Enjoying dark chocolate (chocolate containing 70% cacao or higher) not only supports hair growth, it also combats some of the leading causes of hair loss.
Dark chocolate is more than just a sweet snack packed with vitamins. Its value is two-fold in its capacity to benefit your body and those curls on your head. Its fatty acids are perfect for nourishing and moisturizing the hair strands, restoring shine and health, and making your curls softer and shinier.
Help Hair Grow
Dark chocolate contains important nutrients like copper, iron and zinc, which happen to be responsible for growing more cells—including hair. You can combine a bar of melted dark chocolate with 2 tsp. olive oil and 2 tsp. water for a moisturizing hair mask to use during your daily shower.
It is related to aging, heredity, and changes in the hormone testosterone. Inherited, or pattern baldness, affects many more men than women. Male pattern baldness can occur at any time after puberty. About 80% of men show signs of male pattern baldness by age 70 years.
As a standard direction in blocking the production of DHT naturally, look for food sources that are rich in zinc such as mushrooms, green peas, beet greens, spinach, kale, sweet corn, etc. and pumpkin seeds, dark chocolate, almonds and walnuts.
Lowers Testosterone
Dark chocolate containing 90% cocoa is considered a good source of zinc (3.5 mg/100 g). Zinc has been shown to inhibit testosterone from converting into its active form of testosterone, DHT, which contributes to hirsutism.
Chocolate contains potassium, copper, iron and magnesium in high concentrations. These ingredients are beneficial for healthy hair and skin.
If you're a coffee drinker, you've probably wondered whether caffeine causes hair loss. In the past, it was believed that caffeine could accelerate hair loss. However, recent studies suggest that there's no link between caffeine and hair loss.
Raw Egg Whites
A deficiency of biotin can lead to hair fall. However, when egg whites are consumed raw, your body may experience a deficiency in biotin. Apart from biotin, raw egg whites also contain a substance called avidin that reduces the intestinal absorption of biotin. Include cooked eggs in your diet instead.
Only riboflavin, biotin, folate, and vitamin B12 deficiencies have been associated with hair loss.
It is a high-energy (high calorie) food, and too much can result in excess weight, a risk factor for cardiovascular disease.
How much chocolate can I eat a day? Experts say the recommended “dose” is approximately 1 to 2 ounces or 30-60g. Indulge in anything more than that, and you may be consuming too many calories.
Excessive consumption of anything is harmful to health, whether it is veggies or chocolate. One must not eat more than 30 to 60 grams of chocolate in a day. Consuming too much chocolate will increase your daily calorie count leading to weight gain and other issues.
Bananas
Bananas also help maintain healthy DHT levels by helping you develop a healthy gut and prevent your body from overproducing DHT. Bananas are your go-to DHT blocking food!
Foods rich in lycopene such as tomatoes, watermelons, carrots, and mangoes naturally block DHT production. Biotin-rich foods like berries, liver, legumes, oily fish, and bananas condition the skin and scalp creating an overall healthy environment for strong hair.
Eggs: Chicken eggs are believed to have some DHT-fighting powers, especially when they are cooked. They also can help produce a healthy environment for hair growth in your scalp. Almonds: These crunchy nuts are a major source of biotin, a nutrient that promotes hair growth.
Eggs contain cysteine, a key amino acid for hair growth & found in hair keratin. Boiled or cooked eggs act more as DHT blocker than raw ones.
There is only one treatment that has been clinically proven and approved to block the effects of DHT, and that is the prescription treatment: finasteride. Finasteride is the active ingredient of the well-known hair loss treatment Propecia.
Vitamin D can indeed cause hair loss, but it's rare. Although the precise role of vitamin D in hair growth isn't well understood, research shows that vitamin D receptors play an important role in the anagen phase of the hair follicle cycle — the phase in which new hairs grow from the follicle to their full length.
It's normal to shed between 50 and 100 hairs a day. When the body sheds significantly more hairs every day, a person has excessive hair shedding. The medical term for this condition is telogen effluvium.