Anyone suffering from hair loss is probably very familiar with the list of mainstream, tried-and-trusted solutions. These range from medication and hair transplant surgery for the more severe cases, to changing your hairstyle to combat traction alopecia. Other solutions are aimed at reducing the stress that can bring on some types of hair loss, solutions that include activities like meditation and exercise.
Here’s one solution you probably haven’t heard of before. What if someone told you that you could stimulate hair regrowth by rubbing your fingernails together? Sounds too good to be true, right? Read on to learn more!
The Problem
Many of us experience hair loss issues at some point in our life. The problem may be hereditary, or it may be triggered by illness, or it might be due to lifestyle choices, such as the way we style our hair, the products we apply to our mane or even the heat appliances we use to dry and shape it.
It’s normal to lose 50 to 100 hairs from our hair every day, but the hair’s normal growth cycle usually replaces these. When that doesn’t happen, we start to notice our hair becoming less dense. We may even develop bald spots on some areas of our head.
There are many mainstream remedies to help with hair restoration, and perhaps these will be required, but wouldn’t it be great if there was a simple way of stimulating hair regrowth, one that was right at your fingertips?
The Fingernail Hack
The fingernail hack made the news recently when trichologist Helen Reavey went on Tik Tok to share it with her followers. Her advice was directed at people experiencing hair loss and involved her demonstrating how you could stimulate hair regrowth by rubbing your fingernails together. It showed her curling her fingers into what could be described as a half-fist shape before rubbing the nails of both hands together.
As she explained, rubbing your fingernails together every day for about ten minutes (either in one session or spread over the day) prompts the brain to send signals to adult stem cells to kickstart dormant hair follicles. The technique also improves the blood flow to the hair follicles, which means that essential nutrients are delivered to them more easily and more often.
Traditional Ayurvedic practice
Why would rubbing your fingernails together affect your hair? In truth, it’s not as random as it sounds. The technique is based on ancient traditional healing practices with their roots in Asia. The first of these is Ayurveda, a natural system of medicine that originated in India 3,000 thousand years ago.
The core principle of Ayurveda is that illness is caused by an imbalance between mind and body. Healing can only take place when a person’s lifestyle is realigned to restore the equilibrium between mind, body and the environment. Its natural therapies involve herbal remedies, yoga, massage and meditation. Balayam yoga, or nail rubbing yoga, has long been used in Ayurvedic practice as a yoga technique for the natural treatment of hair problems.
Chinese Acupressure
The second ancient healing practice is Chinese acupressure. According to The HealthSite.com, this teaches that pressure on one part of the body can affect a different part. So, as the site explains, ‘When you rub your nails together, you create friction through which the nerves in the scalp get stimulated. The blood flow to the scalp is also said to increase when you rub your nails together which in turn revitalises the scalp and stimulates hair growth.’
This increased blood flow is also thought to combat some scalp conditions (dandruff, for example) and delay the arrival of grey hairs, improving both the tone and volume of the hair for good measure. In terms of your overall health, improved blood circulation is linked to benefits such as better heart and lung capacity and increased energy levels.
Does it Work?
All this sounds very promising, but does it work? The evidence in favour of the technique is anecdotal at the current time. That doesn’t mean it should be dismissed as nonsense, only that there have been no clinical trials to substantiate the claims made for it.
The same note of caution applies to Ayurvedic and Chinese acupressure therapies in general. Like all complementary healing practices, they have real benefits when used alongside mainstream health care rather than as an alternative to it.
Conclusion
This article has maybe given you food for thought when it comes to hair restoration. Mainstream remedies for hair loss have their place and are often the only credible solution to the problem. That doesn’t mean, however, that we should never consider solutions that seem, at first glance, unlikely to have a successful outcome.
If you have concerns about your hair loss problem, take advantage of Vinci Hair Clinic’s offer of a free, no-obligation consultation. That way, you can get all your questions answered without having to commit to anything. Get in touch today to book your appointment with one of our hair experts!
