Easy Natural Remedies for Hair Growth

Natural hair growth occurs in four stages to keep your hair looking healthy and feeling strong. The growing phase is the main period during which most of your hair development takes place. After that are the transition, resting, and shedding phases, all of which play key roles in hair health. Factors that may affect this cycle include diet, age, genetics, gender, hair type, ethnicity, and the season.

Throughout this cycle, you typically lose 50-100 hairs a day — that’s why your shower has so many lingering in the trap. That’s normal and healthy and isn’t why some people get thinning hair. If your hair is thinning, it’s likely due to family history, hormone changes, medical issues, medications, radiation therapy, stress, hairstyles, and even various types of hair treatments that can thin hair.

No matter what your cause, it’s important to know easy natural remedies for hair growth. The best easy hair growth remedies and home remedies for thick hair can help restore your hair’s natural beauty when paired with medical treatments. In this article, we’ll examine common DIY remedies for hair growth and help you understand whether or not they work well for your unique needs.

Nutritional Support for Healthy Hair

When examining easy natural remedies for hair growth, it’s important to know what kind of nutrients are common in easy hair growth remedies. You probably already take some supplements every day for health — why not choose some that naturally create stronger home remedies for thick hair? Even better, you can choose a diet that naturally supports your DIY remedies for hair growth!

Vitamins Your Hair Needs

Your hair is like any other part of your body — it needs various vitamins and nutrients to stay healthy. Now, it’s no secret what vitamins your hair needs these days; just look at a bottle of healthy shampoo to see a few listed in bold, blazing colors. Topical application can help keep your hair strong, of course, but taking vitamins orally can ensure you get the right nutrient mix for your hair:

  • Vitamin B
  • Biotin
  • Vitamin C
  • Iron
  • Keratin
  • Vitamin D
  • Zinc
  • Vitamin A

Foods That Get Your Hair Growing

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could eat a few delicious foods and get your hair looking luscious and awesome again? Well, adjusting your diet could do just that! We don’t want to overpromise and say that eating a little more chicken is going to restore a bald head to full thickness. But it’s worth noting that healthy diets can help promote general hair restoration over time and get you on the right path:

  • Chicken, which is filled with healthy biotin, niacin, and other important vitamins
  • Avocado, which includes important omega-3 fatty acids for your hair
  • Legumes, which provide protein, zinc, iron, and even biotin.
  • Nuts, which include lots of biotin and vitamin E
  • Salmon, which provides mucho omega-3 fatty acids, protein, and vitamin B
  • Generally healthy foods like cruciferous veggies, chia seeds, collagen, and pumpkin seeds

Easy Natural Remedies for Hair Growth

The following natural remedies may help stimulate hair growth in some people. Though many are based on testimonial evidence, the general science behind these approaches is sound enough. Just understand that they’re not miracle cures — they can likely restore hair thickness but not cure baldness.

Scalp Massages

Over the years, scalp massages have topped many lists for easy hair growth remedies, and for a good reason — they’re easy and seem to work pretty well. You’re not likely to suddenly grow long and luscious locks, but a little massaging can help open up your pores and stimulate hair growth.

A traditional scalp massage — using your fingertips to lightly apply pressure on the scalp — should work just fine here. However, you can also massage your scalp while washing your hair or even use tools to work the scalp and help open up your hair follicles for more and better hair growth.

Essential Oils

You’ve probably heard a lot about essential oils in recent years — they tend to surge in popularity in cycles. Well, the most recent movement towards DIY remedies for hair growth includes oils like rosemary and peppermint, along with lavender, cedarwood, lemongrass, and thyme oils.

Simply place a few drops on your scalp and massage it into your hair to see the benefits. Some oils are used for specific purposes, such as treating alopecia areata. Others just provide powerful antibacterial and antimicrobial properties that can minimize potential long-term hair issues.

DIY Hair Masks

Now, a hair mask might sound a bit strange at first — coating your hair with items like avocado, egg, and honey can seem costly or even uncomfortable. However, items like castor oil, cinnamon, coconut oil, lemon, yogurt, brown sugar, bananas, and apple cider vinegar may help with hair growth.

It’s important to note that home remedies for thick hair are typically most effective when used as a supplement. After all, the FDA has only approved Rogaine for hair restoration. That said, it doesn’t hurt to add these items to your scalp — they’re healthy and filled with tons of vitamins and nutrients.

Herbal Rinses/Teas

Herbal or tea rinses can help add nutrients directly to your hair, prevent hair loss, moisturize your scalp, and keep your hair strong. Some people even dye their hair using teas and herbs — this method is much safer than chemical dyes though nowhere near as long-lasting for hair coloring.

Options such as black tea, hibiscus tea, green tea, chamomile tea, sage tea, rosemary tea, nettle tea, witch hazel tea, parsley tea, and lavender tea may all work well as herbal rinses. Make sure you choose carefully and properly prepare your hair to get the results that you need.

Lifestyle Practices for Hair Health

Now that you know a few easy natural remedies for hair growth, it’s important to know what you can do to potentially avoid serious hair loss in the first place. There are many lifestyle factors that can cause your hair to fall out in clumps — and we’re here to ensure you don’t make these mistakes!

Stress Management

If you’ve read even a few of our articles, you know that stress is one of the most common issues plaguing Americans today. Everybody — even the most laid back person — experiences stress at some point. Unfortunately, stress can seriously contribute to various types of hair loss.

But if stress can cause hair loss, can avoiding it mitigate your risk? Absolutely! Learn to meditate, practice yoga, use mindfulness techniques, or even practice cognitive behavioral therapy to manage your stress more efficiently and help your easy hair growth remedies work more effectively.

Hydration and Sleep

Here are a few things you might not even realize are connected to hair loss — hydration and sleep. Keeping your body properly hydrated — through frequent glasses of water throughout the day — supports general hair health and minimizes your risk of loss. It also hydrates your hair properly.

Furthermore, poor sleep (often connected to bad hydration habits) can also contribute to hair loss. Our bodies repair themselves while we sleep, including our hair follicles. Thankfully, proper sleep, especially a nap or two during the day, can help give your body the rest it needs.

Avoiding Harsh Hair Styling

Do you like to spend an hour or so getting your hair looking just right every day? Well, harsh chemical products, such as dyes and treatments, can damage your hair. Furthermore, even ironing or blow-drying your hair excessively can trigger hair loss, especially if you already have a predisposition.

Of course, dyeing your hair once or even blow-drying it a few times a week isn’t going to turn you bald. However, using natural dyes — such as henna or even tea — can not only prevent chemical damage but restore many vitamins to your follicles. Towel drying can also avoid heat damage issues.

Incorporating Remedies into Daily Routine

At this point, you’re probably pretty ready to try home remedies for thick hair. However, before you just implement DIY remedies for hair growth into your routine, it’s important to know how to do it properly. In this way, you can minimize potential problems. Here are a few tips to consider here:

  • Make a Plan: Try to choose a few of these remedies and focus on trying them out throughout your day. For example, you can choose supplements for hair growth that provide you with the vitamins and minerals your hair needs to stay strong and healthy.
  • Stay Consistent: Anything worth doing is worth doing right, so stay consistent with your restoration plan. Take your vitamins every day at the same time, do scalp massages every few days, utilize the same essential oils to keep your scalp strong, and read books on hair restoration.
  • Temper Expectations: When reading about DIY hair restoration, it’s easy to get excited and expect too much from these techniques. We’re not saying to expect nothing, but anticipating miracle growth is likely to let you down and can distract you from the process.
  • Stay Patient: Similarly to the last point, it’s critical to stay patient and consistent with your hair restoration processes. These methods will help support hair health and can cause some regrowth, so please stay patient and focused — just imagine yourself with thicker hair!

Precautions and Considerations

Now, these natural therapies are mostly pretty safe and shouldn’t cause too many concerns. However, essential oils and even herbs can cause adverse reactions on rare occasions. Here are a few considerations to keep in mind if you plan on utilizing any of these restoration techniques:

  • Check for Allergies: You never know when you might develop a new allergy. As a result, if your scalp reacts poorly to any of these techniques, stop immediately and contact your doctor.
  • Pay Attention to Warning Signs: Don’t ignore problems such as scalp flaking or even rashes on your scalp, as these might indicate a poor reaction that could spread and cause hair loss.
  • Don’t Overdo It: While none of these DIY hair techniques are too problematic for your health, overdoing anything — even a tea rinse — can cause potential issues, so stay focused.
  • Talk With Your Doctor: Whenever you change your healthcare methods (even when integrating natural therapies) talk with your doctor to get a little help here.

Sean Byers, MD

Sean Byers, MD

Sean Byers is currently a Resident in the Internal Medicine program at UTMB. He studied at the University of Queensland School of Medicine as well as received his Master’s in Public Health with a focus in epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Southern California. His background is in biology, computer science, public health, and internal medicine.

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