One alternative to the popular Himalayan pink salt you’ve never heard of – Bamboo Salt.
Having dark eye circles is not fun… Some expensive creams or lotions may help a bit but you have to use them all the time! Thousands of desperate people are trying to figure out how to remove dark circles permanently. I was one of them.
My options were laser treatment or surgery. Well, dark circle laser treatment cost will set you back for a couple of thousands of dollars and surgery to remove dark circles under eyes will be surely a lot more costly. I was too broke to go with either of these two. But now I don’t need them at all!
After substituting sea salt with Korean Bamboo Salt my dark eye circles simply faded away. It was one bamboo salt benefit that I didn’t expect at all.
With hundreds of posts dedicated to amazing benefits of Himalayan pink salt and its comparison to the Celtic Sea Salt®, Fleur de Sel, Real Salt, etc. there is almost no mentioning of one of the most unusual salts in the World.
Unusual because it is packed with extra micro-minerals on purpose through a rather tedious process developed by Korean monks more than a thousand years ago.
Even if your neighborhood has a Korean market, don’t rush there – the only thing that they might have in stock is a toothpaste with Bamboo Salt. This is how we first discovered this amazing salt while browsing the aisle with dental products many years ago.
Before throwing away your current “healthy” salts, know that Bamboo Salt comes in several different grades with the highest ones like “9X” priced at ~$50 per 1/2lb and the lower ones like “1X or “3X” 3 to 4 times cheaper for the same amount.
Why so expensive?
- Its manufacturing process involves a lot of manual labor and is time-consuming
- It’s considered to be a “medicine” rather than an everyday food condiment.
For example:
Bamboo Salt 9X means that naturally extracted salt from the seawater (like the Celtic Sea Salt®) must go through 9 additional steps before becoming an actual product.
This is how the process is described:
This sun-dried salt from the Western Sea Coast of the Korean Peninsula, bamboo tree of more than three years old, pure yellow soil from deep valleys, pine tree firewood and furnace made of steel drum. Those four major sub-materials: sun dried salt, bamboo, pine tree and yellow soil should be of Korean origin due to their unique ingredients and their powerful medical value. The reason is grounded on the fact that certain herbs such as ginseng or bamboo have a totally different ratio of its major ingredients according to its country of origin.
First, cut the bamboo tree trunk so that one end is hollowed and the other end is closed. Then fill the bamboo tubes with the sun-dried sea salt and close the opened end with kneaded yellow soil from deep valleys. The bamboo tubes are then stacked inside the furnace, and burned with pine tree firewood. While the bamboo container becomes ash, the melted ingredients of bamboo soak into the salt. The stuffed salt is also melted and then becomes hardened into white column.
The hand mill crushes these hardened salt columns. Then new bamboo tube containers are filled with the crushed salt and heated again. This type of heating process is repeated 9 times. On 9th time it is burned at 1500℃ by sprinkling pine-resin on the pine tree firewood and other heating agents. Through this process, the salt is beginning to melt and flow down like lava, and finally becomes hardened like big stone.
This is “Jukyeom” (which means “Bamboo Salt” in Korean). People can take this salt in a type of powder or tablet mixed with elm tree resin or garlic resin.
What is so special about Bamboo salt?
From our personal experience we can point to a few things:
- After regular consumption for a few weeks (3-4 in our case) dark circles under both eyes faded away (!!!) ;
- After eating a few granules of it you don’t get thirsty;
- If you eat a few granules after each meal your digestion improves;
- Skin color visibly improved;
- Other salts and salty foods started to taste over-salted or even unpleasant;
Besides 1X, 3X and 9X versions Bamboo Salt come in 2 different colors:
gray or purple (violet).
Purple Bamboo Salt is considered to be more potent with a greater number and amounts of additional micro-elements. This valuable Bamboo Salt benefit comes at a higher price and a warning not to eat this salt in public. Although the person eating purple salt may feel fine, other people in a 10 ft radius may faint from his/her overpowering “dragon breath.” Our solution was to eat bamboo salt together or do it in a different room from your companion.
9X Purple Bamboo salt has a taste of egg yolk and colors varying from light gray to dark violet.
Gray salt is not so smelly as the purple one and a bit more affordable. Despite its lower price, this cheaper bamboo salt has the same benefits and is an excellent option to start in case you’d like to get rid of your dark eye circles and add some minerals to your diet, for example.
Other Bamboo Salt Benefits
Korean Bamboo salt manufacturers list a number of all kinds of health benefits starting from improving skin conditions and up to eliminating bladder infection. Of course, we know that salt is a good preservative. Our blood and lymph contain 3.3% of salt for this very reason. At the same time, we need to be careful with the amount of salt we are taking daily even if we are using these “good” types of salt such as Himalayan pink or Bamboo 9X salt.
As a common disclaimer, we’d recommend consulting your physician regarding your salt intake. Most of the time you will be told the same thing: too much sodium leads to high blood pressure. Be sure to ask for real scientific research linking salt to high blood pressure. Read it, if provided, and make the decision for yourself – after all, many of us are still dealing with mercury teeth fillings recommended by our trusted health professional not that long ago.
How is Bamboo Salt different from Himalayan pink or Celtic Sea Salt?
As you saw from the process description during 9 cycles of melting it in the bamboo cylinders sealed with clay and mixed with ashes of pinewood a lot of different elements are infused. All this dramatically changes the micro-mineral composition of each batch adding much larger amounts of some minerals while reducing a few others.
Let’s do a very short comparison between Celtic Salt and Bamboo Salt:
As you can see, Bamboo Salt sports more magnesium, manganese, 6 times more potassium (read about 13 Incredible Potassium Benefits here), and 6 times more iron – a mineral responsible for carrying oxygen in your red blood cells and transmitting nerve impulses.
Analyzing the benefits of each micro-element is beyond the scope of this post. You can do your own research and see the benefits of each micro-element.
To make the whole picture of the benefits of Korean Bamboo Salt simpler, look at the process. Clay is involved and it’s well-known that clays such as bentonite clay or French Green Clay are excellent detoxifiers, so consuming Bamboo Salt may have a detoxifying effect. This may explain why my dark eye circles faded away in 3 weeks.
Independent lab tests confirmed an average of 92-96 trace minerals in 9X Bamboo Salt.
Let’s Summarize Major benefits of Bamboo Salt:
- Purifies blood (detoxifies) – may help some people rid of dark eye circles
- Reduces dioxins from pollution and radiation
- Restores natural alkaline balance
- Reduces Inflammation of many internal organs
- May help with healing stomach and infesting ulcers
- One of the most powerful antioxidants available (see Corrosion test below)
- It helps to reduce skin problems such as Eczema or Athlete’s foot, etc.
- Re-mineralizes teeth (when added to toothpaste or mouth rinse)
- Promotes better digestion
- Many, many other benefits including a big number of Himalayan and Celtic salt benefits
Low sodium diets
Quite a few people we know follow this diet. One family takes it to the extreme by avoiding all the food containing salt and drinking only plain water. A general theory here is that raw food should provide all the minerals our bodies need. All this sounds good in theory only.
Why? Because Earth’s soil has been depleted for a long time from most of the minerals by the modern farming practices and heavy use of chemical fertilizers.
Even expensive organic fruit and veggies nowadays can’t provide you with a fraction of minerals needed for your body.
Not convinced that this is a problem? Read this book by the German agricultural chemist Dr. Julius Hensel “Bread from Stones” published in 1894 (read it here).
How to remove dark circles using this Bamboo Salt?
There is no exact recipe for this anywhere. I can only describe what I did.
40 to 60 minutes after each meal I took 4-5 big grains of the Gray Bamboo Salt and let them dissolve under my tongue. I also did the same before bed and 2 more times between meals. At the same time, I eliminated all other salts and salty foods from my diet. After continuing this regimen for 2 weeks or so I noticed one of the dark circles becoming really pale and the other one decreased in size. In one month both of them were gone completely.
Since then I take Bamboo salt one time a week or even less frequently. Replacing regular table salt with Celtic or Himalayan Pink Salt for cooking seems to be enough for maintaining the correct amounts of microminerals.
Different people have different mineral deficiencies. What worked for some may not work for others. Thus, Bamboo salt can’t be a magic 100% solution for dark eye circles removal.
With more people switching to healthier salts it would be interesting to see if Bamboo Salt will help others to get rid of dark circles as it had helped me.
More on the health benefits of unrefined sea salts
Like many other unrefined sea salts, Bamboo 9X Salt is healthy. It contains plenty of magnesium and other important minerals, which is why it does not raise blood pressure.
Sodium is also an essential nutrient required by the body to regulate levels of fluids and for providing channels for nerve signaling. You may remember from school that salty water has much better electric conductivity than plain water.
Here is good general information regarding the major benefits of Himalayan Pink Salt and Celtic Salt from Dr. Axe https://draxe.com/10-benefits-celtic-sea-salt-himalayan-salt/
