Do Hair Vitamins Really Help Grow Hair Faster?

If you are running into problems with growing your hair surely at some point you may have considered taking hair vitamins. While the thought of simply popping a supplement in your mouth to boost your rate of hair growth sounds appealing, the results vary largely.

The problem with hair vitamins is, it doesn’t counteract the damage you are doing to your hair. Let’s say you are using tons of heat on your hair, experiencing breakage from manipulating your hair too much or if it’s breaking off from being too dry, vitamins will not solve the problem. You will still be breaking off your hair at a rate that is much faster than your hair is growing, so the vitamins prove pointless if you don’t learn how to care for your hair.

See: 10 Tips For Growing Longer Natural Hair

Erica Douglas aka Sister Scientist sheds light on hair vitamins and some common misconceptions, “First, it’s important that you realized that hair growth is not determined by just one factor. Hair growth is the combined result of a variety of attributes such as genetics, age, diet, hormones, environment and hair regimen.”

There’s also nothing that will speed up the rate you are genetically capable of growing per month.

“Vitamin supplements are not increasing the growth rate, but rather can help to prolong the anagen (growth) phase of a malnourished follicle, allowing the hair to stay in the growth phase longer.”

This is especially true of the hair vitamin, biotin. Those who reap the most from taking biotin are biotin deficient. You can read about that here.

Finally, it doesn’t make sense to get a vitamin that’s just for your hair, when you can get a women’s multivitamin. A daily multivitamin is good for your entire body and has the daily recommended dosage of biotin, Vitamin B-Complex, Vitamin A, Zinc and other vitamins that support hair growth.

“Hair vitamins are merely a method to increase the nutritional level that our bodies are not achieving with our diet alone. However, if your body is already operating at an optimal nutritional level, hair vitamins will most likely not have a huge affect on your hair because the follicle is most likely sufficiently nourished and stays in the anagen phase as long as your genetic disposition will allow it to. The lesson here is don’t compare your results to the girl to your left or right because your starting points will vary from hers— genetically and nutritionally—which ultimately means the results of vitamin use will also vary.”