[0:02]If you have hair thinning, hair loss, or premature gray hairs, this is what you need. Did you know, most of our hair issues are linked to our blood and therefore, our kidneys? Because it's the kidney that processes and filters the quality of our blood to then deliver the nutrients to travel all around our body to then reach our scalp and hair. So today, I'm going to show you three ways to make some of the most delicious and easy hair boosting drinks using sesame. Because in TCM, it's the holy girl ingredient that can help with everything and of course, I'll share more about how it all links together. And I also am including some daily lifestyle tips that are just as important as the drinks at the end of the video, so make sure you watch till the very end. If you haven't subscribed already, please like and join our Beauty Within fam. We do a lot of different wellness and health recipes based in TCM because I'm on my journey. All right, so first, I'm going to show you how to make a black sesame paste that's going to be the foundation for all three drinks that we're going to make. And it just makes everything super easy. All you're going to need is a cup of black sesame, some honey to taste, and water. So, first, we're going to use black sesame, very different to white sesame, so make sure it's black. And we're going to just toast this for about two to three minutes. So this is on like low to medium. And this is to activate all those essential oils and omega fatty acids that are actually in black sesame, which also helps it make it easier to blend into a paste later on. Okay, turn this off. Now, we're going to just blitz it, blend it until it becomes pretty much a paste. Depending on what appliance you use, it may take a little bit longer or really short. So you can use a blender, which is probably the quickest. I had a little hand mixer, so it took a little bit longer. Quick tip: If you're using this blitzing thing that I'm using, you want to make sure the seeds are cooled. But if you're using a blender, just pop off the little top so it has that aeration because the heat can, you know, make it all trapped inside. So, it's looking pretty good. I'm actually going to add some honey now at this point just to make it kind of like nice and gelatinous. And you can also add a little bit of water, not too much, just to make it kind of emulsify a little bit more. So, just keep going and trust the process because it's going to become a sesame paste. A little tip, when you open it up and if it's still kind of like thick, just keep adding little bits of warm water to it and then just kind of like hand stir it until you get the final consistency that you want.
[2:50]Runnier is fine, thicker is fine, it's really just up to you and how you want to use it. I want mine kind of like in the middle because it will just be almost like this thick syrup at the bottom of my drinks. So, I think this is good. Okay, so what we have here is pure sesame. Like this you can just eat on its own or there are snacks where people even roll them into balls. So, if you've never even thought of black sesame and how it can help the hair, nutritionally it has a lot of antioxidants, which means it protects our cells from oxidizing, which means it also is anti-aging. And it contains those healthy fats. But in TCM, it doesn't just have those nutritional benefits, it also helps to rebalance and boost your kidney, liver, and blood. Blood holds the essence to everything. It's life, right? Like, if you want healthy glowing skin from the inside, it's blood. If you want healthy hair and scalp, it's blood. It's the essence of life. And for our hair, it's directly linked in the bulb of our scalp to blood and nutrients. And so you can think if there's not enough of that, then there's nothing to grow, there's no pigment and premature like gray hairs can happen. And so if you are deficient or depleted in kind of this normal energy in your blood, you'll find symptoms like you're always tired and fatigued. You might have hair loss, you might have really dull skin as well as hair. Your nails are also really pale and not pink, and period issues because our menstrual cycle depends on healthy blood. Which is why sesame really treats everything from its root. Now that we know why, let me show you the three drinks. First is black sesame and soybean. So, this is like a hair strengthening drink to me because the sesame we just talked about, but soybeans are super high in protein. And our hair is actually 80 to 90% made up of protein. Because it essentially makes up the entire structure of our hair so that it can be strong, shiny, and healthy. So, we love soybeans for hair. If you've ever made any kind of like nut milks or soymilk, you'll know that normally there's almost like a filtering, like a cheese cloth that you have to pass the soybeans through. But this one, it's just one step. It grinds it up so finely that there is no need for that. So, that's why I love it. So, for this recipe, we just need the soybeans, the black sesame, and then just some water. So, we first want to rinse the soybeans just roughly. In a lot of recipes, you'll see that they actually say to soak them overnight, but for this machine, we don't have to. So, we're going to measure out the soybeans in this. It's like two thirds of this cup, it comes with the machine, and then we're going to fill up to 400 mLs of water. And then we're going to plug it in and it's going to heat it up, it's going to cook the beans, and then it's going to blend it. So, it's basically just doing all the leg work. It probably takes around 30 minutes. What do you have to say? Are you going to make my hair grow stronger? Very nice. If you've ever looked at your hair products or when you go to the store, it's always talking about keratin. And keratin or a keratin treatment or if it's an ingredient used in shampoos and things like that, is actually a protein. And so those keratin treatments are trying to strengthen the bonds and the structure of your hair, right? So, this is really strengthening it from within. So, when we don't have enough proteins in our daily diet or things like that, it can show up as really slow hair growth, maybe like slower than normal where supposed to experience two to three inches of growth every four to five months. Or if you feel like your hair is breaking really easily, then protein is another one that you want to like amp up. It's ready! Oh my gosh. Wow. Look at this creamy fresh soymilk. Never again will we have artificial drinks. And it just smells so good. So, let's add some of our sesame paste. So, for this one, I'm just going to put like this much of the sesame cuz I still want to taste the soymilk. Sesame is pretty strong. Soymilk. I actually put a little bit of rock sugar in here.
[7:23]Sesame seeds just on the top. Wow. And then when you mix the sesame, it becomes this like luscious, rich, kind of gray. Mmm. Next drink, we're going to blend some ingredients. So, we have jujube dates, a staple in TCM drinks, but also walnuts. So, walnuts are also high in omega fatty acids that we need for healthy skin, but also hair as well as proteins, antioxidants, and in Chinese medicine, walnuts are really good at nourishing the kidney and the kidney essence. And the kidney essence, as we know, directly relates to our blood and the health of our hair and scalp. So, we love these guys. So, for this one, the good thing is you don't really need to prepare anything, but with our jujube dates, we're just going to rinse three of them. And my tip is actually when you're buying jujube dates, try not to get the pitted ones because it dries it out. Get the whole ones and then just cut and pit them yourself. And the reason why we don't want the pit or the seed inside is because it's very heating, it's got a hot quality, and we want to just like leave that out. With the walnuts, I'm just going to do like three to five, depending on it's just for the nutrients. Ding. And then we're going to blend it all up using the soymilk we made. It is perfect. So, I have my little neutral bullet here. Put everything in. And then I'll just do like two heap spoons of this. One to two cups of the milk. Perfect.
[9:20]And that's pretty much it. If you don't want it as thick, you can add some water to it. And also if you want it more icy, you can add ice to it, but room temp is fine with me. Dunk. And we have our hair drink, hair smoothie. Okay, at this point, they're all starting to look the same, but I can tell you they all taste different. Subtly different. Cheers. Mmm.
[9:54]So, I want to talk a little bit more about this concept of energy or chi, because it's directly related to the blood, which then relates to our hair. I remember when I went to the Japanese scalp head spa specialist that she was saying, even in the Japanese culture, they also understand that when we eat, those nutrients are transformed into energy, right? The energy is normally for us to like walk and run and be alive, but it's also energy in the blood. And so that carries oxygen and the nutrients to flow so that, you know, the follicle can absorb all of that and grow healthy hair. And if you're facing kind of like premature gray or white hairs, one side might be that it's genetic, but the other side might be nutrient deficiency and lack of energy. And you can kind of think of it as like we saw this video, which explained it as though energy and blood is like the ink to our hair. Think of your body like a printer. Your chi, your vital energy and blood are like the ink and paper. If you have enough chi and blood, your body printer has plenty of ink. So your hair grows full and dark. And if you don't have enough of it, then your hair will be pale and white and brittle and break. And now for a trendy friend, we're going to make matcha and sesame. Honestly, these two go hand in hand. If you've ever been to Japan, these are everywhere. Matcha is great because it's full of antioxidants, the EGCG, that's specific to the green tea and matcha plant. And that earthiness just pairs really well with sesame. So, what we're going to do is use the sesame paste again, froth some milk. You can either use the soybean that you just made, or, you know, oat, almond, whatever milk of choice. I'm not drinking cold drinks, so we're making a hot one.
[11:55]This is our black sesame matcha. So, make sure you get all that like sesame at the bottom mixed up. And then I also didn't add any sugar because once again, we already have the honey in the sesame. It just makes it so much easier. Ah.
[12:15]Okay, so with these drinks done, that's not it. Let me go back and give you some daily lifestyle tips that are just as important. First thing that I've heard from every hair specialist, scalp specialist, they all say daily head or scalp massage. And this is because our head has a bunch of different muscles as well, right? And we want to make sure that's moving, much like our limbs, like we want to make sure we're moving all the time. So, it enhances circulation, you want to help your scalp and move the fascia. And the fascia is that layer that's over the scalp, so you want to move that, either with your hands, you know, just like kind of do this for a couple minutes every day. It could also be when you're in the shower, massage that, and you'll see people who have chronic hair loss have grown their hair back just by hair massage. It's insane. So, do that for at least, you know, five minutes every day. Second is find the right shampoo for you. So, we all have different scalp conditions and it's almost kind of like dating. You got to like try how one goes for a couple weeks or months to see if you like it. Because think of your scalp skin as just an extension of your face. It is different, but it still needs those soothing, calming and TLC that we give our face. My favorite ones are the ones we have on our shop. It's the O2 shampoo. It works for everyone. It's so good. It's watery. It has all the calming ingredients of skin care. And then there's the Mirei Labo that we just put on, it's got the green tea matcha, so it's high in antioxidants and is super gentle as well. Can be used every day and it will keep your scalp microbiome healthy. The matcha, not just good for our insides, but also our outside. And then we have the Free Moment one, which is fantastic as well. It smells like a dream, and I would say it's good for like normal to even more oily combination. So, all of those are my top three shampoos. And then I think this is actually the most important tip. And it's to manage stress because chronic stress causes every kind of issue that we can think about. And once again, it will come up differently for everyone. For some people, it will be hair loss. And the scary thing is it only shows up three to even six months after a traumatic event. Because it takes that long for the cycle of the hair to then like start dropping off. For my friend who had this big bald patch, she kind of had to think about, oh my gosh, what happened three to four months ago? Was I super stressed and she was, and, you know, she wasn't taking care of herself, she wasn't eating right, she was super anxious, and everything was out of whack and therefore this big bald spot happened. And if there's anything that I've learned in TCM, it's that everything is all connected. But the good thing is it will come back, you just have to kind of take more care, replenish, and manage that stress and anxiety again. So, biggest tip is find some form of activity that gives you peace and is your safe place. Mine is gentle walking and moving, it's Qigong, it is meditation, it's that calm and that will really help your hair. I know it sounds far-fetched and it's like, I just want to tell my hair. No, my friends, it starts within, it truly starts within. If you do all of these right, your hair will look thick, it will be shiny, it will be growing and you'll be so happy. Because I am also on my health journey and if you haven't seen those videos, we'll put them down below. I've tried everything from acupuncture for 30 days. It's been six months now, and I've seen nothing but benefits and I've really learned a lot about myself. Like cold hard truths. So, if you're also on this kind of journey of learning, please subscribe.
