M a x i m i s e H a i r G r o w t h
Spend thirty minutes each day sitting in the sun...
Exposing your hair and scalp to direct sunlight has a dramatically positive and immediate effect on the health and growth of your hair. Without exposure to sunlight, hair becomes limp and lifeless. You can see for yourself the positive effect that sunlight has on your hair. If you’ve just got up in the morning, you can observe the state of your hair. It’s probably a bit limp as a result of you sleeping all night in the dark. If you go out and sit in the sun for thirty minutes, at the end of this time, you’ll notice that your hair seems thicker and that it’s largely standing upright on your head, instead of hanging limp. It’s very telling that exposure to sunlight is necessary for your body to produce the Vitamin D that it needs, and that Vitamin D deficiency can result in hair thinning and hair loss. Conversely, having a plentiful supply of Vitamin D in your body, as a result of adequate exposure to sunlight, has a positive effect on the health of your hair and on its growth.
Your body can’t produce very much Vitamin D by itself. It can manufacture only some Vitamin D from food sources like salmon, sardines, milk, eggs and mushrooms. However, your body readily creates the necessary building blocks for Vitamin D production from the nutrition you supply to it. It’s the exposure of your body to sunlight which is necessary for your body to manufacture Vitamin D in the quantity that it needs each day. When you expose your skin to the ultraviolet radiation of sunlight, your body converts the building blocks already in your body into Vitamin D, so that your body can readily utilise it and benefit from it. Vitamin D receptors can be found all over your body, in your skin and in your hair, so the more you expose your skin and hair to sunlight each day, the more Vitamin D your body will produce each day.
Since exposure to sunlight is so important, in order to ensure that your body produces enough Vitamin D each day, it makes sense to figure out something you can do habitually on a daily basis to ensure that you get thirty minutes of exposure to sunlight each day. That something is eating your lunch each day sitting out in the sun. This is the perfect time of the day to sit in the sun because you’re generally too busy at other times of the day. You can’t guarantee exposure to sunlight while you’re exercising in the morning because half of your mornings spent exercising before the day begins will be indoors doing things like weight-training for your muscular exercise. (The other half of your mornings spent exercising before the day begins will probably be outdoors doing things like running for your aerobic exercise.) The end of the working day isn’t any good for guaranteeing exposure to sunlight, because that’s generally when the sun is going down and is weaker in its intensity. It’s at lunch time, in the middle of the day, that the sun is at its strongest, so this is the best time to sit under the sun and let its rays condition your hair.
At this time when you’re taking a break from work and relaxing while eating your lunch, sitting in the sun is very welcome because it’s naturally pleasurable and therapeutic to feel the warm rays of the sun beating down on your skin. Spending an entire thirty minutes each day sitting under the sun is necessary because some days will be cloudy and overcast. Because the amount of available sunlight will be much less on these overcast days, your body won’t produce as much Vitamin D. Sitting under the sun for thirty minutes on the days that are clear and bright will make up for these overcast days by enabling your body to produce a greater amount of Vitamin D.
The importance of getting enough exposure to sunlight each day, so that your body can produce enough Vitamin D, is highlighted by the many symptoms of Vitamin D deficiency:
It’s obvious by now that the pleasure we derive from sitting in the sun isn’t just a superficial sensation arising from the feeling of its warm rays hitting our skin. This pleasure is actually the result of something much more tangible – the Vitamin D that our body manufactures when we expose it to sunlight, which is so important for our health and well-being, not to mention the health and vibrancy of our hair. It’s well worth making this pleasure a permanent part of your daily routine.
Copyright 2013 Andrew Mackinnon. All rights reserved.