10 essential vitamins and minerals necessary for faster hair growth

Many of us have a love/hate relationship with our hair. We can’t live without it but a bad hair day is enough for us to want to stay indoors forever or just rip our mane out for good. Of course, we wouldn’t actually do that. Our hair is what defines us. Without it, we’d struggle to even leave the house and many of us spend half our lives trying to get it right! However, as you get older, your hair loses some of its lustre. It becomes prone to breakage, doesn’t shine as much as it once did and, worse still, it starts to fall out and takes longer to grow. Not cool! The good news is that one of the most common reasons for hair loss or slow growth is vitamin deficiency. Why is this a good thing? Because it can be cured! How? By consuming the essential vitamins and minerals necessary for faster hair growth. Let’s take a look at the 10 best!

How to make your hair grow faster? Here are vitamins for hair growth:

Protein

Perhaps more famous for healthy hair than any other vitamin or mineral on this list, you simply can’t mess around where protein is concerned. If you want healthier, faster growing hair, you need to consume an adequate amount of protein. Why? Because your hair IS protein! Meat eaters can get their protein fix from the likes of chicken and salmon, while vegetarians can consume eggs. Vegans and vegetarians also have the option of spinach, beans, quinoa and broccoli.

Iron

Iron is a key nutrient that ensures our blood is transported around our body with better efficiency. This in turn makes us feel more energised and awake. Iron also strengthens our hair and encourages it to grow faster. If you don’t have enough iron in your system, your hair might go dry, dull and thin. In other words, it won’t look anywhere near as good as you want it to!

There are many excellent food sources of iron, and these include the likes of apricots, raisins, spinach, eggs, poultry and red meat.

Biotin

If you’ve been keeping a close eye on the world of supplements, you’ll surely have already heard of biotin, an essential B vitamin that keeps our hair nice and healthy by breaking proteins down into amino acids and producing glucose.Many of us get just enough biotin from our diet each day. However, getting just enough isn’t enough because your body has a bad habit of flushing a lot of it out. As such, you need to consume more than you usually do so that you don’t run a deficit and end up with hair loss. The best food sources of biotin include peanut butter, salmon, eggs, avocados and mushrooms.

Vitamin E

When we think of the most popular vitamins, vitamin E is hardly one that pops up. It’s actually pretty overlooked, which is kinda unfair as it’s a useful antioxidant that fixes tissues before rebuilding it. And this is exactly what you need when you want to grow more hair. Foods that are rich in vitamin E include broccoli, avocado, seeds and almonds.

As well as getting your vitamin E fix from food, you can also apply it topically to your scalp. Doing so improves oxygen supply, boosts blood circulation and lowers inflammation. To massage vitamin E into your hair, take two capsules and mix them together with coconut oil. Then, massage into your scalp, leave for 20 minutes and rinse out.

Zinc

Without enough zinc in your body, you might experience hair loss. In fact, if you’ve been noticing that you’ve been losing more hair than normal recently, it could well be because you’re not consuming enough zinc. This is because a zinc deficiency can lead to hormonal imbalance, which in turn can cause hair loss. Good food sources of zinc include spinach, sweet potatoes, chickpeas, eggs, nuts and oysters.

Vitamin C

Vitamin C bolsters your immune system, thereby protecting you from colds. It also stimulates hair growth and strengthens follicles. How? By producing an important protein called collagen. Lots of people get their vitamin C fix in the form of supplements, but we think it’s far better to get it from delicious food such as peppers, kiwi fruit, strawberries, broccoli, kale, oranges and Brussels sprouts. As well as food and supplements, hair care products tend to contain vitamin C, too.

Vitamin B12

Part of the vitamin B family, vitamin B12 is an essential vitamin that boosts cell division and growth, two key processes that are needed if your hair is to grow faster and healthier. Without scaring you too much, if you don’t get enough vitamin B12 into your system, you might find that your hair is growing way too slowly. Moreover, vitamin B12 can also stop hair loss altogether. Foods that are rich in vitamin B12 are predominantly dairy products, such as yogurt, milk, whey powder, cheese and eggs.

Niacin

Another B vitamin, niacin might not be the most famous vitamin in town but because it promotes better circulation, it can accelerate the speed at which your hair grows. Its main job is to turn carbs into energy while boosting circulation which, in turn, means more nutrients and oxygen get to your hair follicles.

Folic Acid

Folic acid thickens your hair and gives it that illustrious shine by adding more moisture. It can also stop your hair from going grey. But where would we find folic acid in our diet? Pretty much any food that contains vitamin B will also contain folic acid, which includes cereals and wheat grains. And, yes, this means you’ve got free reign to eat more carbs! Sweet! However, a lot of people opt for vitamin B supplements and they will work just fine too if you’re looking to consume more folic acid.

Vitamin D

Lastly, vitamin D – which largely comes from the sun – is essential for better hair growth. And because we get it from the sun, it means you’ve got yet another excuse to spend time at the beach. As if you needed one!