It's a fair question, and most brands selling them won't give you a straight answer. Here's ours.
The short version
Certain nutrients have a recognised role in maintaining normal hair. Biotin, zinc and selenium each hold an authorised claim in Great Britain for contributing to the maintenance of normal hair — meaning the evidence has been assessed by regulators and accepted.
What that means is narrower than most advertising implies. “Maintenance of normal hair” is not the same as growing hair faster, making it thicker, or stopping it falling out. Those are different claims, and no hair supplement in the UK is authorised to make them.
So: hair vitamins have a real, if modest, recognised role. They are not a treatment for hair loss. Anyone telling you otherwise is either uninformed or hoping you are.
Why the marketing is so much louder than the evidence
Walk through any hair supplement's website and you'll see percentages, before-and-after photos and phrases like “clinically proven”. Very little of it is substantiated in the way you'd assume.
A few things worth knowing when you're reading claims:
- A customer survey isn't evidence of an effect. “87% of users said their hair felt thicker” measures what people reported, not what happened. Regulators have repeatedly rejected this kind of data as substantiation for objective claims.
- Ingredient studies aren't product studies. A trial on an isolated compound, often at a much higher dose than the product contains, doesn't tell you what the finished product does.
- Before-and-after photos are a claim, not evidence. Different lighting, styling, hair colour and camera angle can produce a dramatic “result” in an afternoon.
The thing nobody measures
Here's what we think is the more interesting question. Not “do hair vitamins work” but “do people take them long enough to find out?”
Nutrients don't do anything in a single dose. Whatever benefit is available comes from consistent intake over months. And the honest truth about supplement-taking is that most people don't manage it. The pot goes on the shelf, the routine slips in week three, and by week six it's behind the coffee jar.
If you stop in month two, the formula was never the variable. You never ran the experiment.
That's not a criticism of anyone — remembering a daily tablet is genuinely difficult, and the supplement industry has spent decades competing on ingredient lists while ignoring the part where a human being has to actually swallow the thing every morning for six months.
What we'd suggest
If you're going to try a hair supplement, three things will serve you better than the ingredient panel:
1. Check the amounts, not just the names. A nutrient has to be present in a meaningful quantity — at least 15% of the Nutrient Reference Value per daily serving — before any claim can lawfully be made about it. Plenty of products list impressive-sounding ingredients in quantities too small to matter. If a brand won't publish per-serving amounts, that tells you something.
2. Be realistic about the timescale. Hair grows slowly. Any nutritional effect is gradual and undramatic. If a product promises visible change in a fortnight, that promise is the problem.
3. Pick the one you'll actually keep taking. This is the boring answer and it's the one that matters most. The best supplement for you is the one that survives contact with a Tuesday morning.
Where we come into this
We'll be upfront: we sell a hair supplement, so we're not a neutral party.
What we'd say is that we built Cocoa Locks around the third point above. It's a hot chocolate rather than a tablet, because a drink you enjoy is easier to keep up than a pill you tolerate. That's a claim about human behaviour, not about hair — and it's the only advantage we'd claim.
On the hair itself, we'll say exactly what we're permitted to say and nothing more: it contains biotin, zinc and selenium, and each of those contributes to the maintenance of normal hair. You can see the full amounts and the nutrition table here.
If you'd rather take a tablet, take a tablet. Just take it for long enough to find out.
Food supplements should not be used as a substitute for a varied and balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle. If you have concerns about hair loss, speak to your GP or a pharmacist — sudden or patchy hair loss can have medical causes worth investigating.