Dr. Henry Cheng & Christine Cheng
Have you noticed more hair on the floor when you vacuum your home lately? Are you now able to see your scalp between hair bundles? These are the subtle signs of hair thinning. Don’t wait till you go bald. You can do something to slow down the process if not grow back more hair. The first step you want to take is to have a doctor check your thyroid function. If blood tests came back normal and yet you have symptoms of low thyroid activity like lack of energy, weight gain, loss of memory, dry skin, etc., then you can take a supplement called Thyrosol® (Metagenics) to enhance the efficiency of your existing thyroid hormone. Do not take this until you have your blood test results. Innate makes a supplement called Innate Skin Hair & Nails® that contains various vitamins, biotin, silica, sulphur and a long list of herbs and anti-oxidants that promotes the metabolism of skin follicles. When your skin is healthy your hair follicles will grow more hair. There are various shampoos and conditioners designed and labelled for hair restoration. Some of them contain the Chinese medicine He Shou Wu which literally translates to “Mr. Ho with the dark hair”. Others contain alcoholic and heat producing herbs to stimulate circulation. There is a line of product that I had found reasonably effective is called M ‘n’ T Nutrient Shampoo/Conditioner. This line of product contains biotin, hydrolysed proteins, and vitamins that nourish the hair follicles. It has a pH that does not damage the hair. When you get into the shower, wet your hair, apply the shampoo, leave the shampoo on while you shower the body, and rinse the shampoo off. Then you massage the conditioner onto the scalp and leave it on. Only if you find it too sticky that you would lightly rinse. Do not blow dry your hair. When the hair dries you will find the leave-on conditioner fairly silky and appealing. For the high risk and already bald areas, rub some Mega-Tek Rebuilder Cream (Cell Rebuilder) on and leave it there. The Rebuilder Cream contains various ingredients to promote hair growth including hydrolyzed keratin protein, marine protein, alantoin, amino acids, mucopolysaccharides, etc. Interestingly all these products were originally developed and used in horses and show dogs. Horse owners and dog owners saw the remarkable results and they tried it on themselves. I remember about 25 years ago, a Vanvouver newspaper had a front page article with a photo of a cow-girl holding a bottle of horse shampoo. The article talked about horse owners using the show-horse shampoo on themselves with great success. For your daily grooming, try not to use chemicals on your scalp, do not blow your hair with the hair-dryer, use gentle grooming tools, and avoid strong and direct sunlight. Eat a healthy diet and exercise regularly. You need adequate high quality proteins, collagen, and mucopolysaccharides in your food. Mucopolysaccharides can be reinforced with products like Recovery® that contains glucosamine, MSM and anti-oxidants.
Some people have very thin, brittle, ridged, scaled nails, and their nails hardly grow back after they are clipped. These people can also take Innate Skin Hair Nail. As well they can rub the Mega-Tek Rebuilder cream over the nail and into the nail bed. If your nails are grey and black you need to see a doctor because you may have fungal infection of the nails. Like the skin and the scalp, your nails need to be clean and free of diseases in order to grow. Again, animal products like the horse hoof grower Hoofmaker had been used by people to grow their nails for the past 30 years. Hoofmaker is not as strong as Mega-Tek Rebuilder. Being less costly, Hoofmaker had been used by many ladies as a hand cream that improves moisture and suppleness.
Christine Cheng is a registered pharmacist and Certified Natural Products Advisor and Dr. Henry Cheng is Natural Health Products Consultant at Pharmasave Cloverdale.
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