Is your receding hairline giving you sleepless nights? Rest easy, for if experts are to be believed, the cure for baldness has been found in the gaushala.
Experts say the extract obtained from a cow’s placenta or umbilical cord is capable of re-growing hair and treating baldness. A Korean team of scientists has been experimenting on Indian cows in gaushalas and their findings are quite remarkable.
Though baldness is an irreversible process, certain hormones present in the placenta of the cow can trigger hair growth on a bald head. A cow’s placental extract is a natural and cheap equivalent to the chemical minoxidil used widely by hair experts. “The hormones and cytokins in a cow’s placenta promote hair growth not only by elongating the hair shaft but also by increasing the number of hair follicles,” said Dr L. Mira, part of the Korean team involved in the research.
According to Dr Mira, cow placenta extract is also useful in other cosmetic applications, including whitening of skin and increasing tone and texture.
The discovery comes soon after a team of German bacteriologists’ findings claim that cow dung has actually been protecting Indians from outbreaks of E. coli. The E. coli strain present in cows and buffaloes is more harmful than the strains that exist in the human colon. Thanks to their contact with cow dung for thousands of years, Indians have developed immunity to E. Coli and this explains why there have been no E. Coli outbreaks in the country’s history, the findings claim.
“The German scientists were surprised by the visibly unhygienic conditions in certain parts of India, such as heaps of garbage, open drains etc, and apparently with the fact that there were no institutionalised outbreaks of E. Coli. They think Indians could actually be immune to the dangerous E. Coli strains,” pointed out Dr Niyaz Ahmed, who leads the Indian side of the Indo-German team.
While the German scientists then went back to basics in trying to find the origin of the E. Coli strain, which caused havoc in Europe last month, in cattle sheds, the Korean team took the lead to discover the benefits of cow placenta.
The research was carried out on crude placental extract but the results were more than encouraging. “If refinement is done, the placenta extract would be a good candidate medicine for hair loss,” the team noted. The research was carried out on laboratory rats with successful results and work is currently on to start human trials.