4 Foods That Can Cause Hair Loss

Some foods are best to avoid or minimize if you’re trying to naturally re-grow your hair and reverse baldness. In some cases certain food groups could be triggering hair loss, and reducing the amount of them in your diet can have a significant impact on your hairline.

Other times, there’s no one food in particular, but combinations of these foods over long periods of time can have an effect. Here are the best foods for hair growth.

There are some general rules for foods that are conducive to hair loss, and some specific foods that should definitely be avoided. In this post I’m going to talk about both.

BONUS: Try the quiz at the bottom of this page that calculates if your type of hair loss is naturally reversible through diet changes and other natural methods.

The first general rule is to avoid foods that could be triggering delayed allergic reactions. These are similar to the instant allergic reactions, that things like peanuts and shellfish often induce, however they occur over the span of weeks or days, and are consequently more insidious, but no less damaging.

The primary reasons delayed allergic reactions can cause hair loss is because of increased immune response which can cause our own bodies to attack the hair follicle as well as cause inflammation in the scalp which constricts blood flow to the hair follicle. These two things combined often lead to hair loss.

The second general rule is that of alkaline and acidic foods. This is a large subject that is explained in other posts on this site, and fully explained in our course, along with the exact alkaline and acid values for all different kinds of foods, so you know exactly what to eat more of and what to eat less of to reverse hair loss.

The rule is to maximize alkaline foods and minimize acidic foods in your diet. Over time this will significantly slow down the rate of hair fall, and potentially lead to hair regrowth.

Ok, let’s have a look at which foods can cause hair loss and should therefore be avoided as much as possible.

Dairy Products

Dairy can be a big problem. Not only is it highly acid forming in our bodies (remember the second rule) but it can also trigger delayed allergic reactions, so for both reasons it should be avoided. Commercially available dairy is almost always pasteurized.

The pasteurization process actually renders the naturally occurring enzyme in the milk useless. It’s this enzyme that allows us to digest the milk in the first place, and without it our bodies really struggle to digest the dairy making it bio-unavailable and nutritionally useless.

Instead it is digested by harmful bacteria that give of waste products that go into our body.

Dairy also blocks the pores resulting in pasty skin. It also means that epidermis plaque is more likely to build up on the scalp causing hair follicle miniaturization and thinning hair. Either only consume unpasteurized dairy or avoid it at all.

Carbonated Drinks

Carbonated drinks are hugely acid forming. In fact they are the most acid forming food or beverage of them all. Not only this, but the sheer about of sugar in them causes blood sugar levels to spike and then crash.  Dr Mercola has researched the link between excess blood sugar and male pattern baldness and has this to say about it.

 

“There is strong evidence that early male-pattern baldness could be a clinical marker of insulin resistance, a condition in which you lose your sensitivity to insulin, resulting in excess blood sugar.”

This provides us with another general rule that is: eat foods with low glycemic indices, so as not to spike blood sugar levels. Find out about the glycemic index of many foods and more about Dr. Mercolas research in our hair loss course.

This is a very important concept for reversing hair loss and thinning hair. We must understand that male pattern baldness is an unnatural phenomenon, it is a modern ‘ailment.’

Concurrently processed (modern) foods all have very high glycemic indices and natural (unprocessed, unpasteurized) foods have substantially lower glycemic indices so it would seem viable that there is a link between processed foods and the ‘triggering’ of the male pattern baldness gene.

Although this link may seem tenuous to some there is more research that has come to a similar conclusion. Dr Mercola’s research included. To find out more, with tables of the glycemic indices of foods get hold of the course now. Alcohol can also cause hair loss.

Instead of carbonated drinks, stay hydrated with these instead:

• Avoid tap water, drink filtered, distilled or ionised water instead
• Drink vegetable juices
• Almond milk is incredibly healthy (make it yourself) and almond oil has been proven to stimulate hair growth in mice.
• Herbal and spice mixtures (anisee, clove, ginger, cinnamon, lemon greass etc)

Sugary Cereals

These foods have such high glycemic indices that they inevitably cause blood-sugar spikes something which is conducive to early hair thinning as we have already discussed.

It’s no wonder the ever increasing number of men suffering from hair loss when you look at the typical Western breakfast of pasteurized milk and sugary cereals.

Processed cereals have a very high glycemic load because the natural fiber from the plant has been removed, which would cause it to digest and be absorbed into our bodies more slowly.

With the removal of this natural fiber the food sugars go straight into blood stream causing a huge spike in blood-sugar levels.

This fiber would also be beneficial because it sweeps clean the colon of impacted mucus and left over feces, stopping it being absorbed back into the body, (which would cause toxemia) The answer is to eat natural unprocessed foods that contain high amounts of fiber.

This is why I always recommend a juice fast detox if you’re serious about beating hair loss for the long-term.