There really are good and bad foods you could eat that affect your hair greatly.
Below is a list of the top 9 foods that will literally destroy your hair over time.
1. Sugar
Sugar is the demise of every civilization that incorporates it into its diet.
Dr. Weston A. Price devoted his life to discovering this fact.
Sugar is clearly related to the status of your hair because it robs your body of B vitamins and minerals such as zinc, chromium, calcium and magnesium.
A B vitamin deficiency of biotin, riboflavin, and folic acid will cause hair loss and hair that is dull, brittle and can’t hold a curl.
A deficiency of zinc will cause hair loss.
Giving up sugar is a lot easier than what you may think.
There are sugar detox programs available online from health coaches that work exceptionally well.
What happens when you start the process is that your taste buds will adapt and you will soon think that your favorite piece of cake is way too sweet for your liking! It only takes four days for taste buds to change.
2. Boxed Cereals
Boxed cereals may seem like the best answer for a quick breakfast but they aren’t.
The processing that goes into making boxed cereals involves high temperatures, and this produces compounds called advanced glycation endproducts or AGEs.
These AGEs have been linked to the progression of every degenerative disease such as macular degeneration, diabetes, heart disease, neurological disease, high blood pressure, and others.
What exactly does that mean to you? It means if you have metabolic disease or pre-diabetes, it won’t be long before your health condition has progressed to full diabetes or even diabetes with complications.
Some of these complications can include infections that lead to amputations because they won’t heal or kidney disease that leads to dialysis.
Your substitute for boxed cereals is whole grain cereals.
Yes, you won’t be simply pouring them into a bowl and topping them with milk in the morning.
Instead, you’ll add 1 cup of whole grain such as buckwheat to 2 cups water, simmering it covered while you shower, and then checking on its doneness by the time you have dressed.
Then it goes into your breakfast cereal bowl and topped with milk, a handful of almonds and even a few raspberries to sweeten it.
It’s easy enough to make the change!
3. GMO Wheat
GMO wheat makes up about 99% of all the wheat in America.
That’s unfortunate because it’s not a real food.
It’s called GMO because this acronym stands for Genetically-Modified Organism – organism and not a food!
One of the best books to read on this topic is called Wheat Belly by William Davis, M.D., who lists over 300 different diseases that are associated with eating GMO wheat.
Of course hair loss (called alopecia) is on that list!
Wheat is said to be the stuff of life but that saying refers to the REAL FOOD wheat, which is called einkorn wheat.
If you can’t fathom the idea of living without GMO wheat, change to einkorn wheat.
It’s worth it to have a full head of hair!
The einkorn wheat products on the market include macaroni and other pasta types, einkorn that can be cooked and eaten as a hot cereal, and even einkorn flour that may be used to make your own breads, muffins, pancakes and waffles.
You could become the einkorn master chef with a few months of practice using this flour.
4. Aspartame-containing foods such as Diet Coke
Aspartame is a sugar substitute.
If you believe all the marketing about it, you’d think that it couldn’t possibly harm you in any way possible.
However, if this were true, there wouldn’t be whole websites dedicated to side effects people experience from aspartame.
One of them is hair loss.
Sugar substitutes also won’t ever help you lose weight so give up that idea as well.
Learn how to readjust your sweet tooth with sugar-free dark chocolate recipes you make at home and overcome the whole problem head-on!
5. Other GMO Foods
Reconsider your consumption of all GMO foods in your diet.
As William Davis, M.D. points out, it’s the genetic engineering process that starts to disrupt metabolism, biochemistry of your body and even your genes.
It’s not only GMO wheat that is linked to hair loss; it’s the entire genetic engineering process.
A good book to read on the subject is by Jeffrey Smith called Seeds of Deception.
What is the substitute? It’s real foods.
6. Rice Cakes
Rice cakes have no nutrition whatsoever and cause blood sugar levels to rise exceptionally high after eating them, only to be followed by a rapid plummet.
This robs the body of B vitamins and zinc, two essential types of nutrients your hair needs.
The sudden drop of nutrients in the blood means that the nutrients have to be taken from other places in your body.
Hair is considered an “expendable” source of nutrients, and it’s one of the first places for your body to give up its nutrient stores.
This results in hair loss.
Rice cakes simply aren’t worth eating, plus they are high in AGEs.
7. A High Carbohydrate Diet
It’s easy to consume a lot of carbohydrates in our Western culture.
Everywhere you go, there are fast food restaurants, and foods are pre-packaged and created with plenty of unnecessary sugars and starches.
When you eat a high carbohydrate diet, your protein levels decrease.
A lack of protein ends up causing the body’s protein stores to dwindle to nothing.
One of your body’s protein stores is your hair.
This is why whenever you see pictures of starving adults and children in foreign countries, they have lost their hair or it has become sparse, spotty in places and discolored.
The answer is to eat at least a moderate amount of protein in your diet.
Make these types of proteins high quality proteins, ones from fish, poultry, beef, buffalo, bison, eggs, and dairy products.
8. Fried Foods
Fried foods release free radicals in the body that accelerate aging of any cells they come into contact with.
If free radicals hit your hair follicles, then you can expect them to cause damage.
Damaged hair follicles can result in disrupted hair life cycles.
Instead of your hair living to be two years, it could end up falling out at 9 months or a year and a half.
When this process continues for a while, you end up with a net loss of hair that is not replaced.
Even if you try to beat the process by including a lot of antioxidants in your diet that neutralize free radicals, you’ll still be hurting your health with fried foods.
These foods will use up your body’s antioxidants, contribute to hardening of the arteries because of their oxidized fat, and be responsible for added weight gain over time.
9. Alcohol
The problem with alcohol comes from drinking it regularly, not occasionally.
Alcohol depletes your body of zinc and other important minerals such as chromium and magnesium as well as the B vitamins.
For your hair, it’s most important to keep your zinc and B vitamin levels high.
That means that every time you take a drink, you are whittling away at your reserves of important nutrients that feed your hair.
It’s best to ask yourself if that alcoholic drink is really worth it.
Is there another way you can still feel social without the alcohol?
You really can eliminate all these bad hair foods from your diet.
Give it some thought and then systematically tackle the removal of each one from your diet over the next few months.
And watch your hair take a turn for the better within about four months with very little additional effort!
Donna Schwontkowski
Donna Schwontkowski is known for her practical advice on hair care and is passionate about tracking new hair care methods and hair growth products. She recommends only those brands that she strongly believes can help in effectively resolving your hair problems.
