Location of Gray Hairs Corresponds to Health of Different Organs

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Graying and white hairs are a concern for many people, but do you pay attention to the location of your gray hair?

In fact, the position of your gray hair can indicate other things about your physical condition.

To learn more about what your body might be trying to tell you when you spot gray hair and how to reverse and minimize this, we spoke with Dr. Dawei Guo.

“We know that the conditions of a person’s internal organs have manifestations in our appearance, too,” Dr. Guo said. “such as, if there is gray hair at the top of one’s head, near the forehead, they may have a weak spleen or stomach.”

“If gray hair appears on both sides of the temples, in Chinese medicine we call that having excessive liver ‘fire,’ too much qi and blood.

“If gray hair is appearing all over the back of the head, we can probably assume this person has issues in the kidneys.”

We asked Dr. Guo to tell us more about these three areas.

Gray Hairs in Front

“I remember when I went to the outpatient yesterday, a patient came in and told me he had gastrointestinal problems recently, including lots of flatulence and stomach acid reflux. As we were discussing, I saw that he had gray hair all around his forehead,” Dr. Guo said. “So I told him, those gray hairs were linked to his gastrointestinal problems.”

The patient told him he’d been pulling out his gray hairs often, and Dr. Guo told him he was making two important mistakes.

“The first is that you can’t pull out the hairs, it will end up hurting the surrounding hair follicles, making you more prone to hair loss,” Dr.Guo said.

“The second thing is, if you don’t fix the health problems in your spleen and stomach, the gray hairs won’t go away,” he said.

“I would suggest to patients with gray hair near the forehead to deal with their diet. It includes eating the right portions at the right times of day, at set times of day,” Dr. Guo said. For most of these patients he recommends three meals spaced out. “We suggest to eat until you are 70 percent full. That way, you are leaving room for your stomach to rest.”

“In addition, eat a bit of food that is easy to ferment. If you eat white rice as the main dish, have it with some box choy and meat, and in such a way reduce flatulence and stomach acid reflux,” he said.

Graying Temples and the Liver

“Have you ever noticed that people who work in finance or some other stressful jobs tend to have white hairs around their temples?” Dr. Guo asked. “We often say that people who overuse their brains, who have ‘overheated liver fire,’ or have sleeping disorders tend to have their first gray hairs popping up around the temples.”

With these patients, Dr. Guo first prescribes medication to unblock the liver meridians, or energy routes looked at in traditional Chinese medicine. He asks them to relieve stress in ways such as trying not to stay up too late, and moderate their relationship with their work. In that way, their gray hairs slowly decrease, growing less around the temples.

This “liver fire” refers to or is caused by excess stress and emotions.

“Emotions and stress that we often talk about belong to ‘wood’ in the five elements of our traditional Chinese medicine,” Dr. Guo said. “We call it ‘liver wood,’ and we often say that ‘liver wood suppresses one’s “spleen earth.” An overactive liver can negatively impact one’s spleen, intestines, and stomach.

“When you’re in a bad mood, you may end up eating too fast. Or sometimes you may not want to eat, your appetite becomes worse. Then your stomach and intestines absorb less of what they need.”

“We say that the stomach and spleen are the source of qi and blood generation. Deprived, the body’s qi and blood supply becomes relatively less. If liver stores the blood, and hair is supported by the leftover blood, with inadequate nutrition there is not enough to nourish the hair.

Dr. Guo says he’s also seen this in patients and public figures who have had liver transplants. After the surgeries, in their period of recuperation, their temple hairs would go white.

‘A Good Kidney Shows Through One’s Hair’

Perhaps the most direct link between an internal organ and gray hairs is the kidneys, so much so that traditional Chinese medicines have a saying that “a good kidney shows through one’s hair.”

“Sometimes you’ll see someone who is old, but with a head full of shiny, colored hair,” Dr. Guo said. “It also means they have good kidneys.”

When the back of the head is scattered with gray hairs, there are typically problems with the kidneys and by extension the bladder, he explained.

Diet can help remedy this too, he said. “We can sometimes take care of it by improving our diet by eating more black colored food every day. Things like black rice, black sesames, and even some medicinal herbs like ‘he shou wu.’”

The tuber fleece flower, or climbing knotweed, is called “he shou wu” in Chinese, which means “the black-haired Mr. He.” It is a flowering vine plant that is part of the buckwheat family.

You can also see the health of the kidneys in one’s energy levels, Dr. Guo said, so if someone alerts you of gray hairs at the back of your head that you could not see, pay attention to it.