Irish Moss – Jamaican Power Drink

How does great skin, a strong “back”, virility and awesome taste wrapped up in one drink sound? Sounds great to me, so that’s why I’m introducing you to a little known Jamaican treat called Irish Moss or Sea Moss. Chrondus Crispus is a variety of seaweed that is found in coastal regions of North America, the Caribbean and parts of Europe. Many of you have heard of the thickener, Carageenan, which comes from this seaweed. It’s popular is Scotland and Ireland as the main ingredient in pudding. It’s high in Sulfur and other minerals and is touted as male performance booster. Here’s how you make it:
Ingredients:

  • Irish Moss
  • Flax Seed (aka Linseed)
  • Condensed Milk (I use skim milk to lower calorie content)
  • Spices–Nutmeg,Cinnamon,Vanilla
  • Optional-Gum Arabic
  • Optional-Isinglass (Agar)
  • Optional-Sugar or Sweetener to taste
  • Optional but recommended-Wray and Nephew White Rum

This is how one of the good Irish Moss packages looks like and where to get it.

Power Drink
Power Drink

How to Make it:
Note:I tend to shy away from listing exact amounts. Experiment, you can’t go wrong.
Some people recommend soaking the irish moss overnight first with some lime juice. I found it’s not necessary. Just rinse it and take off any particles. Put in a pan with water to cover and a bunch of the flax seeds and the optional agar and Gum Arabic. Bring to a boil and simmer until the Irish moss melts away (could be an hour or more depending on how much seaweed you’re using). I recommend starting small until you get the hang of it. Keep an eye on it because it can boil over and make a huge mess on your stove. You can use a fork or one of those hand blenders to speed it up. Put in the vanilla and spices with milk and sweetener. Add the Rum if you want an extra kick.
Be creative. Everytime I drink this mixture, my skin looks great for days afterwards. It must have some kind of nitric oxide, PDE-5 inhibition or related effect because this stuff is seriously powerful and works.
Ideas to enhance the effects:

  • Boil in some peanuts or peanut butter. If using raw peanut, try to include the skin
  • Add a Jamaican Root Drink (these are bitter herbs with reputed aphrodisiac and healing power)
  • Try adding Carrot Juice
  • Ginseng Extract is often added
  • Various combinations of Banana and Oats are also often used
  • Gingko extract is sometimes added

Take the time to make this drink and enjoy it’s tonic effect. You’ll be glad you did!

Shou Wu Chih 3 Month Update

It’s roughly 3 months now that I’ve been drinking Shou Wu Chih fairly regularly. It’s hard to take something almost every night even with free dailynudge reminders sent to my cellphone! Daily Nudge. Because it has a fair amount of alcohol in it, I didn’t take it on nights I had a few drinks or got caught up with work late into the evening. It’s non stimulating, so I find it’s a superb tonic to take before bed.
I do have to say, that my hair is much much darker. I haven’t found a hair with a dark root yet, but overall my hair is darker. Why the hair is darker is hard to say. More oil? Any experts out there?

Other benefits

If you read my first post on this product: Gray Hair Experiment you will notice that Shou Wu Chih is one of the more effective tonics out there. It’s taken to restore energy depleted from too much sex or stress. This is a good one to have and it’s certainly not expensive. I’ve been finding mine in a asian grocery store for just a few dollars. And it tastes good!

Tocotrienols — Testosterone Booster

I just ordered this:
Toco-8.
Tocotrienols Testosterone Booster

As I mentioned in an earlier post, in addition to all the great things it does for our arteries and hair, it also reportedly boosts testosterone. I decided to plunk down the $29 bucks to give this a try. I should have it in a few days. It’s a powder and I heard it tastes delicious.
Admittedly, I should have done a little more research into exactly how it might work for testosterone production and I wanted to look at the studies a little more closely as well. Pub Med didn’t turn up anything obvious, so I’m a little skeptical. Stay posted and please comment with your thoughts and experiences!

Tocotrienols–Better Hair Stronger Arteries!

There’s a new buzz around Vitamin E.  For many years there seemed to be positive health benefits for Vitamin E such as improved circulation, lower cholesterol, strong antioxidant, male virility and anti-imflammatory. However, the research just didn’t quite prove it. Over time we learned that there wasn’t just Vitamin E, there were different types of Vitamin E like Gamma, Delta, etc.   A Greek alphabet’s worth of granularity! Well, it gets worse! Now we have tocotrienols.

The good news is, these tocotrienols promise to finally vindicate Vitamin E!
Did you know that tocotrienols might grow hair on bald heads?
Check this out!
Vitamin E grows hair.
I believe Tocotrienols increase Nitric Oxide which accounts for the hair growth and the positive effect on our arteries. It may even really boost Testosterone!
Click here to read about tocotrienols and LH for Virility.
So what are you waiting for? Get this now!

Gray Hair Experiment

One of my all time favorite tonics is something called ‘shou wu chih‘ and it’s found in any chinese herbal shop or asian grocery. It looks like this:

The main ingredient in Shou Wu Chih is an herb called polygonum multiflorum. There’s a raw version of this herb that is sold in many herbal tablets for hair loss and graying.. However, traditionally, the raw herb is specially prepared by boiling it in a broth made primarily of black soy beans and then carefully dried. Many people don’t know this, but if you’re interested in this herb for it’s reported hair benefits, you want the prepared herb, not the raw version.
This herb is also called FoTi and He Shou Wu. You’ll probably encounter just as many spellings and pronunciations as you can imagine. You’ll also find countless variations of the legend that states a person who was gray haired and really old, ate this herb and became young again with dark black hair. I’m told in chinese, he shou wu means something like ‘mr. he black hair’.
Many people familiar with Chinese Medicine take this tonic everyday in hopes it will either darken their hair or keep it from turning gray. There is another benefit–this is also a very good overall tonic that is supposed to benefit the ‘Jing‘ if you are depleting your energy from stress or other activities (read my post on Jing-Chi-Shen).  It’s purported to be a reliable youth tonic and powerful libido enhancer.  I really like the taste of this one.  There are two versions–one made with alcohol (it’s labeled ‘cooking wine’ in some stores) and one made with water.

I could go into all the other ingredients, but you could google it. There’s a wealth of information on it.

The Experiment

So, I’m not happy that I sprouted some gray hair on my temples and scattered throughout what used to be very black hair.  I’m going to take this everyday and report on results after a few months.  If I see some gray hair with dark roots coming in, I will claim this a success.

I’m thinking about picking this up as well:

Shou Wu Extract
Shou Wu Extract

Shou Wu Pian is a concentrated version of the single herb in a small black pill.  It’s supposed to be taken for a long period of time to see results.  I think I may add this to the regimen.

The products are in my amazon store on this page.  Your best bet if you live near a metropolitan area or asian community is to buy it yourself.  These products are inexpensive.  Try my links or search the web for a better deal.  In the future, I may setup a store.  Let’s see…

 

Nitric Oxide – The Great Unifier

I consider Nitric Oxide the great unifier. If you do research on just about any tonic or elixir, I bet you will find a nitric oxide connection. Korean Ginseng? Enhances Nitric Oxide. Jiaogulan Tea? Nitric Oxide. Honey? Yep, Nitric Oxide. Acupuncture? Nitric Oxide.  Vitamin C?  I could go on, but you get the point. There are a ton of books and internet articles on Nitric Oxide. I don’t want to repeat that information here or begin a biology/chemistry lesson.

We will be talking about it alot on this quest. This is a good book for information on nitric oxide:

I’ll mention a few things that I think are important. First, if anyone says they understand Nitric Oxide, I think they are lying. It’s been studied alot, however, it seems like people are still figuring this thing out. To get through alot of the information, you need a PhD in biochemistry. That’s why the book above is a good introduction. It was written by one of the guys who put alot of the pieces together and is viewed as one of the discoverers of it–and won a nobel prize for it.

What I do know about it, is that it is involved in helping arteries expand, which in turn improves blood flow and reduces blood pressure. However, that’s extremely simplistic. To make it more complicated there are several forms of it. Scientists are constantly finding new ways it is used in our bodies and the role it plays in disease and health. It has roles in inflammation modulation, blood flow, hair growth, diabetes, hormone release, brain health and even erectile function :O to name just a few things.

Alot of chronic diseases thought to be normal aging are probably caused by our inability to produce enough nitric oxide. Many prescription drugs, like viagra for example, increase nitric oxide by blocking the enzymes that help break it down in the body. There other techniques to increase nitric oxide production by ingesting  the substances that produce it. For example, the amino acid arginine or nitrates from vegetables (yes, nitrates may not be so bad after all).   You can teach your body to produce more by exercise.

Another interesting aspect of Nitric Oxide is that it is a toxic gas that kills viruses and bacteria. In fact, there were some studies that showed producing enough of it killed tuberculosis and scientists were recommending eating peanuts (high in arginine and probably nitrates) to help ward it off. 

As with everything, too much is probably bad and there is some evidence that overproduction probably causes alot of damage in our bodies. That’s why you will see nitric oxide products with liberal doses of antioxidants included. 

Bodybuilders have caught on to this and you will find a wealth of products claiming to boost nitric oxide. These products help the muscles swell up with blood. If you examine the ingredients, you will find a basic formula: amino acids that provide the ‘food’ for nitric oxide and herbs/chemicals that slow or prevent it’s breakdown or speed up it’s production. Read the labels on these products for clues on the next big elixir to try.

I’ll be writing more on this in future posts…

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.