This month I have articles for you on superfoods for strong & healthy hair, exfoliating your scalp, surprising things that can affect your weight, why your hair hurts, beards, bangs and the fascinating history of shampoo.  All that and more so please scroll down and check it out! ​

This section is for the "Follically Challenged".  There are so many conversations and articles on the topic and I want make sure you are getting good information. 

This month's article

Digestive Problems & Hair Loss:
How IBS & IBD Can Cause Hair Thinning

Hair loss is something a lot of people struggle with and it’s caused by a multitude of factors. Some of the most common are hereditary factors, aging, medication, hormone changes, and diseases like Alopecia areata. One of the less obvious factors involved in hair thinning is the disruption of the digestive process.

Your body needs certain molecules in order to grow hair. So, hair loss can be one of the consequences of any serious digestive problem. Afflictions like Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) or Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) can impede digestion. This means that your body might not get the proper nutrients it needs from the food you eat. Not having the necessary nutrients means no building blocks for hair growth.
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In this article, we will discuss how your gut health can play a role in hair loss, and explore some of the ways you can improve your hair and scalp health. Read on to find out more.

Your hair is made out of protein, lipids, water, and some trace elements. But the process of hair growth requires a lot of energy and involves other important elements, such as hormones, minerals, and vitamins. If the body doesn’t have sufficient quantities of any element involved in this complex process of hair growth, then hair loss may become a real threat.

Your body gets all the nutrients it needs in order to function by digesting food. Everything you eat ends up in your digestive tract. Once there, your enzymes and gut bacteria break it down into simple elements that are absorbed and transported for further processing or immediate use. This is why any digestive problems may indirectly lead to hair loss.

How Poor Gut Flora Can Lead to Hair Thinning

Getting the proper nutrients out of food requires having a functioning digestive tract and a healthy gut flora. The bacteria and microbes in your gut are essential for the production of certain elements like amino acids, triglycerides, and vitamins (B1, B9, B7, B2, B5, K). Some imbalances in gut bacteria are also associated with diseases like IBD.

A healthy gut flora represents a true ecosystem with a diversity of over 400 species of microorganisms. Most of these bacteria live in the large intestine, and they play an important role in digestion and the general health of the body, like protecting against harmful microbes. The balance between these types of germs is essential to our health, and any imbalance can lead to problems like colon cancer, and liver fibrosis.

Unhealthy gut flora may cause disruptions in the process of food digestion and absorption. So even if you eat the right things, your body may not be able to extract the molecules it needs. This can, in turn, lead to deficiencies in certain elements the body uses to grow hair. It seems that gut bacteria and hair loss are interconnected. Studies have shown that improving a patient’s gut may stimulate hair growth in patients with Alopecia areata.
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The Link Between Gut Permeability & Hair Loss

After being digested, the micronutrients obtained from food have to pass through the intestinal wall and into the bloodstream or the lymphatic system. The intestinal wall represents a barrier between the billions of bacteria and the rest of the body. But this barrier has to be permeable to allow nutrients to pass.

A change in diet, gut bacteria, or inflammation in the intestine can alter the permeability of the intestinal wall. While there is no direct relation between gut permeability and hair loss, changes in the intestinal wall disrupt the digestive process and impede the absorption of nutrients. And without the proper nutrients, hair growth is slowed down or stops entirely.

How Malabsorption can Lead to Hair Loss

Nutritional deficiencies can be a consequence of poor diet choices, or they might be a consequence of malabsorption. In certain pathological situations, even if you’re eating healthy food, your body might not be able to break down and absorb the nutrients from the digestive tract.

Malabsorption can be a consequence of certain food type intolerance, local inflammation, bacterial overgrowth, autoimmune diseases of the digestive tract, or parasites. There also appears to be a strong correlation between hair loss and patients who undergo sleeve gastrectomy procedures. This type of intervention may cause malabsorption of micronutrients like zinc and iron, both of which are necessary for hair growth.

In periods of nutrient deficiencies, your body uses all its resources to keep your organs functioning properly. A process like growing hair is not a priority, so your hair might take longer to grow or it can start to thin out.

IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) and Hair Loss

Irritable Bowel Syndrome or IBS is a chronic medical condition that affects over 7% of the general population. Symptoms like pain, bloating, diarrhea, and constipation can severely affect life quality for patients and are often associated with the disruption of the digestive process.

There is no primary cause for this disease, but factors such as intestinal infections, parasitosis, alterations in serotonin levels, gut flora imbalances, and psychosocial factors have been associated with IBS. The effects of IBS are often local inflammation, food sensitivity, and carbohydrate malabsorption.

One study has shown that patients with IBS have reported hair loss, hair thinning, and brittle hair as part of the accompanying non-digestive symptoms.

IBD (Inflammatory Bowel Disease) and Hair Loss

Inflammatory Bowel Disease or IBD is a term that includes Crohn’s disease, Ulcerative colitis, and other noninfectious inflammations of the bowel. The main factor associated with IBD is an overreaction of the immune system to the normal gut flora.

Symptoms can vary, but most patients report abdominal pain, diarrhea, rectal bleeding, weight loss, and fatigue. Hair loss in patients with IBD is associated with nutritional deficiencies and adverse reactions to medication. Recent studies have also uncovered shared risk factors with Alopecia areata and Inflammatory Bowel Disease.
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How to Improve Hair and Scalp Health

Change Your Diet to Improve Hair Health

You can improve your hair’s health and prevent hair loss caused by nutritional deficiencies by changing your diet. Changing your diet enables you to provide your body with the nutrients it needs to grow hair.

Some of these nutrients are the actual building blocks, such as proteins, and others like zinc and iron are necessary for the chemical reactions taking place inside the cells that synthesize the hair fibers.
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• Protein – this is an important nutrient in any diet and you can get it from animal and vegetable food sources. Some healthy sources of protein are meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, whole grains, and legumes like lentils, beans, soybeans, peas, and peanuts.

• Omega 3 fatty acids – are considered essential fats because the body can’t produce them on its own, which means that you must acquire them from food. They are part of the cell membrane, and your body uses them for proper cell function and the synthesis of important molecules, such as hormones. Fatty acids are also important for skin and hair health. Great sources for Omega 3 fatty acids are fish and other seafood, nuts and seeds, and plant oils (canola oil, soybean oil, flaxseed oil).

• Vitamin B12 – or cobalamin is an important factor in cell replication. This vitamin can be found in abundant quantities in meat, fish, dairy, and eggs. Unfortunately, people with vegan diets are predisposed to B12 deficiencies.

• Iron – deficiencies in this mineral are quite common, the main causes being blood loss or insufficient dietary intake. Some important iron sources are red meat, liver, nuts, fortified cereals, dried fruits (apricots), and beans.

• Zinc – an important mineral involved in many chemical reactions in the body, involved in the functioning of the immune system, and known to support hair growth. Some important zinc sources are oysters and other types of seafood, meat, dairy products, peas, beans, pumpkin seeds, and oatmeal.

• Glutathione – General hair loss is often associated with low glutathione levels. Supplementing your glutathione consumption can help prevent or treat hair loss.

How Stress Can Lead to Hair Loss

Stress can have severe effects on a person’s health by causing both psychological and biological damage. Stress can damage the autonomic nervous system and affect the immune system. It can also play a role in the pathology of various diseases like Irritable Bowel Syndrome and cause alterations in the body’s hormone balance. All of these factors may have a negative effect on hair growth.

• Regular exercise may help protect against the harmful consequences of stress and have positive effects on the circulatory system and metabolism. Studies also show that physical exercise has antidepressant and anxiolytic effects.

• Aromatherapy might also be a great way to manage stress levels. One study has shown that aromatherapy can reduce stress, anxiety, and reduce pain. Its effects will probably be more powerful if paired with sessions of mindful meditation.

• Having unhealthy sleeping habits can cause insomnia and amplify the effects of stress on the body. Getting enough sleep and having good sleep hygiene are essential practices for stress level management.

Other Methods to Treat Hair Loss

• Probiotics are made of live yeast or bacteria. You can take probiotic supplements as a way to add good bacteria to your body. Your doctor might recommend probiotic supplements after antibiotic treatments. Studies have shown that there might be a connection between the administration of probiotics and hair growth. One clinical study has shown the improvement of hair counts, hair thickness, and hair growth in patients with androgenic alopecia.

• Limiting hair product use can be beneficial to your hair health. Most products like shampoos contain a lot of chemicals that can dry out your scalp and hair if used too often.

• Using brushes and combs on your wet hair can damage hair fibers. When you’re drying your hair with a towel, try to be gentle and use patting motions instead of a vigorous scrub.

• Avoid pulling out your hair with rough combing or tight hairstyles such as braids, buns, or ponytails. Using very tight hair ties can damage the hair fiber and hair follicles.

• Try to limit the use of curling irons, straightening irons, hot rollers, or hot oil treatments. High temperatures can be very damaging for the hair fiber, and it may cause irreparable damage to your hair.

Conclusion

Hair loss is a condition that affects both men and women, and often has a huge emotional impact on those who are affected. It can be caused by a multitude of factors, and some of them are related to digestive tract issues. Any disturbance in the digestive system has the potential to cause a deficiency in the nutrients your body needs in order to grow hair.

Hair loss may be prevented with proper care for gut flora health, eating a healthy diet, and managing stress.
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Most importantly, make sure to consult a medical specialist. Get assessed by a Naturopathic Doctor to find the root cause for your condition with natural medicine solutions.  

​Can shampoo in a bar really get your hair clean and shiny? Industry professionals explain how the bars can help your hair and, more importantly, the planet.

​If you think you’re already doing your part to reduce plastic use, take a quick peek inside your shower stall. See those plastic bottles of shampoo and conditioner? No judgment, but ahem.

The good news is there’s another, more eco-friendly way to cleanse that magnificent mane of yours. The growing category of shampoo bars is gaining in popularity with folks who want to do the right thing, but who also want their hair to look its absolute best at all times (so, pretty much everybody).

One shampoo bar = Three plastic shampoo bottles

Shampoo bars are a small but significant step in our quest to reduce plastic proliferation. The makers of these bars say their products are essentially all the good parts of shampoo (the stuff that gets your hair clean and beautiful) without a bunch of non-essential water added — and with no plastic bottle required.

“Liquid shampoo contains 80 to 90% water,” Superzero founder and co-CEO Conny Wittke told HuffPost. “The amount of plastic used in the beauty industry is significant, creating 120 billion units of plastic packaging waste every year globally. In the United States, 552 million plastic shampoo bottles are sold every year. But overall, less than 10% of the plastic we create gets recycled.”

Removing the water from shampoo formulations leaves consumers with one small bar that can contain the equivalent of up to three bottles of shampoo, enough for up to 80 washes, depending on the brand. Then there’s the issue of what it takes to get that bottle transported from a factory to your shower stall. “Because you get more product for less weight and volume with shampoo bars, there are fewer greenhouse gases generated during shipping,” Wittke said.

How significant is that impact? “One of our shampoo bars has just 8% of the carbon footprint of the equivalent liquid product,”said Brianne West, founder and CEO of . Allison Teasdale, the chief operating officer ofUnwrapped Life, noted: “We’ve diverted more than 4.5 million plastic bottles from entering our oceans, and we’re committed to preventing more than 20 million plastic bottles by 2025.”

Is there a shampoo bar in your future? It seems likely. “Everyone who uses shampoo eventually will use them,” said co-founder Dion Hughes. “I foresee a time when using shampoo from plastic bottles is as uncool as lighting a cigarette in a restaurant.”

You’ve got to let go of the ‘theater of lather’

You’ll need to manage your expectations with your first few bar uses, starting with the volume of lather you’re likely to see. There’s a “theater of lather” that we’ve come to expect from our cleansing products, but the additives that provide a rich lather aren’t necessarily proof of super-deep cleaning. “Lather is not so much a cleansing effect as a reassuring effect,” Hughes said.

“You’ll notice that your shampoo bar will suds up, but it’s not like the kind of foam you see in a beer commercial, more just a creamy lather,” Shambar founder Jeffrey Qaiyum told HuffPost. “If you’re getting that much foam from a shampoo bar, frankly, you’re using a bar of soap with the word ‘shampoo’ slapped on the label.”

It might take some getting used to

How that small, hard bar will translate into a good shampoo might seem confusing at first, but after a few tries, you’ll get the hang of it. “Just swoosh the entire bar around on your head,” said Erica Vega, brand and product expert for Lush Cosmetics USA . “If your hair is prone to tangles, rub it in your hands first, then rub the lather in, the way you would do with a liquid shampoo.”

After rinsing and drying, your hair might look a little different than the way it does after a traditional shampoo, at least at first. Shampoo bars tend to be gentler than shampoo, so you’ll need to let your hair adjust to that milder cleansing, or you might eventually need to switch up the timing and frequency of your shampoos. “For some people, it takes two to three weeks to ‘break in’ and let the hair become normalized after years of having natural oils stripped away by shampoos,” said James R. Liggett, president and founder of J. R. Liggett’s.

What about conditioner?

Whether you’ll need a conditioner bar is a matter of your particular hair type. Someone with short hair might be just fine, but those with thicker, longer or curlier hair might want to use one.

“Many people with curly hair choose not to use shampoo in favor of co-washing, which is washing with conditioner,” West said. She noted that those products also have eco-benefits. “One of our conditioner bars is equivalent to five bottles of liquid conditioner,” she added.

Travel, shave and even wash the dog with your shampoo bar

Because of their compact size, shampoo bars make sense for travel. They eliminate worries about Transportation Security Administration requirements because — ta-da! — you’ve ditched the liquid altogether. Whether you’re staying at a luxury hotel or at a campsite, you’ll also find that a shampoo bar is a good in-a-pinch way to care for hand-washable clothing when you’re on the road.
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People can use the bars on their entire bodies, or as a replacement for shaving cream. And you can break them out when it’s time to wash pets, too. No matter what you’re doing with your own particular bar, “They’re absolutely gentle enough to use every day,” Qaiyum said.

For more of this story, click here and scroll down to Shampoo bars to try

Before modern liquid shampoo became widespread, hair care routines didn’t involve so much plastic waste. Now, we are conditioned (!) to believe we need liquid shampoo in plastic bottles that usually get disposed of rather than refilled, and solid soap is considered a niche. However, thanks to environmental awareness about plastic waste and renewed attention on some of the harmful effects of toxic synthetic ingredients in many liquid soap brands, shampoo bars are making a comeback. But where did the humble shampoo bar come from? And how did it fall out of use? Below we nerd out on the history of the cult zero waste beauty product, explore the role of British cruelty-free beauty pioneer LUSH in “reinventing” shampoo bar in the past two decades, and how we might be looking at bottle-free becoming mainstream again soon. 

Where Did Shampoo Come From?

​The word “shampoo” entered the English language around three centuries ago, and it originates from India in the colonial era. It is derived from the Hindi word champo and the Sanskrit root chapati (yes like the popular Indian flatbread), which is to press or knead. The practice of “shampooing” therefore meant to massage the scalp with fragrant oils, rather than hair washing as the word is understood today. The hair treatment was introduced to European societies when colonial traders returned with the local Indian custom of cleansing the hair and body with massage and oils.

Shampooing – cleansing the excess oil and dirt from our hair – was also done using other natural methods, such as using vegetable starch and wood ash to absorb excess oil and wash hair. In the 19th century, people also started to use soap bars containing palm fruit oil and coconut oil to wash their body and hair. So the concept of using a packaging-free solid bars to clean our hair isn’t exactly “new” – it has been around for centuries, long before “zero-waste” even became a term.

With the dawn of liquid surfactants that scientists created to efficiently remove dirt, a few opportunistic cosmetics companies jumped on the idea of developing products that marked the start of what would become a billion-dollar industry. We started seeing different types of commercial soap displayed on retail shelves in the 1930s and 40s: liquid shampoo, body wash and gels, liquid conditioners – all of which by necessity had to be packaged in containers. At around the same time, plastic as a material became favoured as a replacement for less convenient and more expensive forms of packaging such as paper and glass. The single-use/disposable personal care industry was thus born.

The Rise Of Modern Bottled Liquid Shampoo
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Slowly, these liquid shampoos in plastic containers and bottles became widespread in almost every family bathroom. Though unarguably convenient to use, these products generate massive amounts of waste and neither consumers nor businesses considered the effect off their choices when it came to the lifespan of the container bottles.

It is estimated that over a lifetime, the average person goes through 800 plastic shampoo bottles – the majority of which ends up in landfills or in our oceans, which are then further broken down into microplastics, choking marine life and contaminating our own water and food. Needless to say, recycling has never been and continues not to be the answer, with waste regulations and recycling infrastructure mostly unavailable in large swaths of the globe.

As reports of the scale of our plastic pollution began to surface and headlines about the massive Pacific trash vortex became more widespread, environmentalists and concerned consumers became concerned about everyday consumption habits and the throwaway culture that was becoming pervasive. This heightened eco awareness saw the advent of the now worldwide “zero-waste” lifestyle, which initially began as niche grassroots concern that later morphed into today’s global movement.

How LUSH’s Co-Founder Upended An Industry

Over in the United Kingdom, a couple of alternative upstarts were looking to disrupt the personal care industry. In the 1980s, Mo Constantine, co-founder of cult beauty brand LUSH (known as Constantine & Weir, and later Cosmetics-To-Go at the time before they rebranded to LUSH in 1995) was struck by inspiration thanks to an unlikely source: Alka-Seltzer. The fizzing tablets led her to create the brand’s ubiquitous bath bombs, which were also the first product they sold ‘naked,’ aka without packaging.

Shortly thereafter, Constantine and Stan Kryszta, the brand’s cosmetic chemist, sought to reinvent the traditional soap bar specifically for hair. Unlike other soap bars on the market at the time, which were based on oils and fats (the traditional recipe for soap), Mo and Stan came up with an innovative formula for a solid version of liquid shampoo. When they first launched their shampoo bar product in 1988 under the Constantine & Weir name, it became so popular that they successfully applied for and won a composition patent for their groundbreaking recipe.
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Years after the now famous shampoo bar was born in the kitchens that later became LUSH, the brand remains the keepsake of the invention, even though the original patent expired in 2011.

Thanks to LUSH, eco-friendly beauty products have been on consumers’ radars like never before, as the brand has captured a (mostly) young and eco-conscious generation with their low waste range and naked store concept, with the brand reportedly saving around 30 million plastic bottles from landfills over the past year alone. Amid a recent public outcry on plastic waste, the company has even launched a carbon positive cork container for the shampoo bars, manufactured using regeneratively grown cork (which absorbs carbon from our atmosphere) and transported via sailboats. 

The Shampoo Bar Goes Mass

LUSH shampoo bars are infused with blends of natural ingredients with cleansing yet soothing properties, such as cinnamon leaf oil, contain no preservatives, and most importantly, do not require any packaging or container. Compared to the average bottle of liquid shampoo, solid shampoo bars last around three times as long and only need be stored on a dish.

In recent years, a plastic-free and zero-waste beauty movement has taken hold and become more mainstream. As well as LUSH‘s pioneering range, other independent beauty brands with a sustainability focus have also developed their shampoo bars, many of them featuring natural, plant-based and organic ingredients- brands like Lamazuna (France), Meow Meow Tweet (US) and Ethique (New Zealand) filled Insta feeds the world over with their low-waste, plastic-free modern bars to suit every eco warrior hair type.

Even mainstream cosmetics corporations have caught onto the trend and launched eco-friendly and plastic-free beauty products, hoping to catch a share of this budding market. The shampoo bar crazy has also spawned a whole range of plastic-free bars from face moisturisers to pet soaps to hair conditioner, all formulated for various care concerns and all made available sans packaging.
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In the midst of the many environmental issues the planet is facing, from global warming to biodiversity loss, plastic pollution is one that we can easily tackle individually by making easy switches in our everyday habits. So go on, ditch the bottle and choose the (shampoo) bar- it’s an easy choice you can feel seriously good about. 

Spate’s 2022 Trends Report includes data on U.S. consumer search trends in professional services, lipstick, and seasonal products.

A commonality across the entire makeup category is the increased search volume for mature skin. Spate suggests brands take note and develop products suitable for all consumer groups.

Hair Dusting & Beauty Services

There are 2.7K average monthly searches in the United States for hair dusting—a hair trimming technique that involves cutting off damaged split ends to maintain healthy hair strands and promote growth. The trend has low search volume compared to other hair services but is trending in the right direction, growing 27.5% since last year.

Spate reports that hair services are experiencing the highest search growth in the hair category, with a 12% increase since last year. This growth is consistent in other segments, with makeup services increasing 18.6%, skin care services growing by 4.2% and nail services increasing 33.2% since last year.

Hair Loss

There are 4.5K average monthly searches for hair loss conditioners, a low search volume compared to other conditioner products but also a 54% growth since last year with no market leader.

Postpartum hair loss search rates are experiencing the highest growth among hair concerns, with a 14.8% increase since last year. Hair care products like scalp serum and hair loss cream have increased 34.5% and 21%, respectively.

Thigh Cream

There are 1.6K average monthly searches for thigh cream, a low volume relative to other leg care searches, but also a 59.3% growth since last year. There is medium market competition and Clarins is currently the market leader. Related searches include cellulite, chafing, how to use, what is and review.

Spate’s report indicates that thigh cream is a top growing bath and body trend during warmer seasons. Spate suggests that brands consider adding SPF benefits to their thigh creams.

There are 27.5K average monthly searches for cream blush, a high search volume compared to other blush products and the largest increase in the blush category. The trend has grown 20% since last year and currently has high market competition with six market leaders: Maybelline, Milk Makeup, Charlotte Tilbury, Elf Cosmetics, Stila and Beautycounter.

Plum Lipstick

There are 4.8K average monthly searches for plum lipstick, a growth of 549% since last year, but still a low volume compared to other lipstick product searches. Brands being searched alongside the trend are Clinique, Mac, Bobbi Brown and Nyx.
Spate suggests that plum is the new red in lipstick as consumers look for a bold and moody vibe to fit the cold winter. The color has universal appeal, as evident in its related searches for skin, dark skin, pale skin and olive skin.

Lipstick had a resurgence in 2021 that continues to show growth, with lipstick palette and metallic lipstick searches increasing 196.6% and 230%, respectively. Lip plumping gloss (132.7% increase) and lip pencils (79%) are other trending lip products.

Gua Sha Stone

There are 99.1K average monthly searches for gua sha stone, an increase of 47.7% since last year and a high search volume compared to other accessories and devices in the face product category. There is low competition with two brand leaders—Lanshin and Sephora.

The gua sha stone is a tool for massaging face or body to improve circulation and skin health. The technique is derived from traditional Chinese medicine. The most common related search term was “how to use” (301% increase), presenting an opportunity for brands to provide education and tutorials on the skin care tool.
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Jade is the traditional stone used for the tool, but rose quartz is a popular alternative. Crystal products are currently the largest increase in natural beauty-related ingredients, with a 63.5% increase since last year, per the report.