Say Goodbye To Thinning Hair: Your Essential Guide To Regrowth
For many of us, our ultimate hair wish is to just have more of it. Whether that’s about encouraging some extra length from your hair, boosting volume, or restoring hair that’s thin by encouraging regrowth, enhancing our hair is a multifaceted process.
For anyone who’s experienced hair loss, it can be a super worrying and even traumatic hair event. Your hair can be a source of your confidence, and when it starts falling out, your self-esteem can be similarly diminished. Luckily, there are things you can do to help promote hair regrowth.
Choosing the right hair products, looking at both natural and medical treatments, and prioritizing length retention, as well as preventing loss and promoting growth are all important factors in bringing your hair back to its thickest and fullest potential.
Understanding Hair Loss
The first step to prompting hair regrowth is understanding why you’re losing hair in the first place. The NCBI explains that healthy hair growth occurs at a rate of 0.35 mm/day, adding up to approximately 0.5 inches a month or 6 inches per year.
As per Web MD, all hair abides by a natural growth cycle, with the three phases to our hair’s life cycle called anagen (growth), catagen (transition), and telogen (resting).
Healthline explains that at all times, the majority of your hair is in the anagen phase, while around 1% is in the catagen phase, and 9% is in the telogen phase.
Therefore, losing 100-150 hairs per day is all a part of hair’s natural growth cycle—although losing more could point to an issue which needs treating.
Hair Loss As A Symptom
Hair loss tends to be a symptom of something else going on in your life and is potentially a sign of an underlying health issue. There are several major lifestyle contributors to hair loss, and if you identify which one (or ones) are impacting your locks.
Diagnosing Underlying Causes
- Stress. The NCBI explains that the stress hormone, cortisol, is known to affect the function and cyclic regulation of the hair follicle. Heightened levels of cortisol have been demonstrated to reduce the synthesis and accelerate the degradation of important skin elements, “namely hyaluronan and proteoglycans by approximately 40%.”
- Poor Lifestyle Choices. Smoking is associated with negative effects on hair health, particularly premature hair greying and alopecia, per NCBI. It’s recommended that those struggling with hair loss should make an effort to stop smoking.
- Lack Of Vitamins and Minerals. The NCBI confirms that micronutrients, such as vitamins and minerals, play an important, in normal hair follicle development. “Deficiency of such micronutrients may represent a modifiable risk factor associated with the development, prevention, and treatment of alopecia.”
- Side Effects Of Medications. Per the AARP: “Hair loss is a relatively rare side effect, but a variety of common medications may cause it.” These include beta-blockers, blood thinners, antidepressants, cholesterol-lowering drugs, certain nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and hormone-related drugs like thyroid meds, hormone replacement therapies or steroids.
Choosing the Right Products
Alongside tackling the underlying causes of your hair loss to help boost regrowth, you can also switch up your haircare routine to help promote long, healthy locks.
There are a few different haircare products and practices that can be employed to help not only stimulate hair regrowth but also help minimize excessive hair loss, and help with length retention for a longer-looking mane.
Gentle Washing
Getting into a gentle shampoo routine can help to maintain and healthier scalp and to keep hair feeling happy. Anything overly harsh, or using surfactants such as sulphates can dry out the hair strands and irritate the scalp, which can cause issues with hair growth.
The Monday Haircare range has a wonderful gentle shampoo that will properly cleanse without causing inflammation to the scalp or leaving hair feeling brittle and prone to breakage.
Scalp Care
Scalp care is another crucial element of hair regrowth efforts and should not be slept on! An NCBI study proves that scalp massage can help increase blood flow to the area, which can, in turn, enhance the strength of your hair’s roots, which can also help nutrients better travel down the strands of your hair. The study saw an increase in hair thickness over a 24 week period.
If you want to up your scalp massage game, you can opt for a dedicated scalp massage tool, which you can use both to work (gentle) shampoo into the scalp or use it to apply scalp serums or oils. They can be bought from most major haircare brands, but the Boucleme massager is a personal favorite.
Topical Product Application
There are many different scalp treatment products on the market that are designed to help support hair growth and minimize hair loss. L’Occitane, Act & Acre, and Phillip Kingsley all make scalp serums with these aims in mind. It’s worth bearing in mind that consistency is key with products like this, but getting into a routine with your application will offer the best results.
Keeping the scalp clean is also key to making sure that you maximise the absorption of hair regrowth topicals and encourage new hair growth. A temporary halt on non-essential scalp product use, while you’re in your scalp serum routine, can also help it to work as effectively as possible.
Length Retention
If you’re trying to make your hair grow, the last thing you want is to be losing more hair through breakage. Length retention strategies can help to keep the hair you do have as long and as healthy as possible.
- Sleeping on silk or satin. Switching out your pillowcase from cotton to silk or satin can help keep your hair protected while you sleep. Silk doesn’t soak up oil in the same way cotton does, meaning hair won’t dry out overnight. These fabrics also generate less friction, which can help stop hair from snapping or tearing.
- Limited hair brushing. You should be mindful of any hair brushing that can cause damage or breakage to your hair. Opt for a bush with more gentle detangling properties, like the Tangle Teezer or the Aveda Wooden Paddle Brush. You should also be wary of brushing your hair when it’s wet. Wet hair is more delicate and can therefore be more likely to snap.
- Wearing hair in protective styles. There are a whole host of different protective styles for different hair types, although the terms primarily concerns hair textures 3 and 4. Braids, twists, and locks are all types of protective hairstyle.
- Extra TLC. If you want to keep your hair healthy, strong, and less prone to breakage, it’s important to spend some extra time on treatments. You can opt for more conventional hair masks that help to pack in moisture and nourishment, such as our beloved Davines NouNou Nourishing Repair Mask, or opt for a specific anti-breakage treatments. The K18 Leave-In Molecular Repair Hair Mask uses the brand’s patented K18 peptide, which repairs damaged hair strands from the inside out. The K18 peptide protein fills in the gaps in the polypeptide chains which make up strands of hair, re-bonding the strand over time, not only preventing breakage, but also repairing damage.
Natural and Medical Treatments
On top of wonderful reparative and growth-boosting hair products on the market, there are also some natural remedies, such as Rosemary oil mixed with pumpkin seed oil, which may be worth considering. The NCBI draws attention to a wide variety of different oils that offer haircare benefits.
The use of rosemary oil to help cleanse and stimulate the scalp for hair growth has been well-documented. One study even claims that the application of rosemary oil is as effective as medication! In addition, people found it easier to stick to a rosemary oil, rather than a medication, regimen.
Medical Treatments
If you’re really struggling with your hair regrowth, it may be worth asking your doctor about Minoxidil. The NCBI explain that minoxidil was first introduced as an antihypertensive medication. But the discovery of its common adverse event, hypertrichosis (or hair growth), led to the development of a topical formulation this use. Now, topical minoxidil is the mainstay off-label treatment for hair loss conditions.
Per Healthline, minoxidil, the key active ingredient in Rogaine, has been available on the market for hair loss since the introduction of the 2% formula in 1986. This effective hair loss treatment is approved by the FDA to treat male and female pattern baldness and is available over the counter in different topical formulations.
Wrapping Up
There are multiple steps needed to begin addressing hair loss. From identifying underlying causes to selecting appropriate treatments and adopting beneficial hair care habits, there are a whole host of different approaches to tackling hair loss and encouraging regrowth.
These actionable strategies for promoting hair regrowth and retaining hair length can encompass both natural methods, medical treatments, or a combination of both.