When we talked about what benefits avocado has on the skin we briefly touched on avocado hair benefits and avocado hair masks as a means of preventing and/or treating dandruff. While the external application of DIY avocado products will benefit your hair significantly, did you know that eating avocado daily might produce the same effects, as well? In this article, we are going to touch on how eating avocado daily benefits your hair, and what are all the different avocado hair benefits.
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The Benefits
What is it in avocado that makes your hair strengthen and grow? Hair essentially grows from regular consumption of vitamins E, D, B6 and A, proteins, amino acids, and also a regular intake of minerals and metals such as magnesium and iron – all of which stimulate cells that produce hair growth in your scalp.
Avocado is rich in all of these mentioned above, while also working as a powerful antioxidant for your gut. This helps better absorption of nutrients into your body, and is the answer as to how eating avocado daily benefits your hair – you get a daily dose of all of these nutrients that help you grow and strengthen your hair while also boosting your digestion (which also helps speed up your metabolism).
The avocado hair benefits are visible in the ratio of these nutrients; just one average-sized avocado provides 21% of your daily needs of vitamin E which is the main culprit for hair health as it helps combat oxidative stress by neutralizing free radicals that can cause damage to your skin, scalp and hair follicles. Vitamin B (biotin) is essential for the growth of the hair follicles themselves. A deficiency in fatty acids has also been linked to hair loss because your body cannot produce these acids on its own, so you need to introduce them into your food (and avocado just so happens to be an excellent source of fatty acids).
Topical Use
Incorporating avocado masks into your hair care routine is still very important because the antioxidants don’t only benefit your gut – they benefit your scalp, as well. If you have a sensitive and damaged scalp, possibly even chemical burns from perms, bleach or dye, and have issues with hair fallout and dryness – hair masks are your go-to solution.
Processed hair is the best client for topical avocado use. While any hair can become brittle and dry – this is usually due to the lack of moisture that comes from improper hair care or heat, which can be instantly reversed with a good moisturizer. Processed hair, on the other hand, has been deprived of proteins and vitamins with chemicals, which loosens up connectivity within the cells and causes hair to become thinner and, eventually, break off.
Avocado hair treatments are very easy to craft at home, even if you’re in a hurry; you can make a mask just by mixing some avocado flesh with either avocado oil or olive oil and applying it to your scalp. Add eggs for extra treatment. Leave it on for about 15 minutes, then rinse through with lukewarm water. The avocado oil will lock in your hair’s moisture while adding some of its own, making your hair smoother, shinier and less likely to tangle. These are the same effects that silicones have. Unlike silicones, though, you don’t need sulfates to rinse avocado and/or avocado oil out.
Silicones cannot be removed without sulfates, and sulfates are essentially like detergent for your hair. Common use if harsh sulfates will also deprive your hair of moisture, and you are stuck in a never-ending cycle. This is why it is better to turn to natural remedies for locking in moisture – such as avocado oil, per se. You can even make an avocado oil hairspray from a little bit of oil mixed with water for those extra hot summer days when your hair is particularly dry and frizzy.
Why Can’t I Stick To Masks Only?
While a topical application may provide temporary relief, using avocado only externally won’t do as much as if you add it into your diet and get the nutrients dispersed into your whole body from within. All of the vitamins, fatty acids, proteins, and minerals will penetrate the first layer of your scalp and hair follicles, but they won’t stay there for long. Moreover, using avocado masks (or any masks for that matter) in your hair on a daily basis might deprive your hair of its natural oils and clog the pores on your scalp – which produces a contereffect.
The answer as to how eating avocado daily benefits your hair more over applying masks daily is that you essentially “feed” your hair with the same nutrients, but you don’t drown it in them. On the other hand, eating too much avocado can also cause weight gain (as avocado is highly nutritional and also highly caloric) and produce the same countereffects.
Balance is key, so it’s best to apply masks once a week while following a healthy, well-calculated and nutritious diet (which, of course, includes some avocado daily, too). In our article touching on avocado for weight loss you will find many guides and recipes on how to make a balanced meal plan, and prepare dishes with avocado without “overdoing it”.
If you were to introduce one or two avocados a day to your diet, you would boost your nutrition immediately, which – in the long run – will work just like any other hair vitamin. If you have the option to choose – we recommend eating avocado over taking hair vitamins, as processed and extracted vitamins never work as well as the “real deal”. Many hair vitamins also don’t include fatty acids, proteins, metals, and minerals, so they don’t work as well on people whose issues are not vitamins.
Hallie Gould posted her experience with her avocado hair benefits journey on Byrdie after the following advice from influencer Victoria Hoff. Gould introduced two avocados per day into her diet for 12 months, and the results were astonishing – without any other changes in her hair care routine, she reported her hair becoming shinier, softer and her curls becoming less tangled and frizzy.
Conclusion
The high concentration of vitamins, minerals, metals, proteins and fatty acids in avocados essentially makes them work in the same way as hair vitamins do. While topical use of DIY avocado hair products might temporarily benefit your hair – oral consumption of avocado fruit will give you the same effects from within. A combination of the two will help you get longer, softer and shinier hair while also cleansing and benefiting your entire body in the process, as well.
