Why it's happening and how to avoid it

I first heard about the keto / hair loss connection on one of my favorite podcasts. He explained that this effect often occurs a few months after the transition to a keto diet, but that hosts have not been too interested in Why this happens or what you can do about it. So I turned to dietitian Ali Miller, RN, who has been eating keto personally and has been using ketosis in her clinical practice for 10 years.

According to Miller, hair loss due to a ketogenic diet can be due to two factors: stress and / or malnutrition.

First, the keto can be an additional stressor that your body simply can not handle at the moment, unless you make changes to your lifestyle. "Although keto can be an extremely healthy diet, it is also a stressor for your body," says Miller. "Many health-promoting behaviors are stressors, such as intermittent fasting. But if you are someone of type A – too much caffeine, too little sleep, intermittent fasting and keto – that's too much. "

If you take the keto as an additional stressor and do not change your lifestyle in any other way (for example, make sure to sleep seven hours a night or bring back your workout sessions so that 39, they are a little less intense), so the keto could tip your body deeply. a chronic combat or flight training, says Miller. And it can spoil a variety of regulatory functions in the body. "It can stress your thyroid, have an impact on your adrenal glands, or even cause an autoimmune reaction, which could contribute to hair loss," she says.

Secondly, many women may not consume enough protein when they adopt a keto diet. "If you follow a classic ketogenic diet, which has been developed further for the management of epilepsy and neurological diseases, it is often too limited in protein," says Miller. "What often happens in women is that their appetite is regulated and they have no organic hunger. So, they eat badly – and they eat pretty much protein – and the first sign of protein malnutrition is hair loss. "