How biotin benefits my haircare routine

With so many vitamins and supplements on the market that advertise hair growth and other benefits it’s often hard to figure out which ones are actually worth your time. We can’t promise that any one brand of vitamin promising to help your hair, skin, or nails is going to help more than the other, but we can promise that there are a few key ingredients to look out for in these supplements that provide the most benefit. Biotin is one of those ingredients, and its many health benefits all boil down to a couple parts of the body: the hair, skin, and nails.

Biotin, which is actually a water-soluble form of vitamin B, occurs naturally in the body and helps your body convert nutrients into your hair, skin, and nails. For this reason it plays a huge role in the health of those parts of the body, and can impact how quickly they grow and how strong they are. If you’ve ever noticed that your nails are feeling more brittle or less strong than usual, it’s a pretty good indicator that your body isn’t getting enough biotin or vitamin B. A diet rich in biotin will help your hair grow faster and stay stronger for longer. While you can’t really add nutrients to hair once it’s grown out of your scalp, you can help your new growth by making sure it’s full of the right nutrients.

Research seems to be conflicted about whether or not biotin supplements will actually help hair growth if your body isn’t deficient of biotin already (which is also rare, since it occurs naturally in many foods). Regardless, many doctors recommend loading up on the stuff anyway—just in case. Many studies have found that taking biotin supplements will help hair growth as well as reducing the amount of hair shed over time, but not enough evidence has been gathered to prove that biotin supplements play a major role in hair health—but there’s no harm in trying!

Your hair, skin, and nails are made up of keratin, a naturally occurring substance in the body. Biotin helps your body convert carbohydrates and fats from food into nutrients that are broken down and distributed into different parts of the body, like your hair, skin, and nails. Many people who experience thinning hair or hair loss will find that supplementing their diet with more biotin will help it continue to grow—or at least prevent it from excess shedding. It can also make new hair and nail growth feel stronger, as well as helping the skin with cell turnover to decrease the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.

Scientists have found that adult bodies only need a little bit of biotin in order to be getting enough. Some studies have shown that women who took biotin supplements every day for an extended period of time saw that their hair felt thicker and shed less than the women who did not take the supplements at all. Other studies have shown similar results, but doctors are still wary that the supplement does enough to really be considered effective in all cases.