Ghana Hair Chick's Letters: Does your scalp absorb nutrients?

Hello beautiful Naturalistas! I hope everyone is doing great. After the last post on whether it is important to do an ACV rinse on our hair, a question was raised that I'd like to address today.

Q:Can the scalp absorb nutrients?

A:This is a very debatable issue, and even in research, is still a question that hasn't been answered. Very little work has actually been done to see if the scalp is capable of absorbing nutrients.
However, there are a few scientific research articles I cam across from years ago that were investigating the absorption of testosterone, insulin and pancreatin through some parts of the body including the scalp. These were experiments focused on other aims, but generally they all found that the scalp is capable of absorbing all three of these compounds. I have also seen a few other articles make a passing mention of the scalp's ability to absorb elements such as mercury. Unfortunately, I haven't come across any research that is attempting to see what specific nutrients may be absorbed by the scalp.

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Based on what has been reported with the compounds above, we can attempt to make inferences about the scalp's ability to absorb actual nutrients from the products we put on it. In order for absorption to take place, the compound to be absorbed needs to be small enough to be absorbed by the membrane of the scalp. One way to get the size of these molecules would be to look at their molecular weights. Since we already know that testosterone can be absorbed through the scalp, we can make a reasonable assumption that most molecules smaller than testosterone can be absorbed as well. Testosterone has a molecular weight of 288.42g/mol.
With a little research, the molecular weights of some of the most common nutrients we might want our hair to absorb include

1.Keratin=44-56kDa =44,000-56,000g/mol (1Da=1g/mol)
2.Biotin/Vitamin H=244.31 g/mol
3.Vitamin E=430.7g/mol
4.Vitamin A=286.45g/mol

Generally, I found that most vitamins range in molecular weight from 175-1500g/mol. I couldn't come up with much more nutrients we might want our hair to absorb so this is where I stopped. As you can

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already see from the list, only a few vitamins are smaller than testosterone and so could possibly be absorbed by the scalp. Keratin is much too big to be absorbed, which will generally be the case for most proteins. Even though this wasn't an actual experiment, we can still get a fair idea.
Therefore, to answer the question it is indeed possible for the scalp to absorb certain nutrients. However, the size of the molecule in question will play a very big determinant role.
I hope this post has been helpful to you.


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The Ghana Hair Chick