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When looking at any supplement, whether it is Nutrafol or something else, knowing what the potential side effects are can be literally a matter of life and death in some cases.
I’m not talking about the beneficial side effects, like how an ingredient in a hair growth product can also benefit your nails or skin. I’m talking about the adverse side effects that even a natural supplement can have.
Even things like Vitamin A or Vitamin E can be bad for you in certain cases or if you have too much of them. Nutrafol certainly has some potent ingredients in its products, so it shouldn’t be surprising that it has some side effects.
So, let’s look at the different Nutrafol supplement options, and then see what some of the possible concerns are for each of them.
The Products
Nutrafol offers multiple products designed to help with your hair, either directly or indirectly. Nutrafol has four ‘core’ products. These four are the ones you are likely to think about when you think of Nutrafol.
The core products of Nutrafol also have many of the same ingredients, just in different amounts in order to better suit specific people. These four are: Nutrafol Woman, Nutrafol Womens Balance, Nutrafol Postpartum, and Nutrafol Men.
It’s fairly easy to see who each Nutrafol supplement is for based just on its name. The Nutrafol Womens Balance is for women who are around or after menopause, as they often need a little help balancing their hormones.
Meanwhile, the Nutrafol Postpartum is quite similar and is for women who have thinning hair due to having a baby. The original Nutrafol Woman is there for women who don’t fit in either of those categories. Finally, the Nutrafol Men is for men.
Perhaps Nutrafol will make another core product for men at some point. In the meantime, Nutrafol has a variety of side products that help your hair more indirectly. You can only get the booster products if you also get one of the core products on their site. Even at Amazon (I checked), these aren’t sold separately.
These boosters include a collagen infusion supplement, a stress adaptogen, a gut microbe supplement called Hairbiotic, a liver support booster that helps you detoxify, a Vitamin B booster for more energy, and a DHT blocker for those needing more help with that.
The last Nutrafol product is a hair growth serum that can be bought separately. While the core Nutrafol supplements are all capsules, the boosters are a mix of things, some are drops and some are pills.
The Side Effects Of The Core Products
Before we look at Nutrafol’s booster products and the side effects that those can have, we’ll look at their core products first. After all, it is the core Nutrafol supplement that you will be most likely to try for your hair loss.
For starters, in order to treat serious hair loss conditions like male pattern baldness, Nutrafol uses some pretty potent herbs. Add to that the fact that the Nutrafol supplement requires you to take four capsules of it a day, and you might see the problem.
The core products can very easily make your stomach uncomfortable. Those who are accustomed to strong herbs and plants in their diet are less likely to have a problem. However, those who aren’t accustomed to that may struggle for a while.
The stomach problems generally go away after taking Nutrafol for a while. What definitely doesn’t go away is how much biotin is in these pills. While 3,000mcg of biotin is not as much as the 5,000 or even 10,000 mcg that is in most biotin supplements, it is still enough to affect blood work.
Too much biotin has the little-known result of affecting lab tests, according to mayo clinic. Specifically, biotin skews the results of tests pertaining to your thyroid and heart. It can give false positive results or false negative results, either hiding a serious condition or making you think you have a condition you really don’t have at all.
The last two Nutrafol side effects that we will look at are worrisome enough to be worth their own sections. These are blood thinning and the fact that Nutrafol does affect your hormones.
The Blood Thinning
One or two of the herbs that are in Nutrafol have slight blood-thinning properties. Some people will find this effect completely unnoticeable, and it won’t seem to affect them at all. However, for others, blood thinning is a very serious thing.
People who are already taking blood thinners are far more likely to get blood that is even thinner. You should talk about stopping your blood thinners with your doctor in this case.
Thin blood comes with a whole host of problems, which is why doctors only prescribe it when they feel it is absolutely necessary. Blood that is too thin will not clot properly. This means even a small scratch will bleed for much longer.
Mild cuts also become much more serious, and there is a greater risk of bleeding to death from things that wouldn’t have been too much to worry about if your blood clotted properly. Anything requiring a surgery becomes much riskier.
If you plan to have a surgery, you can stop taking Nutrafol a few days or a couple of weeks ahead of time. Doing so should help your blood start clotting better again. However, what about the times when you can’t schedule ahead?
Things like appendicitis, as just one example, aren’t things that you can plan ahead for. Therefore, anything requiring an emergency surgery is going to have higher risks for you.
Finally, thin blood also makes for more bruising. Any bruises you get will be much darker in color and will likely stick around longer. This can both look very unsightly on your skin, but it also isn’t healthy for your skin either. And those are just the more common negative effects of having thin blood.
The Hormone Changes
Nutrafol affects your hormones to some degree in order to block your DHT. Though you’d think this feature would affect men and not women, the fact is that women have a small amount of testosterone as well.
So, any changes to your hormones can get everything out of whack. If your hormones are already out of balance, then Nutrafol could potentially help get them back into balance. However, if your hormones are just fine and you take a Nutrafol supplement that affects you, something will most likely happen.
This is why people taking Nutrafol can experience negative effects on their hormones. Your hormones are important and can affect a wide variety of different things. Some of the slighter effects might be tiredness, mood swings or irritability, or any number of other problems.
Hormone changes can also affect how hormone therapies work, potentially making them not work at all. As hormone therapies can be needed for a variety of reasons, and they are very expensive, disruption here is a very bad thing.
In some cases, hair thinning is the result of this imbalance. Considering thinning hair is likely the reason you are taking a hair supplement in the first place, it should be quite understandable that this is a serious problem.
An imbalance can also lead to you getting very sick. This can be either simply having a low immune system that makes it so that you catch everything that goes around, or it can be just plain sick without it being an actual bacteria or virus behind it.
Finally, most women are fairly familiar with hormone imbalances causing splitting migraines, nausea, lack of appetite, etc. These are just a few more symptoms of hormone problems you could potentially experience.
What People Say
Just because Nutrafol has the potential for side effects, that doesn’t necessarily mean that people actually experience them. Besides that, sometimes users of a product like Nutrafol hair supplements may find a side effect that wasn’t accounted for.
As for the biotin skewing test results, Nutrafol is fully aware of this. One lady wrote a review stating that her yearly thyroid test had some really weird results, and she traced the problem back to Nutrafol. According to her, she called them about it.
Nutrafol told her that she should stop taking Nutrafol three days before having any blood work done. Apparently, though Nutrafol is fully aware of this happening, they don’t feel the need to put any warning up about it on their site or on their supplements.
Multiple reviews have been written by people who stated they had increased hair fall instead of the hair regrowth they wanted. That, aside from Nutrafol not working at all, is probably the most common complaint from those taking a Nutrafol hair supplement.
Nausea was another one that can be seen in a few reviews, as is stomach aches, etc. This is fairly commonly noticed as well and is experienced even by those taking it with food.
A few reviewers reported hormonal changes or said that the Nutrafol supplement increased their anxiety, gave them nightmares, made them unable to sleep, and a couple of other issues.
More than one person had an acne breakout when taking Nutrafol. Said user stopped taking their Nutrafol hair supplement, and their breakout ended.
Other unusual side effects are excessive thirst and having a burning sensation when urinating. Regarding that latter, the reviewer’s doctor doctor told them it was likely the ascorbic acid, which is a form of Vitamin C.
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The Side Effects Of The Side Products
Nutrafol’s “booster” products come with their own concerns. First, there is the collagen infusion booster. While collagen helps with hair density, it also can cause problems in your stomach.
It’s rare, but collagen sensitivity is a real thing, causing headaches and allergic reactions. That is beside the increased risk of kidney stones and other problems. Nutrafol’s liver support booster can help slightly with the detox, but it is not advisable for people with liver problems.
Then, detoxing of any type flushes out your system, including any nutrients you have. This both makes the added nutrients from Nutrafol obsolete, but it also means you are more likely to have thinning hair due to not getting enough nutrients, among other problems.
Both the stress adaptogen and the additional DHT blocker affect your hormones. I’ve already mentioned how hormone changes can lead to a lot of bad things. However, one side effect I’ve not mentioned yet about hormone changes is the fact that they can counteract certain contraceptives.
While some may simply be putting off pregnancy just because it is inconvenient, there are also genuine medical conditions some women have that make it highly risky to be pregnant.
Next, the Hairbiotic is a probiotic, which is basically something with living organisms that can be beneficial. However, if your immune system is weak, these organisms can make you ill.
Finally, the Nutrafol hair growth serum has a few side effects as well. It can make your scalp break out, get itchy, have increased dandruff, and a few other issues. Each of these side effects, far from giving you healthier hair, will contribute to your hair thinning even more.
Nutrafol’s Side Effects Compared To Others
Though this list of Nutrafol’s potential side effects might seem like a lot, it actually isn’t too bad. Hair loss medications tend to have far more side effects than these. Some of these actually have a warning on their site about going to a doctor in case of a severe reaction.
Just some of the listed severe reactions sometimes include things like heart palpitations, difficulty breathing, dizziness, and other things. Most of these potential side effects from hair loss products are quite concerning.
More than that, most would agree that any one of these side effects is certainly not worth healthy hair growth. After all, if the side effect is severe enough to potentially kill you, what good would a thick head of hair be?
Though these are the more serious of the possible side effects, there are plenty of others. Almost any hair loss supplement you get stands a chance of not working. Most are also potentially hard on your stomach and might also cause additional hair fall.
So, the Nutrafol supplement is far from being the only hair loss treatment to have those side effects. Therefore, it compares quite favorably to some of the other options. In fact, the variety of ingredients in Nutrafol help make it less likely that you will have any of these side effects.
Part of the reason Nutrafol’s list of potential side effects is so long is because almost every ingredient has something about it that can be harmful. However, considering that even Vitamin B can be harmful when taken in too large of a dose, this shouldn’t be especially worrisome.
Having small amounts of several different things means that you aren’t getting too much of any one thing. This both minimizes the risks and helps you get the maximum benefits.
Who Nutrafol Says Shouldn’t Use Their Product
In Nutrafol’s FAQ section, they do mention that not everyone should use their hair loss supplement. Under the question: Is Nutrafol Suitable For Everyone? Nutrafol says as much. They claim that Nutrafol is good for most people, but they don’t recommend their product for anyone under 18.
They also recommend skipping your Nutrafol supplement not only when you are pregnant but if you are trying to conceive. The Nutrafol Postpartum is also the only product that they recommend for breastfeeding women.
Right after that, Nutrafol states that those with a medical condition (they don’t specify which ones) should talk to their physician before using their supplement. They do specify that those taking anticoagulants and blood thinners should be especially careful.
As for their booster supplements, Nutrafol gives a caution or two about those as well. For starters, they say that those with sensitivity to the Asteraceae family of plants might not be able to use their Liver Support booster.
That is because this booster has in it a plant or two from that family. Some plants from the Asteraceae family include ragweed, chamomile, dandelion, milk thistle, artichoke, and yellow dock.
Also, Nutrafol’s Digestive Enzyme booster has bromelain in it, which is derived from pineapples. As some people can’t eat pineapples, those people might not be able to take this booster.
Further down in their FAQ, Nutrafol has the question: Are there any contraindications or precautions with Nutrafol hair growth formulas? To that, they go over in length that pregnant women should not use any of their core supplements.
They also go over at great length here that those with blood conditions or hormone issues should be very wary of their supplements. Even further down, they also don’t recommend Nutrafol for those already taking biotin without quitting the latter.
Final Thoughts
All in all, this list of Nutrafol side effects can seem both very long and very worrisome. However, considering both how few people actually experience any of these side effects and the fact that they are much milder than other hair loss supplements, Nutrafol is still a great product.
Even other natural hair growth products are bound to have at least a couple of things to watch out for. Fortunately, natural hair supplements practically always have fewer side effects than drugs that are designed to treat hair loss.
This is partially why it is always advisable to try products like Nutrafol first before going with drugs and other things that are more harmful, often more expensive, and only slightly more likely to work.
So, take Nutrafol, but also take care. While you’re here, take a moment to write down if Nutrafol gave you any side effects that I didn’t mention so that other people can read it and be forewarned.
