Iron Deficiency and Hair Loss

Contents
- Your symptoms
- Those at risk
- Prognosis
- Treating the hair loss

Your symptoms

The hair is thinning out and losing its shine.

The hair loss is chronic and diffuse, throughout the head. Sometimes, the loss is everything but spectacular! When that is the case, you will not find that your hair falls much; you will rather only notice a loss in volume that will increase over the months. Inversely, the daily hair loss is sometimes rather major and you quickly notice it. 

In parallel, other symptoms related to anaemia can give you a good indication: being tired or suddenly feeling drained for no apparent reason, breaking nails, and pale skin. 

When those symptoms occur, a blood analysis is recommended in order to check your level of ferritin (your organism’s iron reserves). The rate must be equal or superior to 40 ngr/ml of blood. If it is below, your lack of iron is more than likely the cause (or one of the causes) of your hair problem. That would need to be confirmed by an in-depth hair diagnosis.

Those at risk

LADIES FIRST... The lack of iron most often comes from excessive blood loss that is not compensated for via nutrition. The deficiency thus mostly affects women in age of reproduction. They lose, on average, twice as much iron as men do, and almost 50% of women suffer from some sort of deficiency, according to various studies.

Throughout their active gynaecological lives, women thus need much more iron than men do. Those different needs are often not know about, and lead to women’s anaemia.

VEGETARIANS TOO…
They are also at risk of anaemia, for two reasons:
1) Fruits and vegetable contain less iron, on average, than meat or fish. 
2) Moreover, the iron contained in the vegetables (non-hematinic iron) is 4 to 5 times less well absorbed by the system than the one coming from meat or fish (hematinic iron).

Example: Cooked lentils contain 2.5 mg of non-hematinic iron per 100g: beef liver contains 10 (and it is also 5 times better absorbed by the system). You do the maths: in order to absorb the equivalent in iron of 100gr of liver, you will need to eat 2 kilos of lentils!

Prognosis

Alopecia caused by iron deficiency totally stabilises itself once its cause disappears. But one needs to be patient, because it takes a while to rebuild the body’s level of iron, which requires long term supplementation. You should count at least 3 months of treatment (which is how long it takes red globules to form) and 2 months beyond so that the regrowing hair starts to appear. 

In the meantime and in parallel, it is recommended to follow a local hair treatment, in order to limit the damage caused by the lack of iron. In other words, the aim is to:

1) More rapidly trigger the return of the regrowing hair,
2) help the hair regain thickness ( hair diagnosis).

Treating the hair loss

Whatever the medicine prescribed by your doctor, it should not be taken lightly. Iron is a fragile element, easily inhibited, and the treatment must follow some rules:

Intake
Basically, before the meal, you optimise absorption, and during the meal, you optimise tolerance. Iron is indeed better absorbed if it is taken with a glass of water (or, even better, with a glass of orange juice) 15 min before a meal. That being said, if it is not well tolerated by the system (abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhoea…), it is better to take it in several times throughout the meal, rather than to simply decide to stop the treatment.

Good combinations
Because vitamin C multiplies by three the absorption of iron, it is good to consume vegetables, salads and fruit that contain a lot of it (especially citrus fruit). But be careful, it cannot just be at any moment of the day: during the meal that follows the intake, otherwise, the vitamin C will have no effect on the iron.

Bad combinations
Do not drink tea or coffee in the hour following the intake because their tannin decreases the iron’s ability to fixate itself. You should also avoid too many dairy products during the meals that follow the intake, because calcium is also an inhibiting product. 

Finally, the daily diet should include nutrition that is rich in iron, in order to act in synergy with the supplementation. See our info file on the Diet and Hair Loss.

It comes as a complement to supplementation and is justified on two levels:

- During the iron treatment, it will help oxygenate and keep alive the hair follicles and the roots that tend to atrophy themselves under the effect of  anaemia.

- When the loss stops, it helps the regrowing and existing hair to regain its strength and shine.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
Child-Bearing and Hair Loss
Telogen Effluvium (diffuse hair loss)
Hair Loss - Women's Androgenetic Alopecia
Thinner and Fewer Regrowing Hair
Alopecia Areata and Hair Loss
Frizzy or Semi-Frizzy Hair Loss
Your Diet and Hair Loss
Daily Hair Loss: What Is the Norm ?

FOR TREATING
CLAUDERER Anti-Hair Loss Treatments
Hair Growth and Regrowth: Where Precisely to Act?
Clauderer in-Depth Hair Diagnosis

Diagnosis In-depth Clauderer Diagnosis: Have a complete hair checkup