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What Are Some Carnivore Diet Hair Loss Causes?

When you change your diet fundamentally, something like a change from the Standard American Diet to a zero or low carb approach you to have a large amount of change in your body and how it handles and holds nutrients. When these bodily changes occur if you aren't making sure to get enough foods, vitamins, […]
Josh Koop
January 15, 2020

When you change your diet fundamentally, something like a change from the Standard American Diet to a zero or low carb approach you to have a large amount of change in your body and how it handles and holds nutrients.

When these bodily changes occur if you aren't making sure to get enough foods, vitamins, and minerals you can experience side effects like temporary hair loss.

What Are Some Carnivore Diet Hair Loss Causes? In the case of zero and low carb diets, almost all issues that are around hair loss are due to a lack of the necessary proteins in the diet, since you aren't taking in enough protein your body stops using it to repair hair follicles and instead jettisons them off.

Concerned? Well, you shouldn't be, with some proper preparation and organization when you plan your meals you can avoid all the side effects like hair loss.

Let's take a look at what can cause hair loss and once it starts how you can stop it in its tracks.

Woman holding a brush with lots of hair in it - What Are Some Carnivore Diet Hair Loss Causes

What Causes Hair Loss From Diets?

There are a few common causes of hair loss when you are dieting, there is also a lot of rumor and misunderstandings around the loss of hair. These real causes are typically just due to a change in what the body stores as most zero or low carb diets will cause a flush of body water.

The flushing of the stored water drops out vitamins and minerals which your body typically held for use when required.

Otherwise, people tend to hear the can have bacon and fats, instead of consuming the higher level of proteins they drop down to levels lower than on the original diet which can cause undue stress on the body.

Losing hair with rapid weight loss

Missing Nutrients

There are many nutrients that have been implicated when not consumed in enough quantity by science as a cause for hair loss. The role of vitamins and minerals in hair loss has been researched before to help gain a greater understanding of the roles they play in overall hair health.

Micronutrients are major elements in the normal hair follicle cycle, playing a role in cellular turnover, a frequent occurrence in the matrix cells in the follicle bulb that are rapidly dividing. 

Role of Vitamins and Minerals in Hair Loss: A Review

Vitamin D - Vitamin D is known to stimulate hair follicles, so having a deficiency may lead to hair loss. There is some evidence that having a vitamin D deficiency does cause hair loss and other problems.

Biotin - From everything I have read Biotin is NOT something you should supplement as it can cause issues. But a Biotin deficiency has been shown as a cause of hair loss. Additionally, there is no evidence-based data that adding supplemental biotin will help to promote hair growth

Zinc - It has been shown that extreme zinc deficiency can cause hair loss. Zinc levels in the blood and hair are lower in men experiencing male pattern baldness

Iron - When you don't have enough iron, your body can't produce the hemoglobin in your blood. Hemoglobin carries oxygen for the growth and repair of cells in your body, including the cells that stimulate hair growth.

Niacin - Vitamin B3 has a complex effect, helps to saturate the hair follicles with oxygen and strengthen the hair, which stops the process of hair loss.

Vitamin C - Rich in antioxidants, vitamin c fights off free radicals that cause brittle hair and hair follicle damage.

Lack of Protein

The largest cause of hair loss issues occurs with a lack of protein intake, this lack of protein causes your body to choose what is vital over what isn't. Since hair is less vital than the internal structure of your body it stops production and management of the follicles.

This stop in the production of the follicles is what causes that loss of hair that many experiences, many times people describe it similarly to shedding. This is a sign from your body that it is starting to fear famine from a lack of protein and is saving the protein for your vital organs and functional repairs.

Infographic - What Are Some Carnivore Diet Hair Loss Causes

Rapid Weight Loss

One of the more common issues is the stress on your body caused by a rapid amount of weight loss. A period of extreme stress like when you lose weight fast and rapid can cause a reflexive action afterwards where the body attempts to recover.

If the body feels that it may be short on the necessary resources to maintain overall health one of the first systems it will stop and shutter is the hair systems, many times after a period of normalcy this will recover on its own.

Rumors or Assumptions On Hair Loss

What happens more often when hair loss starts, especially on Facebook groups, is victim-blaming and telling you to take more collagen supplements. The reasoning being that hair is made of collagen, and hence having more collagen would resolve the issue.

While I understand the rationale behind the collagen belief it isn't factual and causes more people to get stressed and quit the diet thinking they are having devastating health impact.

How to Stop Loss of Hair

The best approach is to look at lessening the overall stress, one way is to add calories back in to slow the weight loss to a more balanced level.

This should lessen the stress and many times within 2 weeks your body will recover from the stress and your hair will start to come back in, many times thicker and stronger than it was prior.

Final Thoughts

Loss of hair can be very frightening to you as most people have built a persona around their overall appearance. Loss causes stress and the stress causes the problems to worsen and to make irrational changes to try and rectify the problem.

I guess the best way is not to approach it from a panic, you want to take some time and think about everything that you have changed. If you have dropped a lot of weight fast then you may just be in recovery and have to wait it out while eating adequate protein.

If you read this far you are amazing! I would love to hear from you in the comments below if I helped you gain knowledge and useful information, additionally I would like to know if I got anything incorrect that you believe should be researched more and updated. As always to get the word out please join our new Carnivore Rx group on Facebook and share this out on social media!

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