Defying times….with “He sou wu” soup

I have just come back from the hair salon with Priscilla, my neighbor. I have a routine trim while she had her hair dyed. Dyeing your hair at the salon nowadays can be rather expensive – you have to pay a hand and a leg for a bottle of good quality dye and the service.

“How about you, do you want to dye your hair too?” the hairdresser asked me after he had finished trimming my hair.

“No, thanks. I don’t dye my hair. I don’t need to, at least not at the moment,” I told him politely.

“You mean your hair color is natural? I thought you dyed your hair too!” he replied laughingly.

“Thanks, I have never dyed my hair before,” I replied.

Priscilla is of the same age with me but she had grey hair since her teenage years. She was born with premature grey hair. She had been dyeing her hair since then and had spent a lot of money coloring her hair all these years.

On the other hand, I was born with very dark brown hair. I got it from my father who got it from his mother. It ran in the family. The advantage of having dark brown hair is that we do not get grey hair so fast compared to those who have black hair. Both my grandmother and father do not develop any grey hair until they are in their late seventies. But the down side is that you will have very fine and oily hair.

Some people like Priscilla are born with grey hair but more and more people find their hair turning grey before they turned 50 and this can be quite traumatic. Leading a very stressful life and not eating a balance diet can be some of the causes besides genetic ones.

Let’s have a look on why hairs turn grey. Hair color is produced by a tiny hair pigment cell inside hair follicles called melanocytes. Melanocytes produced a pigment called melanin that gives hair its color. The more melanin being produced, the darker the hair color. Hydrogen peroxide is a byproduct of the body’s metabolic process. Too much of hydrogen peroxide in our body will caused the melanocytes to become less active. They then produce less melanin, resulting in grey hair.

In traditional Chinese medicine, it was believed a person’s hair is a reflection of the health of that person’s kidney and liver. To have healthy hair, first you must have healthy kidney and liver. This is where “He sou wu” comes in.

“He sou wu” is a tuberous plant found mostly in China, Taiwan and Japan. The nutrition can be found in its root. “He sou wu” means “Black haired Mr. He.” Mr. He was a defeated general who went into exile after a war. He lived on roots in the jungle. After many years, he left the jungle and came out, younger looking and his white hair restored to its original black. He survived on these tuberous plants for years and nothing else.

Researches shows that “He sou wu” works on the kidney and liver to improve the quality of red blood cells and helps break down the buildup of liver fat. This in turn stimulates blood circulation in the hair scalp where nutrient delivery is improved, nourishing hair follicles and promoting the production of melanin.

So, don’t wait until your hair turns white before you do something! Start consuming “He sou wu” while your hair is still black and healthy. This herb helps to maintain your natural hair color. You can boil it with lean meats for several hours or simply with rock sugar. Drink once a week on a regular basis. If you are lazy to brew a soup, then buy them in pills form from reputed Chinese medical halls. Another reason why “He sou wu” is good is that when our blood circulation is restored, not only our hair benefitted, our skin too. Little wonder “He sou wu” is called the perfect anti-aging herb!