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Healthy hair starts from the inside out — which means your nutritional needs are just as important as what you apply to your strands to keep them strong and silky. A well-balanced, non-restrictive diet filled with enough proteins, carbohydrates, healthy fats, and vitamins and minerals is crucial. But knowing which vitamins to make sure you’re getting enough of is also an important consideration for thicker, healthier hair. We spoke with health experts who recommend this one vitamin you should be taking every morning for thicker, healthier hair.
Vitamin B-7
If you aren’t familiar with the B vitamins, get ready to incorporate them into your diet in a major way — because they’re all extremely important and play a role in healthy haircare.
“One way of taking care of our crowning glory is to consume enough vitamins, particularly vitamin B-7, or more commonly referred to as biotin,” says Niyla Carson, the nutritionist of Fast Food Menu Prices. “It should be noted that there is no solid evidence yet that consuming enough biotin would automatically do wonders to our hair— however, the deficiency thereof makes hair brittle and weak! To be on the safe side, having enough biotin intake is better to avoid these hair worries.”
Dr. Ailynne Marie Vergara-Wijangco, a Clinical Dermatologist and researcher with ThankYourskin.com also agrees that biotin is the one vitamin out there with haircare cred.
“Studies link biotin deficiency with hair loss in humans (5Trusted Source),” Dr. Vergara-Wijangco says. “Although biotin is used as an alternative hair-loss treatment, those who are deficient have the best results. However, deficiency is very rare because it occurs naturally in a wide range of foods. There’s also a lack of data about whether biotin is effective for hair growth in healthy individuals. Other B-vitamins help create red blood cells, which carry oxygen and nutrients to the scalp and hair follicles. These processes are important for hair growth.”
You can get B-vitamins from many foods, Dr. Vergara-Wijangco says, including whole grains, almonds, meat, fish, seafood and dark, leafy greens.
Although Carson points out that almonds, peanuts, soybeans, legumes, and whole-grain are some great, healthy foods you can snack on, Dr. Vergara-Wijangco says animal foods are the only good sources of vitamin B12.
“So if you’re following a vegetarian or vegan diet, consider taking a supplement,” Dr. Vergara-Wijangco says.
