Poor Diet & Gut Health Cause Hair Loss

The Skinification of Hair Care

A poor diet will disrupt your gut microbiome and harm your gut health, and cause hair loss. A diet balanced with low-inflammatory foods, anti-oxidants, and probiotics will stimulate hair growth.

Your Scalp is Skin

For years, I have been telling my patients “your scalp is skin”, so treat it well.  This is why I believe in the SKINIFICATION of haircare. You cannot produce healthy hair without a healthy scalp. There is no separation between the skin on your body and when it turns into scalp – it’s all SKIN!

Your Gut Health Matters

The gut microbiome is basically a bunch of different bacteria that live in your gut to keep things in balance. Your skin and hair are also affected by this gut microbiome. The Standard American Diet (SAD – yes, it is), is full of sugar and processed food. This disturbs the natural order of things, and it spills over into your skin.

Have you ever heard of “leaky gut”? Leaky gut is when the gut bacteria is so imbalanced that inflammation increases. The inflammation “leaks” out of the gut, causing inflammation in your skin (and hair). This makes skin conditions like psoriasis, seborrheic dermatitis, and inflammatory hair loss (alopecia areata, CCCA, FFA, and LPP) worse. I know it sounds like alphabet soup, but these are all different types of scarring and permanent hair loss. Take the letters I just gave you, put the word alopecia after them, and you can research them. There is not enough time in this blog to cover all the hair losses.

Before I digressed, we mentioned the disturbance in gut microbiome, which in turn affects the scalp microbiome, and therefore hair growth. Since 2020, we have witnessed the burgeoning of scalp care products with CBD formulations, products boasting of microbiome benefits, and scalp serums and solutions for flaking, itching, and tension. So, what is this all about? Bear with me as I get a bit scientific.

The Scalp Microbiome is a Microcosm Within the Skin Microbiome

Scalp hair follicles go down deep into the skin harbour a variety of normal bacteria (we need these). A single square centimetre of human skin – including sweat glands and oil glands can have up to one billion microorganisms including bacteria, fungi and viruses, forming a complex community known as the skin microbiome.

Your scalp contains 100,000‐150,000 hair follicles out of a total five million human hair follicles on your body. The hair follicle openings contribute to a significant increase of skin surface area and form pockets that extend into deeper scalp skin layers. It begins at the surface of the epidermis (uppermost layer of the skin layers) and extends to the opening of the sebaceous duct (where scalp oil is secreted). The follicles are filled with sebum (oil), debris, viruses, bacteria, yeasts/fungi and even mites (they are microscopic people, like dust mites).

Your Diet Matters

So why am I saying all this? Well, because what you eat does matter. Avoid added sugars as much as you can. Avoid processed foods and inflammatory foods (you can do your own research). I’ll help you out a bit by emphasizing that you should reduce the amount of sugar, dairy, and red meat that you ingest, as these are all inflammatory. When there is an uptick in the consumption of these aforementioned foods, inflammation increases, and people with arthritis say their joints hurt more, eczema and psoriasis worsen. People CCCA, FFA, and LPP say that their scalp is red or itches a lot. Then hair loss follows a few weeks or months later. Your body is speaking. I need you to listen before it screams.

Good Bacteria Creates a Healthy Environment for Hair Growth

Microbiota help to decrease the magnitude of inflammation and promote tissue repair. The local follicular microenvironment (pollution, oxidative stress, stress itself), resident microbes, and their metabolic products can influence inflammatory and antimicrobial processes in the skin is acne and primary scarring alopecia’s (CCCA, FFA, LPP).

To avoid gut problems, inflammation, and hair loss, adopt a healthier diet with probiotics. Also reduce stress, and use haircare products that actually treat your scalp like skin, and repair your scalp barrier, like the DermHairDoc^® Hair Mask.