Just like brushing your teeth daily, it is important to comb your hair every day. Believe it or not, just this simple activity can do wonders for your hair — the only hair care routine that you must religiously follow on a daily basis.

Arthi Raguram, the founder of Deyga Organics, says people with dry hair or those susceptible to hair loss are reluctant to comb in order to avoid losing extra strands.

“But, combing hair is not just a self-care practice as it has obvious scientific benefits. Brushing hair twice a day — once in the morning and once in the evening before bed — is a norm. The frequency can vary from person-to-person, depending on hair length and texture. For instance, people with long hair should comb at least thrice a day to prevent knots and breakage,” she advises.

Raguram lists the following benefits of combing hair every day;

* Promotes blood circulation in the scalp
​
Combing acts upon the capillaries of the scalp, which helps in transporting oxygen and nutrients to the hair follicles effectively, thus, promoting blood circulation in the scalp, nourishing hair roots, promoting growth, and helping reduce hair loss.

* Stimulates and distributes natural oils

Sebaceous glands in the scalp produce sebum that naturally conditions and protects hair. Combing stimulates the sebaceous glands and ensures natural oils are properly distributed from sebum to the root of the hair, all the way along the shaft. Thus, combing maintains a healthy scalp and creates the right pH balance.

* Exfoliates scalp

Regular combing helps to clean old hair, dead skin cells, hair product residues, grime, and other deposits that sit at the root of your hair and scalp. Unclogging the scalp’s pores, combing allows scalp and hair to breathe and rejuvenate dull and dandruff-ridden hair.

* Adds volume to the hair

Combing hair from time to time helps to keep the shine, enhance volume, and maintain bounce since the hair looks healthy and fresh. Also, combing prevents the accumulation of loose hair that leads to tangles or knots. People with oily scalp can benefit from regular combing as the comb distributes the natural oils and makes hair look less greasy.

Brushing hair the right way

1. Select the right tools
Use a wooden comb (preferably made from rosewood) as it is anti-static, unlike plastic combs that make hair frizzy, brittle, and prone to damage. Besides, wooden combs don’t pull on your hair or scratch the scalp while detangling hair.

2. Never start brushing hair from roots
To ensure a damage-free experience, brush your hair in sections and start mid-hair. Going all the way from top to bottom will lead to breakage, so continue moving up your hair until you reach your scalp, and then brush the entire length.

3. Do not comb wet hair
Wet hair is highly susceptible to breakage. Always make sure to air-dry or blow-dry hair before using a comb.

The passing of time brings about many physical changes, and hair isn’t exempt from its effects. As we mature, tress texture, color, volume and shine tend to shift and fade—but those transformations needn’t be traumatic. Hair color, quantity and quality can be preserved by taking certain styling steps while following basic healthy-living tips. Our experts weigh in on the biology of hair aging.

Cause and Effect

“There are three main reasons for why hair aging occurs,” says Kenneth Vigue, Redavid director of marketing and education. The first and most common encompasses internal factors, including genes, diet and medication. Menopause is a contributor to women’s hair transformation starting in their forties, as the sex hormones that stimulate follicle-fiber growth tend to dwindle. Over time, fibers become thinner, often falling out and no longer regenerating. “Family history can’t be altered, and genetics also play a role when it comes to pigment,” says Cherry Petenbrink, CLICS creative director and Olivia Garden artistic director. “If one or both parents turned gray early in life, chances are you’ll follow that same pattern.” The second cause consists of environmental factors, including exposure to chemicals, pollution, salt and sun. “People with active lifestyles often find themselves in environments that promote hair aging, particularly come summer,” says Vigue. “That ranges from the photoaging effects and molecular breakdown caused by excessive UV damage to salt and chlorine buildup.” Finally, mechanical factors play their part in the tress-aging process. “Years of wear and tear caused by thermal tools like blowdryers and styling irons, in addition to the overuse of chemicals found in straightening treatments or perms, can lead to less youthful-looking hair,” says Petenbrink.

Signs of Aging Strands

Graying

Whether you were in your twenties or forties when you spotted your first gray strand, loss of saturation is an inevitable fact of life. Melanocyte cells that infuse hair with color eventually stop producing pigment. Stress on the sympathetic nervous system, poor nutrition and a deficit of essential vitamins and minerals can all hasten this process, but the bottom line is melanin doesn’t generate forever. Most studies agree on the rule of fifties: Half the population will have fifty percent gray hair by age fifty.

Thinning/Texture

“Hair gets thinner as you get older, and its texture can also change,” says Sonya Dove, Wella Professionals global artist. That’s because shorter follicle life cycles stop replacing old strands with new ones as people hit their forties and fifties. Thinning patterns vary, with men experiencing more male-pattern baldness around hairlines and crowns, and women tending to see uniform loss around the scalp. Fiber diameters also alter, growing larger for the first few decades before steadily decreasing in size, which can lead to loss of volume or even a change in existing curl patterns.

Dryness

Excessive oil production may be a marker of puberty, but when most of us hit middle age, both skin and hair begin to tend toward dryness. This is due to shifting hormones that slow down sebum production. Natural oils keep strands looking smooth, which means loss of moisture may result in the unwanted appearance of flyaways and frizz.

Combating Hair Aging

Luckily, there are solutions to the hair-aging problem. “I like to start my graying clients with a demipermanent hair color,” says Petenbrink. “That covers fifty percent or less and blends fifty percent and higher without changing hair’s structure.” Scalp health is an essential prerequisite to shiny, voluminous-looking tresses, so opt for products containing ingredients that increase blood flow while nixing impurities. “Cedarwood oil boasts those qualities naturally, and is phenomenal for cleansing scalps and hair so they can thrive and breathe,” says Vigue. “Certain oils, including orchid oil, can also smooth down cuticles to infuse luster and tame flyaways.” And while it may be easier said than done, making healthy lifestyle choices can help hair—and bodies—look and feel their best. “Attempt to keep stress to a minimum and eat a good diet rich in protein, iron, vitamins and minerals,” says Dove. Cheers to many years of youthful-looking strands.

What do hair masks do?

When your hair’s looking dull, feeling dry or not as smooth and shiny as you’d like it to be, a hair mask is the best remedy. This product is an intensive conditioner designed to nourish and moisturize hair and repair damage. Hair masks are available for a range of hair types and needs.

You can buy hair masks ready to use or make them yourself at home. Whichever option you choose, you’ll need to choose the right mask for your hair. 

Who needs hair masks?

People who have dry or damaged hair can benefit the most from hair masks. Hair masks are moisture-rich and can sink into the follicle to nourish hair damaged by heat or hair dye. Other people prefer to use these products preventively, to keep their hair in the smooth and shiny condition it’s already in. Unless your hair verges on the greasy side, you can use a hair mask.

Hair mask benefits

Hair masks have multiple positive effects on your hair. They include: 

• Hair masks leave your hair softer and shiner
• Using hair masks can moisturize dry hair
• Some hair masks can mask the appearance of split ends and reduce breakage
• Your hair may be stronger and your scalp healthier after using a hair mask
• By moisturizing hair, masks can reduce frizz and stray hairs

How to use a hair mask

Hair masks are straightforward to use but require more time than you’d usually spend washing your hair. Start by shampooing your hair as usual. This removes dirt and grease that might get in the way of the mask thoroughly soaking into the shaft of the hair. Shampooing also opens up the hair cuticles so the mask can penetrate better. 

Then, squeeze your hair after rinsing out the shampoo, but don’t dry it. Now apply the mask to your hair, making sure to comb it into the strands with your fingers, so you don’t miss any sections. If your hair is often limp or you want extra volume, avoid the roots, starting around midway down the length of the hair. 

Wait around 20-30 minutes for the hair mask to work its magic. If your hair is dried, you can leave your hair mask on overnight. You may want to use a hair tie to put your hair up and out of the way while you wait. After the designated amount of time, rinse out the mask and dry your hair as usual.

Moisturizing hair mask ingredients

If you want to make your hair mask, there are a few nourishing ingredients you should include. You can also look out for these ingredients in store-bought hair masks. 

Olive oil
Olive oil is an excellent natural moisturizer and is excellent for homemade masks as it’s readily available in practically any grocery store — in fact, you probably already have some in your kitchen. It contains squalene, which is also naturally produced by our bodies to moisturize our skin and hair, so it’s great for hair masks.

Avocado oil
While any oil can help moisturize hair, avocado oil is rich in nutrients like folic acid, iron and magnesium, which can help boost your hair health.

Coconut oil
Coconut oil is a favorite among people who make their hair masks and other beauty products since it’s solid or semi-solid at room temperature, making it less messy to work with. It’s also one of the best oils for penetrating the hair shaft due to its low molecular weight. 

Shea butter
Fat extracted from the shea nut tree; shea butter is another common ingredient in hair masks due to its excellent moisturizing properties. Like coconut oil, it’s solid at room temperature, so it’s easy to handle.

Aloe vera
Anti-inflammatory aloe vera is a quality hair mask ingredient for anyone with a dry or itchy scalp. It’s easy to find aloe vera gel to add to homemade hair masks.

Banana
​Bananas contain silica, which helps make hair softer and shinier. It’s rarely found in commercial hair masks, but it’s easy to mash or blend into a homemade hair mask. 

When i first suspected that I was losing my hair, I felt like maybe I was also losing my grip on reality. This was the summer of 2020, and although the previous three months had been difficult for virtually everyone, I had managed to escape relatively unscathed. I hadn’t gotten sick in New York City’s terrifying first wave of the pandemic. My loved ones were safe. I still had a job. I wasn’t okay, necessarily, but I was fine. Now my hair was falling out for no appreciable reason. Or at least I thought it was—how much hair in the shower drain is enough to be sure that you’re not imagining things?

The second time it happened, a little more than a year later, I was sure—not because of what was in the shower drain, but because of what was obviously no longer on my head. One day, after washing and drying my hair, I looked at my hairline in the mirror and it was thin enough that I could make out the curvature of my scalp beneath it. I still had enough hair, but notably less than I’d had before the pandemic. Feeling a sense of dull panic at the no-longer-refutable idea that something might be wrong, I tipped my head forward to take a picture of my scalp with my phone’s front-facing camera. When I looked at it, the panic became sharp.

I did what everyone does: I Googled my symptoms. At the very top of the search results, a colorful carousel of vitamins, serums, shampoos, and direct-to-consumer prescription services appeared; a so-small-you-could-miss-it disclosure in one corner signaled that these products weren’t real search results, but advertising. Well below them, the real results weren’t much better—WebMD, a bundle of Reddit threads, medical journals whose articles would cost me $50 a pop, factually thin blog posts, natural-health grifters touting hair-growth secrets that doctors didn’t want me to know, product reviews that weren’t labeled as ads but for which someone had almost certainly been paid. I pressed on to gather whatever reliable-looking information I could find, itself full of terms I didn’t fully understand--effluvium, minoxidil, androgenic.

What I didn’t know at the time was that I had just started a quest for answers that many, many others had also undertaken in the previous year. Only a few months into the pandemic, around the same time when I first thought I might be losing either my hair or my mind, people whose hair was indeed falling out by the handful started to come forward. They showed up in Facebook groups about hair loss, in subreddits dedicated to regrowth, and in the waiting rooms of dermatologists and hair-restoration clinics. First there were a few, but then there were thousands. Some of them had had COVID-19, but others, like me, had not.

At first, the fire hose of products I’d been sprayed with felt like a very American type of reassurance—not only was my problem apparently common, but it was also widespread enough to be profitable, and therefore maybe it had a solution. In hindsight, the products feel more like a warning.

This story isn’t about a medical mystery. The pandemic was a near-perfect mass hair-loss event, and anyone with the most basic understanding of why people lose their hair could have spotted it from a mile away. The actual mystery, instead, is why almost no one has that understanding in the first place.

Hair loss, I eventually learned from my diligent Googling, can be temporary or permanent, and it has many causes—heredity, chronic illness, nutritional deficiency, daily too-tight ponytails. But one type of loss is responsible for the pandemic hair-loss spike: telogen effluvium. TE, as it’s often called, is sudden and can be dramatic. It’s caused by the ordinary traumas of human existence in all of their hideous variety. Any kind of intense physical or emotional stress can push as much as 70 percent of your hair into the “telogen” phase of its growth cycle, which halts those strands’ growth and disconnects them from their blood supply in order to conserve resources for more essential bodily processes. That, in time, knocks them straight off your head.

The pandemic has manufactured trauma at an astonishing clip. Many cases of TE have been caused by COVID-19 infection itself, according to Esther Freeman, a dermatologist and an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and the principal investigator for the COVID-19 Dermatology Registry, which collects reports of COVID-19’s effects on skin, nails, and hair. That doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with something unique about the disease, she told me—any illness that comes with a high fever can cause a round of TE, including common illnesses such as the flu. Among the millions of Americans who have been infected by the coronavirus, hair loss has been a common consequence, she said, both for patients whose symptoms resolve in a couple of weeks and for those who develop long COVID. Researchers do not yet know exactly how prevalent hair loss is among COVID-19 patients, but one study found that among those hospitalized, 22 percent were still dealing with hair loss months later.

COVID-19 infections are only part of the picture. Throughout the pandemic, millions more Americans have suffered devastating emotional stress even if they’ve never gotten sick: watching a loved one die, losing a job, going to work in life-threatening conditions, bearing the brunt of violent political unrest. Feelings can have concrete, involuntary physical manifestations, and these traumas are exactly the kinds that leave people staring in horror at the handfuls of hair they gather while lathering up in the shower.

All of these factors have led to what Jeff Donovan, a hair-loss dermatologist in Whistler, British Columbia, described to me as a “mountain” of new hair-loss patients since the pandemic began. What exacerbates the difficulty of dealing with hair loss for many patients, he and the other doctors I spoke with told me, is just how little good, if any, information on the condition the people coming into their offices are able to assemble, even if they broached the issue with other kinds of doctors in the past. “They don’t know what’s going on, they don’t know why they’ve spent so much money, and they’re just so confused," Maryanne Makredes Senna, a co-director of Massachusetts General Hospital’s hair-loss clinic, told me. “It’s like, ‘I don’t know what to believe, and I went to this doctor and they made me feel like I was crazy.’” The doctors I spoke with said that their patients typically come to them after having seen at least a handful of other practitioners, and sometimes as many as 15.

This level of confusion—including my own—is, frankly, infuriating. Eighty percent of men and about half of women experience some form of hair loss in the course of their life. TE was first described in the 1960s, and it has long been a predictable side effect of surgery, changing medications, crash dieting, childbirth, bankruptcy, and breakups. The way TE resolves for almost everyone who doesn’t already have chronic hair-loss issues is that the hair eventually grows back—plain and simple. You would think, at some point, that someone would tell you not to panic if you lose some hair after something intense happens—that even if you shed for months, it will grow back eventually, and there’s no need to do anything but wait.

For several reasons, many people don’t get much straightforward information on any type of hair loss, TE and beyond. For one, hair loss doesn’t really lend itself to the format of the modern American doctor appointment. Finding the right diagnosis can be a detailed, time-intensive process. “You cannot do everything for a hair-loss patient in a 15-minute visit,” Senna said, and that’s all the time many doctors get to have with their patients. Seeing a dermatologist who specializes in hair loss, she said, is more likely to get patients a visit of at least 30 to 45 minutes and a more detailed, empathetic evaluation—if a patient can figure out to go to such a dermatologist in the first place.

Moreover, hair loss typically isn’t a particularly urgent problem for practitioners who may have many other types of health concerns coming into their office. Most hair loss that isn’t triggered by some kind of trauma is caused by androgenic alopecia, or AGA, often known as male or female pattern hair loss. It’s passed on genetically and has no cure, although some safe treatments are widely available. Doctors busy with other things may shrug their shoulders at patients who have incurable conditions that aren’t physically dangerous or painful. And for panicking patients who hear “Wait it out” or “Buy some Rogaine,” that recommendation may feel dismissive or inadequate, even if it is correct.

Some causes of hair loss vary along ethnic lines, so getting answers can be even harder for certain patients. Susan Taylor, a dermatologist at the University of Pennsylvania and the founder of the Skin of Color Society, told me that Black patients usually land in her office with more advanced hair loss than their non-Black counterparts, which can make treatment less effective. Black patients are more likely to have a type of hair loss called central centrifugal cicatricial alopecia, or CCCA. According to Taylor, many practitioners know little about CCCA, and their advice to patients suffering from it can be especially dismissive. “For Black women in particular, they’re told, ‘Stop your relaxers; don’t straighten your hair,’” Taylor said. “And then they say to me, ‘But Dr. Taylor, I always wear my hair natural. I don’t relax my hair.’”

What makes all of this harder is that hair loss—TE in particular—is a long game played on a wonky, counterintuitive timeline. It’s a nightmare for people trying to distinguish correlation and causation on their own. TE is temporary for almost everyone, but because of the vagaries of hair’s growth cycle, the shedding generally doesn’t start until two to four months after the stressor that triggered it occurred. By then, people are no longer thinking about the flu they had months ago—a new shampoo or medication might get the blame instead. And many people who experience TE have no idea whether their hair will ever come back; the shedding can go on for months before slowing down, and regrowth can take several more months to become visible to the naked eye. By the time people notice their hair growing back, a year may have passed since the process was set into motion. Once it starts, the only effective treatment is patience.

If you’ve never gone from normal hair to bald spots in a matter of weeks, you might be tempted to dismiss this as vanity. But people value their hair because the society they live in tells them it’s important. Women in particular have been told for centuries that their hair is their glory, which paraphrases a biblical edict about long hair as a demonstration of righteousness before God. A full head of hair, Donovan, the Whistler dermatologist, pointed out, is still a crude, unscientific shorthand for youth, for healthy living, for vitality. Losing it can send people into a profound depression, or make them ashamed to leave the house.

So people do what I did. They turn to the internet. Waiting for them is a booming market for nonmedical health products, ranging from the dubiously effective to the obviously scammy. Never does a new product look more promising than when you’re trying to solve a problem you don’t understand. In America, where competent medical care can be hard to access even for simple problems, hair loss—extremely common, highly emotional, absolutely confounding—is a case study in how much money there is to be made in this mixture of desperation and hope.

When I first began my own search for answers, the avalanche of hair-loss products under which Google immediately buried me was disorienting and overwhelming. It wasn’t just the beautiful, full-color photos of luxuriously packaged pills and oils that Google threw at me up front, but how the internet kept the score, using the admission that I was losing my hair to stalk me across time and platforms in a way seemingly designed to wear down my defenses. For months on end, those products and many more followed me around the internet, interrupting my friends’ Instagram stories of their latest cooking projects and slipping between my extended family’s Facebook posts about their kids’ first day of school.

At first glance, many of these products seem promising. Vegamour, a start-up that describes its shampoos and scalp serums as a “holistic approach to hair wellness,” can become practically inescapable if you use the internet to look at mainstream fashion and beauty products. It has a website and social-media presence befitting any luxury cosmetic, complete with videos of models tossing around their impossibly thick hair and promises of clinical proof that its products will grow yours. This clinical proof is not included on the site for scrutiny. (A spokesperson for Vegamour did not respond to questions about its products and website.)

Wellness products are a marketing sweet spot for a class of celebrities who are supposed to be more relatable than traditional stars, because they seem to offer a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to be beautiful, but without really revealing anything at all. They are a simple way to assure an audience that you got hot through clean living, good nutrition, and a little self-care—that your entire deal isn’t one big, carefully stage-directed feminine farce. The catch, of course, is that the professionally beautiful absolutely do not rely on these types of products to ensure that their hair looks thick and luxurious. Celebrities, as Senna told me, generally don’t have incredible hair. Instead, they have incredibly expensive hair extensions and lace-front wigs. (SugarBearHair did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

In the United States, cosmetics and dietary supplements occupy a separate legal category from drugs. Their efficacy claims are far less regulated, which allows the manufacturers of nonmedical hair-growth products to make enticingly vague promises that would be more heavily scrutinized and caveated when made by a pharmaceutical company. Paradoxically, this freedom from regulatory surveillance can lead potential customers to assume that these products must be superior overall. The difference can seem implicit in the distinction from pharmaceuticals—if this class of products weren’t safer, more natural, and just as effective, wouldn’t the same level of governmental caution be applied to them? Can’t we infer something from its absence?

These assumptions and their attendant fears are explicitly encouraged by many supplement and cosmetic companies as a way to more effectively market their own products. Vegamour’s website, for example, includes a list of medical-grade ingredients that its products do not include, alongside context-free lists of the most unpleasant side effects that have ever been attributed to those ingredients, even if those side effects are quite rare. The site does not mention any potential side effects of its own products. Drug manufacturers are legally required to track and disclose side effects, but cosmetic companies are not.

You can see the effect anywhere that health problems are being discussed online, especially in spaces dedicated to regrowing hair. In one Facebook group with nearly 30,000 members, the same discussion plays out again and again: A new member asks for help, alongside photos of her thinning hair. Well-meaning people post links to buy the vitamins or essential oils that they’re currently using. They suggest a megadose of biotin, which has never been linked to hair growth in those without a biotin deficiency. They recommend an iron-supplementation protocol with its own Facebook group, even though taking iron supplements can be dangerous if you’re not deficient. Suggesting minoxidil can be controversial, even though it’s one of the only effective treatments for hereditary hair loss, has been studied for decades, and is widely available over the counter in cheap generics. People express a fear of side effects without getting more specific about what scares them. The most common side effect of minoxidil is scalp irritation.

When wading through the sludge of the internet’s hair-loss advice, if you’re lucky, you come across someone like Tala, whose last name I’m not using in order to protect her privacy. She’s a 39-year-old moderator of the Reddit forum r/FemaleHairLoss, which has grown from about 3,000 subscribers to more than 14,000 during the pandemic. The subreddit is a relative rarity on the internet: a place to crowdsource information about a tricky health problem where discussions tend to stay based in reality. People post lots of pictures of their head, either to ask whether it looks like they’re losing more hair than they should be or to show before-and-after photos of treatment plans that really work. They talk about minoxidil and finasteride. They trade hair-war stories about scalp injections and laser helmets, and tell newbies how to find a specialist who can actually help them.

Tala has AGA, the hereditary kind of hair loss, and has been losing hair since she was 30, but she considers herself lucky—she lives in an area with lots of good doctors and she can afford to see them, which means she has access to quality information. Passing on as much of it as possible feels important to her and the subreddit’s other moderators because of how vulnerable many of the group’s new members are. “I can’t tell you how many suicidal people come to this group,” Tala told me. “To know that somebody is suffering that much because they lost their hair, it breaks my heart.”

Maintaining a safe, truthful environment is an uphill battle. “To keep this group running and to keep it free from shills and people who are trying to take advantage of it and spammers, it’s a lot of work,” Tala said. She and the other mods walk a difficult line: For the group to be helpful to as many people as possible, it has to feel welcoming and nonjudgmental, and it has to be free of people who might be trying to sell something. For the group to actually help, the moderators and regular commenters have to find ways to tell people who have spent so much money on “natural” cures that they maybe have been duped, without making them feel stupid or defensive. They teach people the basics of hair’s growth cycle, what to look out for when evaluating a scientific study, and which treatments are known to be effective for the type of hair loss they suspect they have.

Several of the doctors I spoke with think that communities like r/FemaleHairLoss, which encourage rigor and evidence-based treatment options, provide a useful port in the storm of internet health marketing and misinformation. Nonmedical products, the doctors said, are basically all useless for expediting the growth of existing hair—which is not possible in already healthy individuals—or reviving dormant follicles. Dietary supplements themselves can be useful, Senna said, but only for patients whose hair loss is caused by a nutritional deficiency, which is rarely the case for people eating a standard American diet. If you’re not medically deficient, more isn’t better—and it can certainly be worse. Senna mentioned biotin, large doses of which are extremely common in hair-growth supplements. Too much biotin can lead to an incorrect thyroid-disease diagnosis, she said. Thyroid disease can also cause hair loss, so the misdiagnosis can send doctors on a wild-goose chase. The whole problem becomes bigger than if you never took the supplements in the first place.

The myths commonly passed on as facts in some online hair-loss groups are a constant impediment to getting patients on treatment regimens that actually have some chance of helping their hair. “It can be very, very challenging to convince the patient that the diagnosis that she came up with from the internet is not the correct one,” Taylor, the University of Pennsylvania dermatologist, told me. With some types of chronic hair loss, the time that people spend trying things that don’t work is precious—the longer someone goes without effective treatment, the less effective they can expect that treatment to ultimately be.

In the case of TE, hair loss’s timeline is on the side of the wellness industry. Think about how all of this feels to the average person, who has no idea what’s happening to them or why, and who may not even realize that dermatologists treat hair loss—I didn’t. After a couple of months of shedding, they may get worried enough to start looking for remedies as their scalp becomes more visible. They pick up a bottle of hair vitamins and a vial of scalp oil, with the understanding that results will take a few months to see. Down the line, when they spot short little hairs filling back in around their hairline, they’ll attribute that regrowth to the things they bought, not their natural hair-growth cycle. Suddenly, they’re evangelists for their vitamins and oils, which seem like a miracle cure but did nothing at all.

The pandemic likely put this process into motion thousands—if not millions—of times. It’s a challenge that the supplement and cosmetic industries were well positioned to meet; beauty supplements and topical cosmetics are now often sold alongside each other, not just in luxury department stores and beauty emporiums such as Sephora and Ulta, but at Target or via Amazon’s recommendation algorithm. That these products don’t work matters very little to their profitability. In that way, this is a story that predates the pandemic by at least a century. When real, reliable information is hard to come by—in this case, when it is cut off from the general public by the structural limitations of the American health-care system—there will always be a market for new products with hollow promises.