Bridge Tradition and Scientific Innovation: Ayurveda as a Suitable Alternative to Promote Healthy Hair
Advisor: Dr Zeynep Araci
Onsite Mentor: Sachin Deshmukh
People all around the world use hair as a form of self expression. However, unhealthy approaches to hair care from poor nutrition, hormonal imbalances, to scalp conditions, we put our hair condition at risk. Ayurveda, an ancient Indian medicinal science, focuses on preventing diseases and motivating people to maintain a healthy quality of life. In this project, I’m researching the extent to which Ayurveda improves the health of our hair. Through research papers and assistance from professionals in Ayurveda, I will analyze which oils, dietary changes, and herbs will be optimal in promoting healthy hair. I will then conduct a three week study where I randomly select individuals to either continue their normal hair routine or incorporate the chosen Ayurvedic remedies into their hair routine. By the end of each week, I will compare the results between the two groups. After completing the study, I will create a comprehensive data model that includes the results from my study, explaining Ayurvedic concepts and the results of my study in detail. This project will give people a platform to educate themselves on Ayurveda, understand Ayurvedic concepts, and practically incorporate Ayurvedic remedies into their regular lifestyle. Comprehension of this science will be substantial in finding new ways to incorporate multiple medicinal approaches in the numerous health concerns in the field of health care.
Project Blog
Week 0: Introduction
Hi everyone! Welcome to my first blog post! Tune in here weekly to watch my journey navigating through my Senior Project, where I will investigate how to bridge tradition with scientific innovativeness through Ayurveda!
Ayurveda has been an integral part of my life growing up in India. I moved to the US when I was eight years old and saw that the Ayurvedic practices I was so used to were extremely uncommon. None of my friends understood when I told them how bad my mother’s turmeric milk recipe tasted but that that was the reason I had gotten better. They didn’t understand why I oiled my hair to make it strong and healthy. Ayurveda helped me connect with my culture while I was navigating my way through a new country.
Hair is an integral component of who we are. My hair stands as a symbol of the most important aspects of me: culture, family, and confidence. I was always made to feel like my hair type was different in a negative way. Hair is an integral component of who we are. My hair never looked like my classmates' hair. I felt embarrassed of my long, thick, poofy hair, because it just didn’t seem to be “healthy.” Part of growing up was realizing that my hair being different didn’t have to be a bad thing. Hair helps us express ourselves and tells a story, which is why I chose to apply Ayurveda to this crucial component of our overall well-being.
I have two main goals with my project: Educate and Apply
Ayurveda has often been misunderstood around the world due to several different factors, such as the language barrier and limited research. I want to educate others on what Ayurveda truly is, diminishing the belief that Ayurveda is just “herbal medication.” The next part of this project is the application of Ayurveda, which I chose to do through hair! By educating people through the results of my experiments and research, I can give insight on topics that people wouldn’t normally connect Ayurveda to, such as consumerism. We spend money on expensive products after using shampoo to further nourish our hair. However, a bottle of coconut oil is cheap, easy to apply after shampoo, and can be used in several other tasks in your home.
Hair is made from a long chain of proteins in a sac, or follicle, which is made of skin cells. The cuticle is the outer layer of the hair and it can be used to measure the softness or shininess of hair. The different textures of hair arise due to the shape of follicles and the number of disulfide bonds found in the hair strands. Shampoos have several ingredients that are good for our hair, however sodium, lauryl sulfates are effective cleaning agents as well as being too harsh and dry on curlier and thinner hair types. Proper nourishment and maintenance of hair is needed, and that is where Ayurveda steps in. Coconut oil is predominantly made up of a medium-chain fatty acid called lauric acid. This gives coconut oil a long, straight structure, which is more easily absorbed deep into the hair shaft.
Stay tuned for my next blog to learn more :)
Week 1: Laying the groundwork
Welcome back readers!
This week, I started off with reading research papers and exploring Ayurvedic hair products on websites. After understanding the scientific aspect of Ayurveda in improving health care, I wanted to see how people apply these scientific findings to coming up with formulas of doses of these products they make from combining numerous Ayurvedic herbs and oils. I got a good understanding of which products have worked for customers by seeing the best sellers on vēdixTM, and noting how often people are recommended to apply these products.
Through reading papers on hair and Ayurveda, I learnt about the three Ayurvedic doshas: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. We all have different proportions of these doshas in our bodies, and that can affect how our hair needs to be maintained. For instance, I examined coconut oil’s impact on people with dandruff through a 2021 study that studied chronic scalp disorder on 140 participants over 16 weeks, noticing that their results highlight coconut oil’s impact on regulating the scalp microbiome. I also learnt how different textures of hair can affect which oil people use. For example, people with dry hair need relatively more oil, which is why castor oil would be the best for them since it is viscous. After exploring Ayurvedic hair products and research papers, I’m steps closer to making my own formula, or the set of instructions and doses I will be giving participants, for this study. As of now, I’ve noticed a common pattern: coconut oil is recommended by several sources to be applied overnight. Additionally, incorporating amla, or Indian Gooseberry, into diets seems to be very beneficial for our hair due to the Vitamin C it contains.
I contacted people from my project and randomly selected twenty people for either control or experimental group. Each group will have 10 participants. I made a survey to assess participants’ backgrounds in order to contextualize my results from my experiment. Participants from both control and experimental groups are completing this survey that asks them about their age, gender, ethnicity, hair characteristics, previous hair concerns, the hair products they use, and much more!
I also started watching videos on YouTube on how to make educational and accessible data models and websites so I can have an efficient end product.
That’s it for this week and I hope to share more with you next week! Thank you for your time!
Sources:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8012655/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12715094/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268805677_Medicinal_benefit_of_coconut_oil
Week 2: Research on hair and experimental planning
Hi readers! Thanks for tuning in to Week 2! This week, things get pretty scientific. In other words, I came across several problems on a daily basis and was questioning my experimental design. I found solutions through guidance from my advisors and research papers. After dozens of changes, I came across a set of instructions I will be giving every participant.
To prepare for my study, I had meetings with my external advisor and read several papers to find studies that have researched similar topics. I found a couple of studies that were actually testing coconut oil on hair, and decided to replicate some aspects of each study to create my own procedure. In order to quantitatively measure my results, I researched some visual hair shedding scales for men and women, such as Sinclair hair shedding scale and Norwood scale, which I will later use to calculate the Spearman’s ρ coefficient so I can compare the rate of change of hair loss over the four weeks of my study. This was particularly interesting because I was able to use the results from my Background Survey to personalize the shedding scales for each participant.
Next, I organized several folders for each participant that consisted of instructions, videos, and forms that they can fill out consistently. After I order the same coconut oil for every participant and send their personalized folder to them, I can start the experiment!
That’s it for this week, and I hope you tune back in next week!
Sources:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7276157/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5336434/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1346-8138.16989
https://www.healthline.com/health/beauty-skin-care/indian-home-remedies-for-hair-growth#ayurveda-101
Week 3: Tangled tales : data, research, and interesting situations
The highlight of this week was when a participant in my study (who I will not name for confidentiality purposes and because they could get really mad and possibly drop out) sent me a picture of their feet ❓❗as they were washing their hair for my experiment. It was hair-alious! Okay, I’m sorry, that was bad.
Aside from receiving interesting data that wasn’t particularly mentioned anywhere in the procedures, I actually communicated with several participants, answered questions, and gave them better instructions. My mom and I even drove across the city to drop the coconut oil packages I made this week for each participant in my experimental group.
Since the experiment has begun, I frequently check the weekly surveys and log my data, trying to see patterns and differences between this week’s results and the participant’s Background surveys. Until now, I’ve noticed how Sinclair’s hair loss scale is applied to people with different hair types. People with straight hair have consistently shown relatively less hair loss, remaining in Grade 1 of Sinclair’s scale. I’m excited to see if this pattern continues in both the experimental and control group. I’m still researching how exactly Ayurveda and hair are related through reading papers, as I will be giving descriptive details in the data model I will be making for the end product of this project. Speaking of the end product, I’m creating templates of it on different websites so I get a better idea of how I can make this project look aesthetic and informative at the same time.
This is what I spent my time doing this week for the project. Next week, I hope to report back more data, as I will be able to look at substantial results by next monday and complete drawing patterns within the initial week of the study. I also hope to return with more fun stories to tell :)
Week 4: Problems and possible solutions
Hi lovely people! It’s week four and I’m back with more!
If you’re keeping up with my blogs, you would know that I started my experiment last week, and noticed several interesting patterns and observations. Well, I’m continuing my experiments this week as well, but my target this week was to make sure the data I am getting is sensitively collected by participants and the results that I am drawing from this data representing my findings as accurately as possible. This is also a great learning opportunity for me: to learn from last week’s mistakes. I definitely don’t want to change/affect/manipulate the results and I want to keep the test conditions constant for every participant so that the data I am collecting represents the real findings.
So let’s go over some problems I (attempted) to tackle this week:
Some participants would forget to record their data
I anticipated that this would be an issue, which is why I decided to send reminders every Friday. However, this felt very last minute and also put a lot of pressure on both me and the participants. I decided to arrange weekly meetings with participants. I’ll contact them this week and next week to figure out their availability to make sure things run smoothly.
Lack of organization
It was definitely a challenge to organize all the data I was getting. I originally had a massive spreadsheet where I recorded everything, but I soon realized that was really ineffective and I need to stop being lazy… I spent my time this week making better ways to organize my data in folders, separating each factor of the study so I can independently analyze my variables.
I planned to meet my external advisor to begin the case study aspect of this project, which I’m planning on beginning next week or the week after.
That’s it for this week and I hope to give you more to read next week!
Week 5: Calls, graphs, and results
Hey guys! Thanks for checking in for week 5! This week was an important one, as it was my first checkpoint in my study. By now I have data from the first two weeks, so exactly half the work is done! I wanted to analyze data in that context and see if there’s any extra information I need to explain trends/ outliers in the results.
I mainly focused on contacting participants and asking them questions based on their results. This helped me clear up many confusing data points. For example, participants’ sense of confidence and self expression through their hair frequently fluctuated in the control group compared to the experimental group. Seeing this pattern, I checked in with the participants to see if there was a particular reason why. Some had bad haircuts 💇that lowered their confidence, while others were just affected by the weather. In the experimental group, I’ve noticed a significant drop in the amount of hair loss. Participants are using the “personal comments” section to indicate how their hair feels so much softer due to the coconut oil. One participant even mentioned how it feels great to finally put something healthy and natural in their hair instead of buying other products to provide nourishment to their roots.
Next, I started modeling my data with graphs and creating the line of best fit for each of the four factors I was studying within the two groups. For now, I ended up with eight graphs with varied data, and I’m excited to see how this either continues or changes in the last two weeks of my experiment. I’m excited to show you guys the graphs when they are completed!
That’s all I had for this week, and I hope my blog catches your eye again next week :)
Week 6: Post Spring Break
What’s up readers! I hope you’re having a good week.
Last week was Spring Break, so I spent quite some time relaxing, and I even traveled to LA to look at colleges and have fun with my family! This week however, I had to get back to business.
I spent a lot of time this week contacting my participants and asking them to explain any data points I was curious about. Calling people and asking them questions made me better understand the results and I took notes of this in my spreadsheet. I then went on to update the graphs I made the previous week. Each graph represented a component I was studying : Hair loss, split ends, shine, confidence, and self expression. I started re-reading research papers to follow the protocol on how to mathematically model my results using the Spearman coefficient.
Next, I had a long meeting with my external advisor, where I learnt several things. Before analyzing the data we’ve collected through the case study, we decided to learn some more ways Ayurvedic doctors diagnose patients. We looked at the Ayurvedic tongue test and the Ayurvedic nail test, and I began with analyzing my own nails to see my dosha constitution and use it as an example before analyzing patients. I’m meeting my external advisor again next week to gather more data for my case study and make a detailed table to note down certain factors for each patient.
This is all I had to share this week, and I hope to see you again next week!
Week 7: Delve Deep: Week 7's Leap
Hello everyone! Welcome back to week 7 of Senior Project! I’m glad you joined me again this week, because this week was a leap closer to preparing the final product!
To follow up on last week's progress, I decided to delve even deeper into Ayurvedic diagnosis, immersing myself in more sample case studies and research articles. Specifically, I focused on understanding how Ayurvedic doctors diagnose and treat patients with hair conditions. This exploration was crucial for gaining insights that will inform my own project. It sets the stage for next week, where I will be meeting with my External Advisor to discuss the case study in more detail.
I had a meeting with my Internal Advisor, in which we discussed how to tackle some problems I was facing in the project. We came up with alternative solutions and ideas, and even strengthened my current plan!
In addition to my research, I began crafting the framework for my data model. Utilizing tools like Canva and Google Slides, I created a preliminary structure to visualize the layout and content of both the website and the data model. Currently, I’ve included essential components such as my experiment details, summaries of prior Ayurvedic hair research, and relevant links. However, there's still much more to incorporate! Over the coming week, I plan to integrate additional factors such as the case study analysis, its potential impact, and other pertinent details. With the project deadline looming, it's imperative to ensure every aspect is meticulously organized and presented.
Join me next week as I strive to finalize my complete data model, taking another step forward towards the final product!
Week 8: The wake up call
Hi curious people! I hope you all are having a good week, because I didn’t… This week was full of confusion, and a lot of that had to do with my Senior Project because we are coming close to the end of these interesting ten weeks! We had a meeting with Ms. Nagpal this week, and I realized that I really need to WAKE UP ⏰and finish this project ASAP so I can start working on my final presentation.
I was hoping for quick results, but things don’t go according to plan literally most of the time. My work this week started with me tediously clicking buttons for days. You might be wondering why. If you remember from my previous blogs, I am making an educational website with multiple data models to store my results and explain Ayurveda’s holistic process. So… yeah…. things started out pretty slow because I was figuring out how to use my template on google slides on an actual website builder, but all I found were ugly template options or websites asking me to pay a lot of money (I need to save for my college tuition). But THEN, my amazing friend Heeya Das helped me out and recommended a few websites I could use to enhance my work. So I spent most of my week on building that, and I can hopefully give my eyes a break from the screen.
Additionally, I have added a new aspect to my Senior Project! Though I can make a website and talk about Ayurveda, I wanted to have some in-person interactions with people, explaining the science and also giving them a sample of what I did in my study, as an appreciation for their time. I’ve really touched on the consumerism aspect of Ayurveda in my analysis. Think about all the products most people use after they wash their hair after using shampoo or conditioner to enhance softness and texture. These products are from expensive brands and can cost around $60 - $90 on average. However, a 84 fl oz of coconut oil costs literally $23, and it can be used around your house for not just your hair, but also cooking and other daily activities. Hence, I would like to make hair kits for Senior Citizens and give these kits out for free. I will complete this task around the last week of the project.
Thank you for your time and see you next week!
Week 9: Oil and prom
Hey everyone! It’s Week 9, which means I should technically be almost done with my work. Luckily, I am! Let me catch you up on everything I did this week.
The first thing I did is make homemade coconut oil mixed with herbs for the people I will be giving out hair kits to. It isn’t difficult at all, I buy a lot of coconut oil from Costco <3 , and then I add methi seeds, curry leaves, and fresh rosemary leaves (coming straight from my backyard) to the oil. I let this sit in the sun for a week. I wanted to make sure my coconut oil was ready in time, which is why I started on it this week! I also started working on the instructions sheet that will be included in the kits!
Next, I continued working on my website. I played around with more platforms and decided to continue with one of them. I would’ve completed it by now if we didn’t have prom this weekend, because I had to pick between three different dresses! I hope to complete the website soon, but I’m almost there!
That’s all for this week, hope to see you next week!
Week 10: The (almost) Finish Line
Hi readers! Thanks for checking in on WEEK 10!!! This project is finally coming to an end, which means that I have results to show you guys!
Starting off, I had an AP exam this week so I decided to spend the first few days of the week just working on the project. Yet, I tried to spend sometime each day trying to manage both, but I couldn't progress too much with the website. That was completely fine though because I had already worked quite a bit on the website earlier! I was confused on how I wanted to connect all the parts together. After writing everything, I realized I had three main parts:
a "What is Ayurveda" section
a section connecting hair and Ayurveda
my experiment!
My experiment had six subparts, each of those parts representing a factor I tested on the participants of my study. I made blogs for each of these parts and subparts, and connected the links of these blogs to a diagram I made that connects all these aspects I'm going in depth in on my website!
After this, I worked on my final presentation for my practice presentation with my internal advisor. I got feedback that I need to incorporate before my next practice session next week!
Thank you so much for following my blogs. This journey has been so fun and I'm glad you guys were reading along :)