Hair loss is an issue older men dealt with and actually was thought of as a “distinguished look” and a sign of “wisdom”; it was something you were not embarrassed about or trying to hide.
It seems today, more than ever, women and men are suffering from hair loss due to many issues. Now the hair product industry is exploding, making all of these promises to grow your hair thicker, and grow it back with topical use products and potions.
Thousands of dollars are used to try to cover up hair loss. This is a sensitive topic and something that affects more people than not.
So what is causing your hair loss?
1. High Insulin and Blood Sugar.
Hair loss is connected to having high insulin from high blood sugar. When you eat high sugar, high carb, processed food diet, this raises your insulin, causing high levels of androgens or testosterone in the body.
This is why women with PCOS lose their hair and start growing hair on their face. This is from high insulin and high levels of androgens in the body.
A ketogenic diet is the best thing to remedy this issue, as it lowers blood sugar, the release of insulin, and balances the female and male hormones in the body. More and more women are losing their hair due to this reason.
If you are getting facial hair and losing hair on the top of your head, it is a sure sign that you are suffering from high levels of testosterone, and blood sugar and insulin in the body.
2. You may not be eating enough calories.
This happens when you switch to a ketogenic diet or any change of diet for that matter, and you cut your calories. If you cut your calories, you might be cutting important nutrients that are needed for hair growth.
When you switch to a ketogenic diet, your appetite does go down as your cravings for sugar and carbs do also. You may find yourself being not as hungry, so it is very important to eat nutrient-dense food when you do eat.
You also will probably cut your meals down to one or two meals a day, which is another reason to make sure those meals are full of nutrients and good quality protein and fats.
Your body does not care what you look like… if it does not have the proper nutrients, it will use what it has for your important survival organs, sacrificing your nails, hair, and skin.
3. You are not eating enough protein, resulting in hair loss
The first nutrient you want to make sure you have enough of is protein. If you’re consuming not enough protein, it’s probably why you’re losing your hair.
Typically you want to eat .5 to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. That’s a rough estimate depending on your lifestyle, exercise routine, and goal weight.
For instance, if you weigh 300 lbs but your goal weight is 150 lbs, you want to do the calculation according to a hundred and fifty pounds.
The benefit of a ketogenic diet is your body does not need as much protein as it does when you are on a standard American diet because your body uses protein as a fuel source.
When you are on a ketogenic diet, your body uses its own fat stores for energy and spares the muscle protein in addition to recycling amino acids and other nutrients.
This is why it is very important to look at which diet you are following.
Many people who switch to a vegan diet will start losing their hair, as they are not getting enough B vitamins and protein. Vegans also tend to eat a lot of carbs, and never enter fat-burning mode which means that their body uses their muscle mass and their proteins as a fuel source.
Therefore their hair and nails suffer the most out of any other diet. I am not against vegan diets, but you do have to do a lot of work to make it nutrient-dense and give you what you need.
When you switch to a ketogenic diet and your appetite is decreased, you need to make sure that when you do eat you are eating nutritionally dense food like organic green vegetables and wild fish, and organic meats that are dense with that good Protein, healthy fat and phytonutrients.
So if you start losing your hair, your nails become brittle, and you become tired or fatigued, these are signs you are not getting enough protein or nutrients.
4. Not getting enough vitamins & minerals on a Keto diet.
When you switch to a ketogenic diet and you are becoming keto-adapted, you need extra minerals and vitamins such as the B vitamins and potassium.
This is why it’s very important to make sure you are eating enough animal protein where you get the B vitamins or supplementing with Nutritional Yeast or other vitamin B supplements if you are on a vegetarian diet.
I recommend oxylent to cover your bases for your electrolytes including potassium.
5. Low Stomach Acid.
Another reason you may be losing your hair is if you have low stomach acid. If your stomach acid is low, you are not able to absorb all of the nutrients and vitamins you are ingesting.
This actually improves when you are on a ketogenic diet and intermittent fast because of the stomach acid increases.
When you are on the standard American diet and insulin is high, your stomach acid decreases which are the cause of acid reflux and heartburn. So if you are someone who suffers from acid reflux, bloating, or burping, this is a sign that you have low stomach acid–not high.
To correct this, go down to two meals a day and incorporate intermittent fasting which will increase the acid. You can also add apple cider vinegar to your water to increase the pH balance in your stomach.
I also recommend the Assist Digestive Enzymes that are specifically created for a ketogenic diet called Assist Dairy and Protein. So not only is the ketogenic diet going to help your stomach acid and improve absorption but it is also going to help your acid reflux and heartburn.
6. Thyroid gland issues and how it contributes to hair loss.
If your thyroid is not working, you have hypothyroidism or Hashimoto’s, which can cause hair loss.
You can get your thyroid back on track through iodine supplementation, as 96% of the United States is deficient in iodine. Iodine is the number one cause for Hashimoto’s and thyroid disease.
I also recommend Kanchanara Guggul, a supplement that detoxes the thyroid and nourishes it to help its functionality. Thyroid GF is another supplement that you can take as a natural alternative to thyroid medication.
Your thyroid could also be dysfunctional because of toxins like fluoride, bromide, and chlorine, clogging the thyroid. When you don’t have enough iodine in your body, these other halogens looking like Iodine clog the receptor sites.
You have heard of T4 and T3 as it relates to thyroid health- well, the 4 and 3 represent the molecules of iodine. Also, radiation from EMF, cell phones, and all ionizing and non-ionizing radiation will disrupt the function of the thyroid.
7. Liver issues.
Most people don’t realize that thyroid and metabolism issues are connected to liver issues. If your gallbladder is sluggish and not producing enough bile to break down fats, you will not be able to absorb the nutrients you are taking in.
And if your liver is sluggish, you will not able to convert the T4 to T3, which is connected to thyroid health and metabolism.
Without that, you are unable to process the nutrients to build your hair, nails, and collagen.
8. High Estrogen in hair loss.
Estrogen can block the thyroid. Whether it is pregnancy, Hormone Replacement Therapy, birth control pills, soy, toxins in the environment that are estrogenic, or high stress which releases cortisol and disrupts the balance of hormones, all of these things can cause high estrogen, which blocks the thyroid.
In other words, the higher the estrogen is, the lower the thyroid hormones are, the slower the metabolism becomes and the worse the health of the hair becomes.
Heavy periods, fibroids, and heavyweight being carried on the lower part of your body can all be signs of high estrogen.
Postpartum hair loss is caused by a quick drop in estrogen which indirectly raises testosterone which turns into DHT. DHT is the cause of hair loss in many people and that is what products like Rogaine go after.
9. High Levels of Androgens.
This causes male pattern baldness in women and men. The androgens start burning out the hair follicles, resulting in dry, brittle hair that starts to fall out and your hairline starts receding.
This is caused by high levels of insulin and blood sugar, which converts high levels of androgens into estrogen. This is why women with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome lose their hair and get facial hair.
It is all connected to high levels of blood sugar. That is why a low-carb, high-fat ketogenic diet can actually correct this cause of hair loss quickly.
10. High levels of Cortisol.
If your adrenals are overworking and high levels of cortisol are released, it results in int high levels of insulin, androgens, and aldosterone.
When you are over-stressed, you can raise your blood sugar and Insulin without eating any sugar!
As this raises the insulin and the other two hormones, you will start losing your hair.
11. Menopause.
During this period, estrogen decreases and relatively speaking testosterone stays higher, so it is the same situation as when you have high testosterone or during postpartum.
As a result, levels of DHT are high and cause hair loss.
12. Alopecia.
This is where you lose clumps of hair at a time, and is usually connected to an autoimmune disease. Most autoimmune diseases are connected to stress, an increase in cortisol, which then contributes to leaky gut.
Because of chronic high stress, cortisol is then very low because of being burned out– typically the case for alopecia.
You can have general hair loss from high levels of cortisol but it is characterized by a more general hair loss and not patches. Stress is one of the main causes of leaky gut.
I recommend my Keto Detox Bundle along with intermittent fasting to heal leaky gut and boost your immune system to recover from autoimmune diseases like Alopecia.
13. Collagen and how it minimizes hair loss.
Hair is made from collagen, a specific kind of protein. It comes from animal protein, typically beef or chicken, and you start losing collagen in your early thirties.
I highly recommend supplementing with liquid biocell collagen, which your body recognizes as its own in the same molecular structure that is found in your body.
There are many collagens that the body does not recognize and cannot use properly.
14. Age.
Obviously, as you age, the above issues affect you. As an anti-aging hair supplement, I recommend Shou Wu. Dr. Shen’s Shou Wu is the one I have seen the most benefit from.
It benefits the hair, prevents premature hair loss or greying, and regulates excessive aging.
For more information on this topic, watch my Hair Loss video:
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