Anti-Aging, Hair Growth, Gray Hair, Baldness, Beauty Myths & Beauty Truths, Dermarolling vs. Microneedling, Scars & Stretch Marks, Testosterone, DHT & Much More With Dr. Cameron Chesnut.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Not that that doesn't play any role, but in general, if people aren't tearing their skin open every day, what's happening is our skin's losing elasticity over time.

A lot of these spendy things that we put in our hair, that we massage into our hair, a lot of that might be because of the massage just as much as the actual product.

So whether we're using a laser or whether we're using a microneedling device, you want to disrupt the skin barrier, penetrate through the epidermis, but your real work is getting done down deeper in the dermis itself.

You are pissing off a lot of supplement manufacturers right now. You realize that health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Welcome to a very special episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show. It's no secret if you've been following me on Instagram or elsewhere, that I am embarking upon a hair growth project. Meaning that I'm researching everything one could do for things like graying hair, male pattern, baldness, hair loss, beard growth, hair care, fuller heads of hair, elastin collagen, the works. Not because I'm upset about my hair or dissatisfied with my hair, but because I'm just interested in growing out my hair and looking into all the different biohacks and supplements and medical treatments and strategies and everything one could do in the whole anti aging b beauty department, particularly relevant to one's hair. And so today's podcast episode is with my friend and anti aging and beauty expert and cosmetic surgeon, Dr. Cameron Chestnut. This one's gonna be a doozy, so I hope you enjoy it. Oh, hey, one last thing. Cameron actually is available for telemedicine consults to anyone anywhere in the world, whether you want to get on there and show them a giant mane of gray hair or talk with him about some strange stretch mark or loose skin or any other beauty anti aging topic. Anything we talk about on today's show, Cameron can unpack with you on a telemedicine consult. So I'll put all that information and all the information about his clinic@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Cameron. Check it out and let's go talk to Cameron. Here we go. Hold on to your hair, folks. Cameron, what the hell did you just do to my face?

We just gave you a quite the micro needling treatment with your own PRP updaub.

I feel it because you took like this.

What do you want me to do?

Yeah. Facial numbing cream.

Oh yeah.

When does that wear off?

You know that's going to be weeks. No. Yeah. Maybe six, seven months till that's gone.

I'll get used to it. I'll just be able to hammer nails into my face between now and then.

Looks good.

Okay, so what did we just do to my face, Dr. Chestnut?

So we just did a microneedling treatment with hyper concentrated matrix enhanced prp. So did a little blood draw. Ran that blood through a centrifuge, then through a pediatric hemoconcentrator to take all the saline off. The same thing you'd use for like a pediatric bypass heart surgery. Wow. We are the world's number one consumer of those. Now we do so much of this.

Prp, but you don't do heart surgeries on babies.

Tons of it. Tons of it.

Really? Every day in your sleep.

In my sleep.

Wow.

That's a little bit more intense of an action.

But hold on. I'm gonna interrupt you real quick and take my recovery shot here. Your clinic is all amped up with all these. It looks like my pantry. Actually. I've got some Quinton get my face well hydrated after. I should just dump this on my face.

It might sting if you get it.

Yeah. Over in a squash while anybody who takes Quinton, you know exactly doing right now, you break open the glass vial, you put it in your mouth, then you break the bottom of the vial. Mmm.

There it is.

Sucking down. Oh, I lost like some of it. Rookie mistake. Sucking down seawater. Seawater shots. Better than tequila.

Love it.

Alright, soso. We basically put baby heart surgery platelet rich plasma into my face after you microneedled me.

Exactly. Yup. We did some in your scalp injections in the right around your hair follicles of your scalp as well.

Okay, so the microneedling is basically opening up a bunch of blood vessels in my face. The platelet rich plas is then able to seep into my face that much better. Correct. And my hair and my scalp.

Right. So there's a couple mechanisms. One of them is actually forcing those growth factors down into your dermis. The other one is actually just the like crude injury that the microneedling creates in your skin. That's a little stimulant.

It is kind of crude looking.

Yeah, exactly.

I'll put photos in the show notes. For those you want to see, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Cameron that's a C-A M E R O N and you guys can see some pretty nitty gritty photos of what this thing actually looks like when you get it done. Or you could go to Cameron's Instagram page. It'll link to. Because you got a ton of before and after stuff on there, right? Exactly.

Yep.

Okay, so you said growth factors. What are the growth factors doing when they go into my face and into my hair?

Yeah, that's a great question. So it kind of depends on which. What our target is. And PRP is a wonderful, wonderfully rich source of these growth factors, but it's really a shotgun of them, meaning that it's, you know, we're putting the same PRP in your hair that we're putting on your face for the most part, with different targets. Right. So when we're putting it in your hair, we're targeting the stem cells that are in your hair bulb that live sort of in the F of your scalp. And when we're doing it on your face, we're targeting a little bit more of these cells called fibroblasts. And those fibroblasts are what create new collagen and new elastin. More importantly, new elastin tissue in your face.

Okay, you said elastin is more important than collagen.

Yeah. And so this is a really, I think, common misnomer and just skin health in general, that, you know, collagen is the key to aging, and it's certainly part of it. But collagen is really like the rebar. It's the structural strength of our skin. And not that that doesn't play any role, but in general, if you, you know, people aren't tearing their skin open every day, what's happening is our skin's losing elasticity over time because.

Speak for yourself. I live a gritty lifestyle. Skin every day.

Love it. Yeah, you probably do. But the elasticity is what's going to make, you know.

Okay, so elastin would lend itself to the elasticity, whereas collagen would be like the. Like the concrete. Right.

That's the rebar, and the concrete, that's that structural strength.

Okay.

Yep.

Got it. And so you. You microneedle. You. Before you microneedle, you draw somebody's blood, and you centrifuge that blood to concentrate. The growth factors, they just separate based on weight or density. Correct. Right. Then you take the growth factors out, and that's almost like the world's most expensive skin cream or hair cream.

Basically, it's the dream. And there's lots of skin creams that have growth factors. They're just not autologous. They're not from you, they're from something else. And so to have your own sort of at your fingertips is hard to beat.

Yeah, I was actually at a clinic. It's kind of funny because this is going to make it sound like I'm just sitting on a medical clinics all my life, but I was literally doing a knee injection the other day and they had some leftover platelet rich plasma and the doctor handed it to me in a tube and I'm like, what's this? He's like, just put it in your refrigerator, use it a few times on your face. I actually gave it to my kids. They thought it was cool that they were smearing dad's blood product on their face. And they woke up the next morning, I'm like, you guys look like you're eight years old. What happened? And they had totally forgotten. They didn't know what I was talking about. And I was like, you put dad's growth factors on you. They're like, really? I do, I do look like that. I'm like, no, not really. You look like you're 13 still. But so these platelet rich plasma growth factors, once they're administered to face or to the scalp, what can someone expect from a treatment like that?

Yeah. So on your face it's going to be dependent on the injury that we're creating with it. In the case of microneedling, it's a relatively mild injury. You're going to have 12 to 14 hours where you're kind of, you know, red and feeling like you're a little bit textured. By 24 hours, most of that's faded away and it's just sort of a pink color. And usually by the next day, so call it 36, 72 hours, you're kind of back to life as usual. You've got the PRP in your skin, it's doing its thing. You tend to have this little edema which is kind of like this cheater look at first that you look kind of good because you're a little swollen. Yeah. But in reality, the building of that collagen elastin takes weeks to months. And so it really is sort of a long term play. Looks good. Over time builds, builds actual structural strength and resilience in your skin.

What about for the hair?

For the hair, as you're getting around the hair bulb, the first injections, like your hair is completely virgin. This. Never seen it before. Right. Totally naive.

Yeah. I pop my hairs, Terry.

Love it.

Yep, yep.

And as that happens, you know, the hair bulbs, getting this first Sort of bath of these stem cells or. Excuse me, of these growth factors around the stem cells. Now, if you have some blockade in which they've been senescent or kind of quieted down a little bit, as in like an androgenic or like male pattern.

We'Ll get into that for sure.

Right?

Yeah.

It's gonna take them a while to get turned back on. Now yours are already on and running. Right. And so we are going to start stimulating those stem cells and we're gonna increase the length of the growth phase of your hairs, which is called anage antigen phase. Like, gets longer, your hairs get thicker.

Antigen. Like anabolic antigen.

Okay, exactly. Antigen, Yep. Antigen telogen is the resting phase. Catagen is the falling out phase. We all lose hair every day. 100, you know, 100 plus. And so, you know, we're constantly going through that cycle. But that antigen phase is the key. That's going to determine the length of your hair, it's going to determine the girth of your hair. And then, you know, cells being in that antigen phase is going to determine sort of the total number, the density that you have.

I'm going to blame the catagen phase on my cat, actually, for. For all the hair laying around the house. That'll be. They'll have me remember that catagen cat. I don't own a cat, but. But if I did, I would blame it on the cat. All that, all that catagen activity. Now, I. I have a ton of questions for you because. Allow me to lay the background, which I haven't even done yet. For those of you listening in. We just jumped right in. But I made a decision about, I guess, like three weeks ago that despite having pretty much the same haircut for the past couple decades of my life, I want to grow my hair out. I'm not promising man bun status or Thor status, but I'm definitely going to get me some flowy locks, possibly if I can talk my wife into it. I don't know about a mullet, but if I can talk my wife into it, possibly also some facial growth, little bit of beardedness, so to speak, so that I can look a little bit more lumberjacky like I've always wanted to look. And also I just want to look more spiritual. Toga sandals, long hair, beard. That's the look I'm trying to pull off, and that's why I recruited you. So you and I were sitting at dinner a few weeks ago, similar to how we're gonna go out to dinner tonight, but I'M gonna look like a freak because my face looks like it got run over by a semi truck.

Might turn some heads.

Yeah, yeah. So anyways though, we were at dinner and you just really started blowing my mind about a lot of this stuff. Because when I posted, it was, I think a few days prior to when we had dinner to Instagram that I decided to grow my hair out. So many people came through with like, oh, do, do betaine and nad and you know, what about finasteride? What's that do? How about DHT and testosterone? All these questions and around a them by you at dinner. And I thought, dude, where's my podcasting mic? We need to record some of this for folks because honestly, for those of you listening in, I know that so many of you are very interested in anti aging in beauty, especially both men and women have been messaging me right and left about hair loss. Doctors from all over the world been writing to me. I've got this treatment, I've got that treatment. So Cameron, are going to tackle a lot of that today, like these myths around beauty, around aging, around hair, to give you a little bit of a background. On camera Cameron. Cameron, you and I have known each other for. Dude, how long?

Going on 20 years.

Yeah. So we both come from the same stomping grounds down in the Palouse in Moscow, Idaho and Pullman, Washington. I went to University of Idaho and Cameron, at a relatively similar time, went to Washington State University. Right. And studied medicine eventually at University of Washington. University of Washington, Yeah. And what's your actual medical license or degree? So I'm an MD, MD and specialty in cosmetic surgery.

Yeah. So my residency training was in dermatology and basic dermatology, then a fellowship training in cosmetics, facial plastic surgery, reconstructive surgery.

And so you spend the majority of your time doing more reconstructive or more like anti aging type of stuff?

I'm about 25% reconstructive, about 75% cosmetic.

Aesthetic at this point. All right, got it. And so anyways, the funny thing is Cameron and I both competed like heavily in Ironman. Like, you and I were pretty geeked out on and not, not to do much chest thumping here, but we were, we were kind of like big fish in a little pond out here on, you know, on the Palouse and out in, in Eastern Washington in Northern Idaho. Like, like you and I went head to head in a few races.

Right.

And yeah, we, we were known as a couple of guys to chase and, and so we battled it out and then when I was operating an exercise physiology lab at. At Champion Sports Medicine up here in Spokane. You used to come in because you. You would come in for. For me to do your VO2 max testing and your bike fits your G. You know, all the fun stuff that we did down there. And then we just kind of didn't talk. Like, once I quit working at Champions and started doing a lot more. What I do now where I. Where I kind of like sold all my personal training equipment and moved off all my clients and shifted to more writing and speaking and media and what I do now, you know, I just kind of got out of touch.

Yeah. The one thing you may not remember was my first year of medical school when I was at the University of Washington. I was in Moscow and Pullman. And you were doing a study. I want to say it was like at the very end of your education, sort of a, you know, VO2 max study between, like, we were doing running on land. We were running in a. Like an aqua treadmill, and then we were on a bike. And you had recruited me somehow to do this. And I'm like in the, you know, one of the most intense years of my life. And I remember going to do these studies with you and just like full exertion for a VO2 max.

Yeah.

And just being super gassed after those. Basically a lab rat that you had.

Me as falling off the back of the treadmill with two spotters at the back to catch it.

And then the aqua part was the interesting. I think that was part of the thesis. But then when you're at Champions, you know, that was you. That was. I learned a lot from you. I don't think you ever knew this, but learned a lot from you in the sense of, you know, you kind of took what I'd been doing in training and turned it into a sort of a very, like, train smarter, not harder. Which is very cliche now, but sort of at that time was like, let's get your actual lactate threshold and let's do some of these things that you drew out a plan for me that year, and that was my first Ironman. I believe I qualified for Kona.

Yeah. With that help, all data driven that. That was really kind of how I personal tried to carve out a name for myself here locally, was I wanted to just feed on my voracious curiosity for all things that are a little bit kind of like, I guess considered a little bit geeky or biohacky, I guess you'd call it these days. So like I said, we had all the high Speed video cameras, the indirect calorimetry. I just finished a stint in hip and knee surgical sales where I'd been administering a lot of platelet rich plasma and spinning blood down post surgery. And so I went in 50, 50 with the DOC who I partnered with at that clinic, and we bought a PRP machine. So we were doing PRP like 20 years ago. Same stuff we did to my face today. Probably your equipment is a lot fancier than what we had back in the day. So. Yeah. And then we recently reconnected and we've been hanging out a lot. And then we decided to partner up on this hair growth project and also do this podcast for folks. Now you live in Coeur d'. Alene. Your wife, Aubrey, is also friends with me and with Jessa. And how many kids we got?

Three kids.

Three kids. How old?

Seven, five and three.

Awesome. Where are they at right now?

They're with Grandma.

Grandma.

Yeah.

That's what I figured. It's a good place. Yeah. Yeah. So a little bit of a gap to fill in there. And I definitely want to get to a lot of the anti aging and beauty and hair growth and hair loss myths, but, you know, from the time that we kind of disconnected and then reconnected and you kind of obviously got out of hot and heavy competition in Ironman and shifted into building out your clinic, what have been some of the highlights for you along the way?

Yeah, you know, that was right around the time where medical school really started picking up. And I got married to Aubrey and we were in Seattle, moved over there.

And she was a standout basketball player at asu, right?

Yeah, she was a team captain and all American, or, excuse me, an all back 10 player at Arizona State. And so, yeah, she had a great basketball career. And once that kind of finished up and I was in med school, we moved off to Seattle, finished at the University of Washington there, then went down to Los Angeles, which is just such a fun place to live for that period of time, and did residency and fellowship training, which is pretty intense. You know, once we finished up with that, we moved back up here to home, Coeur d' Alene, Spokane, and been back for about seven years. From there, opened a medical practice here, you know, doing, like I said, facial plastic, reconstructive surgery, dermatologic surgery. It's been just a really fun journey. I love, love what I'm doing every day. I get that comment from patients almost daily. Like, I can just tell you love what you're doing. You know, that passion shows through. It's really fun. And where we're sitting right now in this Optum clinic kind of of Optim.

I'll link to it in the show notes. People want to check out your site, but Optim is this kind of new mashup of biohacking and anti aging. I know you have hyperbaric here. I think my wife's actually in the hyperbaric chamber right now.

My wife in there right now.

Okay, so our wives are snuggling in the hyperbaric chamber. And then you have infrared. I notice you have a kettlebell. That's important. Cryotherapy chamber. What else do you have here?

We've got LED sauna and then we do IV drips here.

What's an LED sa?

Like an LED sauna blanket? Like a full body LED treatment?

Yeah, gotcha. What do you use that for?

I use that a lot post laser treatments. Okay. You know you can get a little bit of anti inflammatory component on the skin surface. So we use it with everybody but you. Everybody. The microneedles, we use LED light with them every single time to kind of calm down some of that initial inflammation.

And you like hyperbaric also after some of these anti aging treatments to help with stem cell mobilization?

Yeah, I would say that hyperbaric was sort of the birth of this whole facility for me in that training down in la. It's a very progressive environment and a little bit of it is like how, how much you can get your patients better, faster from similar procedures as somebody next door that they do. And so hyperbarics down there is a big, big part of a lot of practices. And I kind of picked that up. And it's not, it's not highly adopted. Regenerative medicine in general honestly is not that highly adopted amongst cosmetic physicians. You know, I used it a lot up here, which was very differentiating in the Northwest. And I, at one point I was like, you know, why don't I sort of of have this in house, build a practice around it, kind of make it work together. And that's what the birth of this Optum clinic was really was having like all the ability to do all of this, you know, in my backyard.

Yeah, well, like I mentioned, I mean like I was shocked at the number of, I guess Instagram comments and emails and messages that I got when I started posting about anti aging and beauty and you know, this hair growth project. How big of an industry is this and is it growing at the pace that I perceive it to be?

I mean, all the things you just mentioned are massive industries, individually Talking about obviously beauty and cosmetics and aesthetics and then hair, like a whole separate world. And that is, you know, so, so sought after. Kind of a bit murky to get through, which I think we're going to get into a little bit today to sort through the pearls from the poo. Really?

Yeah.

You know, so those individually are just such, such big markets.

I want to talk about the poo because it seems like there's a lot of like charlatan esque activity that goes on. And after just like our dinner conversation, I mean there was stuff I learned. I'm like, oh wow, I've been doing that and that might the way to go despite my, my misperceptions about it. And so I'd love to maybe, maybe start with, with the bad start. Start with the miss here. So I guess the first thing that I want to ask you about because I know a lot of my listeners have been doing this based on recommendations from me, specifically. Guilty as charged. His derma rolling. Now I do, I've talked about how I do a weekly derma rolling session followed by this clay mask. And so I use a clay mask from a company called Alitura. Shout out to them for their wonderful clay mask. They also send me derma rollers, however, which might mean that they are potentially evil. I'm just kidding. And Andy's one of my buddies, he runs that company. But he might listen to this. So I'd love to hear your take on derma rolling, which a lot of people are doing.

Yeah, Derma rolling is very, very hot right now. It's sort of the home version of what you did today, which is that microneedling device. Right. Causing specific sort of injury, the skin maybe pushing something topically into like a per. We call it like a percutaneous drug delivery. Getting something through our skin barrier, which is really tough. Our skin is built to keep us protected from the outside world. So it's hard to get things through it.

Unless something is very, very small though. Right.

Small, killer, very lipid soluble. There's ways to get it through.

Right. Like some of these peptide therapies people are doing, they're measured in daltons and some peptides. One that we'll probably talk about because it's commonly used in the beauty industry. Ghk, Copper peptide. That's often used as a transdermal. So if it's small, it could potentially get through the skin. Exactly right. And derma rolling theoretically is kind of like ripping open the skin to allow that to occur.

Yep. Yeah. Our skin sort of is a Brick and mortar structure, and you're just putting a hole in the brick and mortar and getting something through it.

Okay, but. But that's not the same as microneedling.

Well, so microneedling is going to use that same mechanism. The difference is going to be that you're going to have needles that are penetrating perpendicular, directly perpendicular to your skin, in and out. You're using a brand new needle every time, and you're controlling your skin depth very, very precisely with what you're doing with a dermaroller. Similar principle, except that if you just think of the mechanism of something attached to a cylinder and rolling along a surface, it's not perpendicular the whole time. It's going to be tangential, forcing its entry and tangential on its exit, and that tends to cause a tearing injury to the surface of the skin. So evil's not the word to use for them, but they can certainly cause more damage than they can do help at certain times, especially with, you know, It's a catch 22, because if you want more depth of penetration, you're going to have sort of a long microneedle on that, on a derma roller, and you're going to do more damage because it's more tangential at those angles of the cylinder entering. And so really common.

And so it's almost like a shearing instead of like a straight in and out type of thing like microneedling would do. Microneedling is almost, you know, to me, it felt to it like a similar sensation as a tattoo.

Right.

In terms of that needle going straight in and out of the skin. And what you're saying is that dermarolling more kind of like rips open the skin in a way.

Yep. And shears it open. And your analogy of a tattoo is dead on. Perfect tattoo is putting pigment in your dermis, and this is putting PRP in your dermis. Right.

Same idea.

A little bit less intense, as you were saying, but same idea.

Okay, so why would derma rolling be bad? I mean, if it is ripping open the skin, isn't that kind of what we want to do?

Right. So you generally want to minimize the trauma at the epidermis, the surface of the skin, with anything that you're getting through. So whether we're using a laser or whether we're using a microneedling device, you want to disrupt the skin barrier. You want to penetrate through the epidermis, but your real work is getting done down deeper in the dermis itself. And so when you have a hole that's not maybe A perpendicular or perfect cylindrical shape. You're, like I said, doing a bunch of epidermal damage for very little sort of dermal penetration.

Okay. So in terms of derma rolling, and this was kind of my theory that we talked about again at dinner, I feel like I've actually looked a lot better since I started that weekly dermarolling and clay mask protocol. And I've gotten comments on how I seem to be retaining a youthful appearance with age. But my hypothesis is perhaps it's more the clay mask than it is the derma rolling. And the dermarolling might actually be doing more harm than good.

Well, it could be any combination of those things. You were telling me that you were derma rolling almost every day, right?

No, no, no, no, no. Like once a week.

Gotcha. Okay, well, and like I just mentioned, with the, with the microneedling from this, you get a little bit of edema after that first part of the treatment. That's like that fake result. Like it looks really good and taut and, and full of fluid at the very beginning. So wrinkles and things like that look great, but it's fake. It's just swelling from injury. And so sometimes dermarolling can actually give more edema because it's causing a little bit more injury.

In that sense, it's like the fake pump that the bros get at the gym. It's like when you want to crank out all the push ups before a hot date night. Or like how bodybuilders look really swole. Or if you do blood flow restriction training or even electrical muscle stimulation, you actually look pretty big because the amount of edema and swelling that goes into the muscles afterwards, but you're not actually building muscle. That's just metabolic byproducts and swelling. Exactly. Doctor. Well, not all, but a lot of it is.

Yup.

Okay, and what you're saying is that that edema is kind of like a short lived trade off to look a little bit better. That might be doing long term damage to the underlying structure of the skin.

Correct.

Okay, correct. That's interesting. Now what about something a little bit simpler like a coffee scrub for the face or one of these, you know, one of these scrubs that just kind of like irritates the face a little bit, followed by say, a clay mask.

Right? And it's gonna similar sentiment. And honestly, like, if you talk about, I don't know, like an apricot scrub, that's a really common one. Right, Right around a dermatologist, they're generally going to cringe a Little bit. Because it's causing sort of epidermal. Yeah. Damage. The idea is that you're shedding.

It's so popular.

So popular. Yeah. And they. You put them on and, you know, you kind of get that. I think you mentioned afterwards that you're after you got your microneedling, that your face felt a little injured, right?

Oh, yeah, it still does.

Yeah, exactly. And so you can get that feeling with those types.

I want to punch you in the face later on.

Yeah, right.

Trade off.

I deserve.

Yeah.

But you can get that same sort of thing with like that epidermal scrub to it.

Interesting. And so the question, no scrubs, no derma rollers?

There's some devices that are geared at this. Like a Clarisonic, for example. Like a really common, popular thing.

That's what I was going to ask you. If they sell like, maybe like a home unit version. That's what that is more like microneedling.

Yeah. You can't get a microneedling device for home necessarily. I'm sure somebody can hack that and find one, certainly. But it's really. Honestly, it's the PRP that's the benefit of that treatment in the first place. Anyway. Anyway. Lots of people microneedle without PRP and it's fine, but it's just, you know, it's an inferior treatment. Certainly they do have home sort of exfoliating devices that are like gentle brush tip types of things. It's like if you talk to a dentist about your teeth, use a soft bristle brush. Right. Don't go nuts with a hard bristle. It'll be the same thing on your skin surface.

Okay. So if you were somebody listening in and you had some kind of fancy hair or skin product, and we'll talk about the ingredients of some of these products momentarily. You know, let's say like C60 or GHK copper peptide, somebody paid a lot of money for. You also have a derma roller or maybe some of that coffee scrub or an apricot scrub. Would you say that Is there anything someone could do to enhance the delivery of some type of skin treatment prior to using it? If they listen to this podcast and decide they don't want to use a derma roller or a scrub, or should you just put it on your face and call it good?

Yep. Generally you're going to want to put those on and let them do the penetration that they're going to do if they're going to get through. Through. Like you were talking about putting straight PRP on your face earlier. You're going to get some penetration to some of those growth factors through. You know, this is like one of those ideas of the good stuff sticks a little bit. You know, you're going to want to kind of stick with those if you're, if you're trying to, you know, force them in with a derma roller. Like I said, they're not evil. They're not going to do a ton of damage in the sense of like, oh, you've ruined your face, but they're probably doing more harm than good in.

General and possibly wasting your time with that extra 10 minutes you're spending doing the rolling beforehand. Now what about afterwards? Because you'll often hear people say, oh, find like an infrared light and do infrared light afterwards. Or well, I guess infrared is the only one I can think of that people are talking about like post treatment. But are there things you could do after you apply one of your beauty products to enhance its effects?

Yeah, you nailed it right there. And that's why with hair treatment or like the microneedling we talked about infrared or near red. Near infrared, like red light, anything that's giving a little bit of depth of.

Penetration, but not sunlight. Because the UVA and uvb, correct?

Right. Yep. You're going to get some basal dilation with that initially and that can help with some of your, like delivery of your drug that way too. So that's kind of nice to do afterwards. Even the little nitric oxide release that comes with it and things like that are, you know, going to be beneficial to what you're doing. You and you said you'd mobilize some stem cells where you came in for your treatment today?

Yeah, before I came in, I did like I have this thing called the biocharger and it has all these recipes, recipe for adrenals and a recipe for recovery. It's got a recipe for nitric oxygen. And I thought, okay, well I should increase my blood flow before I go into Cameron's clinic so that this stuff gets delivered even better. So I did a nitric oxide session. And so if one were to do something like that, let's say even before they do a beauty treatment like go hit the infrared sauna or what about oral administration of betaine or niacin or, you know, even like arginine or citrulline or some kind of blood flow precursor, like anything that makes your face red. And a lot of people who have taken like a pre workout or a blood flow precursor, you've probably noted, and some people are more genetically predisposed to this kind of like alcohol flush, but your face gets red if you have something like that and you've noticed increased capillarization or blood flow to your face or your skin or elsewhere, theoretically, that might be something that you could almost use as kind of like a pre workout, your pre beauty, just like your.

Pump you just talked about. Same thing.

I want to throw at you some of the things that my audience asked me about. We talked about one already, collagen. And obviously this is a hot one. It's a big seller in the supplements industry. People take it and it's often marketed for hair, skin, nails, beauty. And it's oral supplementation of something that theoretically is going to assist by building up your body's own collagen. What do you think about collagen supplementation?

Yeah, that's another hot topic. And when we think about the way that our digestive tract works when we're eating that collagen, whatever the sources bovine say, we're getting that in our GI tract and we're breaking it down to its amino acids that are transporting across our gut wall, and then we're reassembling them into the proteins that we need. So from us, I think a lot of people have this idea that they're going to eat collagen and then it's going to get deposited in their skin or wherever they're kind of looking at that end organ, that target that it's after. And we know that that's not what happens. Right. So from a nutritional standpoint, and we get into this with skin and hair, a lot, you know, when we're looking at, okay, well, I'm not that smart of a guy, Right. So I like to think of this as a what's the anatomy, the structure that we're looking at, and what's the physiology of how it got that way? Right. So when we're looking at how these things are getting deposited, what's happening? We're building them from the precursor amino acids that we need for that. And so eating collagen is not going to cross your gut, get in your skin, and all of a sudden you've got like a bunch of new collagen in your skin. Especially if you're nutritionally, like sound at baseline, you've got those amino acids that.

Would be almost like saying, well, I'm going to eat hair to grow my hair. It just doesn't work that way. The exact thing. Okay. Yep, Interesting. Or eat nails to grow my nails. Good idea. Or grind up rhino horns to grow my nose. Yeah.

Get keratin in there, some stuff.

Right, got it, got it. Now there are some other things people have asked me about. You just brought one up, keratin. And I was actually unfamiliar with this. Apparently it is available for oral supplementation.

Yeah, Keratin is that hard, hard protein that our hair, nails and rhino horns, interestingly that you mentioned, that are made out of. And so same idea. In our body there's numerous, numerous types of keratin that make up those different things. They're little subtypes of this protein, but it's the same idea. You're not going to eat keratin and have it deposit. Especially since when we break it down, we've got a set number of amino acids that we're looking at that make up that keratin. They're going to get broken down into that and that's what we're going to recreate it out of anyway.

You are pissing off a lot of supplement manufacturers right now, you realize that?

Oh, I'm sorry.

You're also saving a lot of rhinos on the flip side.

Oh, there we go. Is that a delicacy?

I guess so, yeah. It was a keratin source. Okay, so peptides, I'm also asked about a couple that came up were a lot of these peptides that are used for, for anti inflammation. TB500 is one that apparently some, I guess doctors are recommending for hair, skin, nails, beauty, et cetera. What about a peptide like that? That's an injectable peptide. We'll get into topical peptide shortly.

But yeah, that's the Thymosin Beta 4. There's an oral version of that as well. And you know that's basically like, comes from a thymus. And that little peptide portion of it certainly is angiotens. So you see it used a lot for injury recovery in general, let alone with like hair growth or something like that. You know, there's a part of like regeneration, stem cell migration and angiogenesis, all these aspects that are key to healing which are also key to hair growth. And as we get into that mechanism, maybe a little bit more. Anything that's angiogenic in the scalp could potentially be helpful. There's not a ton of data backing that up. That's not like a strong evidence backed type of recommendation. But it's sort of a theoretical, it's.

Saying, well this is going to increase angiogen, so theoretically it could be conducive to something like hair growth. Correct. Okay, yeah. Now what about another peptide that I mentioned earlier that's More of a topical and I see this all over the place. I've been using it. There's this one company called Oxano that sent me up like a two part beauty application. Number one, we can tackle both of these. Number one is GHK copper pest peptide and then number two is C60. Are you familiar with either of those?

Yeah. C60 is the soccer ball, right?

Yeah. Buckminster Folio.

Buckminster folio, yes, exactly. Which is a potent anti inflammatory. Right. And that's its main mechanism of action if we're talking about hair or something like that.

Right. And when I interviewed Ian Mitchell a while back and I'll link to all this stuff in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com Cameron Ion swore up and down by C60 for both gray hair as well as hair growth.

Yep. And so, you know, mechanistically gray hair. That makes sense, you know, from an anti inflammatory, antioxidative standpoint for hair growth. It's going to be again for me going back to like what's the cause of the hair loss in the first place? Right. Are we talking about androgenic alopecia? Are we talking about an inflammatory scarring? Alopecia means hair loss. Are we talking about a scarring inflammatory alopecia? Are we talking about an autoimmune alopecia? There could certainly be roles for a, you know, peptide like that or a compound like that like that if the.

Hair loss is inflammation related, basically.

Absolutely. Yeah. And that's going to be the same as we get into a lot of these nutritional discussions of, you know, jumping ahead, biotin or you know, iron, things like that. Well, are you deficient in that? Is that an issue? Is that part of this like anatomically something that you're missing or physiologically something that you're missing? If so, those can be incredibly helpful for that type of situation.

What about the GHK copper peptide?

Yeah, and that's, I think that that was the one you mentioned at dinner that really sparked our conversation.

The Martians Q46 explosive space modulator.

GHK copper peptide is really interesting in that there may be a double benefit a bit with it, one of which being an improvement of the hair that you've already grown Right. From the copper itself.

So it's the copper that's doing it.

It's the copper that's doing it. Right. And then you've got. That one has a couple of mechanistic things as well that sort of make sense. One of the things is an elevation of this vascular endothelial growth factor, vegf, we know that it increases that, and that's important at the hair follicle, the stem cell level, to signal them. It also changes the way we talked about this a little bit when you're talking about your hair and your skin fibroblasts. Fibroblasts are those cells that create collagen and elastin. It stimulates dermal fibroblasts. And so with all those mechanisms, the vascular endothelial growth factor, just like we sort of talked about before, it can be angiogenic, so it can certainly be helpful there.

Okay, interesting. This is where I get to sound smart. You know what else increases that, Jeff? What up? Hyperbaric oxygen therapy. I learned this from a guy. I learned almost everything from people I interview. It's like my continuing education for years and years. I get to talk to smart people. Blood flow restriction training can also increase vegf. So if you're losing your hair, get a hyperbaric oxygen chamber and put some tourniquets on before you lift weights.

Do you put those around your neck?

Not yet, no.

It's a different game.

Okay, so another one that someone asked me about was, was this ketoconazole shampoo. What is that?

So ketoconazole is just, again, this is a perfect example of. It's an antifungal. So ketoconazole is an antifungal. It may have some anti androgenic effects as well. But ketoconazole, if you've got a fungal issue happening on your scalp, which is really common. Tinea capitis, it's called, certainly treating that fungal infection can improve your hair. Same thing. There's a couple of other something called seborrheic dermatitis that's pretty common to get on the scalp. That's like when someone has like dandruff in general, just straight dandruff, you know, it's going to probably fall under some spectrum of the seborrheic dermatitis. And ketoconazole is like the. One of the mainstays of treatment for that. So again, mechanistically, yeah, totally. If that's one of your predisposing factors to having alopecia or hair loss or hair thinning, ketoconazole is going to be a miracle.

Okay, so to clarify real quick, ketoconazole would be indicated if you had what.

During your hair loss, like a fungal infection.

Fungal. Okay, so it's not like being used off label is not the fungal. It's actually Actually, its mechanism of action in that sense is acting as an antifungal.

Yeah, you can get it in all kinds of forms. Used all over dermatology for fungus.

I had fungus at one point. It was actually back in my triathlon days. I used to have super speckled mottled skin. It would tan. And it turned out it was this skin fungal infection I had for years. And I thought I had, what's it called? Tinea versicolor, which is another way that that happens. So I started after I'd shower, I would take oil of oregano and use it as a topical on my skin. Skin. And within like three weeks, after years of tanning, discolored like I was tanning perfectly. It just basically killed off all the topical fungus on my skin and I was good to go.

It's really interesting.

Nuts. Yeah, yeah. Just make sure you don't use concentrated oil of oregano because that will burn a hole through your skin.

A little caustic.

Use something diluted. Okay, so this one kind of made sense to me based off of what you said about oxidation and also copper. There's this guy named Ray Pete out there, there, and Ray Pete is kind of like this fringe anti aging guy. And one of his forum enthusiasts told me balance iron to copper ratios and that would be like, for example, regular consumption of organ meats or encapsulated liver or something like that, which I think is a smart strategy anyways, especially for men who have a higher risk of hemochromatosis. But iron is also an oxidant and in a certain sense, from what I understand, can contribute to graying hair in particular due to that oxidation. I'll let you get into the mechanism of action regarding hydrogen peroxide here momentarily because I think you'd do a better job explaining it than I could. But then in addition to balancing the iron to copper ratio, using methylene blue to reduce ferrous iron, I think it would be to ferric iron, Fe4 to Fe2 and then finally topical DHEA. That was kind of like the trilogy with iron to copper ratios and then something like methylene blue and then dhea. Is that just way out there or is that kind of on the right side?

So super interesting because I certainly love the first part of it. Iron, copper, huge oxidative capacity. Having a peroxidated iron that's going to contribute to graying first of all, as you sort of mentioned, because stress on the stem cells, those melanogenic stem cells that are creating pigment is going to calm them down. And they're not going to make as much pigment. And that's sort of the normal senescence of aging anyway. And we can do things to turn them back on. Even the PRP that you had today with graying hair can certainly turn gray hair back to color, which is really fun and interesting. So I love that. And then I get the dhea. That's where things get a little bit kind of like, well, we got to talk about that. DHEA is going to be a precursor for testosterone. Right. So we're going to get increased testosterone levels. And we know you just want to.

Get into the testosterone discussion right now.

Well, this is going to lead us to.

Let's do that. But don't worry, if you're listening in, we'll jump back into the myths, but we're going to rabbit hole here for a second.

Well, this is. This, I think, kills two birds with that sort of myth and whatever. Because interestingly, if you look through the literature, there is some evidence on scarring alopecia. We call that cicatricial alopecia, like where the hair follicles themselves are getting destroyed by something and shut down that putting dhea. And there's a bunch of versions of this that are relatively common, but putting DHEA on it can have sort of an effect to protect those follicles themselves.

Because hair follicles are really topical dhea.

Not a topical dhea. Yeah, yeah, Topical dha. It's really, really reactive. Hair follicles are really, really reactive to. Let's just call it androgens in general. Whatever form it's going to be. There's one in particular that's very important that we can get into. But for regular patterned baldness, this is like the androgen paradox with the scalp. And we could talk this. It's incredible.

I'll lay the foundation here. This is the stereotypical, like, male, like, alpha male, the rock, or I don't know. What would be another example, like a bald Hollywood guy, like Bruce Willis or whatever. And they're obviously, like, horny, full libido, strong alpha male, but they're bald.

They're bald.

And then a lot of times, like the guys with the long, flowy locks are a little bit more effeminate and maybe appear to have slightly lower testosterone. And while I'm painting with a broad brush and stereotyping here, to a certain extent, there's something kind of to that.

There's absolutely something to it.

Explain that.

Yeah. On a hormonal level, there's something to that as well. So the Androgen paradox is that our hair follicles all over our body and in primates in general are exquisitely sensitive to testosterone. Let's just call it testosterone. It can get converted by this enzyme called 5 alpha reductase to a more potent form. But, you know, that is going to determine sort of the antigen phases of our hair, where we're growing hair. Think about puberty, right? You don't. Until you get that testosterone growth for women and for men, we're lacking hair in certain parts of our body, right? And so our hair follicles are so exquisitely sensitive. And then we get to our scalp, right? And our scalp, which we want the most probably of all those, has this little paradox where we know that people experiencing patterned baldness, androgenic alopecia, have higher testosterone levels. Dihydrotestosterone, which is what the 5 algorithm.

Anabolic form, that testosterone is converted into.

Way more, has a way higher affinity for the, you know, follicular bulb and things like that. But at that level, those areas, the DHT levels are really high and there's no hair. Right. And so this is the paradox, like, and there's theories about this that are really interesting.

I would have hair in my balls, but not my head. Right, right.

Yeah. And there's theories about gravity, you know, that playing a role in sort of where those key areas are. And that kind of makes anatomic and physical sense and that. We could talk about that for a minute or two because that's really interesting.

Yeah. What is that?

So the idea is this is actually first person proposed by this Turkish physician, this Turkish plastic surgeon in like a decade ago, maybe eight years ago or something like that. And it's this gravity theory. And his theory is. I like it. It's that the areas, if you think about where men are losing their hair first, tend to be sort of the vertex, crown, frontal part of the scalp. Right. And the paradox is not explained by anything in that. Okay. Why do we have high DHT levels in those areas and no hairs? And so the idea is that the gravitational force on the. That the most apex part of our scalp, the pushing on it, causes some restriction of the microcirculation to the hair follicles. It causes loss of fat cells in those areas. And we know that the hair bulb lives around in our adipose tissue there. We were talking about this when I was doing your injections earlier. It's very important to bathe that adipose layer because that's the energy that feeds these very, very metabolically active hair bulbs. And so the gravitational force of all of the scalp, all the neck, everything really on that part of the scalp in particular causes changes in microcirculation that causes decrease in the fat cells. And we know that in bald men that their adipose tissue is gone or thin. We see this all the time in skin cancer and reconstructions where there's just no adiposity left at all. And so the idea of having higher DHT then gets explained by, you know, the micro insults to the fat change. The, you know, fat is one of our main metabolizers to create estrogen. Right. And so when we, when we lose that ability to metabolize, it creates a little vicious cycle where the DHT actually causes more fat to go away and it creates more like a proactive environment. So you're getting this vicious cycle where DHT levels rise, basically, long story short. And so that can explain. That's really the only thing that explains why DHT levels may be higher in those areas.

Areas.

And so what that leads to therapeutically is, okay, well, how. What in the world do you do about that?

That's just nuke dht, Right?

Right. Nuke the dht. But that's not what finasteride does. That's exactly what finasteride and potasteride do. Those, those inhibited inhibitors. Yes. Good job. And that's a huge topic as well. But the problem is, great, you can decrease those DHE levels, but that's not, you know, we're talking about a chicken and egg situation. That's not what caused it in the first place. That's a byproduct in the gravitational theory of gravity pulling it down.

Plus, if you suppress the DHT levels, you're going to suppress libido. Everything else you would want for that as a trade off to taking finasteride, correct?

Yeah. Because finasteride inhibits. There's two specific five alpha reductase that we were worried about. And finasteride hits one, Dutasteride hits both. Finasteride is the only one that's like sort of FDA approved for hair loss. But the problem is most importantly that those exist in our brain quite a bit. Which is why you're talking about libido. We're talking about mood dopamine receptors. Like, we don't want to decrease mood. There's like, you know, concerns with suicidality and decreased libido. And so I struggle with that from a hair standpoint. Like, well, do I really want to give you a medication that may grow your hair but may decrease your libido.

And make you fall head of hair on me. A depressed person doesn't want to go out with my full head of hair.

Yeah, quite the irony, isn't it? And that's not the case every time. But when you start again, I like to look at the anatomy and the mechanism and the physiology. Is there another way that we can get around that a little bit? And on the scalp proper, this is where ideas like doing stem cell rich fat transfer or like adipocyte derived stem cells from your own autologous fat placed and put into your scalp can do a few things. You're going to get the growth factor release that we just talked about. Like for your scalp with the PRP and all those exosomes that come from these mesenchymal derived stem cells. You're also going to get the extra volume and fat density that is in a youthful scalp. So you're going to kind of recreate some of those things. And so there's a little bit. We know that adipocyte derived stem cells work really well for hair growth. But you know, is it just the, is it just the paracrine effect of them or is it the mechanical effect of actually lifting and supporting the.

By paracrine you mean there's their cell signaling effect that would be attracting more of the compounds that would cause follicular generation.

Exactly. Yeah.

Okay.

Exactly. Right, yeah.

But either way it works regardless of us not knowing how. If you're a man who has say high testosterone, great, but the problem is you're beginning to bald from all the DHT that that high testosterone is producing. The solution therefore would not be finasteride, but to instead look at how you can increase the activity of the stem cells in that adipose tissue around the follicle. And that would be literally like a stem cell treatment for, for your head would be a better solution, which is.

So actually like sounds very complicated, but it's quite simple to do, you know, when it mechanistically when we get down to it. But yeah, that's certainly, you know, one of those ways. And that's just my thought paradigm, you know, that you're hitting on there, which is I'm going to try to avoid pharmacotherapy in general. I'm not, I would rather kind of get to the root of the problem and solve it there. You know, that's a, that's a really great option for it. It's simple to do. It works well, has good longevity and it's autologous 100% from you just like PRP. Right. And it, you know, again, it helps explain, like, you know, our scalp has, you know, similar hair follicles everywhere. Why in our occipital scalp on the back of our hair, why do we not get thinning there? And that all gets explained a little bit by this idea of, like, okay, well, there's something different about what the DHT is doing at the crown vertex and frontal scalp.

And it's fascinating. Now, a little bit of a rabbit hole on a rabbit hole based on your theory of gravity. What about, don't laugh. Like inversion gravity boots, stuff like that. Like, like, if you did like a daily gravity boot treatment, wouldn't it kind of be good for your scalp and your hair growth?

It's funny that you mentioned that I think about this too, because I know you like your yoga swing. I like my yoga swing, my gravity boots. Yeah, right. I get. I get in there and I'm not thinking about my scalp when I'm doing it. And I always wonder, like, is my eight minutes, you know, inverted every day? And, you know, yogis everywhere love this. You got to get inverted every day. Well, there may be some truth to that for your hair even. Right. Taking some load off that microcirculation. It's not going to hurt, you know, if there's any. If there's any, like, you know, kind of holding water to that theory. It's not going to hurt to get upside down.

Honestly, the number one reason I do this is. And this is why I like better than, like, headstands, handstands, or even inversion tables to an extent. I like the yoga trapeze because of the traction, like.

Right.

I can get similar traction what I might get from a chiropractor, you know, tugging on my neck and my hips at the same time. So, you know, stuff pops. I hang from that thing almost every morning. Not for the hair, although now I'm think about it. But for that traction that I get, it's just amazing.

The question becomes, do you massage your scalp when you're on there for a little bit too?

No. Would that be a good idea?

Maybe. Who knows? And stimulate a little microcirculation?

Well, you know, what I do to increase the traction is I have, because my kids love this. As they get older, this might become more impossible for me. But I grab one of my kids and cradle them in my hands and they love it because it's like they're swinging and swinging, snuggling with dad, and I'm hanging upside down, holding on for dear life to one of My kids, but I get like 90 extra pounds of traction on my spine. Maybe I could have them massage my scalp as a trade off while I'm doing that. All sorts of ideas.

Fan you with a fern leaf at the same time.

Okay, I want to get into. Now that we've tackled, Gosh, we tackled most of the myths that I wanted. Actually, there's one other one I want to get into. And then if there's any other myths that you want to talk about, we can discuss them. But I was reading this book called I of Revelation. Is Eye of Revelation. Yeah, Eye of Revelation. It was about these Tibetan Longevity rites, which I love. I actually am writing an article right now about this morning energy routine that kind of balances your meridians and allows for a lot of energy flow. It's a cool routine. And if you're listening, you could Google it. It's called the Five Tibetan Longevity Rites. But in this book, which is mostly about these rites, there's a quote. I wrote it down here. It says, here's something else which should interest all of you. Only two years ago, I was bald as the baldest man here when vitality started coming back. One of the llamas, which is like one of the Tibetan, I guess, monks that live lives at this llama, told me to massage my scalp with a piece of butter twice a week. The butter up there was fresh, not a bit of salt in it. I took his advice and massaged my scalp with butter until it soon loosened up. I did this about one hour after a meal. The food elements in the blood were brought to the scalp by the circulation of the blood. The scalp was so thoroughly massaged that the blood vessels were dilated. The hair roots picked up the necessary nutrition, I'm assuming from the bottom, butter. And the hair grew, as you can plainly see, butter on the scalp after a meal followed by massage. Anything to that?

You know, I really liked this because this is an incredible story. So I kind of, when you sent this to me, I was like, oh, that's incredible.

Or incredulous. One of the two.

A few things. I was like, well, what can I pick out of this that might be sort of of interest? The massage, you know, we talked about microcirculation a little bit and this person hits on that a little bit, you know, talking about the vasodilation, picking up the necessary nutrients. The question is, was it really picking up the necessary nutrients or was it. Was it bringing them from somewhere else? Anyway, right. I was curious about this part where he said it loosened up, which Makes me think like, well, what was tight on your scalp in the first place? Is this like arguing for like, well, maybe he has some thinning of his adiposity there. Does he have some sort of inflammation or scarring going on on the scalp? Does he have just like there's this very common form of alopecia called alopecia areata, which is an autoimmune phenomenon where our body attacks our own hair cells. And. And so I wondered maybe there's something to that at all. But I think that maybe what he's sitting on here with the vasodilation, we know that the classic minoxidil, that's like the classic, the original topical, approved for hair, hair regrowth, causes vasodilation. That's what it does. And so we know that things like that work. And a lot of the peptides and things that we could go way deep in the weeds. That's a lot of their mechanism too. They're causing some vasodilation. That's what your sauna is doing. That's what, you know, infrared light or near infrared light or red light's doing. You know, we're getting all those things. So. And you know, there's lasers for the scalp. They call them lasers, but it's usually light based therapy. They're doing the same thing. They're causing vasodilation.

So that's like what that, that hat in the back of the airplane magazines with the laser lights on. Those actually work. There's some truth of the circulation.

There's some truth to them. Absolutely. Some truth to them.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Okay. Although most monks I've seen are bald as a cucumber, so not a lot of them know this butter trick, apparently.

Or maybe he's just the paradox, the rest of them. Yeah, that's true.

But it's interesting, I'm getting this repeat message that a lot of these spendy things that we put in our hair, that we massage into our hair, a lot of that might be because of the massage just as much as the actual product is basically what kind of alludes.

That's an excellent message to take away from the butter story. Interesting. I've never rubbed like this type of butter on my scalp, so I don't really know. Kind of sounds good everywhere.

And one other that I forgot about, that I got an email about yesterday. This idea of rapamycin, this very popular off label prescription drug for managing immunity, for suppressing the immune system, frankly, that is now used as an anti aging protocol. And this doc, Dr. Alan Bellman, he wrote me, and he wrote me about this article that appeared in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology about suppression of MTOR via the use of rapamycin being something that could be used for alopecia. What are your thoughts on that?

So this JID for us journal Investigative Dermatology is like our hardcore basic science journal. So this getting published there is. Congratulations. That's a sweet deal. Just kind of goes to show, generally, things in here are going to be at the early sort of, we'd call like, maybe bench phases of looking at them. Yeah, you know, there's certainly some promise to this down the road, potentially. The problem with this and all of these sort of approaches that are, you know, we're taking a systemic thing to a, you know, very focal problem of hair loss is that MTOR and rapamycin have so many effects in so many parts of our body. And so this particular disease called tuberous sclerosis, you know, that's actually where the observation for this particular paper came from. People with tuberous sclerosis that have issues with this have poliosis, which is light or white hair. And so they're thinking, like, maybe this has something to do with hair pigmentation. And they look into it, and sure enough, it sure does. But it also has a lot to do with tumor formation and things like that. So people with tuberous sclerosis get a lot of tumors at the baseline level. Like, it makes total sense that MTOR and rapamycin are going to have effects on especially hair color, but certainly hair growth as well, you know, because they're a regulatory mechanism for stimulating, like, cellular growth. So I think that's fascinating, and I think that's going to develop over time.

Theoretically, would suppression of MTOR via other mechanisms, such as, say, fasting or the other things that we would do for cellular autophagy be potentially helpful?

I love that. I have no idea. That could. I mean, according to this paper, certainly, like, there could be some argument to.

That Jesus fasted a lot and he had really good hair, according to the photos and all in all the Sunday school posters.

And that's what you're shooting for, right?

Yeah.

Sandals and that hair. Yeah, that is very true. He did fast a lot. And there could be some truth that, you know, and I think that one of my other, like, messages here is if that does have an effect, it would make sense. Right. But to what degree is that improving? Sort of what the main mechanism is, because with, you know, androgenic alopecia, you're fighting a relatively steep Uphill battle depending on the individual. Right. Because it's so multigenetic. If you have, have a strong genetic predisposition for male pattern baldness and you're dealing with intermittent fasting to try to inhibit that, is that going to work? How much is that going to do?

Right. And then the other thing to think about, and this would include the people who might be thinking about smearing butter into their scalp and massaging it for days at a time. Usually someone who's doing something that intensive is also at the same time maybe shifting from McDonald's and Burger King and all these oxidized vegetable oils that we know affects cellular oxidation and hair graying and potential for hair loss. And they're living a healthier lifestyle and going for walks in the sunshine. There's a lot of confounding, so called healthy user bias variables that could be part of this as well.

I love that. And that's so true here. Even when he's talking about kind of this time of meditating and rubbing a scalp. We know now that one of the strongest indicators for hair hair loss is like what your stress hormone levels are.

Or your basic point.

You hit on this a little bit too, you know, which is like, we know that men with androgenic alopecia tend to have higher test free testosterone levels, higher sex hormone binding globulin. Like there's, there's issues that we can look at in the blood and know like, okay, you know, here, this, this makes sense. That's what we're seeing. And so yeah, is it the massaging your scalp or is it the having a moment, having an hour every day with yourself or you're doing some self.

People are gonna make a lot of money telling you to meditate and sleep your way to hair growth. But I get it, doctor, I don't.

Know how you sell that.

So we've tackled a lot of myths and I want to make sure we allow time to get into some of the stuff that works. Obviously we talk about prp, right? We talked about stem cells a little bit. There are some other things I wanted to ask you about exosomes. You see these in many cases in the same clinics as like a PRP clinic or a stem cell clinic. When you think about exosomes, like these paracrine signaling, cellular signaling molecules to enhance the effects.

We just talked about that a little bit with the stromovascular fraction, which is the mesenchymal derived mesenchymal stem cells coming from the fat. And I like to just kind of Honestly, in my head, again, I'm a lumper. I like to lump things together. And prp, amniotic fluid, exosomes, stem cells, those are all going to fall on the same mechanism of this regenerative capacity that they're going to have on the hair follicle. The growth factors contained within them are going to vary slightly, but not that much. Honestly, you don't have to do all of them.

You could just choose one like prp.

You can choose this. And so PRP is probably going to be your baseline entry level because it's, again, a lot of great things about it. It's from you, it's autologous. You can control that. Like we did with you. We controlled the concentration of your platelets very precisely to what we wanted it to be.

Save some, put it on your kids.

That's beautiful. I don't know. Drink it, put it in your eyes. PRP has a history that goes back to the 70s, and it's been used a lot in ophthalmology, orthopedics, as you mentioned. You know, one of the big users was actually the OMFs surgeons, the maxillofacial surgeons, using it. Like, when they were using this stuff in the 70s and 80s, they were like regrowing bone in the jaw by mashing up bone, putting PRP in this little, like, cradle, they call it, and regrown bones. Like, this stuff's amazing, right?

Yeah. Well, that's what we do with the hip joints. When I, when I was doing orthopod sales for biomet is they would almost like, you know, when I spin down the blood and give it back to the surgeon, they would literally just mash it all up in the acetabulum as they were doing the implants.

It's incredible.

Yeah.

And this is with prp, the stuff that we can get, as we will show with you today, so easily. Right. So there's a ton of power to that. And exosomes are really just signaling molecules coming from these stem cells that we've been talking about. These are how, when I said a paracrine effect, and you very well filled in what that is. This is what the paracrine signaling is coming from. It's these little, like, little packets. And when it's like, hey, I'm going to tell something to do something, the stem cell is going to send out these little exosomes. And so they're beautifully packaged. Like here, this is a little perfect message to you to grow. Amniotic fluid has a lot of those growth factors in it. As well. And then I'd call the granddaddy being like stem cells, autologous stem cells, or allergenic stem cells coming from umbilical cord or some other source. Right. That's where your paracrine effect's going to come from. That's you're going to get like a renewing supply of exosomes.

And since it's a paracrine effect, and this is probably a super geeked out question that only the cosmetic surgeons are going to care about, could you have someone when you're doing a PRP treatment before or after doing hooked up to an IV exosome?

Sure, absolutely. Yeah. Because you're going to. And as you said, when you've done exosomes before, you kind of get that systemic boost with those a little bit too. I'm again thinking on a local level here kind of what we're doing with direct access to those pair bulbs that we're after. But you know, systemically. Yeah, you're going to get some of those at the bulb as well.

Interesting. So PRP stem cells, exosomes, amniotic fluid. One other one I wanted to ask you about was actual hair transplant. Right. How does that work? Yeah.

So, you know, hair transplantation is considered this little surgical procedure and in the grand scheme of surgeries, it's so minimally invasive. As from that goes, you're awake, it's very simple to do. And of all the cosmetic, or, you know, let's just call it plastic surgical procedures that you can do, I would argue that this is one of the most restorative and most natural looking of all of them. Really. It is come a long ways. It used to be like cutting a strip across. Well, used to. Back in the day, it was like a hair plug. That's what everybody thinks of, right? That's like the, you know, stereotypical thing. You take a plug of hair and move it somewhere else that does not look very good, not very natural. And then it turned into the strip that you'd excise off the back of the scalp and excise individual hair follicles. But that kind of left a linear scar on the back of your scalp and that dense scale area. And what it's advanced to now is this thing we call follicular unit extraction, or fue, where we precisely go after individual hair follicles, some of which have one hair growing out, some two, three or four. And we take out each one of those individually with this little teeny, teeny little micro punch, and we take it out and we can Re implant it in another part of your scalp in a very specific direction, orientation, density, all those things that sort of recreate. It gets a little artistic, but very much a way to recreate the frontal part of your scalp, the crown of your scalp, the vertex, whatever you're sort of valuing. Right.

Where do you take the hair follicles from?

From the back of your scalp. From this, like, occipital area, like the prominence on the back part of your head. And again, like we talked about, that area is just a little bit privileged when we talk about, you know, the anabolic paradigm.

What would happen if you took it from like the, the chest, crotch. Good question. Like, can you grow pubes on my head?

I love this question. Yes. So you can use body hair transplant transplanting to the scalp. And it sounds ridiculous, but interestingly, those hairs, once they're transplanted to that local micro environment of the scalp, tend to take on a little bit of the characteristic there. And so the antigen phase, which is going to determine a lot of the quality of your hair, changes to be more like your head hair does. And so the issue with follicular unit distraction or any hair transplantation is that you only have so many donor hairs that you can, like, spare. We're really just like rearranging your hair density to be on the front, front of your front or vertex of your scalp. You know, when we start getting low on that, you can certainly turn to body hairs and you can like get a 50 plus percent increase in your available donor hairs by taking, by taking body hair, which again, makes you chuckle. Sounds ridiculous, but can be a nice little supplement when we're looking for the extra hairs. Yeah.

Okay, so what about, you know, we've talked about kind of like some things we can do for the skin, some things we do for the hair. What about scars? Like, people and I get a lot of questions about scars, scars and stretch marks. Do you work on anything like that?

Oh, man, yes.

What are some of the things you do for that?

So, you know, scars themselves are, you know, and this all boils down to like, what we just talked about with hair transplantation as well, where, okay, we've put these hairs in a new spot and they need to be sort of metabolically babied in a way. And so that's where we start using these sort of hyperbaric oxygen, these prp. We'll use those with the hair transplantation, even some stem cells with them to get these hairs to kind of sit and grow because we want to create a comfortable microenvironment for them to live in. Right. So we get to something like a scar, which is where there was an injury. Right. Just like we were talking about derma rolling earlier. There's an injury to an area that created our body's need to heal that spot in. And what it does is it lays down a ton of collagen. Right. That is the strength and structure. And so that's a wonderful sort of mechanism to get things healed quickly, patch us up relatively functional. But that scar is not the same consistency of our normal skin. It doesn't have the ability to hold water from these glycosaminoglycans like hyaluronic acid. It doesn't have any elastin in it. And that's where the big thing comes, where people are like, I want to make collagen. Collagen, collagen. Like, well, it's scar is collagen. You don't want to turn your face into a big scar, Right. You want it to be supple and flexible. And that's what the elastin is doing. Scar itself doesn't have that. And so ways that we can sort of change that microenvironment. Right. At a very simple level, the most basic thing to do generally is to use lasers for that. Lasers can stimulate growth and change in the fibroblast that made that scar to make more elastin tissue, to make more things that are going to make it behave like normal skin. You're never going to recreate the hair follicles, the sebaceous glands, the little rector pili muscles that make our skin what it is and unique and give it that consistency. You can certainly turn things in the direction that way. You can do fat injections, like autologous fat into a scratch scar. And again, this happens on the scalp all the time where somebody has like a trauma that leaves them bald. Usually we'll do fat injections, like stem cell rich fat injections into that scar first and then the scalp creates more vascularity in that scar butt on my head, basically. Right? Yeah, Right. But anyway, then it's a better recipient site. It has more vascularity to take that hair graft that goes in it. And so, you know, I always tell people with scar treatments that we can always, always, always make scars better. Right. If it's raised, you can make it flat. If it's flat, you can raise it up. If it's red, you can make it less red. If it's pigmented, you can take pigment out. You're never going to get it to go away, but you can certainly make it much, much better. And you know, for me in my practice, this is mostly facial scars usually. And they're especially forgiving because we have so many hair follicles and such a great stem cell density there. They're the easiest to get improvement in. But they're also the most sensitive in general, like emotionally sensitive, like you see them all the time, it's hard to get around them. And so whether it's acne scarring, traumatic scarring, surgical scarring, it's a big part of sort of trying to make them better.

You gotta get buttheadbeauty.com by the way. Okay, so based on what you're saying, not that I want to put you out of business, but if I have one of those red light therapy devices at home and like I have stretch marks on my shoulders, for example, from my bodybuilding days, could I use that topically and get some effect from like red and near infrared light?

Yeah, you can. Stretch marks are a little bit of a different animal. They're definitely good to be lumped with scars. But stretch marks usually form from a weak part of our skin that sort of failed. Right. There's a strong genetic predisposition to this. There's some drug related connections to this. Like somebody was on a corticosteroid or something for a long time. It weakens their skin and they stretch out.

I was on corticosteroid, I was on tuna cans, lots of tuna.

Yeah, that's similar. There's a little extra stress. So when the stretch mark comes out, it tends to leave the epidermis, dermis intact. Part of the dermis gets separated so you get this like cigarette paper look like thin look to the top right where it gets all thinned out. And then sometimes you have like no substructure under it. And I see stretch marks that range from like, you know, pretty mild, like let's say just like a surface change to things where like there's fat herniating or muscle herniating through the stretch mark because there's nothing underneath it. And so again, depending on what that is, you're going to. If you have a herniating stretch mark, your red light's going to do not a lot for it. But if you have sort of that surface change with a little bit of color. Color, yeah, red light it, go for it. You can potentially make it better. Taking a laser to it or something is certainly going to restructure it. Adding something that's going to give it a little bit More resilience and make it behave like normal skin is your best bet. But you can certainly get some improvement in them. And there's some other biostimulants that we can inject in addition to autologous fat.

What's a biostimulant?

Biostimulant. A prime example in aesthetics, one that's really commonly used is this product made by this company called Galderma, called Sculptra. It's poly L lactic acid, and it's a collagen stimulating injection that we use in fat pads of the face a lot. It was originally approved for this thing called HIV lipodystrophy. So when people were taking their heart therapy, one of those specific parts of it called the proteases, were basically melting all their facial fat. And so it was a little bit of a stigma to have like a very hollowed out face. This product was approved sort of to revolumize a skeletonized face from this HIV lipodystrophy. Well, it didn't take long for it to catch into cosmetics. And all of a sudden you've got a product that can help add structure and volume back to an aging face. It kind of took off in cosmetics, basically. And it's just a collagen stimulator. Does a great job. It's very reliable, very subtle. And using it in other areas, like I use a lot in people who've had prior liposuction who have depressed areas that we're trying to sort of lift back up, up and change contours for or stretch marks. Does a good job to sort of restructure the base of a stretch mark.

It's fascinating. You know, one thing that. And we talked about this a little bit that I was just thinking about with a guy, you know, having a job like you have, you obviously get a lot of people in who are, you know, admittedly, like, vain, who are grasping at youth and perhaps not wanting to grow old, even if growing old gracefully. And kind of just trying to almost from a transhumanist, life extension type of standpoint, not that everybody has that type of perspective, but kind of like a smaller version of the type of people who are sitting, cutting off their heads and freezing them so that when eventually we're able to restore people's brains to different bodies, that they can just almost like as a rough form of biohacked reincarnation, come back in a new body. And of course, of course, in the biohacking sector, lots of people are saying, I want to live till I'm 150, 160. No, I'm going to make it to 180. Hey, I'm going to be the first person at 200. You know, philosophically, when you're in this environment and you're working with a lot of these people who, you know, are just like getting old. Like, does. Does the vanity aspect of this ever bug you? Like, like people just like, I don't know, like spending a lot of money just trying not to get old and eventually looking like that, you know, you've seen like, I don't want to stereotype, like the 6 year old woman who's obviously got like the fake boob job and all the hair and face treatments and she's supposed to be like old plush grandma, but she's kind of trying to pull off like the Las Vegas stripper look.

Overfilled and shiny and. Yeah, all these things that, like, you know, we have this little alarm in our head that kind of allows variants and symmetry and all kinds of things. This is like a little bit of a social study. We all know when that alarm goes goes off, whether it's like something's just off at that person, you know, it just doesn't look right, doesn't look natural, and we may not even know what it is, but just something right, you don't want that to happen. You want to avoid that. And so this in my practice is, yeah, something that comes up all the time. And when I first started practicing in sort of a more cosmetic type of setting, you wrestle with this a little bit like, you know, what am I doing? What's happening here? My office is a place that is very full of joy and happiness. Honestly, like, people are jacked to be there.

Yeah.

It's not as much of that stereotypical person seeking to like, never die or to look like they never age. It's more people who, like, you know, I want to look and feel a little bit better, be a little bit rejuvenated and confidence.

You get confidence. I mean, like, like I know that when I, when I put on my cool clothes, you know, and I do my hair, I feel great and I shave and sometimes I'll even do that if I'm not even going out. And I got like, let's say I'm recording a podcast that day and always getting a sense see me, I'll shave and I'll work out and I'll get all, do my hair and maybe change out of my underwear for the podcast because I almost feel like I've got more social Confidence when I look good and feel good about myself. And you also commented on beauty and symmetry. There's this whole idea. I first discovered it in Kate Shanahan's book Deep Nutrition and then I actually addressed it pretty heavily in the Beauty and Symmetry chapter, my book Boundless, which I wish I'd written actually after this discussion with you because there's so much more I would have woven in there. It's this idea that based on elements such as the Fibonacci sequence and the sacred geometrical shapes that we would see in the things like the pyramids and in nature, especially when you strip things down to almost like their crystalline structure. And in water, which we know if you look into homeopathy, which I know is rife with controversy, water being structured or crystallized or exposed to positive emotion somehow becomes more symmetrical when placed under a microscope. And there have been many studies that have looked at human symmetry, human facial symmetry and human body symmetry and found that people, they are more comfortable around people who are more symmetrical. There is, although it doesn't sound fair to a lot of people, but let's just face it, this is the way the world works. Beauty and asymmetry is often something that people look favorably upon. And it's not necessarily, although it is in some cases, it's not necessarily because they're being judgmental. It is a built in human reaction to have a desire and love for beauty and symmetry. And so, you know, in my opinion, and I don't know how you feel about this, if you're maintaining some element of beauty and symmetry, you're not only increasing your efforts element of social success as well as your internal confidence, but in a way, I think you're almost equipping yourself to be more impactful for whatever purpose that God has put you on the planet for. In the same way that lifting weights and having a nice body, you don't have to have that to please God or to fulfill your purpose in life, but it certainly is helpful. Even the Apostle Paul says this in the Bible, physical training is of some value. He also has a writing, I think in Corinthians about temperacy and how he knows that if he cares for his body, he will be able to better fulfill by engaging in some amount of temperacy and self control, for example, around food, he'll be better able to fulfill whatever purpose that God has placed him on this planet. For me personally, because I get this a lot, I'm not grasping at straws. I'm not trying to live forever. I'm not Trying to not look like a grandpa for my grandchildren. I just love the confidence and also increased comfort that people feel around with me when I've got deodorant on and I'm dressed nicely and my hair looks good and I've shaved and I show that I'm taking care of myself. And also, although there are some people out there that even though I'd say it isn't right, they will judge you based on your appearance. And many people are very judgy or judgmental in that sense. Well, you know what? If that's the waters that I need to switch, swim in in order to be successful and provide for my family, I'll swallow that pill. I'll look good so that the people who are judgmental are also people who I'm able to speak to and have my message received by.

Right, right. And that affinity for beauty and symmetry is not unique to humans even, you know, that exists in all types of different species. And I think that there's two levels to this sort of like affinity and like, you know, judgment. As you said, there's the one that we all feel sort of subconscious, consciously that just happens like, oh, that's an attractive person. You just don't. You. You notice that. Right? And then there's the sort of, you know, which I think is much more socially determined as to, like, what's acceptable. I trained in Los Angeles. The social norm of what's acceptable and desirable there is different than it is in Portland, Seattle, you know, Coeur d', Alene, Spokane, where we live. It's a little bit different, you know, and so you want to respect that with somebody and you want to know where they're at and you want to, you know, my practice is built off of rejuvenation, not transforming. Like, we're never going to turn something, somebody into something that they weren't and that looks unnatural anyway. We're going to maybe just like make your skin look like it had less sun damage or put that fat pad back where it came from or something along those lines. And that tends to be like subtle, small, incremental, harmonious ways to like, you know, pump the brakes on the process. You're not putting it in reverse. That's the 200 year thing. Like you're going to live to be 200. You're trying to put it in reverse a little bit. Right. We don't want to do that. We just want to slow things down a little bit and make people look very appropriate and sort of, you know, it's kind of Pleasant and happy for where they're at. And part of it is that like, you just feel the happiness when it's like it's some little thing. A lot of times it's something only you notice, like other people aren't even paying attention to it. But you having it fixed, as you just mentioned, gives you that confidence that, you know, the glow, whatever you want to call it, it's like, you know, I'm ready for this. Take the world on.

Hey, if we go out to dinner tonight, which I think we're planning on taking our ladies out, if we can rip them out of the hyperbaric chamber, am I allowed to have a cocktail with dinner?

Absolutely.

Is that going to destroy them?

I think it's strongly encouraged.

All right, just don't spill it on my face.

It might sting a little.

Alright, cool. Cameron, I have a hunch you'll probably get a lot of questions in the comments section for this particular podcast. There's probably some stuff we didn't even cover. I'm going to put all this@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Cameron if you guys want to go check it out, I'll link to his clinic and you can read up more on some of the channels treatments that he does. Leave your questions, leave your comments, your thoughts, your feedback on there. I know that this really seems like a hot topic to a lot of people.

Dive really deep into this and get, you know, a ton about narrow things, which is really fun.

I know so much more now. Before we started, I'm gonna like, I'm not gonna derma roll anymore and I'm gonna hang upside down and I'm gonna definitely do the butter in the hair massage for sure.

And that'll, that'll go great. You should put it in your beard.

Kerrygold as a podcast sponsor is what I'm gonna do. All right, Cameron, dude, thank you so much. That was amazing, bro. All right, folks, I'm Ben Greenfield along with the great Dr. Cameron Chestnut signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com again, the show notes will be@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Cameron, have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the ship, the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep, digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned, mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes. Use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.

Sa.