Are hair vitamins effective? Find out

You don’t have to keep up with the Kardashians to know that Kardashian-Jenner sisters Kourtney Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Khloe Kardashian, Kim Kardashian West actively promote a certain hair vitamin on the internet. It’s all on the gram.
These clearly sponsored posts claim that they are the best thing to happen to their hair, ever since dry shampoos. But the more sponsored pictures and posts we see, the more we wonder, are they for real? Here is what experts have to say.
To understand if hair vitamins to truly work, we must understand what they are supposed to do in the first place.
Hair vitamins are allegedly not even FDA approved. This means their claims could easily go unchecked. But usually, they contain a mix of ingredients like biotin, folic acid, zinc, -Vitamins A, C, D, and E, and other hair-friendly botanicals. After a few months of taking them, your hair can -(supposedly) look -silkier, shinier, thicker, and -longer than usual, and your scalp’s oil -production can speed up or slow down, depending on which kind you take.
While all these are great minerals for hair, they won’t be doing much, if your body already has all of them, which they probably do. But one might think, the more the merrier, right? Nope. Even if you take triple the vitamins your body needs, you won’t reap triple the hair-growth rewards. With most vitamins, your body keeps only what it needs, and you simply pee out
the rest.
But there are a lot of people out there that are deficient of these vitamins and minerals. In these cases, “your body shuts down your hair growth and redirects nutrients and energy to the organs that need them most,” he explains. If you’ve ever -experienced a severe bout of physical or emotional stress, you might have noticed that your hair sheds afterward. “It’s a -reaction that -usually occurs around three months later,” says Sydney-based trichologist and biochemist Dominic Burg.
So, how long does it take for a change to show? It won’t be an -overnight transformation. Why? “Your hair is dead, and nothing you do internally can affect its density, strength, or health when it’s already grown,” explains Dominic.
“Yes, vitamins can help the new hair that you’re growing, but because it grows only about half an inch a month, it’ll take two to three years of taking supplements before new, healthy hair reaches your shoulders.”
So, what do we learn from this? Make sure to test -supplements only from -reputable and well-reviewed brands. And, don’t get your hopes up, because, as we all know, not everything you see on social media is real—even if it’s, like, every third post on your feed.
Sounds like they don’t really work. But, you already knew this, didn’t you?