Nutrition for Healthy Hair: Guide to Understanding and Proper Practice

The quantity and quality of the hair are closely related to the nutritional state of an individual. And yet, there is hardly another field with so much prejudice, misconception, and debate as diet and health, let alone hair health. Pharmacy aisles and Internet drugstores are full of nutritional supplements promising full, thick, luscious hair for prices that range from suspiciously cheap to dishearteningly exorbitant. Since there lies an important commercial interest in the nutritional value of various nutritional supplements, a central question that arises is whether increasing the content of an already adequate diet with nutrients may further promote hair growth and quality. This book aims at distinguishing facts from fiction, and at providing a sound scientific basis for nutrition-based strategies for healthy hair, at the same time acknowledging the problems and limitations of our current understanding and practice.

Ralph M. Trüeb is Professor of Dermatology. He received his MD and Swiss Board Certification for Dermatology and Venerology as well as for Allergology and Clinical Immunology from the University of Zurich, Switzerland. 1994-5 he spent a year at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas with Rick Sontheimer and at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Dallas with Bruce Beutler to complete his Fellowship in Immunodermatology. After 20 years tenure at the Department of Dermatology, University Hospital of Zurich, where he established and was head of the Hair Consultation Clinic, he established in 2010 his private Center for Dermatology and Hair Diseases in Zurich-Wallisellen, where he offers since 2013 doctors-in-training and dermatologists international traineeships in Dermato-Trichology. He is founding President of the Swiss Trichology Study group (founding year: 1999), and past-President of the European Hair Research Society (2008-11). His clinical research interests focus on hair loss, inflammatory phenomena, hair aging and anti-aging, hair and nutrition, hair care and cosmetics, and patient expectation management. He is currently author of 224 peer-reviewed scientific publications, and 7 textbooks on hair.