As we ring in the new year, I’ve no doubt many of you are thinking of bringing with it a fresh take at a ‘crash diet’. However, such dramatic actions can lead to severe health impacts in the 3-6 months after. As your hair is a non-vital organ, your body doesn’t prioritise it’s needs, which you might not think is a problem right now, but starving your hair for the first few weeks of the year can lead to serious complications throughout 2021.
As your hair cells aren’t considered a vital organ by your body, crash diets which don’t contain essential nutrients or enough calories, often lead to a form of hair loss known as telogen effluvium. This is because the limited nutrients you are receiving will be moved to priority organs like your heart and kidneys. Along with this, crash diets often entail completely removing food groups or having very limited amounts of calories per day, causing the body to be sent into shock/stress mode. The nutritional imbalance this causes can take 3 months to show and usually shows up in your hair and skin fist.
Although crash diets can seem like a good way to kickstart the new year, for a more healthy approach, we’d recommend cutting out sugary, processed foods in favor of more organic, natural choices, and upping your fruit and vegetable intake. This will result in sustainable, healthy weight loss, whilst not causing any unneeded stress to your body.
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