- Added iron 2 to 3 times a week
While I am extremely happy my hair loss has slowed down, I understand that this is different for every single person.
Is this the end all be all that’s going to fix your hair loss? Absolutely not.
But this is what has worked for me and some thing for you to research and see what is missing out of your diet.
Hi! I’m Chris! Just a Midlife Wife sharing about life’s journey; screaming and kicking through it while supposedly aging gracefully…
Focusing on healthy living, low carb & keto, things I am loving right now, and life in general.