Hair Growth Oils: A Scam Or Do They Really Work?

​It seems like every day a new hair growth oil comes out promising longer, thicker hair overnight.

But is it all too good to be true?
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If you've invested more than you'd care to disclose in these magic hair growth oils, what we found out may surprise you.

Does hair growth oil really grow your hair?

We decided to hit the books and go deep into the databases for this one. Long story short: Some oils are a gimmick and have negligible to zero impact on your hair growth. But there are some oils that can actually help your hair grow.​

​The composition of every hair growth oil is different and whether it has a chance of working or not depends on its ingredients. If you haven't seen any growth from using these oils, there are a couple of other things you need to check, too.
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What ingredients grow your hair?

Several ingredients have been scientifically proven to grow hair. Image by Asa Dugger.

​For all the duds and hype on the market, there are some ingredients that can actually grow hair. These are both natural and manmade substances which have been scientifically proven to stimulate hair follicles. Each of them work in different ways, so  whether they are effective or not will depend on what's causing your growth issue, and what your hair growth goals are.

Some hair growth ingredients reactivate inactive follicles so your hair grows back looking fuller. Others thicken individual strands, some speed up the growth rate, and some extend the anagen or growth phase of your hair cycle, giving your hair more time to grow before the natural resting and shedding processes take place.

So yes, in a nutshell there are ingredients that can grow your hair. In fact, there are so many with the science to back them up, that we can't list them all. So here are just a dozen for starters:

• Rosemary
• Peppermint
• ​Lavender
• Onion
• Garlic
• Pumpkin seed
• Green tea
• Marine proteins
• Iron
• Selenium
• Vitamin E
• Zinc​

How to check the ingredients list on hair growth oils

Product ingredients are listed in order of concentration. Image by Anis M and Dominican Hair Alliance.

​Now that you're familiar with some of the ingredients that grow hair, it's time to become an ingredients detective.  

So flip it around to the back of the bottle, where you'll see the ingredients listed in INCI format. See if you spot any of the ingredients from the list above (hint: there are four of them on this bottle).

If you've looked at  the lists and are still not sure, you can ask us any ingredients questions in the comments section below.
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Check the concentration of the hair growth ingredients

If you see any proven hair growth ingredients in there, that's a good sign.

​Now move onto phase 2: Concentration. This is hard to know for sure because brands don't have to list the exact percentage of an ingredient on their labels.

But we can estimate how much they contain for most ingredients, at least within a range. That's because in several countries, brands have to list ingredients in a specific order, using the correct INCI name. If they are following the system correctly, the ingredients will be listed in order of concentration.

Ingredients should be listed in descending order, so the ones the product contains the most of are towards the top of the list.

But ingredients don't have to be at the top of the list to work.

The necessary concentration for an ingredient to be effective depends on the type of ingredient. For instance, if the ingredient is a carrier oil, it would need to be towards the top of the list to have an impact on your hair growth because carriers oils are less potent. ​

Macerated oils are less concentrated extracts, created by soaking herbs in oils. Image by Silviarita.

​Essential oils or other highly concentrated extracts can be at or close to the bottom, since they only have to be present in small concentrations to work - as low as 3% has been shown to increase growth for at least one essential oil.

The problem is knowing which form of the extract you're dealing with, as INCI doesn't require manufacturers to specify whether they're using an macerated extract  (infused from the herb into the oil, which would need to be higher in the list to be effective) or an essential oil, or other concentrate (both of which can be low on the list).
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Use these ingredients to check how concentrated it is

Luckily, you can use other ingredients on the list to tell if the product doesn't have a high enough concentration of the hair growth ingredient in question - even for an essential oil.

For instance, if the hair growth ingredient comes after certain ingredients which have to be used at extremely low concentrations, then you can be pretty certain that the product does not contain a good amount of that star ingredient.

Preservatives are a good example; they're usually at, or very close to, the end of the ingredients list. That's because the amount used in products is typically very low, like 1% or under. Preservatives include ingredients like iodopropynyl butyl carbamate, phenoxyethanol, or any paraben.  Antioxidants like sodium benzoate (which can be a preservative too), tend to go into the formula at low concentrations also, so they're another good marker to use.

If you see a hair growth ingredient included after ​ any one of these ingredients, chances are it's not being included as an actual active ingredient, but just for claim purposes. Methylparaben for example, goes into the formula at a maximum of 0.4%. This is a percentage that very few active ingredients would be expected to work well at, so most hair growth ingredients that come after it will probably have little to no effect.

Floral ingredients can be an infused extract or an essential oil. Image by Jhefferson Santos.

​Watch out for ingredients that block hair growth 

Next, you need to check the label for any ingredients that interfere with the hair growth ingredients' work. Most commonly, this happens when the formula includes ingredients that are capable of forming a layer on your skin's surface which stops or limits the product's ability to penetrate into your scalp properly.

Certain silicones and  petrolatum may do this. So could many natural oils and butters that provide a barrier function. On the other hand, oils which absorb easily into the skin, such as coconut or olive, could be good for improving delivery of the actives into your hair follicles.​
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Poor quality ingredients limit effectiveness of hair growth oils

Another common reason why many hair growth products fail is the quality of the ingredients. So while, say, rosemary oil has been proven to have hair growth properties, that doesn't mean that a hair growth oil that contains it will definitely grow your hair.

Why? Many natural ingredients are extremely delicate and can lose their properties if not gently processed. Sometimes, ingredients are stored incorrectly or for too long, and lose their potency. And natural ingredients have very wide variance anyway: not every castor plant will yield the same quality castor seeds to make good castor oil, for example, and the quality of the crop might vary from season to season - even on the same plants.

Unfortunately, the use of low quality ingredients is not always obvious, although a suspiciously low price can be a hint (in some cases), especially when the label lists ingredients which are generally expensive.

So why isn't this hair growth oil growing my hair?

But what if you're pretty sure you have a product with a solid formulation, made of the finest quality ingredients, known to increase hair growth? All the  ingredients are in the right place on the ingredients list, plus you've seen tons of people having success with the same product.
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If your product has passed all these tests, then why isn't it working for you?

Hair growth products might not work for different reasons, including potency or usage. Image by Silviarita.

​You've not been using the hair growth oil long enough

You might need to give it time. Especially if you're trying to wake up inactive follicles and grow hair from scratch; these products take time to work. Remember, hair grows at 0.5 inches a month on average -  and many people's hair grows a lot slower than that. So even if you are using a product designed to speed it up, the results are not going to come in a day.

From the experiments we looked at, most products tended to show results over a 2 to 6 month period - yes that long. One ingredient did show visible results within just 2 weeks. But that was soft, vellus hair from patients that had suffered hair loss; it still took them 2 months to grow thick, normal strands.

No hair growth product will work for everyone

In all of the studies we've looked at, there was one thing that held true in every single one. Some methods worked for more people than others, but no hair growth method was universally effective. Unfortunately, just because it worked for almost everyone doesn't mean it will work for you.
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The most important part of hair growth most people miss

And here's the other big factor in hair growth. The ends. We always think about the roots when we talk about growing hair longer, but good hair growth practices start at the ends, not the roots. It may sound contradictory, but here's what we mean by that: Usually, unless you have some kind of scalp disorder or injury, hair is almost always growing.

The reason most of us don't see the full length our hair offers is because we don't take enough care of the hair at the ends. You can be getting a 40% increase on growth at the scalp, but because you do certain practices that compromise your ends on the daily, your hair breaks off and you never, ever see that growth.

It then becomes a vicious cycle of rubbing stuff onto your scalp waiting for growth that never seems to come - because you keep breaking the evidence off at the ends.

When hair is kept intact at the ends it can grow much longer, regardless of texture. Image by Jose Danilo.

So unless you're dealing with a scalp emergency like thinning, excess shedding or balding, before you start to focus on the latest hair growth solution, you need to master your ends care solution.

Once you figure out how to keep the ends of your hair mostly intact, you just need to kick back and let your scalp continue to do its part. After all, it is covered with hundreds of thousands of mini hair-growing machines called follicles. Get your ends care game on lock, and the natural hair factory on top of your head will keep supplying you with growth. That's a new half inch  or so every month which you can now accumulate for longer and longer hair.

When you start seeing returns from that, you can start experimenting with hair growth oils to accelerate hair growth - maybe add some thickness, too. That is the perfect time to really harness the hair-growing properties of these oils to help you hit your hair goal faster.

For more on the hair growth ingredients that really grow your hair, you can sign up to get Growth Drops. Every week, we check the science and tell you what ingredients work and what don't.

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