Caffeine is one of the most popular drugs in the planet, is it also a key to healthy hair and preventing hair loss? We look closer.
What is Caffeine?
We should start at the beginning, caffeine is a psychoactive drug. As just about the only psychoactive drug that is legal it is by some distance the most popular drug in the world. We are all familiar with it’s use as a stimulant… according to Wikipedia, in 2014 85% of Americans consume caffeine, in one of it’s forms, on a daily basis. While a mention of caffeine will immediately make you think of coffee it should be borne in mind that it appears in tea and cola drinks too.
We have been drinking coffee, according to the evidence, since the 15th Century. Beginning in southern Arabia it made it’s way across to Egypt and North Africa before reaching Italy and the rest of Europe. The Dutch, by taking coffee plants to the East Indies and the Americas, would establish the coffee bean as a product of global commercial importance.
The Effects of Caffeine
Caffeine is a potent and complex drug. As such is has a range of purported benefits, and a few negative health effects. The FDA in the US classify it as “generally recognised as safe,” principally because a toxic dose would require someone to guzzle their way through as many as 100 cups of coffee in a day. It should be noted that pregnant women are, in some areas, recommended to limit their intake to a couple of cups a day. Also that powdered caffeine, sold as a dietary supplement, can be lethal if you eat as little as a tablespoon.
On the upside, caffeine is the go to stimulant for many. It can also reduce symptoms of depression and decrease suicide risk.
Caffeine for Hair Loss
It makes sense that healthy hair is a by-product of a healthy lifestyle. Caffeine is suggested by some as a useful addition to a regime aimed at improving hair health. The theory is that caffeine increases blood flow in the scalp and so promotes (increases) hair growth.
HIS Hair Clinic
Caffeine has been on our radar for some time, particularly since the German firm Alepecin spent so much money convincing people to buy their caffeine based shampoo to fight hair loss. We have yet to see any conclusive evidence linking caffeine to proven hair growth, and suspect that, given the number of coffee shops that have opened over the last 20 years, we might have seen some positive effect from all that coffee drinking. So many people drinking so much coffee, you have to think, at least produce some anecdotal evidence.
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