Ask The Pharmacy: Dry Scalps & Brittle Hair (Part 3 Of Hair Care & Hair Supplements Series)

When thinking about hair care, we also need to consider the impact of your scalp to overall head health. Dry and brittle hair can often be paired with dry scalps and have similar causes, though not exclusively. Finding out what you can do to combat these issues with ensure a happy head (of hair).

In this video, we Ask The Pharmacy about what vitamins and minerals that can improve dry scalps and brittle hair, including which supplements can help support hair health. We’ve included a transcript below with recommended supplements.

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Introduction

A common theme running through our pharmacy is people’s concerns to do with their hair, and that comes in a variety of forms. People are worried about hair loss, scalp issues, weaker hair, thicker hair, just healthier looking hair in general. And it all comes down to the same thing really, which is, when you hair looks great, you feel great and you’re more confident and happier.

So, just like our skin, there are a number of markers where we can look at that indicate how healthy we’re living and also whether our diet is contributing to good hair health. The most important thing to remember when it comes to hair health is actually your body is always assigning priority. So when your giving it, you know, good things like vitamin B and iron, your body is allocating that based on priority, and, as far as your body is concerned, your hair is always the bottom of the priority list. So if your diet is not really good quality, then your hair is really likely to suffer. 

And that’s why so many people do decide to take supplements. In this video series, we’re going to talk about four common issues: preventing hair loss, promoting hair growth, because the two are obviously quite different, boosts for dry, weak or brittle hair and also solutions for dry and flaky scalps.

What Supplements Are Recommended For Dry & Brittle Hair? – 01:32

This is the third video in our series on hair care. Today, we’re going to be talking about dry scalps and brittle hair and what supplements can help with these conditions.

Vitamin A – 01:41

Vitamin A is often very very popular when it comes to dry, brittle hair. Vitamin A plays a really important role in the body when it comes to cell growth. So what that means is, it help to keep your hair healthy and it will help your hair to regenerate. 

Another thing that vitamin A does is it helps your skin glands to, essentially, make serum, more or less, which moisturises the scalp and keeps the hair healthy. A really good quality vitamin A that we like is the Solgar Dry Vitamin A.

The reason we like that is partly because its vegetarian, it’s not made with an oil at all, and we also like it because it’s a really good quality strength, it’s 5000IU. So it’s kind of like the perfect level to build up your vitamin A levels without, kind of, putting you at risk at all of over supplementing.

The one thing that I would add is that vitamin A, as we’ve already mentioned, does affect the skin and in the most important part of this, it makes the skin very sensitive. So when you are supplementing with vitamin A, it is important to avoid sun exposure as much as possible. And if you can’t avoid the sun then it is important to use an extremely strong sunblock to try and protect your skin from any kind of exposure. People often also mention that, again, if you are pregnant, for example, it’s probably worth avoiding vitamin A supplementing unless you’ve spoken to your doctor in advance.

Zinc – 03:27

And again, the other thing that we’ll mention is zinc. Once again, zinc plays that really important role in keeping the body healthy and building your immune system. A good immune system keeps your body healthy which as a result keeps your hair healthy too. A good supplement that we recommend on zinc would be the Lamberts Zinc 25mg.

Again, it’s really well made, it’s top of the range but also quite reasonably priced, which is quite important in this day and age.

What Supplements Will Help With A Dry Scalp? – 03:57

Dry scalp happens for a huge variety of reasons, in many cases it can be as simple as the type of water in your area. In so many parts of England particularly, people are getting hard water which means they are washing their hair, not just with water, but with all the, kind of, you know, deposits and minerals that are within that water that don’t get filtered out, and the result of that can be to completely flush your scalp of it’s natural moisture. 

The other thing that a lot of people find is that they use, in truth, the cheapest shampoo they can find in the supermarket but that shampoo, basically, is washing out all the natural moisture out of your hair. And on top of that a huge number of people, the vast majority of people, are actually shampooing their hair far too frequently. If you’re using shampoo more than twice a week, it’s a little bit too much and it’s going to be drying your hair out, and it’s going to be drying your scalp out.

And the last reason that dry scalp can take place will be from a vitamin deficiency. Again, really, it is most likely to be a lack of vitamin C in the body there. Vitamin C, like we’ve already mentioned, is this really great quality anti oxidant which promotes fuller hair, a healthier scalp and, generally you would expect to see that as a benefit of using vitamin C. If you were already taking vitamin C and you wanted to consider giving your body an extra kick, once again you could consider using vitamin E, which is very similar in the sense that it’s just that really strong antioxidant which should then help to boost healthier scalp and healthier hair in general.

Next Time On… Ask The Pharmacy – 05:55

That was part three in our series on hair care and hair supplements. Coming up next we’ll be discussing how long it takes for supplements to improve your hair. Check out our website or subscribe to our YouTube channel for more videos soon.

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About Mitesh

Mitesh works at Landys Chemist as a nutritionist. His focus is on ensuring people’s wellbeing and to offer solutions where people are finding an imbalance in their life.

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Disclaimer

The products offered are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any illness or disease, or to replace the advice of a medical professional. Results are not guaranteed and may vary from individual to individual.