Healthy Hair Tips For Mums Looking After Their Hair At Home

This one is for the ladies - Do you remember being pregnant? How lush and thick was your hair during pregnancy? Our pregnancy hormones allow us to hang onto our hair during pregnancy, resulting in thicker and healthy looking locks. Once we have expelled our little lodger from it's hiding place however, and our bodies start to return to normal, we start to shed hair in what seems like bucket-loads!

Did you know that the average adult human sheds around 100 hairs per day! That's a lot of hairs left on the pillow, in your comb or hair brush, on the carpet, and down the plughole forming an annoying hair-plug that I always seem to be removing every other day! But it constantly amazes me that no matter how many hairs we shed, we always seem to sport plenty on top of our head that needs our daily care.

With all this constant hair shedding going on, it makes sense to give our bodies the right ingredients for it to keep producing new hair. So lets take a look at what we should be eating to keep our locks looking healthy and lush.

The state of a person's hair reflects the overall condition of their body. So feed your body well for healthy hair. Some of the most important vitamins that a person needs to have healthy hair include B6, biotin, inositol and folic acid. The best way to ensure you get the right balance of vitamins is to take hair, nails and skin supplements. It is not just vitamins for good hair growth that are needed though as there are a number of minerals that are essential, including magnesium, sulphur, silica and zinc. All these can be found in a good quality formulation specifically designed for hair, nails and skin.

Vitamin A in the form of beta-carotene is important for hair, but is also needed for a number of other functions including normal growth of bones, skin, nails and the protective sheath surrounding nerve fibres.

Foods for good hair include protein. Protein is essential for healthy hair. This is because hair itself is essentially made from a protein called keratin. So a diet that is rich in protein foods such as fish, chicken, lean meat, lentils, bean and nuts will give your body enough protein to grow hair. But a diet lacking in protein will result in weak, thinning hair, and in some cases baldness.

Suffering from stress or a lack of sleep can also have an effect on the health of your hair. And as we know, reducing stress and improving the quality of your sleep will not only benefit your body and mind, but will also benefit your hair health too.

So here's to healthy hair for mums and a head full of lush locks!

Sarah Poole emailed in with this tip for a Cleopatra style bath. Sarah said "Although Cleopatra was rumoured to bathe in asses milk to get silky soft skin, we can use powdered milk instead. When my elbows and knees start to feel a little rough, I pour about five tablespoons of powdered milk into a warm bath and relax with a good book for an hour. The results? Soft, smooth skin".

Here is a top tip for your hair from Lisa Wilks. She tells us that if you want to have shiny hair, after you have finished washing your hair, rinse with cold water.

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- Wishing you the best of Family Life.

Michelle
Joint Editor, Cotswold Family Life