The humble onion has always held a place of importance in traditional medicine. From hundreds of years ago, it has been used as a curative for so many ills – pain in the ears, an aching head, poisonous bites and of course, even hair loss. The main remedy for hair loss was to take half an onion and rub it in the area of thinning hair or, if the hair loss was from all over, to rub it all over the scalp. What some people did was to extract the juice and then apply it to the scalp.
It would make sense, considering the many qualities of onions – they are antifungal, antibacterial, and anti-inflammatory and they contain antioxidant properties which is why they are used so much in all our cooking. What people way back then did was to also use it externally and we are re-learning the healing powers of onion again.
In Baghdad, Iraq, at the Department of Dermatology and Venereology, there was a study done in 2002 on the efficacy of onion juice in hair loss due to alopecia areata.
What was amazing was that the group that used the onion juice had a 73% success as against the 13% that used plain water. This is probably because of the high sulphur content in onions and sulphur is known to be essential to keep hair, skin and nails looking good because it helps to form collagen. When there is a deficiency of sulphur, the hair becomes brittle, the nails get weak and the skin looks sallow and dry. So the old folk medicine was very good in that it identified that onion was good for the hair. Today, many hair growth formulas too use extracts of onion.
Here are a few recipes for hair loss remedies with onion. You could mix onion juice with honey and massage the scalp with it. Or soak onion in rum and apply to the scalp after 1 whole day. You could also chop it up and together with dried nettles, soak it in vodka for a few days and apply on the scalp. You could also pour boiling water over onion skins and use this after one hour as a first rinse after you have washed your hair. Of course, remember to add a lot of onions to your daily diet as well.