Deep dive · Hair at Health Royals · 7 min read
The strand you see in the mirror was finished weeks ago. Everything that decided how it looks happened out of sight, in a follicle a few millimetres under the skin, and that is also where nutrition does its work.
The short answer
• The visible strand is keratinised cells with no metabolism of its own. The follicle beneath it is living tissue, and it is the follicle that nutrition supplies.
• Every follicle runs its own cycle of growth, transition and rest. The hairs on one head sit at different points in it, which is why losing some hair every day is ordinary.
• Biotin and zinc contribute to the maintenance of normal hair. Hair Beautification carries both, together with vitamin B6 and 300 mg Keranat® millet extract, the daily dose used in the twelve-week placebo-controlled study on the material.
Nutrition for hair at Health Royals
Hair Beautification provides 300 mg Keranat® millet extract from Robertet per daily dose, the same amount as in the randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled twelve-week study on the material in women, together with 10 mg zinc as zinc citrate, 50 µg biotin and 1.4 mg vitamin B6. Biotin contributes to the maintenance of normal hair. Zinc contributes to the maintenance of normal hair, normal skin and normal nails. Vitamin B6 contributes to normal protein and glycogen metabolism.
See Hair Beautification, hair supplement with millet extract
How does hair actually grow?
It is often said that hair is dead. That is true of the part you can see: the strand above the skin is keratinised cells that have finished their work. What happens to that strand is a question of care. What happens to the next one is a question of supply.
The living part sits below. Each hair grows out of a follicle, a small organ in the skin connected to blood vessels, nerves and hormones. At its base lies the dermal papilla, surrounded by a reservoir of stem cells. Together they decide when a new strand starts and how long the follicle keeps building it.
The work is demanding. Cells divide quickly, assemble amino acids into keratin, cross-link them and push the finished material upwards at roughly a centimetre a month. The length you are looking at is a record of the months behind you, and the work runs in a cycle with three named phases.
Anagen
Growth
The follicle is actively building a strand. The long phase, measured in years, and its length sets how long hair can get.
Catagen
Transition
Building stops and the lower follicle regresses. A short phase, measured in weeks, and the one nobody notices.
Telogen
Rest
Still anchored, no longer growing. Measured in months. The strand is released as the follicle starts the next round.
Hair is produced in rounds, not continuously, and every strand on your head is at a different point in its own round.
How much hair is it normal to lose?
Some, every day. Because the cycle ends in release, shedding is the system finishing a round, not failing. A strand in the brush is usually a follicle that has completed its work and is preparing for the next.
This is also why counting is a poor instrument. What ends up in the brush depends on how often you wash, how you style and when you last brushed. The useful signal is the change: shedding clearly heavier than your own normal, coming on suddenly, leaving defined patches, or continuing month after month.
Hair that feels thinner is not always hair that is leaving. It can be hair growing finer, or hair breaking before it reaches the length you want.
One calm distinction belongs here. Shedding that is sudden, patchy or painful, that arrives with other symptoms such as marked fatigue or weight change, or that begins after a new medication, is a question for a doctor, and worth asking early. Most hair change is slower than that, and tied to age, hormones, seasons and habits.
The question is never how many hairs you lose. It is whether that number has changed for you.
What decides the quality of hair?
Three separate properties, and they can change independently. Density is how many hairs grow in a given area. Diameter is how thick each strand is. Durability is whether a strand survives long enough to reach the length you want.
Density and diameter are decided in the follicle, and so by everything the follicle is exposed to: age, hormones, circulation, inflammation and how well the body is supplied. Around hormonal transitions the balance of the cycle can shift, and new strands can emerge finer than the ones they replace, which we cover in the biology of menopause.
Durability is decided mostly above the skin, by heat, friction, tight styling and repetition. It is the part you control directly, and it usually responds fastest.
Stress and sleep sit across both. Prolonged load changes the environment the follicle works in, and hair is not the body's first priority when resources are short, which is one reason hair often registers a difficult period months after it has passed. More in the biology of stress, sleep and recovery.
Thinner-feeling hair, finer hair and breaking hair are three different things, and naming which one you have is the first useful step.
Why does the scalp matter?
Because the scalp is skin, with the same barrier, pH balance, sebum and microbiome logic as the skin on your face, and because it is the tissue every follicle sits in. When that skin is dry, irritated or out of balance, the environment around the follicle changes with it, and research has connected the scalp microbiome with dandruff and the immune responses that come with it. The practical answer is usually a gentler routine rather than a longer one. We go through the scalp in its own right, including dandruff and itching, in the scalp: the living part of the hair system, and the barrier thinking in skin biology applies there too.
A calm scalp is part of the follicle's working conditions, and it deserves the same care as the skin on your face.
What does nutrition do for hair?
It supplies the follicle that is building the next strand. The visible strand is largely keratin, structural proteins assembled from amino acids and cross-linked into something that bends thousands of times without snapping. One amino acid matters more than most: cysteine carries a sulphur atom, and the bridges between cysteine units give keratin much of its strength.
Assembling that structure is enzymatic work, and enzymes depend on specific micronutrients being available. You are not feeding the strand that exists. You are supplying the follicle building the next one.
A handful of nutrients have health claims authorised in the EU, and the wording is precise. Biotin contributes to the maintenance of normal hair. Zinc contributes to the maintenance of normal hair, normal skin and normal nails, and to normal protein synthesis. Selenium contributes to the maintenance of normal hair, and copper to normal hair pigmentation. Vitamin B6 contributes to normal protein and glycogen metabolism and to normal cysteine synthesis. Notice what those claims are about: maintaining what is normal, and the steps involved in building keratin. That is exactly where nutrition sits.
The research literature reaches further, and it is best described by what it measured. One study examined how VEGF-mediated angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels, related to follicle size and hair growth in an experimental model. Other work has examined how remodelling of the extracellular matrix, the network that holds tissue together, changes in skin and follicles. A review examined inflammation and oxidative stress in patterned hair loss. Those are mechanisms under study, and they point to where the follicle is sensitive: its blood supply, the tissue around it and the skin it sits in. What we know with more certainty is simpler: the follicle builds keratin from what it is given, and a few nutrients have a documented role in that.
Nutrition supplies the machinery that builds hair. It reaches the next strand, not the one you already have.
How did Health Royals choose the nutrition in Hair Beautification?
By starting with the follicle's work and asking what has been studied, at what dose and in whom.
Three of the nutrients above sit in Hair Beautification: 10 mg zinc as zinc citrate, 50 µg biotin and 1.4 mg vitamin B6. Biotin contributes to the maintenance of normal hair. Zinc contributes to the maintenance of normal hair, normal skin and normal nails. Vitamin B6 contributes to normal protein and glycogen metabolism. They sit at a nutritional level, which is where vitamins and minerals belong: the claims apply, and the amounts stay within everyday ranges. For us the dose is as important as the raw material.
The fourth ingredient is the one that defines the product. Keranat® is a millet extract made by Robertet in Grasse, a specialist manufacturer of plant extracts with a published human study on its own material. In a study on Keranat®, randomised, double-blind and placebo-controlled, women took 300 mg a day for twelve weeks. Hair Beautification contains 300 mg per daily dose. That is a decision, not a coincidence: where a branded raw material has a human study, the product carries the dose the study used. Keranat® is a botanical without an authorised health claim in the EU, so we report what the study measured rather than what the extract does, and we go through that trial in what the Keranat® trial measured. For us, the ingredient cannot be separated from its source, manufacturer and studied dose.
Twelve weeks is also the shortest sensible period over which to judge anything in hair, since what you change today is recorded in strands that have not appeared yet. That is why a hair supplement is taken every day for months, and why the jar is designed to stand out on a shelf and become part of the routine. Health Royals works with specialist manufacturers, researchers and supplier networks when raw materials are selected, and we explain what a branded ingredient guarantees in branded versus generic ingredients. Which other hair supplements have research behind them we answer in which hair supplements does the evidence support.
And if you are looking at your own hair right now?
This article is about how hair works. If your question is about thinning hair in women in particular, we keep that in a separate guide with the practical side alongside it, and our hair page collects the wider context.
We have done the selection so that you do not have to. Hair Beautification contains Keranat® millet extract at 300 mg per daily dose, the amount used in its twelve-week study, with zinc, biotin and vitamin B6 at nutritional levels.
Read the need guide on thinning hair
Go deeper
- Guide: hair from within
- Thinning hair in women
- The scalp: the living part of the hair system
- What the Keranat® trial measured
- Which hair supplements does the evidence support?
- Biotin for hair and skin
- The biology of stress, sleep and recovery
- The biology of menopause
Frequently asked questions
How much hair is it normal to lose in a day?
Some, because every follicle ends its cycle by releasing the strand and the follicles on one head are at different points in it. The amount in the brush varies with washing and styling, so the useful measure is a change in your own normal, not a count.
How long before a change in routine shows in my hair?
Hair emerges at roughly a centimetre a month and the cycle is measured in months, so anything you change today is recorded in hair that has not appeared yet. Twelve weeks is the minimum sensible period over which to judge anything.
What is in Hair Beautification, and why those amounts?
Keranat® millet extract from Robertet at 300 mg, the daily dose used in the placebo-controlled twelve-week study on the material in women, with 10 mg zinc as zinc citrate, 50 µg biotin and 1.4 mg vitamin B6 at nutritional levels.
Is hair that feels thinner the same as hair loss?
No. Hair can feel thinner because fewer strands are growing, because each strand is finer, or because strands break before they get long. Only the first is about loss.
Sources
- Paus R, Cotsarelis G. The biology of hair follicles. N Engl J Med. 1999.
- Giesen M, et al. Hair follicle stem cells and regeneration. Trends in Cell Biology. 2021;31(9):713 to 726.
- Fujiwara H. Extracellular matrix remodeling in skin and follicles. Int J Mol Sci. 2022;23(1):385.
- Yano K, et al. Control of hair growth and follicle size by VEGF-mediated angiogenesis. J Clin Invest. 2001;107(4):409 to 417.
- Clavaud C, et al. Dandruff is associated with changes in the scalp microbiome and host immune responses. PLOS ONE. 2018;13(7):e0198485.
- Tosti A, et al. Role of inflammation and oxidative stress in patterned hair loss. Dermatol Ther. 2020;33(6):e13985.
Important information
This article is educational reading and general information. It is not medical advice, and it does not diagnose or treat any condition. Food supplements are not a substitute for a varied diet and a balanced lifestyle. Individual needs and experiences vary. If you have questions about supplements, medication, allergies or your health, speak to a qualified healthcare professional. Sudden, patchy or rapidly progressing hair loss should always be assessed by a doctor.
