Monthly Boost February 2008

Only two weeks ago was I thinking about the subject of my next Monthly Boost when my son asked me ‘mummy why do you have a white hair?’ Oooh, I was struck by his observation skills (well I would like to believe that my ‘white’ hairs are really not noticeable and turn it into a positive that my son has great observation skills, yes I know that I am only fooling myself). And my reactionary response was ‘when one becomes a mummy they get some white hairs with it’…and you can just imagine where that conversation went.

So my subject for this month of course is about hair greying. Again this subject is pretty huge, but I am going to focus on the basics and use a case from my clinic.

Firstly, I am a firm believer that greying hair is an indication of adrenal stress which goes onto fatigue (nowadays known as chronic fatigue or ME). Why is this? In basic language this is linked to minerals. These are our so-called spark plugs of life, without them we would not be alive.

Hair reflects the minerals in our body. Black hair gets its colour from the two minerals iron and manganese. Both of these minerals are vital for energy production. If you know someone who is iron deficient/anaemic you will know that their energy levels are pretty low. So when people are ‘fatigued’ they tend to be low on one or both of these minerals, as these minerals are low the hair also becomes depleted and loses its colour turning grey. You may find this hard to believe…but stay with me….and to the others I would say don’t go running out to buy a whole load of manganese and iron supplements just yet.

Some of you bright sparks may ask, ‘well I feel pretty ‘flat’ energetically but I don’t have any grey hairs’…This is usually because our body has reserves and it is only when these reserves become depleted that hair will show signs of mineral loss…follow so far?

To rattle your grey matter a bit more, there are other minerals that are also very important in energy production and these include zinc and calcium. Believe it or not these two minerals are actually dumped in the hair under times of ‘stress’ or low energy as in this case. Both calcium and zinc are white, so for this reason the hair will become white.

In most cases hair does not turn grey over night, it is a gradual process. Our mineral levels decline gradually over time and hair usually goes from grey to white as more and more minerals are depleted. I have a patient whose hair turned grey within a week due to tremendous emotional stress from loss of a loved one, which was more of a ‘shock’ then an ongoing long term stress.

The body has the amazing capacity to survive, it will do this through hair loss, greying hair, chronic fatigue, cancer and so on, just so that the body keeps going. If we did not have this survival mechanism we would basically die at birth!

Now, the Good News

About a year ago, I was ‘treating’ (by law in Naturopathic medicine we are not allowed to use the word treat hence it is in inverted commas, yes I know enough to lose a few minerals and produce a few grey hairs don’t you think?) a 38 year young female patient who prior to seeing me had a baby through an emergency C-section. She wanted a natural birth in water with the whole candle and hypnotic therapy ‘thing’ but due to ‘complications’ she was rushed into hospital for this emergency surgery. Since then she never ‘felt herself’.

It was obvious she had adrenal fatigue (i.e. her main survival glands were pretty exhausted’) which further impacted her emotional well being. She also mentioned that straight after the birth her started to go grey at a ‘rate of knots’. We did a hair mineral analysis test to see where her body was at in relation to her mineral status as well as her heavy metals (such as mercury, lead, cadmium to name a few). And as expected she had severe adrenal fatigue with high zinc and low manganese and iron levels. There were not any heavy metals present at this time.

Her nutrient levels were re-addressed through healthy eating as well as some mineral and adrenal support supplements which did NOT include supplementing with iron (it is completely incorrect to believe that if you have low iron levels that you need to supplement with iron, by doing this you can make matters worse…I am afraid you will have to wait for more on this in March) and it took her about 8 months to ‘feel herself’ but I was surprised that her hair colour went back to being brown within a month on the healthy eating and supplement programme when usually I see this happen after the adrenals have had at least 3 months minimum to ‘find their feet’ again.

If you would like to have a hair mineral analysis test please click here to contact me.

To great hair!

Khush