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Prenatal vitamins for hair and nails: Helpful or harmful?

LA Health and Beauty Examiner Sarah Torribio

Question:

 “I’ve heard that prenatal vitamins are a great way to get stronger hair and nails. Is this true? Also, is it safe to take them if I’m not having a baby, and don’t plan to become pregnant?”

Answer:

The old wives’ tale is that your nails and hair will grow faster if you take prenatal vitamins.

Actually, there is no scientific evidence linking the consumption of prenatal vitamins with faster hair and nail growth.

Scientists don’t know everything, though. After all, despite the fact that we’ve almost reached the space age-sounding year of 2010, no one has found a cure for baldness or the common cold.

Anecdotal evidence abounds as to the vitamins’ efficacy. Nearly everyone you ask seems to have a story about it. I’m no exception.

A friend of mine watched her hair grow several inches during her pregnancy. And while I didn’t have a follicular growth spurt, when I was pregnant with my now 8-month-old son, my nails were tough as . . .well . . . nails. I think it was the vitamins.

All of this talk is nothing new. A few years back, however, web searches regarding the prenatal vitamin/hair-and-nails link spiked after a 2006 Harper’s Bazaar interview with actress Gwyneth Paltrow, in which she was asked what beauty tips she plans to pass onto her daughter Apple.

Along with touting H2O, sunscreen and fresh organic food, she shared the secret to her lovely flaxen locks, which at the time flowed past her bra strap. She credited prenatal vitamins.

“It doesn’t matter if you are pregnant, I swear to God,” Paltrow told Harper’s. “I have double-processed blond hair, and it’s so long and not damaged. Those vitamins, they are the trick!”

If Gwyneth and the word on the street are right, what’s the secret to this mane magic?

It may not be any particular component of prenatal vitamins, but instead a happy side-effect of consistently using any comprehensive multivitamin.

Perhaps prenatal vitamins seem better at nurturing hair and nail growth than regular multivitamins because expectant mothers —and those hoping to rid themselves of tress distress and the broken-nail blues—are so conscientious about popping the daily supplements.

For instance, I am very spotty about taking vitamins in general. I tend to get on a healthy kick, do well at taking a daily multivitamin for a couple of weeks, and then forget about it. While I was pregnant, however, I never missed a dose. After all, I had the ultimate incentive: a healthy baby.

My prenatal vitamin-consuming regularity could be the secret to my Herculean nails.

In order to treat hair loss effectively we would recommend that you have a diagnosis made as soon as possible by one of our experienced Westminster Trichologists. Stress can be an aggravator in almost all cases of hair loss and an accurate diagnosis will always, at the very least, take some of the stress away from you.

Gary Heron says: “You’ll have access to the most effective treatments available through The Hair Centre and at a fraction of the cost of going to other Private Commercial Clinics and Centres.”

When it’s time to see the Trichologist: If you begin losing hair rapidly, and or are cosmetically concerned about baldness, consult your Trichologist about treatment options. You can receive a free hair loss consultation with a Westminster Trichologist at our Hair Centre.

The point is that you are not getting to the real problem and you should seek specific professional advice from a Westminster Trichologist.

“Why buy hair loss treatments over the counter or on the internet when you can see a Westminster Trichologist for FREE and know that you are guaranteed results”

Do you have Hair Loss Problems, read our Hair Loss Help

Allergan Exploring Hair Growth Use for Drug.

Irvine-based Allergan Inc. may have stumbled upon a biggie in its ongoing quest to find cosmetic uses for its drugs: growing hair.

Allergan’s starting early work on research involving its bimatoprost drug to see if it can grow hair on the scalp, said Scott Whitcup, the drug maker’s executive vice president of research and development, on a conference call earlier this month.

Bimatoprost is the active ingredient in Allergan’s Lumigan, a drug for treating glaucoma, and Latisse, its new drug for growing eyelashes.

Drug makers often discover alternative drug uses that occur as side effects during clinical trials, as was the case with Latisse for eyelash growth.

Now Allergan is wondering whether the drug could be used to treat hair loss.

“Unlike Lumigan for glaucoma, we don’t have the eight years-plus of clinical trials data so we’re sort of starting from scratch,” Whitcup said.

Whitcup cautioned analysts it was “a little too early” to give a timeline on possibly marketing bimatoprost for hair growth.

Allergan is working “as quickly as we can” to get a formulation together, get pre-clinical work done and then go into clinic trials to gather information for a Food and Drug Administration supplemental new drug application, he said.

If bimatoprost is developed and approved for hair loss, it could be another blockbuster for Allergan. Industry sources estimate the market is around $1 billion a year for approved drugs for hair loss and hair transplants.

In order to treat hair loss effectively we would recommend that you have a diagnosis made as soon as possible by one of our experienced Westminster Trichologists. Stress can be an aggravator in almost all cases of hair loss and an accurate diagnosis will always, at the very least, take some of the stress away from you.

Gary Heron says: “You’ll have access to the most effective treatments available through The Hair Centre and at a fraction of the cost of going to other Private Commercial Clinics and Centres.”

When it’s time to see the Trichologist: If you begin losing hair rapidly, and or are cosmetically concerned about baldness, consult your Trichologist about treatment options. You can receive a free hair loss consultation with a Westminster Trichologist at our Hair Centre.

The point is that you are not getting to the real problem and you should seek specific professional advice from a Westminster Trichologist.

“Why buy hair loss treatments over the counter or on the internet when you can see a Westminster Trichologist for FREE and know that you are guaranteed results”

Do you have Hair Loss Problems, read our Hair Loss Help

More Hair Loss Genetic Research

It’s all in the genes! New research coming from Japan has positively identified a particular gene which is responsible for cyclical hair loss in lab mice and which could also be linked to genetic baldness patterns in men and women.

The researchers showed that the mice who were specifically bred to lack a gene called the Sox21 gene started to lose their hair very early on in their lives. By the time they were 20 to 25 days old these particular mice had lost all of their body hair, however a few days later their hair started to reappear again followed by new hair loss. The scientists said that the cyclical nature of their hair loss continued throughout their lives.

Professor Yumiko Saga from the Division of Mammalian Development at the National Institute of Genetics based in Mishima said that the Sox21 gene was definitely linked to some hair loss problems that humans experienced and that more research in this area needed to be done.

In order to treat hair loss effectively we would recommend that you have a diagnosis made as soon as possible by one of our experienced Westminster Trichologists. Stress can be an aggravator in almost all cases of hair loss and an accurate diagnosis will always, at the very least, take some of the stress away from you.

Gary Heron says: “You’ll have access to the most effective treatments available through The Hair Centre and at a fraction of the cost of going to other Private Commercial Clinics and Centres.”

When it’s time to see the Trichologist: If you begin losing hair rapidly, and or are cosmetically concerned about baldness, consult your Trichologist about treatment options. You can receive a free hair loss consultation with a Westminster Trichologist at our Hair Centre.

The point is that you are not getting to the real problem and you should seek specific professional advice from a Westminster Trichologist.

“Why buy hair loss treatments over the counter or on the internet when you can see a Westminster Trichologist for FREE and know that you are guaranteed results”

Do you have Hair Loss Problems, read our Hair Loss Help

Scientists identify gene that may explain hair loss

Researchers in Japan have identified a gene that appears to determine cyclical hair loss in mice

and believe it may also be responsible for hair loss, or alopecia, in people.

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Researchers in Japan have identified a gene that appears to determine cyclical hair loss in mice and believe it may also be responsible for hair loss, or alopecia, in people.

In a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists described how they generated a line of mice that were lacking in the Sox21 gene.

“The mice started to lose their fur from postnatal day 11, beginning at the head and progressing toward the tail region of the back,” they wrote.

“Between day 20 and day 25, these mice eventually lost all of their body hair, including the whiskers. Intriguingly, new hair regrowth was initiated a few days later but was followed by renewed hair loss.”

The cyclical alopecia continued for more than two years and the researchers observed that the mutant mice had enlarged oil-secreting sebaceous glands around the hair follicle and a thickened layer of skin cells during periods of hair loss.

“The gene is likely involved with the differentiation of stem cells that form the outer layer of the hair shaft,” wrote the researchers, led by Yumiko Saga of the Division of Mammalian Development at the National Institute of Genetics in Mishima.

The scientists went on to examine human skin samples, where they found evidence of this same gene.

“We confirmed that Sox21 is also expressed in the hair shaft cuticle in humans … These results indicate that the Sox21 gene could be responsible for some hair loss conditions in humans,” the authors concluded.

In order to treat hair loss effectively we would recommend that you have a diagnosis made as soon as possible by one of our experienced Westminster Trichologists. Stress can be an aggravator in almost all cases of hair loss and an accurate diagnosis will always, at the very least, take some of the stress away from you.

Gary Heron says: “You’ll have access to the most effective treatments available through The Hair Centre and at a fraction of the cost of going to other Private Commercial Clinics and Centres.”

When it’s time to see the Trichologist: If you begin losing hair rapidly, and or are cosmetically concerned about baldness, consult your Trichologist about treatment options. You can receive a free hair loss consultation with a Westminster Trichologist at our Hair Centre.

The point is that you are not getting to the real problem and you should seek specific professional advice from a Westminster Trichologist.

“Why buy hair loss treatments over the counter or on the internet when you can see a Westminster Trichologist for FREE and know that you are guaranteed results”

Do you have Hair Loss Problems, read our Hair Loss Help