TOP FOODS FOR SUPER HEALTHY HAIR

Want to keep your hair looking healthy and shiny? The nutrients in these foods are said to help keep your hair strong and looking its best.

Can we keep hair healthy with the foods we eat? The answer is, yes.

According to many doctors, what you feed your body also feeds each of the 150,000 hair follicles on your head. They recommend these eight top foods that will improve the health of your hair and thus making you look and feel younger.

• Green tea, walnuts, and salmon. The polyphenols and omega-3s in these foods are good for more than your heart and brain. They also help make your hair shiny. (If you’re fighting dandruff, try rinsing with green tea. It helps prevent dandruff-causing fungus.)

• Fruit. Brightly colored fruit, such as peaches, strawberries, mango, kiwi, and tomatoes (yep, they’re a fruit!) are rich in vitamin C, which is essential for making collagen that gives structure to hair. Vitamin C firms skin, too.

• Beans, whole grains, and other healthful B-rich foods. B vitamins (especially vitamin B6 and folic acid) ensure a good supply of blood and oxygen to your hair follicles, which encourages growth and may slow hair loss. Other B-rich foods include beans, peas, carrots, cauliflower, soybeans, nuts, and eggs.

• Dark green veggies. Think spinach, broccoli, and Swiss chard. They’re great sources of vitamins A and C, which help produce sebum, the scalp oil that’s a natural hair conditioner.

• Dark sesame seeds. The Chinese swear this keeps a man’s hair darker longer.

• Say yes to avocados. Avocados and avocado oil may prevent dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which kills hair follicles, from getting where it needs to go.

Many nutrition experts also advise to pass on animal fat (the kind in red meat) in extreme cases of hair loss as animal fat can lead to more DHT production and hair-follicle damage. DHT shrinks hair follicles in men who are genetically predisposed to hair loss.

—Toni-Marie Ippolito