Aviah
Well-Known Member
2011 Starflower oil/ Omega 3 Challenge
CHALLENGE CLOSED
Note: The title is meant to read "challenge" but I can't seem to change it...
So I wanted to increase hair growth, but not topically (though it works, its somewhat of a waste of money). I figured why not nourish my body from the inside out? Sure we all know about Biotin, MSM, and other internal growth aids, but I found something a little different here and wanted to try it out.
THIS IS NOT MY ARTICLE, I FOUND IT ONLINE
Faster Hair Growth
Welcome to faster hair growth. After personally spending, or should I say wasting, countless amounts of time and money on hair care products and treatments, I have decided to tell you my story in the hope that you can benefit from my research and experiences.
For most of my adult life I have been plagued with weak lank hair. I have tried almost every treatment (including the ones that you leave on after your bath) and remedy going, so I decided enough was enough and started to research in depth about what makes hair grow and what would make your hair grow faster, healthier and stronger.
So let me explain a little bit about hair so you can better understand.
Each hair on your body grows from its own individual hair follicle. Inside the follicle, new hair cells form at the root of the hair shaft. As the cells form, they push older cells out of the follicle. As they are pushed out, the cells die and become the hair we see.
A follicle will produce new cells for a certain period of time depending on where it is located on your body. This period is called the growth phase. Then it will stop for a period of time (the rest phase), and then restart the growth phase all over again.
When the hair follicle enters the rest phase, the hair shaft breaks, so the existing hair falls out and a new hair takes its place. Therefore, the length of time that the hair is able to spend growing during the growth phase controls the maximum length of the hair.
I also found that human hair seems to grow at a pretty consistent rate of about half a millimetre or so per day, or about half an inch every month (most authority sites seemed to agree on a specific rate of 0.44 mm per day). It may grow faster or slower depending on your age, your genetics and your hormonal state (pregnancy seems to have an affect on hair), but half a millimetre per day is a good average.
Well all this information was fine but my hair did not seem to be growing at this rate, in fact I bet my hair was not growing anywhere near this fast, I would have settled for normal hair growth !! Hell I would have settled for semi normal hair growth. I found this paragraph below which is allegedly normal hair growth!!
Normal Hair Growth
About 90 percent of the hair on a person's scalp is growing at any one time. The growth phase lasts between two and six years. Ten percent of the hair is in a resting phase that lasts two to three months. At the end of its resting stage, the hair is shed. When a hair is shed, a new hair from the same follicle replaces it and the growing cycle starts again. Scalp hair grows about one-half inch a month. As people age, their rate of hair growth slows.
So after all this research I chanced upon a study that was done in Sao Paulo Brazil. The study was about hair growth and it seemed to show that with certain marine extracts and a nutrient called GLA you could not only increase the rate of growth but the number of hairs per square centimetre on your head…
I thought great, now I am getting somewhere.
The next day I happened to be in the gym on the walking machine when one of the instructors came over for a chat. I was telling him about the research that I had been doing about my hair, when I happened to mention the study in Brazil. He laughed and said “of course your hair will grow strong and healthy if you feed it the correct nutrients as that’s how your entire body works!!”
So I asked him what he meant by this and he explained it like this…
“Many of the western world’s health problems can be attributed to poor nutrition. Supplying the body with the correct nutrients is vital to healthy hair. Starved of essential nutrients the body reacts, and as well as other health issues hair health can be compromised. Dull and unhealthy hair can often indicate other problems.
The same principles apply to healthy hair as to a healthy garden; if you want a good lawn you need to maintain the soil underneath. To have a healthy head of hair, therefore, you need to make sure it is being fed the right nutrients from inside. This means improving your diet and ensuring it contains the right balance”.
I thought, well that makes sense, so I asked what he thought I might be lacking. He asked a little bit about my diet, lifestyle and the quality of my skin and nails, to which I replied, were all very poor. He then said that with all the information I have supplied him with and bearing in mind the hair “issues” I had, almost without a doubt I was lacking omega 3 EPA and the omega 6 nutrient GLA.
So very intrigued by my conversation at the gym I set off to do more research armed with what the gym instructor had just told me.
I started researching again and all that I had been told that night at the gym was beginning to look like some very sound advice. All the evidence was pointing to me lacking the vital nutrients for my body to be able to grow properly and it really looked to be as simple as that!
Now I felt close to getting that faster hair growth that I badly wanted, so all I did for three days was look into how I got these nutrients omega 3 EPA and GLA into my diet.
This is where I got a little bit disheartened because all the research was pointing to eating “ rabbit food” (healthy green stuff) beans, pulses, nuts etc., but the biggest off putting moment was when I found out I would have to eat fish as they were the highest in omega 3, and I can’t stand fish. A tuna sandwich yes, mackerel, herring and sardines three times a week NO WAY, just not up for it!!
So that was it, the only thing I could do was to find an omega 3 EPA supplement as there was no way I was living my life on fish and pulses.
So I started looking for omega 3 supplements and very soon it became obvious that fish oil capsules held the most omega 3 EPA content, so I thought yes, fish oil capsules, I can do that, so I continued my search for a high quality fish oil supplement.
I came across one that was allegedly “the strongest oil on the planet” so I bookmarked it and moved on. After searching for another 30 minuets I got bored and couldn’t find anything stronger so went back and started to look at the product I had bookmarked in more detail and noticed that the capsules contained another oil as well as the fish oil, and the oil was called “borage oil” or “starflower oil”, they called it both names on their site.
So I thought why would you mix two oils together? And then I read this paragraph from their site...
Why supplement with GLA?
A body with a healthy biochemistry has the ability to produce GLA from the most essential fat, linoleic acid. Linoleic acid is found most abundantly in the omega 6 family of oils, which include safflower, sunflower and corn oils. It has been estimated that a majority of Americans and Europeans consume far too many omega 6 fatty acids in proportion to the beneficial omega 3 fatty acids (by approximately 10:1) whereas most biochemists agree that an optimal ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids should be approximately 1:1. Despite the obvious over consumption of the omega 6 oils rich in linoleic acid, some individuals lack the ability to convert linoleic acid into the much needed GLA.
Wow! I thought that’s me... So without delay I ordered some of this oil. It arrived very promptly and I started to take this very strong fish oil combined with Borage oil.
Now I honestly thought that the first place I would notice any changes (if any were going to take place) would have been the hair on my head, but no... After taking the capsules for about 6 or 7 days the very first thing I noticed was my nails were growing faster (I knew because I bite them) but I thought it was just a coincidence.
Over the next few weeks a series of events started to take place…
The first thing was my nails growing longer quickly. I also noticed that my sleep had become more sound? (Very odd), and I also noticed that a patch of dry skin that I had on my upper arm was starting to go?
Now don’t get me wrong I was by no means depressed but my moods had changed too. I was really happy J but what about my hair? Well …
IT’S GROWING, YES YOU BETTER BELIVE IT, ITS GROWING LIKE MAD!!!
CHALLENGE CLOSED
Note: The title is meant to read "challenge" but I can't seem to change it...
So I wanted to increase hair growth, but not topically (though it works, its somewhat of a waste of money). I figured why not nourish my body from the inside out? Sure we all know about Biotin, MSM, and other internal growth aids, but I found something a little different here and wanted to try it out.
THIS IS NOT MY ARTICLE, I FOUND IT ONLINE
Faster Hair Growth
Welcome to faster hair growth. After personally spending, or should I say wasting, countless amounts of time and money on hair care products and treatments, I have decided to tell you my story in the hope that you can benefit from my research and experiences.
For most of my adult life I have been plagued with weak lank hair. I have tried almost every treatment (including the ones that you leave on after your bath) and remedy going, so I decided enough was enough and started to research in depth about what makes hair grow and what would make your hair grow faster, healthier and stronger.
So let me explain a little bit about hair so you can better understand.
Each hair on your body grows from its own individual hair follicle. Inside the follicle, new hair cells form at the root of the hair shaft. As the cells form, they push older cells out of the follicle. As they are pushed out, the cells die and become the hair we see.
A follicle will produce new cells for a certain period of time depending on where it is located on your body. This period is called the growth phase. Then it will stop for a period of time (the rest phase), and then restart the growth phase all over again.
When the hair follicle enters the rest phase, the hair shaft breaks, so the existing hair falls out and a new hair takes its place. Therefore, the length of time that the hair is able to spend growing during the growth phase controls the maximum length of the hair.
I also found that human hair seems to grow at a pretty consistent rate of about half a millimetre or so per day, or about half an inch every month (most authority sites seemed to agree on a specific rate of 0.44 mm per day). It may grow faster or slower depending on your age, your genetics and your hormonal state (pregnancy seems to have an affect on hair), but half a millimetre per day is a good average.
Well all this information was fine but my hair did not seem to be growing at this rate, in fact I bet my hair was not growing anywhere near this fast, I would have settled for normal hair growth !! Hell I would have settled for semi normal hair growth. I found this paragraph below which is allegedly normal hair growth!!
Normal Hair Growth
About 90 percent of the hair on a person's scalp is growing at any one time. The growth phase lasts between two and six years. Ten percent of the hair is in a resting phase that lasts two to three months. At the end of its resting stage, the hair is shed. When a hair is shed, a new hair from the same follicle replaces it and the growing cycle starts again. Scalp hair grows about one-half inch a month. As people age, their rate of hair growth slows.
So after all this research I chanced upon a study that was done in Sao Paulo Brazil. The study was about hair growth and it seemed to show that with certain marine extracts and a nutrient called GLA you could not only increase the rate of growth but the number of hairs per square centimetre on your head…
I thought great, now I am getting somewhere.
The next day I happened to be in the gym on the walking machine when one of the instructors came over for a chat. I was telling him about the research that I had been doing about my hair, when I happened to mention the study in Brazil. He laughed and said “of course your hair will grow strong and healthy if you feed it the correct nutrients as that’s how your entire body works!!”
So I asked him what he meant by this and he explained it like this…
“Many of the western world’s health problems can be attributed to poor nutrition. Supplying the body with the correct nutrients is vital to healthy hair. Starved of essential nutrients the body reacts, and as well as other health issues hair health can be compromised. Dull and unhealthy hair can often indicate other problems.
The same principles apply to healthy hair as to a healthy garden; if you want a good lawn you need to maintain the soil underneath. To have a healthy head of hair, therefore, you need to make sure it is being fed the right nutrients from inside. This means improving your diet and ensuring it contains the right balance”.
I thought, well that makes sense, so I asked what he thought I might be lacking. He asked a little bit about my diet, lifestyle and the quality of my skin and nails, to which I replied, were all very poor. He then said that with all the information I have supplied him with and bearing in mind the hair “issues” I had, almost without a doubt I was lacking omega 3 EPA and the omega 6 nutrient GLA.
So very intrigued by my conversation at the gym I set off to do more research armed with what the gym instructor had just told me.
I started researching again and all that I had been told that night at the gym was beginning to look like some very sound advice. All the evidence was pointing to me lacking the vital nutrients for my body to be able to grow properly and it really looked to be as simple as that!
Now I felt close to getting that faster hair growth that I badly wanted, so all I did for three days was look into how I got these nutrients omega 3 EPA and GLA into my diet.
This is where I got a little bit disheartened because all the research was pointing to eating “ rabbit food” (healthy green stuff) beans, pulses, nuts etc., but the biggest off putting moment was when I found out I would have to eat fish as they were the highest in omega 3, and I can’t stand fish. A tuna sandwich yes, mackerel, herring and sardines three times a week NO WAY, just not up for it!!
So that was it, the only thing I could do was to find an omega 3 EPA supplement as there was no way I was living my life on fish and pulses.
So I started looking for omega 3 supplements and very soon it became obvious that fish oil capsules held the most omega 3 EPA content, so I thought yes, fish oil capsules, I can do that, so I continued my search for a high quality fish oil supplement.
I came across one that was allegedly “the strongest oil on the planet” so I bookmarked it and moved on. After searching for another 30 minuets I got bored and couldn’t find anything stronger so went back and started to look at the product I had bookmarked in more detail and noticed that the capsules contained another oil as well as the fish oil, and the oil was called “borage oil” or “starflower oil”, they called it both names on their site.
So I thought why would you mix two oils together? And then I read this paragraph from their site...
Why supplement with GLA?
A body with a healthy biochemistry has the ability to produce GLA from the most essential fat, linoleic acid. Linoleic acid is found most abundantly in the omega 6 family of oils, which include safflower, sunflower and corn oils. It has been estimated that a majority of Americans and Europeans consume far too many omega 6 fatty acids in proportion to the beneficial omega 3 fatty acids (by approximately 10:1) whereas most biochemists agree that an optimal ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids should be approximately 1:1. Despite the obvious over consumption of the omega 6 oils rich in linoleic acid, some individuals lack the ability to convert linoleic acid into the much needed GLA.
Wow! I thought that’s me... So without delay I ordered some of this oil. It arrived very promptly and I started to take this very strong fish oil combined with Borage oil.
Now I honestly thought that the first place I would notice any changes (if any were going to take place) would have been the hair on my head, but no... After taking the capsules for about 6 or 7 days the very first thing I noticed was my nails were growing faster (I knew because I bite them) but I thought it was just a coincidence.
Over the next few weeks a series of events started to take place…
The first thing was my nails growing longer quickly. I also noticed that my sleep had become more sound? (Very odd), and I also noticed that a patch of dry skin that I had on my upper arm was starting to go?
Now don’t get me wrong I was by no means depressed but my moods had changed too. I was really happy J but what about my hair? Well …
IT’S GROWING, YES YOU BETTER BELIVE IT, ITS GROWING LIKE MAD!!!
Last edited:
) and ends July 14th!! (You may continue after if you wish of course)
