You must eat foods that have the minerals you need for healthy hair. By getting your minerals from food sources you make it nearly impossible to overdose on minerals.
1. Trace Mineral Silica
If you are missing a mineral in your diet it's probably the trace mineral silica. It's the most important mineral when it comes to healthy hair and probably the one mineral that's usually absent from most American diets. Supplementing your diet with silica alone will probably help you more than any of the other minerals combined because Silica helps utilize several other nutrients. Boron, copper, manganese, magnesium, fluorine, phosphorus, zinc and strontium all benefit from silica supplementation.
The only problem is that its very hard to get trace minerals because of the way most western civilizations cook and process their food.
So How do you supplement Silica in the body? It's difficult but not impossible.
You can get enough trace mineral silica in your diet by eating Oats, millet, barley, whole wheat, and algae.
2. Iodine
Iodine is very important when it comes to combating hair loss. You must have Iodine for healthy hair. However, you need a certain kind of Iodine. Not just any Iodine will do. The kind of Iodine that you would get in your generic table salt isn't the type of iodine you need for hair growth. That type of iodine could easily cause you to overdose on iodine and actually cause you more hair loss.
You don't want that.
So stay away from iodized salt and and start getting your iodine from food sources. These include kelp, yogurt (low fat), cow's milk, boiled eggs, strawberries and Mozzarella cheese.
3. Zinc
Zinc is another mineral that you could easily overdose on. Too much zinc could actually block the absorption of other minerals.
However, that doesn't mean that you don't need zinc for healthy hair. Zinc is very important when it comes to tissue growth and hair growth in particular. It helps to secrete the scalp with much needed oil and avoid dandruff that could possibly cause hair loss. It also helps with the absorption of other nutrients that you need.
Organic beef, beef liver, lima beans, organic / wild turkey, chickpeas, split peas, raw cashews, pecans, green peas, almonds, ginger root and organic egg are all good food sources of zinc.
4. Iron
Avoid taking iron supplements. You should get all of your Iron from food sources. If you you decide to take an iron supplement anyway then avoid ferrous sulfate which is hard to absorb.
Oysters, liver, lean red meat, poultry, tuna, salmon, Iron-fortified cereals, dried beans, whole grains, eggs, dried fruit, dark green leafy vegetables, wheat, millet, oats, brown rice, Lima beans, soy beans, dried beans and peas, kidney beans, almonds, Brazil nuts, prunes, raisins, apricots, broccoli, spinach, kale, collards, asparagus, dandelion greens.