3 New Year's Resolutions for Thicker, Healthier Hair

How healthy your hair looks affects how you feel about yourself and how others see you. Boost your self-confidence by resolving to make some changes that may boost your hair health and prevent or slow hair loss.

Men (and women) lose hair for many reasons, including the natural process of the hair growth cycle, in which you shed small amounts. But thinning hair and significant hair loss affect millions of people for many reasons.

If you want to improve the quality and quantity of your hair, make this the year you see what hair restoration can do for you. It’s not too late to make New Year’s resolutions that focus on working toward fuller, healthier hair.

Serving Southern California from offices in Glendale and Newport Beach, Dr. Michael Meshkin and Dr. Alister Meshkin, along with our team at Meshkin Medical, can help you boost your confidence with thicker, healthier hair.

Facts about hair loss

Your hair goes through four stages:

Growing (anagen)
Transition (catagen)
Resting (telogen)
Shedding (exogen)

In healthy hair, typically around 50-100 strands shed daily and are replaced. Alopecia, or hair loss, develops when you lose more hair than you regrow. Baldness affects 80 million people in America.

Other forms of hair loss occur in large numbers as well, including autoimmune conditions such as alopecia areata, which causes nearly 7 million people to lose hair.

Causes and risk factors

The different forms of alopecia develop from multiple causes, such as:

Hereditary factors
Autoimmune problems
Radiation treatment or chemotherapy
Stress from traumatic events

Androgenic alopecia, also known as male or female pattern baldness, is the most common.

Several factors can affect your hair throughout the entire cycle, including hormonal balance, stress, nutritional deficiencies, illnesses, and medications such as oral retinoids, anticonvulsants, anticoagulants, beta-blockers, and thyroid drugs.

Resolutions to improve hair growth

You may be tempted to try a bunch of hair care products, but to keep your hair healthy, these basic steps can be more helpful than you might think:

Resolve to make nutritional changes

Your diet plays a significant role in hair growth, helping to regulate the hair cycle and promote scalp and body health. Adding more protein-rich foods, vitamins (A, B, C, D, and E), iron, zinc, and omega-3 fatty acids can go a long way to improve hair.

These are available as supplements, too, along with biotin and pumpkin seed oil, which can also help.

Resolve to schedule scalp massages

Research shows that massaging the scalp helps create biochemical signals that change skin cells’ gene expression, linked to inflammation, hair growth, and skin repair.

Resolve to use essential oils

While not every oil on the market is beneficial for hair growth and protection, oils like tea tree, rosemary, argan, coconut, and olive have properties that support a variety of functions.

Of course, if these helpful hints aren’t enough to keep your hair healthy and prevent hair loss, we offer treatments to regrow and keep a full head of hair.

For questions, concerns, or treatment options regarding hair restoration or other hair tips, make an appointment today with us at Meshkin Medical. We serve the Los Angeles area from our Glendale clinic, and Orange County, California, from our Newport Beach clinic.