Drink water. Right? That’s the advice we hear. From every corner of the ‘balanced diet’ world, staying hydrated is pretty much the number one pro tip from every gym trainer in with an annoyingly over simplistic view of how ‘easy’ it is to lose weight and become an overnight granite chiselled Greek Adonis (or female equivalent – Aphrodite?).
If water alone truly did wash away flabby bellies, you’d be able to charge people their life’s savings for half a cup of the smelliest swamp juice dredge up from a sewer beneath a zoo. There’s more to it than just water. But when it comes to hair, the health advice on drinking the right amount of water really might be onto something. Of course, if your hair is looking in urgent need of repair, you might want to look into a hair & scalp serum. But for now, let’s look at the rejuvenating effects that a simple daily dose of plain old water can have on your hair.
Why does dehydration affect hair growth?
You might not believe this, but your hair relies on water for about 25% of its makeup. That’s quite an astonishing figure. Just in terms of a surface understanding alone, that means that if you had a magic machine that coils suck all of the water out of hair, it would be only 75% as thick. Starting to get it now? Dehydration leads to thin hair and split ends. In fact, if your body is sufficiently dehydrated, it’s entirely medically possible for your body to react by shutting down hair production to conserve valuable water supplies.
So, the next time you think about skipping drinks at work or before bed because you’re worried about needing the toilet, just think that you are starving your hair of the water it needs to grow at 100% thickness (obviously, other nutrients are required for 100% thickness, such as protein and vitamins, but the 25% of hair that comes from water can only come from liquids – you must remember to drink!)
How much should I drink?
This topic is a bit messy, because what you think you know is probably wrong.
Way before the advent of the internet, facts were whatever people printed in books. Fact checking was hard, and trust in so-called experts was all people had to work from.
OK, so, who has heard that you should drink 2 litres, or 8 glasses of water per day? Yeah, this comes from the 1945 advice from the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council. It’s basically pulled out of thin air.
Drink when you’re thirsty, or when you have strong yellow pee – these are fantastic indicators that your hair needs watering!
