Ayurvedic hair care · Traditional knowledge

Khalitya

खालित्य — the classical term for hair falling and thinning, gradually and across the scalp. Indralupta, for hair lost suddenly and in patches.

Two things happen, and the texts treat them separately.

Hair falls. And then it does not grow back — or grows back finer. The classical account gives those two events different mechanisms, and reading the Samprapti with that in mind is what makes it worth reading at all. Sushruta describes Pitta and Vata reaching the follicle and dislodging the hair; and then, separately, Kapha and Rakta obstructing the follicle so that nothing new comes through it.

Radico is an Indian company making hair colour from Indian herbs. What follows is what the Samhitas say about hair loss, with the Sanskrit kept and the sources named. It is not what we say about our products.

Three things to be clear about first

Before anything else

Hair that is thinning or falling can be the first visible sign of something a doctor needs to look at. Thyroid disease, iron deficiency, autoimmune conditions and a long list of medications all show up in hair, sometimes before they show up anywhere else. Sudden loss, patchy loss, loss with itching or soreness, or thinning that came on quickly — those warrant an appointment, not a herb.

We would rather lose a sale than have someone spend six months on hair masks for something that had a name and a treatment. Please see a doctor first. This page will still be here.

Second

We do not sell a hair growth product, and nothing on this page is a claim that we do. Radico makes a cosmetic hair colour and single herbs for washing and for masks. None of it acts on any step of the pathology described here. A cosmetic in the United States may not claim to treat hair loss, and we are not going to claim it in softer words either.

Third

This is not a translation of Ayurveda into physiology. The texts describe Kapha and Rakta obstructing a follicle. Modern dermatology describes follicular miniaturisation, telogen effluvium, immune infiltrate. Those are different accounts in different vocabularies. We will give each in its own terms and will not present one as evidence for the other.

The terms used on this page

Kesha: The hair of the head
Khalitya: Gradual, generalised loss of hair from the scalp
Indralupta: Sudden loss, patch by patch
Ruhya: A third term used alongside the two above
Romakupa: The hair follicle — literally, the pore of the hair
Rakta: Blood; the second of the seven Dhatus. Also called Shonita
Kapha: One of the three doshas. Also called Shleshma
Asthi Dhatu: The fifth dhatu, bone tissue — from which Kesha is held to arise
Nidana: The causes of a disorder
Samprapti: The sequence by which a disorder comes about
Prakriti: Individual constitution, fixed at birth
Kshudra Roga: The class of minor disorders — minor in prognosis, not in significance

One

Some hair is fine because of how you are made

Before the disorders, the constitutions. In this model, hair does not start from a common baseline that everyone departs from. Its thickness, texture and quantity are held to be set by Prakriti — the constitution a person is born with — and the texts describe what each type looks like without treating any of them as a fault.

Hair by constitution, as the texts describe it
Constitution	Hair
Vatala Purusha	Dry and sparse. Fine in texture, and less of it
Pittala Purusha	Moderate. Prone to early greying and to balding
Shleshmala Purusha	Thick, curly and strong

This distinction is worth taking seriously

Fine, sparse hair in a Vata-predominant person is not, in this account, a disorder at all. It is what that constitution produces. There is nothing to correct, because nothing has gone wrong.

The greying page on this site makes the same point about Kalaja Palitya — greying in its own time, which the texts decline to pathologise. A system two thousand years old drew both of those lines, and the modern hair care market has spent a great deal of energy erasing them.

If your hair has always been fine, the useful question is not how to change it. It is whether the way you are handling it suits what it is.

What would count as a change

The classical disorders are about departure from a person’s own baseline, not about falling short of someone else’s. What the texts describe under Khalitya is hair that was there and is going — gradually, across the scalp, in a person whose hair was not previously like that.

And the classification is careful about the manner of it. Gradual and diffuse is Khalitya. Sudden and in patches is Indralupta. Different names, in a literature that does not hand out names casually — because the texts held them to arise differently.

The same condition, named differently across the Samhitas

Sushruta	Khalitya, Indralupta, Ruhya
Madhava	Khalitya, Indralupta
Ashtanga Hridaya	Khalati, Chacha
Ashtanga Sangraha	Khalati, Rujha
Bhoja	Indralupta, Ruhya
Harita	Keshaghna

The authors do not fully agree on which term covers what — some restrict Indralupta to the beard and moustache, others use it for patchy scalp loss. We give the variation rather than tidying it away.

Where the texts do describe a departure, they describe it as a sequence. That sequence is the next section, and it has two halves.

Two

The sequence, in two halves

Sushruta’s account of Khalitya is unusual among the hair disorders in that it describes two separate events with two separate mechanisms, one after the other. Read it as a single process and it makes little sense. Read it as two, and it maps onto something anyone losing hair will recognise.

Two illustrated cross-sections of a hair follicle. In the first, Pitta and Vata reach the Romakupa and the hair is dislodged and falls. In the second, Kapha together with Rakta obstructs the opening of the follicle so that no new hair emerges — The two halves of the Samprapti: first the hair falls, then the follicle is closed to it. Illustration made for this page.

The first half

Pitta and Vata reach the follicle, and the hair falls

Sushruta describes Pitta, provoked by its own causes, penetrating into the Romakupa — the hair follicle — and there uniting with Vata. Together they disturb the process by which hair is held and grown, and the hair sheds.

Charaka gives it differently. He describes Tejas, with the help of the Vatadi doshas, scorching the scalp — and Chakrapani, commenting, glosses Tejas here as Dehoshma, the heat of the body, and as Pitta. The image is of the scalp being burned rather than blocked.

Some accounts specify the Pitta involved as Bhrajaka Pitta — the subdosha seated in the skin. The same subdosha the texts hold responsible for the colour of hair, described in the account of greying, is named here in the account of its falling.

The second half

Kapha and Rakta close the follicle behind it

Then, separately, Shleshma — Kapha — together with Shonita, which is Rakta, blood, obstructs the channel of the Romakupa. The follicle is blocked, and the regeneration of hair stops.

This is the half that turns shedding into thinning. Hair falls in everyone, every day. What the texts describe here is the failure of the follicle to produce again — and they attribute it to a different pair of factors than the falling itself.

Why the two-part structure is the interesting part

Losing hair and not regrowing hair are treated as different problems with different causes. In a system built on three doshas, it would have been simpler to attribute the whole thing to one. The texts did not.

And the order matters: the obstruction comes after the shedding, not before it. The account is of a follicle that emptied and then closed — which is why classical treatment for this condition is aimed so heavily at the second half, at clearing what is described as blocking the channel.

The components of the Samprapti

Classical analysis names the specific factors involved — the Samprapti Ghataka. For Khalitya they are given as follows.

Samprapti Ghataka of Khalitya
Component	Named factors
Dosha — Pitta	Pachaka, Bhrajaka
Dosha — Vata	Samana, Vyana
Dosha — Kapha	Tarpaka
Dushya	Rasa, Rakta, Mamsa, Asthi
Srotas	Rasavaha, Raktavaha, Mamsavaha, Asthivaha
Adhishthana	Shira — the head

Note that Asthi appears in the Dushya. Kesha is held to arise from Asthi Dhatu, so a disorder of hair that involves the bone tissue is, in this model, a disorder reaching further back down the chain than the scalp. One account describes Asthi Dhatvagni Dushti — disturbance of the metabolic fire of bone tissue — as part of the sequence.

Gradual, or sudden and in patches

Two illustrated heads compared side by side. On the left, Khalitya shown as gradual, diffuse thinning spread across the whole scalp. On the right, Indralupta shown as sudden loss in distinct circular patches — Khalitya, gradual and across the scalp. Indralupta, sudden and patch by patch. Illustration made for this page.

The distinction is one of manner, and the texts are consistent about it even where they disagree on terminology. Gradual, generalised loss across the scalp is Khalitya. Sudden loss, patch by patch, is Indralupta.

How the two are distinguished
	Khalitya	Indralupta
Manner	Gradual	Sudden
Pattern	Generalised over the scalp	Patch by patch
Classified by Charaka as	Tridoshaja Vikara	Tridoshaja Vikara
Classified by Sushruta as	Kshudra Roga	Rakta Pradoshaja Vikara
Classified by Vagbhata as	Shiroroga	Shiroroga

Sushruta placing Indralupta among the Rakta Pradoshaja Vikara is worth pausing on. That is the class of disorders arising from vitiation of the blood specifically — and it is why the classical treatment for patchy loss involves bloodletting, which the next section comes to.

And the four types

Ashtanga Hridaya and Ashtanga Sangraha divide Khalitya by which dosha predominates, in the same way Vagbhata divides Palitya. Four types: Vataja, Pittaja, Kaphaja, and Sannipataja — the last being all three together.

The other account, in its own words

Modern dermatology divides hair loss differently, and by different criteria. Telogen effluvium is diffuse shedding after an event — illness, childbirth, a change in medication — in which a large number of follicles enter the resting phase together. Androgenetic alopecia is progressive miniaturisation of follicles under hormonal influence, following a characteristic pattern. Alopecia areata is an autoimmune condition in which the immune system attacks the follicle, producing the round patches that give it its name.

There is a temptation to line these up: Khalitya as androgenetic alopecia, Indralupta as alopecia areata. The correspondence is not close enough to be useful. One is a division by manner and dosha; the other is a division by mechanism and cause. They overlap in what they observe and share nothing in how they explain it.

Only one of those two accounts has a diagnosis your doctor can act on. If your hair is falling in patches, or falling suddenly, that is a reason to be seen — alopecia areata and several other causes of patchy loss have treatments, and the earlier they are looked at the better.

Three

What the texts blame

Nidana means the causes of a disorder, and the list for Khalitya is longer and more specific than the list for greying. Almost all of it concerns what a person eats, when they sleep, and what they are carrying.

Illustrated panels showing the classical causes of Khalitya: hot, sharp and dry foods and excess salt; sleeping during the day; staying awake at night; prolonged exposure to the sun; and mental distress — The Nidana as the texts give it — diet, conduct, environment, and the state of the mind. Illustration made for this page.

Nidana of Khalitya
Category	As the texts name it	What that means
Ahara Diet	Ushna, Tikshna, Ruksha	Food that is hot, sharp or pungent, and drying
	Ati-lavana sevana	Excessive use of salt
	Kshara ati-sevana	Excessive use of alkaline preparations
	Viruddha ahara	Incompatible food combinations — a category with no modern equivalent
Vihara Conduct	Divaswapana	Sleeping during the day
	Prajagarana	Staying awake through the night
	Atapa sevana	Prolonged exposure to the sun
Desha Place	Ushar Bhumi	Living in saline or alkaline ground
Manasika Mind	Manahtapa	Anguish; the burning of the mind

Charaka names hair loss separately, in Vimana Sthana, among the consequences of over-indulgence in Kshara, Lavana and Viruddha Ahara — alkaline substances, salt, and incompatible foods.

From cause to condition

The chain the texts draw from those causes to the outcome runs in four steps.

From the Nidana

Vata Prakopa, Pitta Prakopa, Kapha Prakopa — all three doshas provoked, which is why the disorder is classed as Tridoshaja.
Then

Rasa-Rakta Dushti and Asthi Dhatvagni Dushti — vitiation of the first two tissues, and disturbance of the metabolic fire of the fifth, the bone tissue from which hair is held to arise.
Then

Kesha Patana — the falling of hair — and Sira Mukha Avarodha, the obstruction of the mouths of the vessels. The two halves of the Samprapti, arrived at from the causes.
And so

Khalitya.

What kind of list this is

Heat, dryness, salt, disrupted sleep, sun, and distress. These are observations from a clinical tradition, written down because physicians noticed the same things recurring in the people in front of them. That is a real form of knowledge, and it is also not the same thing as an established causal link.

You will find pages arguing that modern research now confirms the Ayurvedic emphasis on sleep and stress. We are not going to write that sentence. Where a modern account happens to examine the same variable, it is doing so for its own reasons and by its own methods, and an overlap is interesting rather than confirming.

And some of the list has no modern counterpart at all. Viruddha Ahara — incompatible food combinations — is a fully developed concept within Ayurveda with a literature of its own, and nothing in contemporary nutrition corresponds to it. Systems that genuinely differ will differ in both directions.

And what follows from having a list at all

In this system, Nidana Parivarjana — removing the causes — is the first limb of treatment for anything. It comes before medicine, before procedure, before anything applied to the body.

Which means that in the classical account, the first thing done about hair falling out is not done to the hair. It is done to the diet, the sleep, the sun exposure, and the state of mind that the texts hold to have provoked the doshas in the first place.

We are describing what the tradition prescribes, not prescribing it. If your hair is falling and you want to act on it, the first useful step is a diagnosis — from a doctor, or from a qualified Ayurvedic physician who can assess your Prakriti and the state of your doshas properly. Neither of those is something a website can do, and neither is something a jar of powder can substitute for.

Four

The substances the tradition names — and what we do not sell

Keshya is the classical category of substances held to be good for hair, defined by a phrase as plain as it sounds: keshaya hitam yat tat, that which is beneficial for hair. What is less often mentioned is that the category is subdivided, and the subdivisions do different work.

The three classes of Keshya Dravya
Class	What it is held to do	Route described
Kesha Vardhana	Promotes growth — makes hair dense and thick	—
Kesha Ranjana	Restores the natural colour of hair	Through Ranjaka Pitta and Bhrajaka Pitta
Kesha Sanjanana	Strengthening — the origin and substance of hair	Through Asthi Dhatu and Shukra Dhatu

Two of the three are the ones that matter on a page about hair thinning. Kesha Ranjana is about colour, and it is set out on our page about greying. Kesha Vardhana and Kesha Sanjanana are the classes concerned with growth and with substance.

Where our knowledge runs out

We can give you the Kesha Ranjana list from the review literature: Bhringaraja, Neeli, Madayantika, Amalaki, Sharapunkha and Indravaruni.

We have not been able to establish the full substance lists for Kesha Vardhana and Kesha Sanjanana to a standard we are willing to publish. Secondary sources give them, and they do not entirely agree with one another. Rather than pick the version that suited us and present it as settled, we are leaving this space open and looking for the primary references.

If you know the shloka, we would be glad to hear from you: laboratory@radicousa.com.

Sixteen substances, and only fourteen of them plants

One thing we can be specific about. Bhavaprakasha Nighantu, the sixteenth-century materia medica, names sixteen substances as possessing Keshya property. A review of that list finds them distributed as follows.

The sixteen Keshya dravyas of Bhavaprakasha Nighantu
Origin	Count	Named example
Plant	14	—
Animal	1	Avi-dugdha — sheep’s milk
Mineral	1	Kasisa — green vitriol, an iron sulphate

This is worth sitting with for a moment, because it corrects something the word “Ayurvedic” is routinely used to imply. The classical tradition was not a plant-only pharmacology. It used minerals and animal products without hesitation, and an entire branch of it — Rasashastra — is devoted to mineral and metallic preparations.

A product being all-plant is not what makes it Ayurvedic. It is a modern commitment, and in our case a deliberate one.

A note about iron, and about a decision made twenty years ago

Kasisa is an iron sulphate. It sits in the classical Keshya list, and iron salts have a very long history in plant dyeing generally — they deepen and fix colour, and they do it fast.

When Radico was developing its colours, a partner in Japan — drawing on traditional Japanese dyeing practice — made exactly that suggestion. A trace of iron, one part in ten thousand, would cut the development time substantially. Iron is one of the most abundant elements on earth. At that concentration nobody would have noticed.

Sanjeev Bhatt said no, on the grounds that 100% organic either means every ingredient or it means nothing. It is why Radico asks for one to two hours on the hair rather than thirty minutes.

The tradition would have permitted it. Kasisa is right there in the Keshya list, and no classical author would have objected to a mineral in a hair preparation. That refusal was not an Ayurvedic principle. It was a commitment we made for our own reasons, and it costs us something the tradition never asked us to give up. The full story is on our About page.

What we do not sell

Which brings us to the point of this section.

Radico does not make a Kesha Vardhana product.

We make a cosmetic hair colour, and single herbs for washing and for masks. None of it is sold as a hair growth treatment, and none of it is formulated to be one. If you have arrived at this page because your hair is thinning and you are looking for something to stop it, we do not have that, and we would rather tell you plainly than sell you a mask and let you find out over six months.

Some of our herbs are named in classical hair contexts — bhringaraja most of all, whose synonyms in the nighantus are almost entirely about hair. That is a fact about a name in a text. It is not evidence that milled leaf in a water paste changes what a follicle does, and we have not found published work that establishes it.

What our powders do is described elsewhere on this site in terms we can support: reetha and shikakai wash through saponins, methi makes a slippery gel, colorless henna deposits almost no colour, amla is acidic. Those are physical and chemical descriptions, and none of them is a claim about hair growth.

If hair loss is what you are dealing with, the useful next step is a diagnosis. A dermatologist can tell you which of several quite different conditions you have, and some of them have treatments that work. A qualified Ayurvedic physician can assess your Prakriti and the state of your doshas, which is what the classical approach requires before any of the treatment described in the next section would be chosen. A website cannot do either.

Five

What the classical treatment actually involves

This is the section that settles the question, and it settles it in a way that does not favour anybody selling a jar of powder. The classical treatment for Khalitya is a clinical protocol. It involves purgation, emesis, nasal administration and the letting of blood, and the paste applied to the head comes at the end of it.

Five illustrated panels showing the classical treatment of Khalitya: removing the dietary and behavioural causes; purificatory therapy with oleation and purgation; bloodletting by scraping or by leech; nasal administration and oil massage of the head; and a herbal paste applied to the scalp alongside rejuvenative preparations — The five limbs, in the order the texts take them. The paste is the fifth. Illustration made for this page.

One

Nidana Parivarjana

Removing the causes

First, before anything: stop doing what the previous section listed. The hot and sharp food, the excess salt, the daytime sleeping, the nights awake, the sun, the distress. In this system nothing else is expected to hold if this step is skipped.

Two

Samshodhana

Purification, preceded by oleation

Both Charaka and Sushruta place purificatory therapy before anything applied to the head. Snehana — internal and external oleation — prepares the body; then Vamana or Virechana, emesis or purgation, chosen according to which dosha predominates.

These are supervised clinical procedures. They require assessment beforehand and managed recovery afterwards, and they are not something to attempt from a website.

Three

Raktamokshana

Letting of blood

Sushruta prescribes Prachhana — scarification of the scalp — followed by external application. Contemporary Ayurvedic practice generally prefers Jalaukavacharana, the application of leeches, on the grounds that it carries less risk of wound infection.

The rationale is internal to the system and consistent: Sushruta classes Indralupta among the Rakta Pradoshaja Vikara, the disorders of vitiated blood, and the treatment for vitiated blood is to remove some of it.

We include this because it is what the texts say, and because leaving it out would make the classical approach sound gentler and more like a hair mask than it is.

Four

Nasya and Shiro Abhyanga

Through the nose, and into the scalp

Nasya is the administration of medicated oil through the nasal passages, which the texts treat as the route to the head. Shiro Abhyanga is oiling and massage of the head itself — the limb the classical hair oils such as Neelibhringadi Taila belong to.

Five

Shirolepa, and Rasayana

The paste, and the rejuvenatives

Shirolepa — a herbal paste applied to the scalp. This is the limb that most closely resembles what is sold as Ayurvedic hair care, and in the classical sequence it comes fifth, after the purification and after the bloodletting.

Alongside it, Rasayana: the rejuvenative preparations, taken internally, with Amalaki foremost among them. The literature also names Rakta Dosha Prashamana, Vayasthapana, Twachya and Medhya substances as useful in preventing Khalitya.

The thing this list makes obvious

Taking the fifth limb and presenting it as the treatment is not a small simplification. It is the whole of what is wrong with how Ayurveda is sold for hair.

A paste applied to the scalp is one component of a protocol that begins with diet and sleep, proceeds through supervised purification, and includes the letting of blood. Extracted from that sequence and sold on its own, it is not the Ayurvedic treatment for hair loss. It is a paste.

Radico sells pastes. We are not going to call them a treatment.

Where that leaves this page

If your hair is thinning gradually, or falling suddenly, or coming out in patches, the thing to do is to find out what it is. A dermatologist can distinguish between conditions that look similar and have quite different treatments, and some of those treatments work well when started early. A qualified Ayurvedic physician can assess Prakriti and dosha state and determine which of the above, if any, is appropriate.

This page exists because customers who know Ayurveda ask us what the texts say, and because we would rather answer accurately than approximately. It is not a route to a purchase, and there is deliberately nothing to add to a cart on it.

A note on our sources

We are not Sanskritists, and we have not read the Samhitas in the original. This page is built from peer-reviewed reviews and journal articles by Ayurvedic academics who have, and who cite chapter and verse. Where those reviews disagree — on which term covers which presentation, on whether Indralupta refers to the beard or the scalp — we have given the variation rather than choosing the tidiest reading.

Where we could not establish something to a standard we were willing to publish, we have said so on the page rather than filling the gap. Sanskrit is given in common romanisation without diacritics. Khalitya is खालित्य.

Principal sources consulted

Shivgotra R. Conceptual Study of Khalitya and its Management. International Journal of Research and Review, 2020. On the terminology across the Samhitas, the four types, and the role of Bhrajaka Pitta.
Review Article on Indralupta w.s.r. to Alopecia Areata. On the classification as Kshudra Roga and Shiroroga, and the Srotas involved.
A Conceptual Study of Khalitya. World Journal of Pharmaceutical Research. On the Nidana list and the Samprapti Ghataka.
Agrawalla A.K., Mohanta S., Sahu M. Samprapti and Management of Khalitya w.s.r. to Alopecia. J Ayu Int Med Sci, 2025.
Ayurvedic Management of Indralupta (Alopecia Areata). IJCRT, 2021. On Sushruta’s placement of Indralupta among the Rakta Pradoshaja Vikara.
Indralupta: Raktamokshana and Jalaukavacharana. International Journal of Integrative Medicine. On Prachhana, leech application, and the classical treatment sequence.
Concept of Hair and Hair Diseases in Ayurveda. On the sixteen Keshya dravyas of Bhavaprakasha Nighantu and their distribution by origin.
Ayurveda Hair Formulations — A Review. JETIR, 2023. On the division of Keshya dravya into Kesha Vardhana, Kesha Ranjana and Kesha Sanjanana.

If we have any of this wrong, we would like to know. Write to laboratory@radicousa.com. Corrections to this page are as welcome as corrections to anything else on this site, and we will make them in public rather than quietly.

This page describes a traditional system of medicine for general interest. It is not medical advice, not a diagnosis, and not a treatment claim for any Radico product. Radico makes cosmetic hair colour and single-herb powders for washing and for masks; none of it is intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any condition, including hair loss of any kind. Hair that is thinning, shedding heavily, or falling in patches should be assessed by a doctor. Several treatable conditions present this way, and some of them respond better the earlier they are seen.