Rice Water: The Secret Ingredient for Longer Hair? with Alok Vij, MD

Podcast Transcript

John Horton:

Hey there, and welcome to another Health Essentials Podcast. I'm John Horton, your host.

There's a small village in China where women traditionally grow their hair until it's more than 6 feet long. So what's the secret for these real-life Rapunzels? The answer seems to be rice water. It's said the starchy liquid created when rice is soaked or cooked works as a hair elixir to give you stronger and longer locks. Centuries of beauty parlor chatter back up this claim, too, but is it true? We asked dermatologist Alok Vij to join us today to comb through what's fact or fiction regarding rice water, and your hair. Dr. Vij is one of the many experts at Cleveland Clinic who pop into our weekly podcast to help us make sense of health trends. So with that in mind, let's see whether that box of rice in your kitchen should become part of your day-to-day hair care routine. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Vij. Thanks for coming in to talk shop.

Dr. Alok Vij:

Thanks for having me back.

John Horton:

So last year on the podcast, we talked about using rosemary oil for hair growth and now, we're looking at rice water — I'm starting to think that hair needs to be fed rather than just washed.

Dr. Alok Vij:

People say the health of your hair reflects your overall health, so why not put a little work into making it look as good as you feel?

John Horton:

And it makes sense. And your hair is so important for people, and obviously, people spend a lot of time making it look just right, so let's dive into how rice water might be able to help that. And I guess we should just start in the obvious place: Can rice water help you grow longer, stronger and healthier hair?

Dr. Alok Vij:

Well, John, I have my doubts, to be completely real. Rice water may reduce the amount of hair breakage that you get by acting as a moisturizer or a conditioner for your hair, but most people's hair growth is genetically coated with some modifiable factors like nutrition, age, overall health. Hair care practices are usually a very minor component in how long your hair grows.

John Horton:

Now, I know anecdotally, which a lot of these … it seems like quick fixes, are all anecdotal — it seems like people swear by this. And my favorite thing was that village in China where, apparently, that's what they use and everybody's got six-foot hair. I think they're in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest-haired village. Is this just a neat story then?

Dr. Alok Vij:

So that community in China is really interesting, but it probably has something going on called “the founder effect.” So the founder effect is a genetic principle where a group of individuals starts a community with one specific characteristic. In this case, super long hair. As that community grows, that group of individuals’ progeny keeps that characteristic going. So everyone in that community is going to have long hair because it's in their genes. It's probably not the rice water.

John Horton:

It makes a great story, though.

So the next question that came up, and I saw this a lot, where there's a rumor that rice water can also help fight gray hair, which is a question that I am deeply interested in, as you can tell. So any truth to that or is this another more fable?

Dr. Alok Vij:

Listen, John, my gray hairs are quickly catching up to yours as my kids get older and older. Truthfully, we don't know why hairs turn gray. We think there's some component of oxidative stress in the hair follicle that makes a hair turn from pigmented to gray. It definitely seems like it's an inside-out problem, and an outside-in solution like rice water is not going to be helpful.

John Horton:

OK, well, the stress makes sense because I've got three kids, and let me tell you, before I had them, this was dark, so it definitely changed later.

Going back to rice water, why do people think that it works magic? It seems like you hear a lot of talk about minerals and antioxidants and things like that, is there anything to that?

Dr. Alok Vij:

Yeah, so there are definitely a lot of different components and different minerals — ingredients that make up rice water. The primary component is going to be starch. The starch from the rice bleeds out into the water and you can use that as a nice conditioner for the hair. So that starch is going to lay on the outer follicle, what's called the cuticle, and it's going to prevent the follicles from irritating or rubbing against each other, fraying and breaking. So the starch is a really important first ingredient.

There are other ingredients, particularly one antioxidant called inositol, which may play a role also. So this was an ingredient that was studied by a group in Japan who makes cosmetic products, and they suggested that inositol may be a strengthening agent for hair. It's important to remember that the hair that you see on the surface is actually just protein and keratin. It's not actively growing. It's not active cells. All of the true cells, the growth of your hair, comes from beneath the skin under your scalp. So all of these other products like shampoos, conditioners, rice water are only going to help the texture on the surface, but not necessarily have that much of an impact on the growth of your hair.

John Horton:

You hear all the minerals and vitamins that are in rice water, too, that get brought up — I think vitamin B, vitamin E, fiber, magnesium, manganese, zinc. Is this just people throwing together an alphabet soup of all the nutrients they can find to make it sound like it does something? Or is there any sort of connection to those things and your hair health?

Dr. Alok Vij:

There may be some connection, but it's really hard to prove. The vitamins and minerals and rice water may play a role in helping to stabilize some of the disulfide bonds in hair, those bonds help to keep your hair having its natural curl pattern. So stress from heat, chemical processes can break those bonds and change the texture of your hair — the rice water may protect against those stresses.

John Horton:

Yeah, it sounds like from everything you're saying, there's a lot of “it could,” “it may” — it seems like there's a little bit of truth to everything, but it's hard to pinpoint that, yes, it accomplishes this.

Dr. Alok Vij:

Yeah, there's not a lot of great evidence that rice water's that beneficial for hair; although, anecdotal evidence is great, and as I always tell my patients, if it works for you, then I can't argue against that.

John Horton:

Well, building on that then, if somebody is interested in trying rice water for their hair, how would they go about doing it?

Dr. Alok Vij:

So it all starts with rice and water, as the name would suggest.

John Horton:

Simple ingredients, I guess.

Dr. Alok Vij:

So the first and easiest method is what's called the short soak method. So in my house, when we cook rice, we soak the rice for about 30 minutes before we cook it. That helps to soften the grain to make for a fluffier bowl of rice, or so my mom would say. Take the water, instead of discarding it, take it and collect it and use it after the shower.

The alternative would be to boil the rice with about twice as much water as you normally would, and then drain off the excess water and keep that starchy cooking water for use after the shower.

John Horton:

And you use it after the shower, so you would go through your normal bathing routine, shampoo, soap, whatever, but then afterward, you would just dump this rice water mixture on your hair?

Dr. Alok Vij:

You got it. Once you've shampooed, you douse your hair in the rice water and let it soak for about 20 minutes before you rinse it out.

John Horton:

Is there anything, as far as you'd mentioned the soaking versus boiling, where it's like you might lose nutrients if you have that hot water bubbling?

Dr. Alok Vij:

There's possibly some truth to that, but it's hard to really say that there's any active ingredient in the rice water that's going to make a huge difference in your hair, so I don't know one way or another if there's a better or worse. I did read about people who ferment their rice water on the counter for a few days before they use it. That might make your hair smell a little bit, so just make sure you rinse thoroughly.

John Horton:

Yeah, I would think there'd be a little bit of a bacteria issue going on there, too.

Dr. Alok Vij:

Definitely. And bacteria living on the scalp can cause inflammation, which can reduce your hair growth, leading to the opposite of the outcome you want.

John Horton:

Well, yeah, that's not what we're looking for here. And I was going to ask if there were any negative side effects that can come from using rice water on your hair.

Dr. Alok Vij:

So if you don't rinse it out, maybe that extra starch on your hair could lead to gummy, harder-to-style hair. You can have some irritation if you, for instance, boiled or fermented your rice water, but otherwise, it's a pretty safe solution. It's not really going to harm anything.

John Horton:

And I guess the big question is, once you make your rice water, can you still eat the rice? It seems like an opportunity to multitask.

Dr. Alok Vij:

You can eat the rice, but you can't complain if there's a hair in your bowl.

John Horton:

It seems like that's a definite risk that you might run into with this process. So now I've got this mixture of … I don't know if I'm hungry or I just want to go and wash my hair again, so I'm torn in between here. So before I make that decision and go one way or the other, do you have anything else you want to add regarding rice water or any other kitchen products you might be able to use on your head?

Dr. Alok Vij:

Yeah, rice water is going to be a safe solution if you want to try it.

I'm going to try to wash away my gray hairs with some coffee, so I'm heading to the leftover coffee pot.

John Horton:

There's a whole new episode we can do. It's going to be hard for me to give up my coffee because I just drink it all, but I'm willing to give it a shot. We'll have to have you back on to tackle that question. A little cliffhanger for our listeners.

Dr. Alok Vij:

See you next time, John. Thanks so much.

John Horton:

Thanks, Dr. Vij.

There's not a lot of research to back up using rice water to grow your hair, but it's hard to argue with centuries of long locks. So go for it if you want to give it a try. It might even give you a head start on meal prep for dinner.

If you liked what you heard today, please hit the subscribe button and leave a comment to share your thoughts. Until next time, be well.

Speaker 3:

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