 I once had a patient say to me, if you found a way to regrow hair, you have found El Dorado, the city of gold. And I know for a lot of people, hair loss is something that makes them feel very insecure. And about 90% of the time, it's women coming to me and saying that, hey, Dr. Alex, do you have anything that can help with hair loss from an herbal point of view? On this video, I thought I would share a little bit about East versus West, why hair loss happens, as well as some very famous herbs used in traditional Chinese medicine that are said to blacken the hair again if it's graying prematurely or even potentially regrow it and what the research says. So let's jump in. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hein, author of The Health Book Master of the Day and doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. So before we jump in, there's two very important links right below this video. The first is for a free guide for daily rituals that can potentially help your ideas to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. And the second is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, you can reach out and contact my private practice with the link right below this video. So let's first jump into this research paper here before we get into a lot of what ancestral knowledge has been around hair loss. So in this particular paper, it's called hair loss, common causes and treatment. It actually breaks down and deconstructs many of the common causes of hair loss. For example, gradual onset of hair loss, alopecia, which can be involving hormones. It can be purely genetic. You tend to see this for some men running in their families by male pattern baldness. It can be related to systemic diseases, meaning it is pointing to an actual internal medicine issue like hypothyroidism, iron deficiency or other nutritional deficiencies or nutritional disorders. You can have patchy hair loss, which can be due to fungal issues. There may even be patterns of hair loss that are almost, I hate to say neurotic in origin, but really are more psychiatric stress related. Like for example, picking or plucking can be related to medication use. And in general, they can have myriad causes, but in general, these three buckets, like alopecia involving hormones or a genetic link, systemic diseases, internal medicine issues, fungal issues, et cetera. Now ultimately, we've probably all heard about medications like Rogaine that are said to regrow hair, but I think a fascinating and underserved and really unnoticed corner of the health and wellness marketplace is the formulas from traditional Chinese medicine. So let's talk about one that is the most famous called Hushouwu. Now Hushouwu literally translates to the black haired Mr. He. So it is said basically that this remedy, this particular herb can potentially blacken the hair again if it is prematurely gray and also help to regrow hair. So Hushouwu developed a very famous reputation for doing that. Now let's look at some of the research on Hushouwu itself. In one particular paper here, this paper is entitled Traditional Usages, Botany, Phytochemistry, Pharmacology, and Toxicology of Polygonum Mutiflorum. So this is the Hushouwu plant, right? And I wanna draw your attention to two particular quotes here. One says about the history of Hushouwu, speaks about it. It said it is traditionally valued and reported for hair blackening, liver and kidney tonifying and anti-aging effects. And it's widely distributed throughout the world and has been used as a traditional medicine for centuries in China. Now, when it actually comes to the clinical research on what Hushouwu can do regarding hair follicles, this next research paper is interesting as well. So this paper is called Traditional Chinese Medicine Treatment for Androgenetic Alopecia Based on Animal Experiments, Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Now in this particular paper, they found that researchers found that TCM can increase the total number of hair follicles and terminal hair ratio and reduce the skin discoloration time and skin hair growth time in AGA animal models. Now, they said the potential mechanism of action here is that these effects may be related to the reduction of the serum testosterone level in these animals. And finally, another interesting piece of research here talked about hair follicles themselves. Now, this paper is called the Topical Application of Polygonum Multiflorum Extract Induces Hair Growth of Resting Hair Follicles Through XYZ Mechanism, right? So what the researchers found here was that they observed an increase in the number and size of hair follicles that are considered as evidence for they're describing this physiological process by which more hair can be produced, for example. So this is actually documented with this plant. In particular, this one was topically applied Hushou Wu. So obviously we take it mostly internally but there are lots of ways to apply it. So from a physiological point of view, what is the traditional Chinese medicine point of view of hair loss? So in general, hair loss is viewed as the status of what we call the blood, particularly the liver and the kidney blood. So for example, a lot of people who experience issues with hair loss also experience other symptoms that fall into this pattern. So when we say someone has liver blood deficiency, that can involve issues with the hair, thinning, dry, brittle, the skin, very commonly, either deficiency, which is skin dryness, or skin itching, or excess, which is where people actually get red raised rashes when they itch. You know, I think it's called Dermagraphism where people can write their actual names on their skin and it becomes red and raised after 30 seconds. So that's more the status of the liver blood, right? And so we typically see blood deficiency issues in the hair, the skin, and the nails. Now with kidney deficiency, you know, there's an archetype we talk about a lot in this profession, which is the archetype of the prematurely aged and prematurely gray CEO. So we say that the CEO has been utilizing his resources and pushing, he or her, pushing for so hard that what this elevated stress response does over a long period of time is it exhaust the deeper resources of the essence, the kidney jing, for example. Now, what happens is one of the signs of essence deficiency is either prematurely graying or changes in bone status. So this is very interesting because for people, let's say that are meth addicts, if you've ever seen the before and after pictures of someone who is before methamphetamine, and after what is staggering and quite scary is the changes in the physical bone structure, not just due to the weight loss, but the actual destruction, the loss of teeth, the destruction of the mandible and the jaw, the physical changes to the bones are very shocking to see, not just the weight loss. And from our point of view in TCM, hard drugs like that damaged the essence to a much higher degree. You know, that would ordinarily happen decades later in life, but that's happened over a few years due to hard drug use. Now the aging CEO who doesn't sleep enough, he or she sleeps five hours per night and they eat poorly and they're stressed to wazoo all day long. This kind of person is also taxing the resources and a fairly deep level of taxation taxes the liver and the kidney blood, which is also related to what we call essence deficiency. Now very often kidney deficiency shows up with other symptoms like genital urinary symptoms like frequent urination, nighttime urination, lack of libido, issues with erections for men, et cetera. And the liver is more of what we talked about there. Some people it'll also be night sweats and things like that. So we often use these formulas to replenish the liver blood and or the kidney blood. And a lot of these issues are typically very, very effectively reversed. Hair loss in particular can be a three to six month or more treatment because these issues are relatively deep in terms of the pathology. So interesting lesson, East versus West, where the hair loss comes from, what it may be related to. But typically in TCM it falls into these two patterns. So that's what I have for you today guys. Check out these other related videos right there and I will see you soon.