Losing hair can be quite bothersome and sometimes even embarrassing for a lot of individuals. The connection between fitness and hair loss is still one of the most searched-and misunderstood-topics. While there are reasons behind hair loss, including genetics, hormonal changes and specific health conditions we often forget to consider the influence of exercise on the health of our hair. The idea that exercise itself leads to hair loss doesn’t hold much weight. Actually, keeping active is good for your overall health and your hair’s health, too. This article explores the relationship between weight training and hair loss, examining the existing research and separating fact from fiction.
The Role of Exercise in Hair Health
Regular physical activity plays a role in maintaining well being including the health of your hair. Regular, moderate-to-high intensity exercise enhances blood circulation to your scalp, providing hair follicles with more oxygen and the nutrients they need. By engaging in exercise you can enhance blood circulation ensuring that vital nutrients and oxygen reach the hair follicles. Moreover incorporating exercise into your routine has been proven to lower stress levels, a factor in preserving hair. Prolonged stress can trigger telogen effluvium, a condition associated with excessive hair shedding. Exercise is great for easing stress. Whether it’s cardio, strength training, or HIIT, exercise benefits for hair regrowth.
Cardio Exercise
When it comes to promoting hair growth, not all exercises are created equal. Cardio exercises, like running, biking or swimming can help improve blood circulation in your body including to your scalp. These workouts elevate your heart rate. Promote blood flow supplying more oxygen and essential nutrients to the roots of your hair.
Strength Training
Strength training exercises, such as lifting weights or using resistance bands can have effects on the overall health of your hair. These exercises aid in muscle development. Enhancing strength indirectly contributes to promoting healthy hair growth.
High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) involves engaging in bursts of physical activity followed by periods of rest or less strenuous exercise. These workouts are beneficial for increasing blood circulation and triggering the production of growth hormones, which can contribute to promoting hair growth. HIIT sessions can be completed in 10-15 minutes.
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Exercise Benefits for Hair Growth
Exercise supports hair growth in many ways.
- Enhanced blood circulation: Regular physical activity boosts blood flow, throughout the body, including the scalp.
- Stress reduction: Studies have indicated that exercise helps reduce stress levels, which can prevent hair loss linked to telogen effluvium.
- Activation of hair follicles: Some research suggests that specific exercises like scalp massages or gentle hair brushing can directly activate the hair follicles and encourage hair growth.
- Enhanced being: Exercise offers numerous benefits for general health such, as improved cardiovascular health, stronger bones and muscles and better weight control.
Weight Lifting, Testosterone, and DHT
The level of testosterone in the body does increase temporarily after endurance and resistance exercise (such as weight lifting). Research states that a 45 minute weights session can elevate testosterone levels by an average 25 percent. During exercise, the body produces more testosterone. Anabolic steroids are made from testosterone and are approved for some medical uses, but not for performance enhancement.
It’s a myth that testosterone causes hair loss. The responsible hormone is actually dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which is formed from testosterone by the 5-alpha reductase enzyme. When DHT attaches to receptors on hair follicle cells, the hair follicles start to shrink via a process called follicular miniaturization.
How quickly and how much testosterone is converted into DHT is influenced by genetics.
Cardio exercise has been shown to lower levels of DHT, whereas anaerobic workouts such as HIT training and weight lifting, despite being good for your health do in fact raise DHT levels in the blood. Raised DHT levels in the blood can exacerbate hair loss. In such athletes DHT levels are likely to be higher than average so it is important for these athletes that we manage their DHT levels through other treatments such as Finasteride which is a DHT blocking medication, PRP treatments, laser treatment amongst others. Theoretically then, it is plausible that weight lifting and the consumption of supplements such as protein and creatine could lead to hair loss. However, two and two rarely makes four in the human body. Basically, weight lifting and using supplements to enhance the results of your sessions are likely to have little to no effect on your hair loss.
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Supplements and Hair Loss
Athletes turn to nutritional supplements to boost performance and recovery. But you may be wondering whether key ingredients in these supplements cause hair loss. The answer is probably not.
Pre-workout formulations can vary, but often contain a combination of these ingredients: caffeine, creatine, BCAAs (branched amino acids) and a nitric oxide precursor. They serve different purposes, from providing energy and increasing metabolism to building muscle and aiding blood flow.
One study has linked creatine use to elevated DHT levels (van der Merwe et al., 2009). But you should be aware that the findings did not directly link creatine and hair loss. Additionally, the study involved giving participants loading doses of the supplement, which exposed them to much higher concentrations of creatine than what is normally ingested.
Remember, that just because DHT levels increase, it does not mean that hair growth is affected. As discussed above, your genetics affect how the body responds to hormones and changes in hormone levels. Also, there is some evidence to suggest that common pre-workout ingredients like caffeine might actually be beneficial to hair growth (Völker et al., 2020).
If you’re following a balanced diet that meets the demands of your training and the recommended dosing of the supplement(s) of your choice, you probably don’t need to worry about any negative effects on hair.
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Creatine is popular among athletes for its muscle-building benefits. Creatine is a widely used ergogenic aid that enhances muscle strength and lean mass. However, concerns have been raised about the potential role in promoting hair loss by increasing dihydrotestosterone (DHT). Currently, there is no direct evidence examining the relationship between creatine supplementation and hair follicle health.
Key Considerations for Hair Health During Exercise
For optimal hair growth benefits from exercise keep these suggestions in mind:
- Stay well hydrated: Drink water during and after your workout sessions to maintain healthy hair.
- Maintain a nutrient-rich diet: Eat a diet that is packed with nutrients like protein, iron, zinc and vitamins A, B, C and E to support robust hair growth.
- Use hair oils: Utilize oils like coconut oil. Argan oil on your scalp before or after exercising to provide nourishment to the hair follicles and encourage healthy hair growth.
- Avoid heat styling: Steer clear of heat styling tools like blow dryers or curling irons that can damage the hair and contribute to loss of hair strands. Limit the use of these tools whenever possible.
- Get enough rest: Getting sleep is crucial for your well being and can help promote the growth of hair.
- Manage stress: Handle stress While staying active through exercise can be beneficial in reducing stress it’s also important to explore methods for managing stress.
- Sweat and Scalp Care: Intense workouts mean more sweat, which can build up on the scalp and irritate hair roots. A simple fix is to thoroughly wash your hair after intense sweat sessions, allowing natural oils secreted during the workout to do their work for a short while.
- Your Workout Hairstyles: Tight hairstyles can strain your hair follicles over time, possibly leading to traction alopecia, a type of hair loss affecting your hairline.
- Supplements and Steroids: Seeking that extra edge with supplements or even steroids can backfire when it comes to hair health. These substances aim to build muscle by mimicking male hormones, which can also increase their masculinising effects.
The Study on Exercise and Androgenetic Alopecia (AGA)
Androgenetic alopecia (AGA) is the most common type of hair loss. Both genetic and non-genetic factors are known to play a role in development of AGA. Many studies have focused on the non-genetic factors of AGA, but few have investigated the association between AGA and exercise.
One survey-based study shed light on the association among AGA and exercise. The subjects visited occupational medical clinic of Wonju Severance Christian Hospital for regular medical check up from October 2012 to March 2015. To minimize the possible influence over AGA other than exercise, the subjects who had any underlying disease were excluded, resulting in 1,182 healthy individuals.
Subjects were asked to answer questionnaire about current state of exercise; frequency and intensity of exercise. The intensity of exercise was graded as follows: A) High intensity was defined as more than 20 minutes per day of strenuous physical activity that induces severe shortness of breath; B) Moderate intensity was slightly more strenuous physical activity that induces mild shortness of breath more than 30 minutes per day; C) Low intensity was normal physical activity, such as walking, for at least 30 minutes per day. The frequency of each intensity exercise was defined as the number of exercises carried out per week. Total amount of exercise was defined as sum of frequencies of each intensity.
The status of AGA was evaluated through physical examinations by dermatology specialists, and the AGA patients were categorized into several subgroups in accordance with the basic and specific (BASP) classification system. Differences between normal patients and AGA patients were analyzed using the t-test. The number of male and female subjects was 600 and 582 respectively (total of 1,182; mean age, 51.38±12.83 years; range, 18~94 years). The number of AGA patients was 534 (45.2%) in total, and 350 (58.3%), 184 (31.6%) within the male and female subgroups respectively.
The total amount of exercise was larger in AGA group than that of normal group (p=0.008). When comparing within each exercise intensity group, no significant difference of the amount of exercise between AGA and normal groups was observed in moderate-to-high intensity group. However, within the low-intensity group, the total amount of exercise was larger in AGA group than normal group, with statistical significance (p<0.001).
Within no AGA family history group, no difference of total amount of exercise was observed between AGA and normal group. However, in low-intensity group, the frequency of exercise was higher in AGA group than in normal group (p=0.018). On the other hand, total amount of exercise was larger in the positive AGA family history group (p<0.001). According to the intensity of exercise, higher frequency of exercise was observed within moderate and low-intensity groups (p=0.014, p<0.001, respectively). Whereas no significant difference was observed within high-intensity group.
A tendency of increasing proportion of alopecia patients was observed in the low-intensity exercise group as exercise frequency increased. No difference was observed alopecia types (accrording to the BASP classification system3) and exercise.
According to the results of this study, alopecia patients exercise more than the normal population, especially low-intensity exercise. Similar tendency was observed irrespective of the family history of AGA. Also the proportion of AGA patients showed an increasing trend as the frequency of exercise of low intensity increased.
During the exercise, the testosterone level could be increased transiently. However, as the subjects in this study were required to answer their lifelong exercise habit, long-ranged changes in hormone level would be more importance over the transient ones. According to a study, no differences in serum cortisol, total testosterone and free testosterone level were observed between lifelong exercise and no exercise group.
Accordingly, it was hypothesized that factors other than changes of hormone level would take an important part in the occurrence of alopecia. If it could be assumed that exercise could induce alopecia, it was conjectured that oxidative stress which is generated during exercise plays an important role in the process. Oxidative stress increases the entry of dihydrotestosterone into the dermal papillary cells, and reactive oxygen species (ROS), associated with oxidative stress, increase 5α-reductase concentration and activity.
However, as the amount of ROS generated during exercise is larger in more intense exercise, this explanation for the association between exercise and AGA is limited. However, according to a study of Parker et al.9, regular moderate-to-high intensity exercise can induce a protective effect against oxidative stress, by elevating endogenous antioxidant defense mechanisms.
This is the first large-scale study to analyze the association between exercise and alopecia. According to this study, there is an apparent association between exercise and alopecia. However, as of the result of an observational study, it cannot be confirmed that alopecia or exercise preceded the other. Therefore, the results of our study do not demonstrate causality between exercise and alopecia. The ROS hypothesis was suggested as one of possible explanations between low-intensity exercise and the occurrence alopecia.
Oxidative Stress and Hair Loss
During exercise, the body produces more testosterone and the stress hormone cortisol. Reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are metabolic byproducts, also increase in concentration. To meet the body’s increased energy demands during physical activity, the body produces more cortisol. Cortisol helps break down proteins, sugars and fats and also regulates metabolism. Similarly, more testosterone is secreted to help break down carbohydrates and build muscle (Sato et al., 2015). ROS are produced as these energy sources are used up.
Specifically, cortisol levels increase in proportion to the type and intensity of exercise (Corazza et al., 2013). There are factors like age that can affect what peak concentrations of these molecules are.
Long-term elevations of cortisol and ROS can cause the breakdown of proteins and other building blocks of hair and skin (Thom, 2016 and Trüeb, 2015). They can also disrupt the hair growth cycle itself. Rapidly growing cells are especially sensitive to these kinds of chemical changes, which can result in brittle and weak hairs that fall out prematurely.
Other Potential Causes of Exercise-Related Hair Loss
If you do experience shedding associated with exercise, you could be experiencing telogen effluvium, or short-term hair loss triggered by stress. Examples include a sudden increase in training intensity and/or duration, or changes to diet or the presence of nutritional deficiencies.
Keto is so restrictive that it can deprive your body of the vitamins, minerals, protein, and calories it needs to grow hair. In some cases, dietary changes or nutritional deficiencies can trigger temporary shedding.
The Importance of Professional Consultation
Exercise can promote hair growth, but it may not address medical conditions or severe hair loss. Remember, if you experience significant hair loss, reaching out to your GP or specialists such as our hair transplant clinic is key to identifying the root cause and finding the right treatment. The best hair treatment for hair loss is one that is personalised to you.