grow your hair with iron

What should you do the next time you hear about a “miracle” product that promises it can speed up hair growth, stop hair loss, make thin hair into thick hair, and turn grey hair back to black?

a) Dismiss it as yet another piece of too-good-to be true hair industry hype

b) call your doctor?

​If you’ve noticed your hair falling out, brittle strands that won’t grow or premature greys, then you should probably go for ‘b’. A quick blood test will reveal if you’re suffering from an overlooked, yet all-too-common deficiency that’s often behind these hair problems. If you are, then you might be in luck: that miracle beauty product does actually exist. It’s called iron.

Grow your Hair With Iron:

How iron boosts hair growth

Iron, selenium, vitamin D and folate are all essential for strong healthy hair growth. Image by Bayley Gramling.

​As rewarding as the product junkie lifestyle can be, good haircare really does start from within.

The nutrients in your diet make up the structure of your strands – which makes iron like hair magic. Along with other micronutrients like folate, vitamin B12, vitamin D, and selenium, iron plays a major role in the rapidly dividing matrix cells that lie in the root of your hair.

When your follicles are deficient in these essentials, all sorts of things start going awry: hair turns grey way before its time, strands start falling out, and your hair grows in slower, thinner and more fragile.

When your follicles are deficient in these essentials, all sorts of things start going awry: hair turns grey way before its time, strands start falling out, and your hair grows in slower, thinner and more fragile.

There are tons of studies linking iron deficiency to hair loss, and several which show a relationship between low iron and premature grey hair. Not only can iron deficiency give you low energy, decreased resistance to infection, and poor intellectual performance, it’s bad news for your follicles, too.

Luckily, a lot of this is reversible. Boosting your supply of iron and other key micronutrients won’t only improve your overall health, it can also fight back against premature greys, weak, breaking hair,  hair loss and slow growth.​

Getting sufficient iron has been found to reverse premature grey hair. Image by Natasha Brazil.

Grow your Hair With Iron:

So how much iron do you need?

If you’re a girl or woman aged 11–50 years, you need 14.8g of iron in your diet every single day.  To put that into perspective, that’s almost double what the average man needs. Women with anaemia or other conditions may need even more.

Once menstruation starts, women’s iron needs go way, way up, and most don’t get nearly enough to compensate for blood loss during periods, making iron deficiency the most common nutrient deficiency worldwide.
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Hair usually takes the first hit for low iron as your blood shifts precious stores away from hair follicles, directing them to vital organs instead. Boosting iron levels so there’s enough to go around can be key to protecting your hair from premature greying or hair loss.

Grow your Hair With Iron:

Will upping your iron intake reverse hair loss every time?

There’s debate on how much iron intake can actually impact hair loss – one study found insufficient evidence to recommend supplementation to hair loss patients. There are also several other health issues which can cause hair loss, from thyroid dysfunction to emotional stress, to environmental pollution.

That said, the amount of evidence indicating a connection between iron and the most common hair growth problems is reason enough to look into this if you haven’t been able to curb your hair loss, thinning or growth with simple beauty hacks.

Grow your Hair With Iron:

Should I take iron supplements to grow my hair?

Only take iron supplements for hair growth when prescribed by a physician. Image by Nick Owuor.

Not unless your doctor advises you to. Iron supplementation has a number of known side-effects, including severe cramping and stomach upset, so doctors tend to only prescribe them in serious cases of anaemia.

​Some clinicians do recommend maintaining a serum ferritin (one measure of blood iron) level of 70 ng/dL as part of treatment for hair loss, which may be achieved through supplementation. However, those study authors do point out that this is not evidence based per se. And if you’re dealing with hair loss but your iron levels are adequate, taking more iron may not help.

​As for popular off-the-shelf hair growth vitamins, iron may not be included in all formulas – meaning you’re better off getting as much of your hair-related nutrition from your diet as possible. It’s best to get your daily dose from what you eat; iron from animal sources tends to be more bioavailable and plant sources that contain iron tend to contain vitamins and other minerals that work in synergy with iron.

Since several food sources contain iron, you have literally dozens of options to make up your 14.8 micrograms per day.

Can iron make hair curlier?

As if there were no end to iron’s hair-transforming powers, now it looks like it might be able to curl hair, too. The science is thin on the ground, but stories of iron making people’s hair curlier abound.
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Take Lea. At 29, her iron levels had been low for years due to undiagnosed coeliac disease, which can cause serious iron absorption problems. “I always just thought I had naturally straight hair.” she says. “Once I got diagnosed, my doctor put me on iron. All these curls and waves came out of nowhere and my hair is like three times thicker.”
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Thinner, more fragile hair can sometimes be attributed to low iron levels, which is one reason why curls might appear once hair gets stronger and healthier. As many curlies will attest, weakened hair and curl loss often go hand in hand. It’s something stylist Amanda, in London, sees regularly. “When I notice a certain type of brittleness, I can tell that this is someone who’s not getting enough iron in their diet.” She says clients’ thin, breaking hair has often improved by including more iron in their diet.

If you’re on a natural hair journey and wondering how to grow your hair consistently – especially if you’re battling breakage you can’t explain or unexpectedly slow growth – doublecheck whether you’re getting enough iron. This overlooked nutrient could be crucial to reaching your hair goals.

A solid regime will solve many hair issues, but if hair isn’t growing out of our scalps right, what we can achieve by a good routine is limited.

​After all, even the best hair treatments for growing out your hair work by keeping your strands intact –  getting enough iron from the start will make their job that much easier.

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To separate hair growth science from fiction, check out Growth Drops here.