Hair loss, brittle nails, dull skin — the nutrient checklist that actually matters

Hair thinning, nails that split before they grow, skin that's gone flat and dull. It's one of the most common things people quietly worry about, and one of the most heavily marketed-to. Type any of it into a search bar and you'll be sold a pastel gummy within seconds.

So let's do the un-marketed version. Here is the honest checklist of nutrients that genuinely have a role in hair, skin and nails — what each one actually does, and, crucially, the caveat the gummy ads leave out.

We'll start with that caveat, because it changes how you should read everything after it.

Nutrients matter for your hair, skin and nails in the same way petrol matters for your car. If you're running low, things go wrong in visible, specific ways. Top the tank back up and things work again.

But once the tank is full, adding more petrol does not make the car go faster.

This is the single most important thing to understand about "beauty" supplements, and it's the thing the category is built on you not understanding. If you're genuinely low in one of the nutrients below, correcting that can make a real, visible difference. If you're not low, taking more of it will do approximately nothing for your hair, you'll just produce more expensive urine. There is no nutrient on this list that gives well-nourished people supernatural hair. Anyone implying otherwise is selling the tank-past-full fantasy.

Right. With that established, here's what's actually on the checklist.

Each of these has an authorised EU health claim, meaning the regulator reviewed the evidence and agreed the nutrient plays this role. That's a much higher bar than "studies suggest," and it's the bar we hold ourselves to.

Zinc — the workhorse of this whole list. Zinc has authorised claims for the maintenance of normal hair, normal skin AND normal nails, a hat-trick almost no other nutrient manages. It's involved in the protein synthesis and cell division that hair and nails depend on, which are among the fastest-dividing tissues in your body. Zinc deficiency shows up in exactly the ways this blog is about.

Biotin (vitamin B7) — the famous one, and the most oversold one. Biotin has an authorised claim for the maintenance of normal hair and normal skin. Real role, genuinely important. But biotin deficiency is quite rare in people eating a normal diet, which means the megadose biotin gummies are, for most buyers, treating a problem they don't have. Worth knowing before you spend.

Selenium — authorised claims for maintenance of normal hair and normal nails. It's also part of your antioxidant defences. A little goes a long way, and — unusually for this list — more is genuinely not better, since selenium has a fairly narrow comfortable range. This is a case for "enough," not "loads."

Vitamin C — the collagen one. Authorised claim: contributes to normal collagen formation for the normal function of skin. As we covered in the collagen blog, vitamin C isn't a building block, it's the tool your body uses to assemble collagen. No vitamin C, no proper collagen, dull and fragile skin. It earns its place here on hard mechanism.

Vitamin A — authorised claim for the maintenance of normal skin. It's central to skin cell turnover — the same reason its derivatives (retinoids) are dermatology's most evidence-backed topical ingredient. The supplement job here is simpler: don't be deficient.

Niacin (B3) and riboflavin (B2) — both carry authorised claims for the maintenance of normal skin. Unglamorous B vitamins doing quiet, essential work in skin cell energy and function. Nobody markets these because you can't make a gummy sound exciting with "riboflavin," but the skin doesn't care what markets well.

Copper — authorised claim for normal skin pigmentation, plus a role in the connective tissue that gives skin its structure. The forgotten one, and a good example of why single-nutrient thinking falls short.

Notice the pattern: that's nine nutrients, not one hero. "Hair, skin and nails" isn't a single-ingredient problem, which is exactly why single-ingredient gummies underdeliver.

You could go and buy nine separate supplements off that list. Please don't. You'd spend a fortune, rattle when you walk, and almost certainly over-shoot on some (selenium, we're looking at you) while forgetting others.

The sensible version is one properly formulated multivitamin that covers the whole checklist at sensible doses. Our MultiVit contains every nutrient named above — zinc, biotin, selenium, vitamin C, vitamin A, niacin, riboflavin and copper — each at close to 100% of your daily requirement. Not megadosed, because megadosing is the tank-past-full mistake this blog opened with. Just the full checklist, covered, at the amount your body can actually use.

That's the whole pitch, and it's deliberately unexciting. "Covers the nutrients that matter, at the doses that make sense, no theatre" is a harder sell than a glowing gummy. It's also the honest one.

And if you're taking Vollagen for the collagen amino acids, MultiVit is the natural partner, it brings the vitamin C those amino acids need to actually become collagen. Building blocks from one, the tool that lays them from the other.

If your hair loss is sudden, patchy, or dramatic, or your nail changes are new and pronounced, see a GP before you see a supplement. Thyroid issues, iron deficiency, and a handful of other genuinely medical causes present exactly this way, and no multivitamin fixes those. This is the part the gummy ads will never tell you, because "consult a doctor" doesn't convert. We'll tell you anyway.

For the everyday version, the gradual dullness, the slightly slower-growing nails, the general "my hair's lost its oomph", making sure the nutrient checklist is genuinely covered is a sensible, unglamorous, evidence-based place to start.

The nutrients that matter for hair, skin and nails are real, and there are more of them than any single-ingredient product admits: zinc, biotin, selenium, vitamin C, vitamin A, the quiet B vitamins, copper. Each has an authorised claim behind it, not a marketing hunch.

But they help by filling gaps, not by stacking past full. Cover the checklist at sensible doses, rule out the medical causes if something changed suddenly, and ignore anyone promising that a bigger dose buys better hair. The tank only needs filling once.