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Extracts vs Powders

I recently went to visit a local Chinese Herb shop to get an herbal ‘tune-up’.  Many years ago, I found a great chinese herb shop and whenever I felt rundown, I would get my pulse read by the old resident herbalist and he would write out a prescription for the pharamacist to combine together and grind up.  I would then boil the ground up herbs and drink a cup twice a day.  I always felt like a million bucks afterwards and I recommended them to all my friends and family.  Unfortunately, the place burned down one night and I never saw or heard from them since.  I haven’t been able to find a good herbalist since. 

Anyway, I tried out this new place and when I went to pick up my herbs, I got a bunch of packets of powder I was supposed to mix into a cup of hot water and drink.  The herbalist told me this was the new way to dispense herbal prescriptions.  I didn’t really like this, but decided it was worth a try.

Extracts have some merit.  Always make a note if you are dealing with a raw herb or with an extract.  Extracts are just that..alcohol or water or some other chemical extraction of the chemicals in the herb.  Extracts are very potent and come in varying strengths such as 5:1, 10:1, 100:1 etc.  Extracts are usually standardized to contain a certain percentage of the known active chemical, which I guess makes it more like a drug, but guarantees you are getting a standard and expected dose.  As an example, I don’t think 500 mg of powdered gingseng is going to have much effect on anyone, but 500 mg of a powerful ginseng extract certainly could.

The problem with extracts is that they could be missing important chemicals that are not understood or known that are vital.  I always felt a water extract would miss chemicals that were not water soluble or an alcohol extract could miss ingredients as well.  But I’m not a chemist, so I’m not really sure about that.  I’ve noticed really powerful effects from extracts (which I’ll go into detail in future posts) so I know they work.  At the same time, I’ve had great effects from boiling bulk herbs too.  I can’t really think of a good experience with a raw powdered herb off the top of my head, I think they are largely ineffective because the dosage is so small.

In either case, one is probably not always better than the other and each will have it’s place.  For now, just make sure you know what you’re dealing with and what you’re paying for.   Read those labels to see if you’re getting an extract or just a few milligrams of a powder.

Oh, and my experience with that new herbalist was terrible.  I don’t think mixing individual extracts of the herbs into hot water is the same as the raw herbs.  I didn’t feel better, in fact I felt worse and threw the rest out.  I’ll never go back there.

By the way, and this is a topic for another post, I don’t think the herbs we get now are anywhere near what they used to be in the ‘old days’.  But I digress…

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Alopecia Areata Cured!

Although it’s not a life threatening condition, Alopecia Areata (patchy baldness) can cause sufferers much anguish and distress. I first noticed a golf ball size bald patch on the back of my otherwise thick hair when I was about 17. The doctor said it was stress related and gave me some cortisone shots in the area. A couple months later, the hair grew back in quickly.

I wish that was the end of the story. In retrospect, I was lucky. Many people with alopecia areata lose all their hair all over their body. I just had one bald spot and it grew back.  A year or two later, I got another spot and then a couple other smaller ones.  Back to the dermatologist for shots.  However, this time the hair started to take some time to grow back.  In my twenties, I got new bald spots in different areas just about every year.  I had odd thin patches that came and went as well.  Sometimes the spots would not fill back in after the cortisone shots.  My last dermatologist wanted to take a biopsy but I refused.  I had every blood test imaginable taken.

Everytime I went to a new barber, he/she would remark that the last barber butchered my hair.  “No, ” I would sigh, “that’s how it grows.”  I started to go to one barber who specialized in cutting the thicker areas shorter than the others.

I also suffered from canker sores pretty regularly.  I was heavily involved in martial arts and whenever I recieved a cut inside my mouth, I’d get a painful canker for about 10 days.

When I had my last bout about 4 years ago, I broke down and bought a product to hide the spots.  It was a black powder that worked pretty well except it would rub off on anything I happen to brush my head against, like a head rest or pillow.  However, this product, Dermatch from Dermatch Inc. was a life saver.

Believe me when I tried almost everything — i tried chili peppers, topical steroid gels–I can’t even remember everything, but if it’s out there, I’m sure I tried it.

But something did work — for me.  I completely cut gluten out of my diet.  Yes..no bread, no pasta, no Pizza!  It’s one of the hardest things I had to do, but it seems to be working.  4 years and not one bald spot.  All the thin spots filled in (which never happened for over 20 years).  My better half says my hair is like a ‘carpet’.

And guess what?  I never get canker sores either.

There is one more thing I added, which I feel is related.  I started taking a Fish Oil supplement morning and evening religiously exactly when I stopped the gluten.

This is the one I take:

I know this is not scientific, since I did both things at the same time.  But I’m not willing to test stopping the fish oil to know for sure.  In my mind, if you suffer from this problem, try the gluten-free diet and the fish oil together.  An added benefit is that the fish oil helped improve my lipid profile immensely.  I’ll go over that detail in a future post.

Let me know what you think.