A Holistic Approach to Hair Loss Dr Sophia Kogan #535

Foreign, a state of high performance.

You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. Today's cool fact of the day is that your hair doesn't keep any secrets. It turns out your hair contains information about pretty much everything that's been in your bloodstream, including drugs, heavy metals, and is one of the most commonly used types of forensic evidence. But one thing that no one can tell from looking at just your hair is whether you're a man or woman. Because men's and women's hair is identical in structure. But if they get the follicle, they could probably genetically sequence that. But your hair shaft itself is made up of keratin, which is the same protein that horns, hooves, claws, feathers and beaks are made of. And studies in fetal Nile crocodiles, bearded dragon lizards, one of which I had as a pet as a kid, and corn snakes appear to have settled long standing debate on the rise of skin coverings. Special skin bumps that we've known for a long time direct the development of hair in mammals. And feathers in birds also turn out to signal scale growth in reptiles. Which means all three of them evolved from a shared ancestor. At least that's according to a study in 2016, which is kind of cool and kind of creepy, which means maybe someday we'll be able to transform your hair cells so you can grow scales on your head. Would that be cool or what? Talk about having control of your own biology. I think it'd be awesome to have a bearded dragon tuft, at least for Burning Man. Now, today's guest might have been to Burney Mann, and she's an expert. She's a physician from SUNY Downstate Medical School in Brooklyn, where she studied dermatology, and she's an expert in hair. It turns out a lot of people really liked the Last podcast number 4 20, where we talked about, no, that was not a Burning man joke. It actually was podcast number 420. Just so that's clear. And it wasn't an Elon Musk joke either. But what's happening is everyone's saying, hey, I want to know more about hair. And there's such a focus in a lot of medical studies on men and a lot of advice that it turns out is different for men and women. So I thought I would do a podcast that was focusing on hair growth that's applicable to both sexes, but that had a little bit more detail for women, because hair changes during pregnancy, during puberty, during perimenopause, and women can have problems with hair loss, hair thinning and things like that. And plus, I'm planning to live to 180 and I'd like to not be bald during that time. So I'm hoping I pick up a few tips myself. Dr. Kogan or Sophie also has a personal story here because she had hair loss due to an eating disorder and just the stress of medical training. And it turns out stress and hair loss are integrally linked. She's the chief medical officer of Nutrafol, a company that focuses on science behind hair loss and what you can do with plant compounds and naturally occurring things to take control of that. So, Sophie, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Dave. I'm super excited to be here to talk about a topic that I, you know, that is very dear, near and dear to my heart and to share a lot of the science that we've been, a lot of the news and the science that we've been learning here at Neutrophone.

So I'm going to boil it down to a single question. Why do people lose hair?

Oof.

Like that's one answer was 7,000 hours. But give me the top level, like, what's going on with hair loss?

People lose hair for a multitude of reasons. The thing is that there's no one cause and that's one of the things that's different about how of an integrative perspective versus a Western medical perspective. We're always looking for this one cause of something and that leads to targeted drugs that target only single pathways. So for instance, for hair loss today, we only have two FDA approved medications and that's FIT finasteride, used for men, and minoxidil, commonly known as Rogaine, used topically for both men and women. But finasteride targets androgen synthesis. So for those who don't know, androgens are male hormones. And the one that's implicated in hair loss the most is the dihydrotestosterone, which is a more potent form of testosterone. So over the course of the last, you know, 30, 40, 50 years, we've thought that DHT is the only implicated pathway in hair loss. But now research shows that that's not the case. That basically there's inflammation, that there's stress, there's environmental assaults, and more and more as we, as research evolves. And there's a huge surge in research today because it's such a, such a great area of interest is that the, there are innumerable amounts of pathways. So the number of signaling molecules and pathways that are responsible for both hair growth and hair loss are so many. That it would be impossible to think that there's one targeted intervention or one cause in itself. So any dysregulation to those pathways will cause hair loss. And it could come from multiple factors.

Now, finasteride is something that is a very potent thing that can mess with men's hormones, not just around hair loss. There's actually support groups online for a smaller group of men who take it and just permanently have almost a neutering of their sex hormones with some big problems from that. And that's something that I'm not planning to add to my regimen, even if I decide to go down a pharmaceutical route to make my hair stay in as I age, beyond what you're supposed to age because of that risk. Does minoxidil for men or women represent the same kind of risk?

So, no, but it represents other types of risk. So, for instance, minoxidil was initially discovered to grow hair just like anything else. It was an accident, and it's used as antihypertensive medication. And so it can actually, in larger percentages or larger dosages, can even cause heart palpitations and hypertension, depending. But mostly, a lot of people experience irritation and scalp irritation or inflammation as a result of it. Also, because it is the only, well, not the only, but it's the quote, unquote, only Western medical drug that is allowed for women. Women don't like putting things into their hair. It is very challenging, actually. So for those who use minoxidil, they do know that there is some residue that's left. And also they kind of messes with your hairstyle. So there's different types, implications, and side effects from minoxidil and finasteride.

So you can keep your hair, but it'll be greasy and limp?

Exactly, yes.

That's not something that I think any of us want, or it can cause.

Irritation, and that's something that actually makes a lot of people stop. So compliance is a huge issue with minoxidil.

So those two solutions are also targeting single pathways. And from my understanding of follicles, which is probably not at your level, there's definitely a mitochondrial component. There's a hormonal component, which is a big part of it. There's progesterone, there's cortisol, there's all these different things. And for someone listening to this saying, look, I want my hair to be just thicker and not fall out, give me the Cliffs Notes. Given that we're looking at potentially hundreds or thousands of variables, what are the top three variables to pay Attention to.

I think that the top three variables are stress, inflammation and hormones. And stress can have a range of implications. It doesn't just involve direct effect on the follicles, but it also dysregulates other systems in the body that help the follicles grow. So stress is a huge, huge, huge component of this.

How do you define stress?

Excellent question. So I think we all think of stress as something that happens acutely. And of course our bodies have been wired to respond to this with a sudden surge of adrenaline and cortisol. And it's all very important because that's how our body responds to a sudden stress. Like if a bus is coming your way, you need to run away so the body will mount a response and that's an acute type of stress. I think what's more important today than an acute stressor because I think life threatening events are rather rare. We're no longer being chased by lions or tigers on a regular basis. We don't live in caves. So your stress doesn't come from the same type of life threatening events, but your body responds the same. And so the stress that is affecting us today is almost a constant state of arousal. It's basically a chronic level of. So whether it's the boss, you know, yelling at you at work and compounded by you waiting in traffic for a couple of hours, compounded by you having to deal with your spouse or the deadlines or rent to pay the next day. And most importantly, I think in today's society than anything than even 10 to 15 years ago is this constant connection. So we're no longer able to disconnect from our, from anyone, even from ourselves. So constantly, our brain is constantly aroused. So for instance, we never put that phone down. We're always on. You know, we're speaking of Burning Man. That's one of the places you go to disconnect, right? It's the one place where you don't actually have a tie to the outside world, which is much gratitude for that. I just experienced it for a week. I wasn't responding to emails or text message, nobody could reach me. Thank God for that. But normally speaking, you have your phone, you take it to the bathroom, you answer all these messages. I mean, there's not a single moment in time when you're not connected. And that's the kind of state of arousal that I think is affecting us on a chronic level today. And what's really important is that stress doesn't have to just be psycho emotional. So we're thinking of psycho emotional Stress as being constant state of arousal. But also there's chemical stress from chemicals that we find in food or toxins and pesticides. There's environmental stressors like smoke and xenoestrogens, there's nutritional, we don't have enough vitamins and minerals in our soil. So all those are stressors and obviously like physiological and environmental. So all of these things compound because the body's stress response is basically to adapt to all of these stressors. It activates the HPA system, the hypothalamus, pituitary axis. It activates the sympathetic nervous system. It activates, impacts the immunological response, impacts hormones, just so that you can adapt. And that process of adaptation happens over time and until you kind of exhaust your resources because there's a finite amount of energy that is left for you to respond to these stressors. And that's what we call adrenal fatigue and adrenal dysfunction and adrenal dysregulation. To me, today's stress really means that you're constantly adapting. Your systems are constantly adapting. They're over taxed, there's an over exaggerated burden on them and wear and tear. Even if you're not physically feeling or if you're not feeling thinking that you're stressed, your body's still physiologically trying to adapt to these many different changing environmental factors and psycho emotional factors. And that's what we call the 21st century conundrum. Most people are either in adrenal fatigue or on their way to adrenal fatigue in today's society. And I think that's really where all of these chronic diseases are coming from. You have an elevated, you have a rise in thyroid disorders arise and other immune disorders arise in hair loss, especially in women.

All right, tell me about what stress did to your hair.

So for me, I'm genetically predisposed. Like I said, there are multiple factors that are implicated in hair loss. Genetics, of course, play a role, and genetics play a role in everything. But there's a strong component of epigenetics. So for me, the stress was the epigenetic component that brought my hair loss into progression, into manifestation. Initially I stressed myself by having an eating disorder in the 90s like a lot of teenagers did. So that kind of triggered the progression of this. And I lost a lot of hair, which ultimately didn't come back fully until much later in life. And then I noticed that over the course of my life it was either college and medical school and then residency and then I did another residency. Those were the times that I would shed the most, and those are the times that I would lose the most amount of hair. So of course, even though I'm genetically predisposed to losing hair, that genetic manifestation came out during those times. And my stress didn't just come from exams. My stress came from the fact that I was really bad. In college and medical school, I lived and survived on Coca cola and candy and coffee and tuna fish, which of course has a lot of mercury. So in addition to the psycho emotional stress of, of studying for exams and in residency, not sleeping and all those things that compound, I also had a lot of toxins in my body and a very dysregulated and compromised gut. So as a result, of course, I manifested in a lot of hair loss. And recently there was a study that came out in 2017, and actually they tested female medical students specifically to see what happens during exam time and after exam, before exam time, during exam time and after exam time, to see what effect stress has on their hair follicles. And of course, they found that there was a shift in pro inflammatory markers as a result of stress. So they saw that there was a heightened TH1 response. So more inflammatory cytokines such as interferon gamma and TNF alpha.

After stress, how soon do you start seeing hair shedding?

So again, there's a difference between acute stress and chronic stress. So there is such a thing called telogen effluvium. That's a diagnosis that western medicine does recognize as stress related. And that could be a physical stressor or a psycho emotional stressor. And what happens is that normally a hair follicle cycles through a growth phase, which is we call antigress and resting phase telogen, and then it goes into exogen, which is hair fallout. Unlike animals that have a synchronized cycle. So for instance, animals can shed all of their fur at the same time, seasonally, and then grow new fur. Our cycle is not synchronized. And so lucky for us, because we're not shedding all of our hair, going bald and then regrowing it. Yeah. So all these hair follicles are in different stages, and they have a very finely tuned biological clock. Each hair follicle, imagine this, has a very own biological clock that tells it when to go into each phase of the cycle. When we suffer from an acute stress, such as an illness, a surgery, or a death of a loved one, a breakup, or maybe a big move or something like that, or sudden weight loss, the majority of the follicles or a big portion of the follicles can suddenly are shifted into the resting phase, telogen. That's very logical, because when we are stressed, the body will focus all of its energy on essential organs and disregard the follicles. The follicles are not essential for survival. So it's a kind of survival mechanism. That's not where the energy goes. And so as a result, all of these follicles shift into the resting phase, from which point there's no way back. And so about three to four months. That's how long the resting phase lasts. The follicles will fall out. So if you ask somebody, somebody comes in and they're suddenly shedding clumps of hair, the first question you ask them, oh, well, did you have a sudden, you know, did you have a stressful event within the last six months? And they'll tell you, yes, likely they'll tell you something happened. That's acute stress. That's what we call telogen effluvium. Now, more and more today, we see chronic telogen effluvium and other types of hair loss where the etiology, western medicine, still scratches their head a lot about. But in reality, everything points to the fact that that etiology is due to chronic stress. So where it's not an acute stressor that is suddenly pushing all these follicles into telogen and then hair loss, it's actually this chronic state of arousal and dysregulation of adrenal function and other hormones that's playing a role.

Okay, that makes sense. So it could be a short period of time afterwards, if it's an acute stressor, and if it's a chronic stressor, it just tends to happen through all the different hair cycles.

Exactly. And with chronic telogen effluvium, which is on a rise today, the process just continues. People continue to shed. And also the same thing with male and female patent hair loss. Of course, there are implicated pathways in that of how stress affects that. So chronic stress will definitely affect that type of hair loss that's more insidious. You don't see the shedding right away. You don't actually notice it until about 50% of the follicles are affected.

Can you cause follicles that are affected just by thinning or shedding? Can you make them wake back up? Can you recover them, restore them, turn them into super hair follicles? What hope do we have?

Absolutely. The key is to restore the body. To restore the body, and by restoring the body, you restore the follicles. Every organ has an ability to heal itself given the proper conditions. And when and this is what you talk about all the time, the biohacking. And so having the ability to counter, to support the adrenal glands, to decrease cortisol levels, to decrease inflammation or other rebalance cortisol levels. Sorry. To decrease inflammation, counter oxidative stress and the hormonal imbalances, you will ultimately rebalance the environment of the follicle and the systems of the body support them and as a result, support the follicle in its recovery.

Is there lab tests that people should get to know if cortisol is high?

So there's many lab tests that you can do. So it's not that the cortisol is high. So sometimes cortisol is high and sometimes cortisol is low. When somebody has been producing cortisol over a long period of time, eventually the adrenals get fatigued, and then there's less production of cortisol. So then there's a whole other slew of issues that happens. So the key is to actually see where that system is dysregulated. And you can do salivary cortisol tests. We also, in our. Here at Nutrafol, what we do is we've implemented something called the hair mineral analysis test. So we help our customers figure out what are the stressors that are in their system. Actually looking at the hair itself, the hair mineral analysis looks at a variety of different minerals and heavy metals and the patterns. And so it can actually tell you what organ systems may be stressed.

If you had to guess what percentage of hair thinning or hair loss is caused by toxic heavy metals, and I know this is a guess, you probably can't reference a single paper or anything like that. But just from clinical experience, I mean, do you think it's 5% or 50%? Is it big or is it small? Because you guys are getting data on hair minerals, which makes sense of minerals.

It's actually a really good question. So we're still accumulating. And this is what I think that's the uniqueness of having this sort of mind, inquisitive mind, is we're still trying to address and figure out all of these things for our customers and for ourselves to bring back to the Western medical community. What I do know is that the major things that we found are dysregulation of cortisol, so stress, the adrenals, thyroid absorption, so the gut is impacted by the stress. Heavy metals, and I would say I think at least 60 to 70% we find have heavy metal toxicity.

What are the most common heavy metals you're finding in people with hair that's.

Falling out, we find a lot of mercury. A lot, a lot of mercury. It's very hard to chelate out of the body. I tested myself and I haven't really eaten. I'm not that great. But I do limit my consumption of tuna and, and raw fish. But going back to medical school, where in college, where I pretty much lived on tuna fish my entire, like, what is it, 10 years of my life, it's still there. So it's very hard to get rid of mercury. And we sometimes find lead, also aluminum from deodorant. Deodorant use? Yeah, antiperspirant use. And we actually, within our, within our office itself, I just did a little test myself. And every single person that came back with aluminum elevated was a person that was using deodorant that was.

I just have to do a public service announcement right now. If you have aluminum or alum, as they like to call it in the fancy brands, like the stuff with crystalline things in it and it says antiperspirant, you're doing it wrong. That stuff is linked to all sorts of problems, including Alzheimer's. And it's a mitochondrial dysregulator, which is why it would be linked to Alzheimer's, although it's not the only cause of Alzheimer's. And so you just don't put that in your armpits because the armpits are where you put hormone cream, so they absorb into your system really well. So use good old fashioned deodorant that doesn't have a lot of synthetic crap in it, things with essential oils and natural ingredients. And if you still smell really bad or you're sweating a lot, you have other health issues to get on top of. Since I went bulletproof, I can go four days without taking a shower and I don't grow body odor. And if I eat the wrong stuff, I get body odor. So when you get your system toxicity low and you stop eating things that piss off your gut, you actually don't smell bad. That said, I still use deodorant, but it's a very different thing than when you're soaking through your shirt and things like that. If so, something's not quite right and you want to start looking at hacking your biology so that your body's comfortable and you don't smell bad, because healthy animals don't smell bad unless they really don't shower. All right, back to today's regular scheduled programming.

I just want to say eight days at Burning Man. Eight.

Nice. So obviously that's a good thing you didn't have an RV with a shower. I was spoiled at Burning man this year.

I use it just for those people who are listening. I use a crystal. Jordan, I don't know how you feel about that.

As long as it's not an aluminum crystal, you're good to go.

Oh, absolutely not. No, no. But it is. I think it works really well. You don't limit the perspiration, but you do limit the smell.

I've sent a variety of healthy deodorants or pit pastes out in the biohacking box. I send a box out every quarter for people who are just into the stuff I'm into. I find really cool products and I get them for less. It's at my website, Biohacked B I O h a c K-E-D.com so you spend a hundred bucks a quarter and then I send you a couple hundred bucks worth of cool biohacking toys and just things I come across. So there's a variety of neat stuff out there that you can find. Just look at the ingredients. If it says alum or aluminum, it's not for putting on your skin or in your mouth. Okay, so you're finding aluminum is an issue, but mercury is the biggest issue. And the problem is if we don't eat fish, we don't get the omega 3 fatty acids. And if you're short on EPA and DHA, what does that do to your hair?

Well, first of all, these are anti inflammatory so it helps mitigate the inflammation in the body. So obviously as long as you're getting, if you don't have a good balance of your omegas, you're going to have a pro inflammatory state which will ultimately compound the hair loss issue. So you do want to get those omegas, but you want to try to eat fish that is small. So I think the key is to minimize consumption of large fish. And tuna is large, shark is large. I know most people don't eat shark, but you find shark in some supplements, even hair supplements. So you need to be careful to minimize consumption of large fish at the same time. You could consume fish but use, you know, sardines or other small fish. I'm a big fan of sardines actually. Or take supplement with Omega 3.

What I like to do is I certainly supplement with Omega 3s and Bulletproof has a really interesting new one that I think is out. If not, I don't know, maybe I just dropped a hint there. But what I do, I eat a lot of sushi. When I travel because it's hard to find clean food at restaurants. But you can take things that stick to mercury when you eat the larger fish so that it doesn't get absorbed into the body. Things like activated charcoal, bentonite, zeolite and other chelators can make a big difference. So the idea is getting it out of the body is hard. Keeping it from getting in when you eat something that has mercury, but also good stuff is the strategy. Even chlorella. These are all things that I've been using for a while and it seems to work. So it's one of those situations where I recently went halibut fishing. And if you catch a 50 or 100 pound halibut, the thing is 50 or 100 years old, and I always throw those back. And the reason you do that is they make a lot more halibut babies, which is a good thing for the oceans. And because they've been around that long, they accumulate a whole lot of mercury, so they're not really good for you to eat. And what you want to do is catch a young one that has had a lot less bioaccumulation and it goes back to that smaller fish. And if you do that and you're binding some toxins, I think there's room for fish in the diet and a requirement for fish oil. But like you said, the collagen. And you guys are including a small amount of collagen in the Nutrafol supplement because you're finding it's helpful for hair growth.

Yes, absolutely. And I think the key here is also to include the good stuff, but also include the detoxifier. So we also have kelp, we also have iodine from calcillinium and things like that that help detoxify the liver of mercury. Mercury will affect mitochondria, as you know, and hair follicles require an exuberant amount of energy. So when you have toxicity, it will ultimately not only, you know, affect the hair follicle directly because it compromises the energy production, but also will affect it indirectly by compromising detoxification of other toxins.

And so other than going to Burning man to disconnect, what can people with high stress. And we have jobs, commutes, kids, which even though they're wonderful, are enormous stressors because they interrupt you every five seconds when you try to do something. What can all of us do to help? Stay on top of the cortisol.

There are a couple of things. So you're right about lifestyle modifications. I'm not saying that Burning man is a Lifestyle modification. But there's things that you can do, definitely. So finding hobbies, I know life is busy, but finding even five minutes to meditate or to do yoga or just to sit mindfully, you know, what I try to do is for instance, I pray on my food when I eat. I know that kind of sounds crazy, but it's not even a prayer. It's more like a mindfulness moment. It's a moment when I just disconnect from everything else and stay tuned to the presence of the meal. I find a meal as a good habit forming situation for me. So I time my sort of moment of silence, moment of meditation to that, to that process. So self care is extremely important. We have to find time. It's important we have apps now that we can use. So that's really helpful. So lifestyle modifications, of course good diet is important. Eating healthy foods that are not inflammatory, protecting our gut, excluding foods that are pro inflammatory, that stress our gut and ultimately contribute to the overall stress load for the body as well as taking adaptogens. So I think adaptogens are extremely important. This is something that western medicine has not caught onto because it doesn't fully recognize that the stress maladaptive stress response is responsible for maybe over 90% of chronic disease. So we haven't yet as a medical society caught up to the fact that there are these wonderful botanical gifts that we have from Mother Earth that we can use. And especially now when we have the technology available to us to extract those phytoactives and make them more bioavailable and bioactive. So things like so extracts like Ashwagandha, we use Ashwagandha for instance. But there are others as well, like Rhodiola, reishi mushrooms and everything. They have the ability to actually rebalance the stress response to support both the neurological stress response and also the physiological stress response which is kind of unique to them. And they're also non toxic. So that's one of the definitions of an adaptogen is they're non toxic, that they have an ability to modulate or rebalance rather than have a directed action. So they have a non directed action and they basically help you build resistance to stress.

So you include Ashwagandha in Nutrafol as a supplement strategy. But if you're not at least meditating or taking deep breaths or doing something and you're tweaking in your lifestyle, you might expect thinning hair.

I think that you need to do all of those things.

I agree.

I think taking, we're all used to that's just kind of the way we think in western medical society, or sorry, Western society is that we take a pill and everything gets better. So yes, taking ashwagandha is important, but also implementing these small incremental changes in your life, like you said, gratitude, meditation, yoga, even joy in itself, hobbies to sort of decrease that stress, to mitigate that stress response, that's very important. Good healthy diet and these wonderful adaptogenic herbs and anti inflammatories.

Talk to me about the female menstrual cycle and hair thickening, hair loss and hormones. How does that work for women?

There is, it's a funny question actually. So there's definitely somewhat of a fluctuation during the menstrual cycle as to how the hair feels. Not as much about how it's shed or not, but what I do, it's not a huge difference during the cycle, except for the hormones will slightly change the amount of secretion. So the basic gland secretion. So you do tend to get like oilier hair at one point during cycle versus another. Just kind of the same way as acne responds to a menstrual cycle, for instance. But I think the greater connection is again this dysregulation of hormones. A lot of women are experiencing pms, a dysregulated menstrual cycle. As you know, we talk a lot about estrogen dominance for instance, and pcos, they're on a rise. So the reason why they impact hair follicles and impact hair loss is because when, for instance, when a woman is when the amount of progesterone to estrogen is dysregulated, like happens in estrogen dominance, you have less progesterone because cortisol steals that progesterone and makes cortisol. And now you have more estrogen and estrogen is known to actually block the transition or too much estrogen is known to block the transition of the follicle from the resting phase to the new growth phase. So we know that that happens. So as you have that imbalance, of course you're having a problem with how follicles cycle and grow. In the same way there's an increased amount of inflammation. So when you have against stress and dysregulated menstrual cycles, as a result of its impact of cortisol on other hormones like estrogen and progesterone, you will have more pro inflammatory state and follicles are extremely sensitive to inflammation. So there's more inflammatory cytokines that trigger a progression of reactive oxygen species and more Inflammation and of course you get more hair loss as well.

So stress during certain parts of the cycle where you're more prone to inflammation could trigger enough inflammation to affect the hair.

It's not so much that there is a huge shift in the menstrual cycle. During the menstrual cycle, of course, there's a very slight change. Our bodies are really finely tuned. So in a way that the menstrual cycle doesn't affect hair growth as much. But a dysregulated menstrual cycle is connected to hair loss because there's other bigger problems at hand. So a dysregulated menstrual cycle will point to the fact that you might have an excess of insulin and androgen. And both of those things will, you know, insulin will raise inflammation and that will affect hair follicles. And androgens will target the hair follicles by shifting them to what we call miniaturization, making them smaller and smaller and smaller. So that's what happens when a dysregulated menstrual cycle occurs, such as what happens in women with polycystic ovarian syndrome, for instance. And in the same way it'll happen if you have, if you don't have pcos, you know, if you just have a dysregulated menstrual cycle. A lot of women are in estrogen dominance, they have pms, they have other symptoms. And so that can also cause a big shift in the hair growth cycle and compromisation of the hair fall, hair growth.

What about birth control pills? Good for your hair, bad for your hair.

I'm not a big fan.

Okay, keep going. I want to hear more.

Yeah, no, you were going to say something.

I was just going to say that's awesome. And my very first book was around fertility. It was called the better baby book. 1300 references. And we looked a lot at what birth control pills do. So tell me. We didn't look at hair though. So tell me why you're not a big fan.

For the same reasons I think it contributes to estrogen dominance and estrogen dominance will impact hair loss. And so again, it dysregulates normal hormonal balances that occur. I have a philosophy and it also, from a point of view of there's a physiological aspect of this, of course you're adding more estrogen to already a hyper estrogenic state, because when we're chronically stressed, there is a hyperestrogenic state. And also with the addition of xenoestrogens and other estrogens from the environment, you're already compounding that issue. Also, the extra progesterone that you're ingesting will decrease production of your own progesterone. And as a result, progesterone actually stimulates the growth phase, antigen phase. That's why women who are pregnant have this luscious, awesome hair, because it actually prolongs their antigen phase, the growth phase. So as a result, you're basically compromising your own hormonal production and your own normal hormonal balance with these, with the OCPs. And then from a more spiritual, more yogic perspective, and I do have a background in that as well, women are lucky in the way that they can actually renew themselves every cycle. So there's a downward facility. So there's an aspect of clearing some of that stress, the energy, the detoxification, all of it sort of renewing yourself every cycle. Which is why they say men should go into and sweat to a sweat lodge every month. Right. So there's that component as well. So that compromising that. And you know, I hear a lot of women saying, oh, I haven't had my period in six years. Well, great. But you're also storing all this energy in you that you're not excreting and you're not letting go of. So in my mind, there's a sort of double. There's both of those things that affect you as a woman. So taking an OCP will compromise both of those. The spiritual, emotional, psychological, as well as physiological balance.

That makes a lot of sense. And there's an increased cancer risk from taking birth control pills and things like that. I tell all of my women friends who are on the pill, you're going to pay for that down the road. And using effective birth control is really important, but that birth control comes with a larger cost down the road that isn't well known, but is well understood at this point when you look at the data. So choose something that's effective, but not something that is going to increase all kinds of risk later in life. So I'm happy we got to talk about that. Tell me about what happens inside the hair follicle when hair starts to get thin.

So what happens when we're stressed? And actually, these are clinical observations have been sort of anecdotal. But now there's new evidence that came out that talks about a direct brain follicle connection. And the pathways have only been recently elucidated. So what's really cool, and maybe not cool for us, for the Hair loss. But what we do know is that hair follicles actually have their own functional mechanisms for producing hormones, for producing cortisol. So we know that in the whole body now we have the hypothalamus. It tells the adrenal, the pituitary gland to secrete acth, it tells the. Which tells the adrenal glands to secrete cortisol. So we know that that's the HPA axon, the hypothalamus, pituitary axis. It is actually exactly replicated in the follicle itself. And that's something that is research only recently showed. So that when the follicle is stimulated from the outside by cortisol, by corticotropin releasing hormones, it actually has its own ability to produce that cortisol itself and can also use this mechanism to adapt to stress, which of course, stacks the cortisol on top of cortisol. And what happens is that it actually dysregulates the surrounding immune responses. It produces more inflammation. It stimulates mast cells to degranulate and to release inflammatory molecules that will cause apoptosis cell death and also early induction of catagen, which is the regression phase and, and inhibit hair growth. The other brain follicle connection is that our nerves. So we have a really wide, awesome meshwork of nerves that surrounds the follicles in the skin. That's why we feel things, you know, that's why the follicles stand up or the hair stands up and our hands are. That's why, for instance, eczema or psoriasis get worse when you're stressed out because of that direct connection to the nerves. So the nerves will release neuroimmunomodulatory substances such as nerve growth factor and substance P, which will actually, in some cases, for women, I believe that that's the reason why they feel these dysesthesias. During hair loss or during certain types of hair loss, they feel actual tingling or pain around the hair follicles. I believe that that's a. In relationship to these neurological mechanisms. But basically the systems, the brain gets hyperactive. It sends down signals, these nerves, they release these factors, which also stimulate the mast cells to degranulate and create more inflammation. But also they at the same time compromise what is called the follicle immune privilege. The follicles have a unique system because they're a conduit between the environment and, and the internal body system. They have a unique way of protecting themselves from inflammation by having this immune privilege. But as a result of the what's been shown is that substance P, for instance, this neuroimmunomodulatory or neuroimmune substance that's released from the nerves can actually compromise that. That. It can actually compromise that immune privilege which allows the follicles to be exposed to more inflammation or to trigger inflammation in the body. And that has been linked to certain types of hair loss in itself, like alopecia areata or scarring alopecia, but also is obviously a process that can manifest in other types of hair loss.

Okay, very helpful. Thank you. I've seen people use topical progesterone, which is another hormone, to influence hair growth as well. And this is something that some men do. When you're dealing with your data that you have from Nutrafol, do you. Do you test for that? Do you see people use progesterone at all? Is that correlated with hair loss or hair growth or anything?

Progesterone is very important for hair growth. So ultimately it does stimulate the antigen phase, like I said, and it also has implications for how it stimulates mitochondria, energy production. So it's important for hair growth. Our philosophy here, however, is to rebalance from the inside out again, bringing. Every organ has the ability to heal itself, given the right conditions and circumstances, having the ability to rebound. So going backwards, for instance, putting progesterone on is almost like saying, okay, I'll put Minoxidil and I'll cover up what's happening at the moment, but at the same time, not dealing with the underneath problem. And the underneath problem in this case is actually stress. So stress will compromise thyroid production, stress will compromise progesterone production, and stress will compromise the adrenal glands and the digestion, all the things that are absolutely important for the hair follicle to thrive and grow.

Yeah. But I mean, let's face it, if you look in the mirror and your hair is thinning or some of it's falling out and your hairbrush is full, like, yeah, yeah, of course I'm going to meditate, I'll eat some better food, et cetera, et cetera. But seriously, I don't want my hair to stop falling out right now. And honestly, that's why you guys make Nutrafol, right? Because you're like, we have a supplement that helps with hair loss. That's based on science. But so, yes, ultimately we all want everything to work well internally, and that's certainly. I'm in support of that. But if it's going to keep my hair from falling out while I Get my inner house of cards in order. Should I smear that stuff on my scalp or not? And does it make a difference if you're a man or woman?

Personally, I've never tried it and I don't have experience. I know that some physicians use it in their practice, but I think that everything that is used topically only has a success rate of about 50%. And so it could work for some people, it might not work for others. Ultimately, if you're using it, you know, it has only 50% chance of working. So I think with hair, of course, a lot of people try different things, but ultimately anything topical usually has a penetration like an effect of about 50.

Okay, so if I flip a coin, am I going to be one of the two people who gets hair growth from using progesterone? That might be worth it.

You could. You could try it. I think you could try it, but again, you're sort of covering up the symptom without really addressing the issue. And I think the greatest thing that you can do is really address the issue from the inside out. And not to say that you can't add on to it. There's lots of people that do. You know, hair loss is multifactorial. In the same way you can use a multimodal approach, you can also use PRP plus, you know, supplements. You could do other things. I don't know. I don't have firsthand experience. I know that a lot of our physicians do use it for some patients, but it's not as common as I would have expected it to be. If it had such a wide, such a great effect, it would have been used by many more people.

I would also suggest people maybe get their progesterone levels tested. If they're already high, it's not going to be a good idea. I did buy some over the counter cream and I smeared it on my forehead for a couple weeks to see what happened. And what happened was I smelled like lavender, really heavily and I didn't see any difference. But maybe I needed to use it for a couple months and maybe need a higher strength. I didn't get prescription, so progesterone is a very powerful anti inflammatory. I did take it orally after I had a substantial traumatic brain injury a couple years ago. I've talked about that on a few other podcasts with JJ Virgin and Mark Gordon and all. So it can have a powerful way to just turn off that inflammation, but same thing, turning off inflammation to keep your hair right now, that's okay, but you might want to turn it off permanently at the source instead of blocking it. But. So I am curious about topical progesterone. And I would say if your labs show that you're not high in progesterone and you want to try smearing it on your scalp, you're going to have greasy hair if you do it. But who knows? Maybe it's worth it. But you should have the building blocks for healthy hair. You should be controlling your cortisol levels and things like that, which is the direction that you've taken with a Nutrafol supplement, which is kind of cool.

Exactly. You want to really cut it from the beginning. When cortisol is produced, it steals from progesterone. And that's really what happens when you're chronically producing cortisol. The body will respond by stealing from progesterone because they come from the same precursor. And, and that's the root of the issue. And most people who are, who are having low progesterone and who have estrogen dominance as a result of that.

Okay, what about coloring your hair? Is that good for your hair or bad for your hair? At least your hair follicles?

Well, it's not good, but I do it, so I can't really talk against it. I think that the less you do to your hair, the better it is. So if you're going to color it, I'm a big fan of not, of not being really black and white about anything.

Do you like blue hair color? Red hair color?

Exactly. Just for Burning Man. But black and white means that you're going to be more stressed out about following certain rules and being sort of, you know, allowing yourself to do certain things is fine. So not to be crazy about it, but what I do do is I color my hair, but at the same time, I don't do anything else to it. So I let it, you know, be in its curly form. So a lot of people used to blow dry their hair straight. And that's the thing that we do. We have salons everywhere. You can get it done every day. Now there's this whole thing about social media and how you have to have a good hair day every day. So that's all. Actually what it's doing is that it's, it's compromising the, the scalp itself. So the more products you put in, the, the heat from the, the blow drying everything is really causing inflammation and free radicals in the scalp. So the less you do of that, the better it is. I'm not saying don't do any of it. Because you do want to have your hair to look good. You want to style it in some way. Maybe you want to color it. Maybe, you know, I want to be a blonde and I want to be. So it's fine, but it does cause damage. And the good news is, again, you can take anti inflammatories. You can also take really powerful antioxidants that are going to boost your own production of antioxidants and counter that assault. Minimizing, you know, is the best way to go.

Okay, so minimize hair dyeing. How about hairspray, hair gel, things like that? Are they going to increase my risk of thinning or falling out hair?

Well, I put that all in the same sort of realm. I put that all in this, you know, physical stressors that are affecting your scalp. So they do all create inflammation and oxidative stress. So for instance, we know for sure things like SLS will cause a problem in the scalp. It causes irritation.

Sodium lauryl sulfate.

Yeah, exactly. So that will. Parabens will alter your hormonal balance. So choosing the products wisely, I try my best to use only natural products. I'm very selective in my shampoo and conditioner and in any styling products that I use. In fact, I don't actually use any just to minimize the amount of additives and toxins and chemicals that are growing into the system.

There are a bunch of shampoos out there that say they're for thinning hair, preventing baldness, et cetera, et cetera. Does any of that stuff have merit?

The way I look at it is this. Most of that stuff is do no harm. So when you're applying something topically, well, of course there's serums and things like that that could work, that have phytoactives that will work. But in terms of shampoos and conditioners, if you think about it, it's on your scalp for about, you know, 10, I don't know, five minutes, how long it goes on there for. It doesn't have too much effect. So I would say in that case, the best thing you can do is do no harm to choose the products that have the least amount of chemicals so that you can minimize your exposure to those and minimize the inflammation and oxidative stress that comes as a result.

There's some pretty good evidence, at least in men, for nizoral, which is a kind of shampoo that's antifungal. And the problem there is all the rest of the ingredients are not ingredients. I've had horrible. I don't want to put those on my skin. But that one compound, maybe someone listening, is going to compound a clean shampoo that has the nizoral active ingredient.

That would be ketoconazole.

Yeah. So somebody make me a ketoconazole shampoo. Send me some. I want it.

I would say you can also use tea tree oil, so you can go the natural route. Ketoconazole is basically an antifungal. And what you're doing is you're decreasing inflammation by getting rid of extra pathogens, which are the fungal elements. And so that causes dandruff and dandruff again, it causes inflammation, and any inflammation can contribute to hair loss. So you could use natural shampoos and such. Tea tree oil is a great antifungal. So that's something that you can use instead of the ketoconazole and nizoral.

Okay, that makes sense. I've seen, I mean, I've talked with thousands of fans. I just did a couple meetups in New York and Chicago, and I've seen men and women who go through periods of extreme stress who can get thin hair, which we talked about. There's also people, and it seems to hit women before men. But if they go into unending ketosis without cycling in or out, or they practice intermittent fasting every single day for long periods of time, they also can get thin hair. And certainly I've seen this over and over with people who are former vegans who got thin hair. In fact, it's one of the first things that can happen after a few months of that perhaps lack of collagen, lack of essential fatty acids, lack of minerals, lack of protein. All those things can contribute. But I mean, what's the role in situations like that of. Is this mitochondrial? Is it hormonal, is it nutrient deficiency? Is it all three, or are those different use cases?

I think it's all three, actually. I think you're talking about a little bit of a different thing. So vegans, I think they have the issue of collagen and such as fatty acids and protein, and I see that a lot. We ask our customers what their diet is like. So I think a lot of vegans, unfortunately, a lot of people go vegetarian or vegan at times. They just don't have the proper education and they kind of wind up eating the wrong things, which are actually pro inflammatory as well. So for instance, if you're going vegan and you're not gluten free and you're suddenly eating a ton of pasta, that's not helpful. To the body, that just creates more inflammation and compromises the gut actually more as a result of that. You know, there's a lot of research now that says that the gut is highly tied to hair. It's actually fascinating stuff. They're saying that they fed some mice probiotic and they resulted in a decreased in inflammatory markers and improved luscious fur. So in the same way feeding a proper diet or even exchanging the microbiome like fecal matter transplant resulted in full hair regrowth in individuals who had alopecia or yotter alopecia universalis, which is a complete loss of. Of hair. They had complete regrowth.

So it could be your gut bacteria.

I think it could be also your gut bacteria. If they're not getting the proper nutrition and proper balance, you're getting a dysbiosis. Or especially if you're complementing with foods that are not good, for instance, the processed sugars, even if you're a vegan, you're going to compromise the gut barrier and as a result increase permeability of the gut and increase inflammation and that results in hair loss as well. So I think that's one thing. And then the ketosis, people who are not. I mean, I'm a fan of the.

Ketogenic diet, one of the first books about it. Right?

Yeah, I'm a big fan. I can't fully do it myself because my body type is not. Is not adjusted to that.

You have to cycle in and out, especially women. Very few women can go full keto all the time without substantial problems with hormones.

Exactly. So I think that's where you're hitting on the nail on the head here is that you have to be mindful. You have to. You know, again, being strict about something is great, but nothing works the same for everybody. So listening to your body and knowing what you're feeling and a hair loss could be a great way of, you know, unfortunately, I don't want it to be a way of looking at it, but it is a symptom. It's a symptom of an imbalanced stress response. It's a symptom of an imbalanced immune response. It's a symptom of something happening in the body that's not supposed to be.

It's kind of interesting just going back to the gut bacteria where you talked about that. A guy who's been on the show several times, Naveen Jain, runs a company called Viome V I O M E And with their test, I've been able to get like full data on everything that's growing in my gut. And they also track the amount of human DNA or gut lining shedding that's happening as a result of the bacteria and the other stuff going in your gut. And I don't have data on this, but I would be surprised if there wasn't a correlation between the amount of gut lining shedding and hair quality. So it's a marker of inflammation. So I've inflammation tweaking stuff. In fact, I'm about to write a big blog post on that about what I've been able to do to control that shedding of the gut lining in order to reduce inflammation in the body by making a few tweaks. And it's actually resulted in me getting even leaner without any work at all. I think that could be an inflammation sign or it could actually be more directly tied. But do you know what species of bacteria are going to give me luscious fur? Because I'm all down for that.

That's a trade secret for now.

I don't think the science is out yet, but we'll probably find it, right?

There's some science. Yes, there is some science. There's a couple of strains of bacteria. I'd have to look at my data. To be honest with you, I can't remember off the top of my head. But what I do know is that there is a direct correlation to hair growth and hair health in general. So strains of bacteria. I'd have to look at my data. To be honest with you, I can't remember off the top of my head. But what I do know is that there is a direct correlation to hair growth and hair health in general. So.