Eat your Seaweed For beautiful hair

[COUNTRYBUMPKIN]

I buy Dulse flakes (seaweed) and shake them on my salads. Eden Organics sells them at your local health food store and they are very inexpensive, They have a slightly salty taste to them and are nice to use as a salt replacement.


Eat Your Seaweed for Beautiful Hair
February 14th, 2008 . by Tonya Zavasta
At the Optimum Health Institute in San Diego, I saw a lady with the loveliest hair I’d seen outside the world of fantasy. Her ivory hair flowed almost to the small of her back. I couldn’t pass her without turning for one more glimpse. I ached to learn her secret. She appeared to be about 45—an age most women’s hair grows fine and lifeless. But hers was full and lustrous. After hearing my expressions of admiration, she let me in on the secret to her lavish hair. She eats seaweed every day.

Hair is nurtured by the scalp and blood supply, just as plants are sustained by soil and ground water. Every strand of hair resembles a plant stem in structure. Hair, like vegetation, depends on the quality of the medium in which it grows.

We value hair highly for appearance. For the body, hair is less important. The root is hair’s only living part. Hair above the root reflects the body’s history, its former nourishment patterns. The body, concerned with its present state of health, its future survival, uses to feed its essential organs and tissues first, feeding the hair only if it has a surplus of nutrients. If the body has an abundance of nourishment, it keeps your hair healthy. But when the body senses a deficiency, it abandons the hair, being inessential for life.

Here’s a myth about the nourishment of hair… Since hair is 97 percent protein, the myth goes, you need a protein-rich diet. Nonsense! Your body can converts carbohydrates into protein. Your body in fact prefers to nourish hair this way. If your diet predominately consists of raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, you will have firm, thick hair.

Dandruff is an example of how your body eliminates excess fat and protein. These white, dry flakes are nothing but oil and protein clumped together, caused by consuming saturated fats and proteins in animal foods, especially fried foods. My experience: Stop eating meat, no more dandruff.

Research shows sodium alginate, a compound found in most seaweed, binds with heavy metals and chemical poisons, flushing them from the body. Sea vegetables help the body to discharge radioactive wastes. They nourish the endocrine system, especially the thyroid and adrenal glands. Iodine in seaweed keeps the thyroid functioning normally, and is high in natural sodium.

Sea vegetables, providing plenty of proteins, complex carbohydrates, carotenes, and chlorophyll, stimulate and strengthen the skin, hair, and nails. Brittle hair, caused by a shortage of minerals, too much salt or animal food, or excessive use of drugs, can be restored by eating sea vegetables.

Sea vegetables offer tremendous benefits not only for health but for beauty. Kelp, wakame, arame, dulse, and nori are all high-protein vegetables, low in fat. Rich in calcium, phosphorus, potassium, iron, iodine, and other trace minerals, sea vegetables like alaria and kelp are better calcium sources than milk. Sea vegetables, like land vegetables, are high in potassium.

Thinning hair is a common sign of aging, even more than graying hair. Hair follicles cannot produce hair in toxic environments. The results: slow and meager hair growth, with strands brittle, and split.

People who had been on the raw food lifestyle for a year reported an amazing result: abundant hair growth—as much as an inch a month. In some cases, gray hair was replaced with strands of original color.

When you first begin your 100 per cent raw food diet, you might lose some hair. This is part of the cleansing process. But since a raw food diet will give excessive nourishment, your hair will begin to thrive and be much stronger in the long run. Hair loss during transition is only temporary. Don’t panic. Look to your temples for new hair growth—a good sign!

Gray hair is often a companion of aging, because the cells in the bulb that are supposed to produce melanin are dead. They die for the same reasons other cells do. Poor assimilation, hormonal imbalances, and toxic waste buildup in the system are contributing factors. Graying hair is caused by the consumption of saturated fat and protein, as well as salt. Another cause of graying hair is the excessive intake of simple sugars, which leach minerals from the blood, weakening the nutrients that reach the hair. Starving and suffocating hair turns gray.

Many people on raw food diets claim that their hair returned to its natural color. I am convinced it’s possible to prevent hair from turning gray or reverse the process if already begun. However, hereditary is a big factor here.

Drink wheatgrass, and wash your hair in it. Nutrients penetrate into follicles and stimulate growth of new pigment-producing cells. Getting results takes persistence, but consider the alternative—artificial coloring is carcinogenic.

Do you absolutely need seaweed to stay healthy on the raw food lifestyle? I wouldn’t go that far. Many people on raw food diets do not eat seaweed and are doing fine. But when you’re in your late forties, fifties and older, seaweed just might help you hold your ground.

[happimommi]

I live in Japan for over a year and my hair was gorgous then. Totally agree that it was the seaweed I was eating everyday.

[bee9984]

I love seaweed (kelp) but I just wanted to add that about 4 years or so ago my mother sent me up a big bag( large clear garbage bag full lol) and I snacked on it everyday. The iodine in the seaweed threw my thyroid out of kilter and I ended up having hyperthyroidism for about a 6 month plus time.

I guess the key is moderation although unfortunately I don't think for myself in general I will ever have any again and I grew up on the stuff so I do miss it terribly.

[M55FF]

I was going to say something about the seaweed and thyroid but someone already did.

[COUNTRYBUMPKIN]

Moderation is the key here and that is exactly why I used the flakes. Thyroid can be a very touchy thing. Dear mother in law and her boyfriend purchase the large bags of seaweed and have it in their blended drinks in the evening. I personally think that they go way overboard on the seaweed, but it is not my place to say anything to them. They both do have nice heads of hair for 82 and 86 years young though.

[bee9984]

That is just it with going overboard lol. The big clear garbage bag I mentioned in my post above? I had about 3/4 gone in about 3 weeks.

I'm not kidding when I say that I loved the stuff lol. I guess it would be the same if someone loved bananas and ate about 5 or 6 everyday for a few weeks, it is going to have an effect of some kind.

Unfortunatly I did not think of that at the time. It certainly was no fun having my eyes unvoluntarily start darting back and forth out of the blue, hand tremours, Dry skin which came off my body in big huge flakes, dry hair, brittle nails, feelings of my heart going to pound out of my chest, shortness of breath etc ......

I orginally went to the dr. because I ignored most of the symptoms but thought the hand tremors, being thirsty, having a cut for 3 months on my leg which wasn't healing etc....were all a sign of diabetes. My mother has diabetes so I guess it was natural for me to assume that is what my problem was.

I still can't get over how long it took until my thyroid went back to normal, I am lucky though that the dr. decided to take another blood test just prior to my appointment to have my thyroid destroyed as then my blood work came back normal.

[COUNTRYBUMPKIN]

That is just it with going overboard lol. The big clear garbage bag I mentioned in my post above? I had about 3/4 gone in about 3 weeks.

I'm not kidding when I say that I loved the stuff lol. I guess it would be the same if someone loved bananas and ate about 5 or 6 everyday for a few weeks, it is going to have an effect of some kind.

Unfortunatly I did not think of that at the time. It certainly was no fun having my eyes unvoluntarily start darting back and forth out of the blue, hand tremours, Dry skin which came off my body in big huge flakes, dry hair, brittle nails, feelings of my heart going to pound out of my chest, shortness of breath etc ......

I orginally went to the dr. because I ignored most of the symptoms but thought the hand tremors, being thirsty, having a cut for 3 months on my leg which wasn't healing etc....were all a sign of diabetes. My mother has diabetes so I guess it was natural for me to assume that is what my problem was.

I still can't get over how long it took until my thyroid went back to normal, I am lucky though that the dr. decided to take another blood test just prior to my appointment to have my thyroid destroyed as then my blood work came back normal.

That is alot of seaweed consumption in that period of time. So glad to hear that you have recovered.