Gut Health and Hair Loss: A Detailed Guide for Beginners

When hair begins to thin or shed excessively, most people immediately turn to shampoos, oils, or scalp treatments. But what if the real issue isn’t your scalp at all? Increasing evidence shows a strong connection between gut health and hair loss. Since the gut controls how nutrients are absorbed and how inflammation is managed, any imbalance can directly affect the strength as well as growth of your strands.

This is why digestion-related hair loss is more common than many people realize. Poor digestion often leaves hair deprived of the nutrients it needs, leading to dullness, breakage, or increased shedding. 

In this guide, we’ll explore how your gut impacts hair health, the warning signs of imbalance, and the measures you can take to restore both better digestion and stronger, healthier hair.

How Your Gut Affects Hair Growth? 

Are you thinking about how internal health can impact your external appearance? From your nails, skin, to hair, all external organs depend highly on the nutrients your internal organs provide. Your gut comes first, the key body part responsible for digesting your food and absorbing nutrients. 

Now, let’s understand how your gut controls your hair’s texture and volume scientifically: 

• Absorbing nutrients: As said earlier, your gut is responsible for digesting food and absorbing important nutrients. In the case of hair, those nutrients are vitamin B12, biotin, iron, and zinc. However, the body prioritizes these nutrients for vital organs first, leaving hair last in line. As a result, if your gut absorbs fewer nutrients, your hair gets the least amount of them, which makes your strands thinner and weaker.

• Inflammation in the gut: If you eat junk food and have a poor diet, with no proper nutrients, fiber, or essential elements, your gut reacts to it by producing and releasing proinflammatory molecules in the entire bloodstream. This is called systemic inflammation. This inflammation affects hair in various ways, and one of those is causing hair shedding. 

• Gut issues:  Ever thought about how digestion affects hair? Beyond absorbing nutrients, your gut also plays a role in regulating key hormones like estrogen, testosterone, and cortisol. When the gut is unhealthy due to digestive issues or infections, this balance is disturbed. The result can be hormone-related hair concerns such as hair loss, slow growth, or even changes in texture, especially in women.   

• Microbiome imbalance: The gut has trillions of microbes that balance and strengthen your immune system. This gut team is called the microbiome. So, when your gut becomes unhealthy due to wrong food or infection, the microbes team goes weak, unable to help the immune system. This microbiome imbalance brings uninvited scalp issues like dandruff or an itchy scalp, which worsens with hair shedding. 

Signs that Your Gut May Be Causing Hair Loss

Here are a few gut behaviors that are a sign that it’s bothering your hair. If you notice any of the below symptoms, it’s clear you need to target your gut:

• Bloating and stomach discomfort: If ‘my tummy is hurt or ‘my stomach feels swollen’ are your words every other day, it can be a sign your gut has an issue. Bloating and stomach discomfort make it hard for your body to absorb nutrients like biotin, iron, and essential vitamins, leading to weak, unhealthy hair strands and hair loss.

• Constipation, or loose stool: When your body doesn’t flush out waste regularly or has loose stools, it’s clear your gut isn’t working well. Irregular or loose stool messes with the good bacteria in your intestines, which creates issues with digestion and absorbing nutrients. This directly influences your hair growth cycle and its texture. 

• Signs of poor nutrient absorption: Sometimes your body shows clear signs that your gut is not absorbing nutrients. If your nails break easily, or you get tired without reason, and your skin suddenly feels dull and dry, it shows your body isn’t getting enough nutrients. 

• Food sensitivities: When your gut is unhappy, your stomach gets upset, bloated, or gives cramps when eating certain types of food. During this time, your gut struggles to digest food well. As a result, your hair doesn’t get enough nutrients and vitamins, causing hair Issues.

• Co-existing acne or skin rashes: There’s always a gut-skin connection. So, if you notice skin problems like pimples or rashes alongside tummy issues, it may be because of gut inflammation affecting your body. This inflammation can hurt hair follicles and cause hair shedding and scalp issues.

Common Gut Issues That Lead to Hair Fall 

Let's understand how different gut problems impact hair.

1. Leaky gut: Lining of your intestine is designed to absorb nutrients and water from the food. When your gut is infected or unhealthy due to poor diet, the gut lining allows partially digested food, bacteria, and toxins to flow into the bloodstream.  This condition is called leaky gut. This unwanted flow in the bloodstream triggers your immune system, bringing skin and hair concerns like acne, eczema, leaky gut, and hair loss.

2. IBS or IBD: Inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome are both types of gut issues. IBS and IBD have several common symptoms, like belly pain, bloating, diarrhea, or constipation. However, in IBD, doctors can easily see ulcers in the gut through x-ray, endoscopy, or biopsy, while IBS is a functional disease with no direct physical reason. These concerns impact your gut’s potential to break down and absorb nutrients. 

So, when your gut faces any of these issues, it impacts your hair. Your strands don't get enough nutrients to nourish and grow, giving you dull, thin, and weak hair strands.  

3. Candida overgrowth: Candida, a type of yeast, lives and grows in the gut, skin, and mouth, causing no harm and helping digestion. But when your gut bacteria get imbalanced, this yeast overgrows, leading to candida infection. This gut infection causes nausea, stomach pain, bloating, diarrhea, and even mucus in stool. Due to this infection, your intestine absorbs fewer nutrients, which causes hair loss.

4. Chronic acidity: When acid reflux occurs, your stomach sends acid to your esophagus, causing heartburn and nausea. It lasts more than a week; it's called chronic acidity. This condition affects your digestive system, slowing protein breakdown and directly impacting your hair health due to a lack of nutrients.

Gut Issues and Their Impact on Hair Health in a Nutshell

How to Restore Gut Health for Better Hair

Once you know the concern, it's time to resolve it. So, here are a few tips for you on how to restore gut health for hair:

• Eat fermented foods: Add fermented foods like curd, kanji, and pickled vegetables. Fermented foods have probiotics, which are good bacteria, promoting healthy hair growth. They help digest proteins and vitamin B12, which is essential for hair growth. 

It also improves the gut environment by restoring the gut microbiome and balancing stomach acid. So, balanced gut bacteria equals a happy tummy and healthy hair.

• Reduce processed sugar and fried foods: Although fried crabs and processed sugar are tempting and tasty, they feed the harmful bacteria and yeast in your gut. These bad bacteria and yeast slow down the digestion process and increase the chance of acidity and inflammation.

• Drink herbal teas: Not a favorite of many, but of your gut, try herbal teas made with fennel, ginger, and licorice (mulethi). Together, these help to relax your stomach muscles, reduce gas, calm inflammation, and create a healthy gut environment.

• Add ghee to meals: Many assume ghee is bad for health, but a limited amount can do wonders for your gut lining. Ghee contains butyrate that improves the lining of your intestine, improving nutrition absorption and decreasing the chances of leaky gut.

• Chew more, don't drink water with meals: It's natural to drink water while eating, but that doesn't make it a healthy option. Your stomach makes acid to digest the food you eat. When you drink water while eating, it dilutes the acid, slowing down the digestion process and causing issues like bloating and gas.

Besides this, chew your food at least 21 times before swallowing it. When your food reaches the tummy, well mixed and broken down, digestion becomes smoother and faster.

Hair-Friendly Nutrients That Depend on Gut Health

Vitamins and nutrients play a very important role in your hair and gut health. Here are a few essential nutrients important for your gut and hair: 

• Biotin (Vitamin B7): Vitamin B7, also called hair vitamin, as it helps to produce keratin, the most significant part of hair. Your body produces Biotin naturally. However, you must keep your gut microbiome balanced to get the benefits of biotin. Adding fermented foods can restore gut flora after tummy issues like diarrhea, constipation, etc.

• Vitamin B12 & D3: These two vitamins produce red blood cells and create new hair follicles. Red blood cells supply all the nutrients and oxygen to your hair strands, keeping them healthy. But when the stomach or intestinal lining faces problems like inflammation or acidity, this process is disrupted, often leading to hair shedding, dullness, or even premature greying.

• Zinc & Iron: Zinc is essential to repair hair cells and balance the scalp oil, while iron helps transport oxygen to follicles. Gut inflammation, like gastritis, leaky gut, acidity, etc., reduces zinc absorption. As a result, low zinc brings hair issues like dandruff, scalp irritation, and slow hair growth. Iron requires enough stomach acid to convert dietary iron into an absorbable form. During gut issues, the excess acid damages the lining, and medicines or drinking water with a meal can reduce the acid too much. This causes iron deficiency in the hair and body. 

• Protein: Your hair is 95% protein called keratin. But eating protein isn’t enough if your gut doesn’t break it down into amino acids. Lack of protein in the body makes your hair thin, brittle, and prone to damage.  

Here’s a summary of what new foods you need to add to provide enough nutrients to your hair for healthy hair growth:  

Lifestyle Practices that Heal Gut & Hair Together 

Everything you do impacts your health, and your hair is no exception. Instead of stressing over what to do or what to avoid, here are some simple lifestyle tips you can try to reduce gut inflammation and improve hair loss:

• Eat meals on time: Your gut has its own natural body clock. It remembers when you eat food most often, producing stomach acid then. When you skip that time and change it, your tummy gets confused and upset. So, try to return to your school habit of eating breakfast by 9 AM, lunch at 12 PM, and dinner at 8 PM. During school, you have a meal time every day. The same habit can help you avoid gut issues like bloating and acidity.   

• Stay active: Try to move your body, whether by walking, dancing, or doing home chores, just get up and move at least 30 minutes a day. You can start with a daily 10-minute walk and 20 minutes of exercise early in the morning. Moving your body helps to improve blood circulation, including to your scalp. Besides, it helps food to move in your digestive tract and prevents gut issues like bloating and constipation. 

• Practice deep breathing or meditation: Take deep breaths and practice sitting calmly to do meditation at least 10 minutes a day. It can be difficult initially, but these 10 minutes of silence and doing nothing can relax your mind and decrease stress, which can bring gut issues and stress-related hair loss. You can start with box breathing, where you inhale for four seconds, hold for four seconds, exhale for four seconds, and again hold for four seconds. Repeat this five times a day. 

• Prioritize sleep: Getting enough sleep is one of the simplest ways to support your gut health. During the night, your gut carries out most of its repair and digestion. When sleep is disrupted, this process slows down, leading to inflammation and poor nutrient absorption. Over time, this can show up in your hair as weak roots, dull strands, and excessive shedding. 

• Stay hydrated: Two liters of water are essential for the body. Your gut highly depends on the water you take in. Drinking enough water helps to take out toxins from the body, which can be the reason behind gut inflammation or other health issues. Take small sips of water throughout the day, and avoid large gulps, especially during meals. 

When to Seek Help for Gut-Hair Issues?

If you are trying all tips, tricks, and products yet seeing no improvement, it might be a sign that your hair needs expert care. So, here are key signs you need to seek help: 

• Digestion issues + hair fall: If you have digestion issues like constipation, nausea, or bloating for more than two weeks along with hair fall, it’s a sign your gut is facing some issue. So, it absorbs fewer nutrients and impacts your hair health. Consulting an expert at this stage can help you identify the key deficiencies and take the proper treatment. 

• Antibiotics or restrictive diets: If you recently went through some medical conditions, and you have been taking antibiotics, then you can easily say the hair issue is from the gut. Sometimes, the antibiotics wipe out the good bacteria in your tummy, slow the digestive system, and prevent it from absorbing enough nutrients. A consulting doctor can help you restore gut flora and nutritional balance early, before your hair shedding becomes more complicated. 

• Suspected food intolerance: If your stomach has bloating, gas, or a skin breakout after eating something, then stop feeding yourself that. No matter how good that can be, whether it's gluten (wheat), dairy, soy, or even processed sugar, avoid eating it if your stomach has intolerance. Knowing your food sensitivity and avoiding it is essential, as it starts low-grade inflammation in the gut. This can further damage the gut lining, leading to poor nutrient absorption.  

• Hair fall continues despite scalp care: If your hair fall continues for over two months, even after doing scalp and hair care. Maybe you are targeting the wrong area. Hair fall is not limited to only scalp health. Even stress and gut issues can cause hair concerns. And it’s wise to consult an expert to know the root cause. 

Traya’s Expert Tip: If you suddenly find a bald spot, widening of the hair part, or very early grey hair, maybe you are a victim of medical conditions like thyroid imbalance or severe nutritional deficiency. So, rather than waiting and trying remedies, it's better to consult an expert and take tests. You can ask for tests like complete blood count, iron panel, vitamin B12 & Folate, and stool test if you have digestive issues. These tests will help you know the early signs and seek help accordingly. 

FAQs 

Can gut issues really cause hair fall?

Yes, gut issues can cause hair fall as all essential nutrients required for healthy hair growth are transported to hair from the gut. When your gut is unhealthy, the hair doesn’t get efficient nutrients and oxygen, leading to hair dullness, weakening, and even shedding.

Will probiotics help my hair grow?

Yes, probiotics can support hair growth. By improving the gut microbiome, probiotics help restore balance in gut bacteria, which enhances nutrient absorption and can even support the production of vitamins like biotin. Since biotin is essential for producing keratin—the protein that strengthens hair strands, this connection makes probiotics a helpful ally in maintaining healthier hair.

Does bloating indicate nutrient deficiency?

Bloating doesn’t directly indicate nutrient deficiency. Instead, it’s a sign your gut is unhappy, and it might need help to restore gut health for hair. If you face bloating frequently, your intestinal lining might be equally affected, slowing nutrient absorption.

How long to restore gut and see hair results?

Restoring gut health cannot happen overnight. However, with constant efforts, you can see improvement in your gut health within 4-6 weeks with proper bowel movements and healthy skin. At the same time, your hair might need three to six months to show visible improvement in thickness or reduced hair shedding.

Should I stop oiling if it’s a gut issue?

No, you shouldn’t stop scalp care because you have gut-related hair fall. Both internal and external hair care are essential to reduce hair shedding.

Conclusion 

Every digestive issue has an impact on your hair, whether directly or indirectly. While your scalp is the house where hair grows, it’s your gut that supplies the essential nutrients. That’s why gut health is often the hidden root cause of hair loss. A healthy gut ensures your body absorbs nutrients from food and delivers them to your hair, keeping strands strong and healthy.

From your daily diet to your lifestyle choices, every detail influences both your gut and your hair. By improving gut health, you can activate growth, strengthen roots, and restore smoothness to your strands.

You can start small with simple, actionable changes. Focus on adding more fermented foods, getting seven to eight hours of restful sleep, and eating based on what your body truly needs instead of cravings. These little efforts can create a big difference in your inner hair health.

And if you’re still unsure about the real cause of your hair concerns, try Traya’s quick hair test. This science-backed quiz asks precise questions designed by experts to help you understand your hair and inner health better, offering a personalized solution tailored just for you.