Hair Revive - Review

I’ve tried quite a few hair growth vitamins and products, it’s kind of part of my job to experiment with various formulas, and I always like to be taking some sort of hair growth supplement to enhance my hair’s natural growth speed and also to enhance the look of my hair as far as sheen, thickness, resillience and that coveted healthy look goes.

As a vitamin supplement to strictly enhance the appearance and growth rate of my hair, since I don’t really have issue with hair loss per se, but I did notice that the fronts of my hair, where my “widow’s peak” I suppose would be considered, was thinning a bit a few months ago, so I am using a vitamin supplement now really to enhance the appearance of my hair.

I came across one online called Hair Revive. Although it had a somewhat cheesy label that looked like it should be from the seventies, I decided to give it a try since it had several of the ingredients I was looking for, including horsetail (silica) and biotin and a ton of chinese herbs and regular vitamins that are supposed to help with your hair health and growth.

It also was fairly well reviewed by it’s users. Of course there were a few mixed reviews, but that’s to be expected with most products of this nature since they work so differently depending on a person’s existing health, diet and lifestyle and their individual chemical makeup.  Anyways, I bought a couple bottles, which I figured would last me around two months since you had to take a whopping 4 pills a day, and they’re not small as I found out when I got them and opened my first bottle.

It’s been over two months, and I’ve been taking about two to four a day, depending on how I remember to take them that day, and I’m not sure I’m overly impressed yet. I don’t know if I should have taken four consistently every single day, but with the vitamin count percentages in them I almost worried that I would be overloading my body on some of the vitamins, so I took four only on some days.

I think that it has helped with my hair turnover a bit, as I notice that less of my hair falls out when I was it, and it may have improved my hair’s strength as well, as I notice it doesn’t break off or snap as easily when I’m brushing it.  I do notice a bit more sheen as well, but I still have days where my hair looks like a dry haystack, and I was kind of hoping this would be a little miracle in a bottle for that purpose.  Overall, they’re not bad, but I’m going to continue experimenting. They do have some great ingredients in them, definitely, and they are ingredients that are supposed to benefit your hair.

I recently got into a long research stint online about which vitamins for healthy hair growth I could take to make my hair more lustrous, stronger, and generally healthier and more resilient against breakage. This is because I’ve been noticing that my hair is just not as strong as it usually is, and I’ve been noticing that it seems to have been falling out at a faster rate (I can’t tell you how many times I have gobs of hair in the bottom of the drain in the shower), but I also noticed that my hair just didn’t seem to have a great shine or texture to it either.

Of course, I could relinquish myself to thinking that this is just due to age. After all, as we age, our hair gets much less resistant to breakage. It also loses a lot of it’s luster and color, which makes it look even duller. As the greys creep in, we also start to see a great change in the texture of our hair. This is because grey hair is caused by the increase of peroxide in our hair follicles, which essentially bleaches out the hair. This results in the absence of color, which makes the hair appear not only grey, but also much drier.

I read about what types of products might be able to help me with the decreasing lustre, increased falling out of my hair, and the lack of resilience against breakage, and I found two main vitamins, or nutrients that held promise in that area. One was horsetail, or silca (a digestable form of silicon that helps keep the bonds of the connective tissue together – meaning that it helps prevent wrinkles and also happens to help the hair prevent breakage.)

The other one was biotin, which is also a product that is supposed to help keep the bonds of the skin and the hair together. Biotin is often recommended to women as a vitamin for hair loss, who are having problems with their hair falling out, even chemotherapy patients. It is a derivative of vitamin B. Other ingredients that may help with hair loss are things like copper, other B vitamins, and also vitamin C.

Alopecia is an increasing problem seen in female patients.  It is a specific type of hair loss, and is responsible for women (and men) losing patches of hair at a time, creating an obviously embarrassing problem that usually needs some sort of treatment before it gets any worse.  Things that can make hair loss worsen are stress and anxiety and hormone swings, so if those two things alone can be kept under control then at least you can ensure that you are creating an unfriendly environment for the continuation of the hair loss you are experiencing.

Alopecia isn’t just limited to the scalp and the hair on your head though, it can actually occur anywhere on the body, which means it could occur on your face, arms, legs, and most anywhere else since every are of our outward body contains hair follicles.  It can even result in total hair loss in women and in men, which means that you could totally go bald from alopecia if it is left untreated or if it does not respond to treatment.  There are several vitamins that you can take for hair loss as well, and there is an FDA approved ingredient called minoxidil that you can find in several reasonably priced hair loss treatments.

Alopecia often occurs in women and men who are in their teens, late teens, and early adulthood, although it can still happen to anyone of any age.  It is suggested that genetics may be a pretty big factor in alopecia, as it is not totally understood what causes this mysterious and often devastating hair loss.  Many times, it affects the scalp and makes a person lose small circle shaped patches of hair, and this pattern is not understood either.  In more rare cases, it can spread to the entire scalp.

For stronger fingernails, there’s a nutritional supplement that you can take to stop the splitting, chipping and peeling.  That supplement is biotin, which is a B complex vitamin.  Our nails are made of keratin and biotin should increase your nail thickness up to 25 percent.  A dose of 300 micrograms of biotin per day should work to increase the strength of your fingernails.

Foods that are naturally rich in biotin include almonds, peanuts, cashews, filberts, eggs, tomatoes, salmon, carrots and sweet potatoes.  However, these foods provide us with about 10 micrograms per serving.  Biotin, in addition to the growth of your nails, also can help aid in the growth of your hair, and may be incorporated into part of a natural hair loss remedy or routine if you use vitamin supplements to help replenish hair growth or have a problem with thinning hair.

In fact, some patients who have gone through chemotherapy use it to help their hair grow back faster, stronger, and healthier. I personally use a supplement that has biotin included in it as I feel it helps my hair, skin and nails, all of which are simply connective tissues if you think about it.

To get the recommended amount of biotin for improvement of nail strength, you will need to use a nutritional supplement.  Foods that will not directly help your nail strength, as was previously thought, are extra protein in the diet or gelatin.

Items to avoid if you’re trying to strengthen your nails are nail polish removers that contain acetone.  This type of product will dry your fingernails and leave them more prone to breaking and splitting.

In the summertime, your nails actually grow faster than other times of the year.  Summertime would be a good time to supplement your diet with biotin so your fingernails can grow stronger together with growing faster.  Scientific and clinical studies have shown that the use of biotin will lead to increased nail strength.

If you are conscious of the look and feel and the health of your hair, then you may have seen some shampoos either in your salon, your local market, or your independent natural foods market, that say they are “sulfate free” or do not use sulfates or harsh chemicals in their shampoo.  You see, there is a chemical that is used in almost every shampoo on the market, even those expensive hoity toity ones that you pay an arm and a leg for at the salon, called sodium laureth sulfate.  The problem is, this chemical has been linked to everything from dry, scaly skin and scalp, to even being a possible carcinogen (cancer causing agent), so of course it may be in your interest to avoid products make without these sulfates.

Sodium laureth is probably the harshest one though, and the one that gets the most negative press because it is so pervasive.  You will find this chemical in all soaps, except those that don’t use chemicals, toothpaste, shampoo, and any other product that lathers up basically.  If it lathers a lot, chances are it has sodium laureth sulfate in it, and chances are it is drying to the skin and the scalp, even though you may be so used to it you don’t even notice.

If you do switch from a product with sulfates to a sulfate free shampoo for better hair health, and perhaps to help if you suffer from hair loss and are concerned about further aggravating the problem through chemical use on the scalp, be prepared to be shocked when you realize how much it won’t lather compared to your brands that had the chemical in it.  In fact, it may be something you find hard to get used to at first, but in the long run, it still is probably better for your skin and scalp.

I did try one that had all natural ingredients in it and none of the sodium laureth sulfate, and unfortunately my first foray was a disaster.  The shampoo I chose made my hair look and feel like a brillo pad, so needless to say I wasn’t too impressed, however, I was able to find a L’Oreal, very reasonably priced shampoo that said it did not use any sulfates of harsh chemicals, and that one has been awesome.  I’ve continued to use the L’Oreal Sulfate Free shampoo for color treated hair with great success, and I’d recommend it to anyone.  If anyone else has any sulfate free suggestions that also happen to make your hair look good, then please suggest them here.