Pregnancy Pill and Faster Hair Growth

Birth control pill
Photo: Phuangphech/Shutterstock
Q: Is it true that the pregnancy pill will make your hair grow faster? My friend claims that birth control pills improve hair growth.
 
A: Many women have talked for years about how their birth control pills seem to cause their hair to grow faster, and studies have been done that support this claim.
 
Birth control pills operate by manipulating the levels of hormones in a woman's body, and in some cases – depending on the types of hormones used and the individual woman's body chemistry – this can have a side effect of improving the growth rate and condition of her hair. The opposite can also occur.
 
The problem with trying to use this as a means of increasing hair growth is that the results are often specific to certain women, and the hormone therapy such as is used in birth control medications can have other unpleasant side effects.
 
Some of the side effects reported with various formulas of birth control pills are acne, breast tenderness and swelling, bleeding and spotting between periods, nausea, vomiting, changes in the eye that make wearing contacts difficult, bloating and headaches.
 
So, you can see that while birth control pills may make a reasonable solution for preventing pregnancies, to contemplate taking them for what may or may not work to help speed hair growth is irresponsible.
 
©Hairfinder.com
 
See also:
 
How to increase your hair growth rate
 
Does washing your hair every day affect the growth rate?
 
Does the sun make your hair grow faster?
 
Does different people's hair grow at different speeds?