[00:00:00] Rita Black: Rapunzel, let down your hair. What hair are you talking about? Today’s episode is all about something many of us might be struggling with as we get older. Hair loss, whether it’s a receding hairline, thinning patches, or just noticing those strands in the shower. Hair loss can take a toll on how we feel about ourselves.

[00:00:21] The good news, there are more effective science-backed solutions than ever before. So joining me today is one of the most trusted names in the field of hair restoration, Dr. Alan Bauman. We’re gonna talk about how hair loss happens as we age, what really works to treat it, and how modern medicine is helping men and women over 50 feel and look their best again.

[00:00:46] So if you’ve ever looked in the mirror and said. Gosh, I wish I had that fuller, more youthful. Look. This conversation is for you, so let’s dive in.

[00:01:02] Did you know that our struggle with weight doesn’t start with the food on your plate or get fixed in the gym? 80% of hour weight struggle is mental. That’s right. The key to unlocking long-term weight release and management begins in your mind. Hi there, I’m Rita Black. I’m a clinical hypnotherapist, weight loss expert, bestselling author, and the creator of the Shift Weight Mastery Process.

[00:01:29] And not only have I helped thousands of people over the past 20 years. Achieve long-term weight mastery. I am also a former weight struggler, carb addict and binge eater, and after two decades of failed diets and fad weight loss programs, I lost 40 pounds with the help of hypnosis. Not only did I release all that weight, I have kept it off for 25 years.

[00:01:55] Enter the Thin Thinking Podcast where you too will learn how to remove the mental roadblocks that keep you struggling. I’ll give you the thin thinking tools, skills, and insights to help you develop the mindset you need. Not only to achieve your ideal weight, but to stay there long-term and live your best life.

[00:02:16] Sound good? Let’s get started.

[00:02:19] Welcome, friends. Come on in and welcome to our fabulous month of May. May, May , maybe fabulous for you. So I am about to dive into my interview with Dr. Bauman, but I have a favor to ask of you. Before I dive in, I’m gonna ask you to share our podcast with a friend or leave a review.

[00:02:40] I love bringing you all our content that helps you on your weight mastery journey, and reviews really help other people find us and our wonderful thin thinking community to grow. So please just take a moment and go to your podcast platform. It just takes a few seconds and review us or share it with a friend.

[00:03:00] It would mean the world to me. Thank you.

[00:03:03] And now let’s get on with the episode. Dr. Bauman is an acclaimed board certified hair restoration physician with over 28 years of experience in the medical field. He’s the founder and CEO of Bauman Medical and International leading treatment center in the field of hair restoration with a particular focus on the end genetic alopecia or hereditary male and female pattern hair loss. Bit of a mouthful there. Dr. Bauman has established himself as an authority in the industry. Welcome to the Thin Thinking Podcast, Dr. Bauman. It’s nice to have you here.

[00:03:46] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: It’s great to be with you. Rita, thank you so much for having me on.

[00:03:49] Rita Black: I’m excited about talking about hair.

[00:03:53] I was all nervous putting my, I was like, is he gonna be able to look at my hair?

[00:03:59] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Of course I am, but that’s okay. That’s my job.

[00:04:02] Rita Black: You can give me the notes after our call. Okay.

[00:04:05] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Rita, your hair looks thick and beautiful today. It looks amazing.

[00:04:07] Rita Black: Oh,thank you. I work very hard at faking it. Thank you. I’m glad my efforts paid off. For us ladies above the age of 55 we may have noticed the, with, shock and horror, the thinning hairline, the shedding, et cetera, et cetera. So I’m just gonna hop right in and say, why does that happen to us, especially above the wonderful age of 55.

[00:04:30] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Sure.

[00:04:30] Yes and as you mentioned, it can happen to the hairline. You can see a decrease in ponytail volume. Sometimes you see more shedding. Sometimes it’s a change in just the texture or the color of your hair. And this happens certainly with age. More frequently as we go along in life, we have more hair problems, much many of our other organ systems.

[00:04:49] They tend to fail over time. But how quickly your hair degrades, so to speak, is hereditary. And so if you know that there’s someone in your family mom’s side or dad’s side, and it could be a male or female in your close bloodline who has some severe hair issues, then you’re more likely to have them too.

[00:05:07] And so there are some pretty strong genetic components, but the hair follicle is an amazing organ. It can be affected by so many different things, lifestyle factors and so forth. And I’m sure we’re gonna get into all of that. So it’s not just your genetics that’s, that plays a role, but there’s other things too.

[00:05:23] Rita Black: Okay, so I’m curious about that. The genetics. Is there a lineage, is your, if your mother was balding versus your father or could both genetic sites, they say, oh, if your mother, or if your father was bald and you’re a guy, you’re gonna be bald. What’s the story behind that?

[00:05:41] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: So the story your mother’s father, tells the whole balding process and that’s just not the case. We know that there are hundreds and hundreds of different snips or genes, if you will, that are basically relayed down to us through our DNA and it’s related to not just the hair loss or hair thin problem, hair thinning problem, but also the color, the curl, the texture, and all of those things make a big difference.

[00:06:02] The density as well make a big difference in terms of how quickly you’re gonna see hair loss occur and how your hair is gonna be affected by different factors in your life over time, how resilient it’s going be actually. It’s not an easy answer. One of the things that we sometimes do when patients come in for evaluations, obviously we’re getting a deep history of hair loss in the family and their medical situations and their lifestyle factors. But we may do genetic testing to look at certain metabolic pathways that not only influence, let’s say nutrition, ’cause there’s pharmaco nutritionals meaning there’s nutrigenomics. Those are things that you may be experiencing that are relate, in terms of how you absorb nutrients and fuel related to your metabolism.

[00:06:44] But certainly. Things that are related to your hair, like enzyme pathways that create excess hormones and so forth that might be detrimental to your hair growth over time.

[00:06:54] Rita Black: Wow. Gosh, it sounds so complicated. Are there medical conditions or medications that would be impacting that? So like talking about like impacting enzymes or nutritionals, like if I was taking a medication or, any of those factors.

[00:07:12] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Sure. Absolutely. In your medical history if you came into Bauman Medical, for example, we want to take a list of all of the medications that you’ve taken, either in the past or also in the future. So even folks, let’s say, who took Accutane as a child or as a young adult for acne tend to have a higher incidence of hair loss and hair problems as they go along into the future.

[00:07:32] But certainly, as medications for cancer. Chemotherapy, knock your hair right out, it knocks out the most highly metabolic cell populations in your body. Obviously you’re hoping that’s the cancer, but it could also be your bone marrow. It could be your hair follicles, it could be your gut lining.

[00:07:47] And that kind of explains why so many different of those side effects occur with chemotherapy. Now, when you take the chemotherapy away, sometimes the hair follicles rebound. And many times they do, I should say, but sometimes they don’t. And there are medications that are out there. Taxateer is the one that comes to mind that was a surprise to most that caused some permanent chemotherapy, post chemotherapy alopecia, which alopecia meaning hair loss.

[00:08:11] But the more common medications that you see out there in women of childbearing age, birth control can sometimes wreak havoc on their hair. You can also see medications such as blood pressure medications, mood modulators, statin medications, and of course weight loss drugs, which I know we’re gonna get into.

[00:08:27] Rita Black: We’re gonna talk about that .

[00:08:29] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Yeah. But those, there’s like just general categories that just seem to, be not so good for hair quality, texture curl and volume, and can really start to shut down hair follicles over time.

[00:08:40] Rita Black: Those damn hair follicles are really sensitive, aren’t they?

[00:08:45] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Yeah.

[00:08:45] It’s sensitive, you said. And so it’s it’s very true. And so actually there, we say in men, we know exactly the hormonal influence of the, effect of the hormones on the hair follicle. And in women’s hair follicles just seem to be much more sensitive, which, maybe potentially is the reason why hair is so valued, right? Because, if everything is on point, all your, all 12 cylinders are popping at once. Your hair follicles are doing great. But if there’s one chink in the armor, 1, 1 1 drop in the chain, one link in the chain, then all of a sudden the hair kind of degrades. And so hair is a very important sign of youth and vitality. And that’s why it’s so valuable. You know what a good hair day is like. Yeah. We all do. I wanna have a great hair day we fight like hell to keep our hair looking good.

[00:09:29] Rita Black: We do.

[00:09:30] We do. And especially you were talking about like you’re in Florida and I’m in LA. Yeah. Everybody’s hair . It’s gotta be amazing. So I gotcha. Now, is there a medical condition, like anything that just pops to mind that would also impact hair loss? I mean you mentioned cancer in the cancer drugs, but is there any other sort of that our listeners might be queued into?

[00:09:51] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Absolutely. Sometimes subtle changes to your hair can happen with hormone abnormalities, and that would also include thyroid in addition to what goes on during a perimenopause and menopause. And so as hormones change, so do your hair your hair follicles, but there are autoimmune conditions which can trigger hair loss on the scalp, for example. Basically, alopecia areata is an autoimmune condition that affects the hair follicles. A follicle loses its immune privilege, which means it gets attacked and you get these circular patches of hair loss usually on your scalp for mannequin happen on scalp or beard.

[00:10:27] And the good news is that oftentimes these are temporary. Meaning that with a little bit of treatment or even sometimes not much treatment, they tend to get better. Other times it gets severe and you can get these massive patches, which can create total loss on the scalp and even autoimmune conditions like Univar Ssus, which causes hair loss on your total body.

[00:10:47] And there are, there are FDA approved medications now that basically knock out that immune response and can protect and restore and regrow your hair. If that’s the problem. But remember the majority of hair loss is really androgenetic alopecia. That’s male and female pattern hair loss, which is something that happens more subtly.

[00:11:05] And so I guess we should make sure we just make that distinction. For women –

[00:11:09] Rita Black: Does that happen during menopause or like what’s, when you talk about that?

[00:11:14] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: So androgenetic alopecia can happen actually anytime after puberty, although it is a little bit more commonly revealed after childbirth and then also during the shifts in menopause.

[00:11:25] So what happens is that unlike male pattern hair loss, which is extremely visible from across the room, you see the receding hairline, balding spot in the crown. For women, it’s more of a diffuse loss in that frontal one third of the scalp to begin with, and sometimes, most of the time it doesn’t even affect the hairline, meaning the hairline is about the same and it’s just this diffuse loss within that frontal one third, a loss of density and quality and caliber, and the hairs get miniaturized and weakened over time.

[00:11:51] Eventually, it can lead to a receding hairline. And that we can see that in a lot of patients that, for example, use testosterone replacement after menopause. Along with their other hormone optimization regimens that sometimes if they’re truly androgen sensitive, which is hereditary male and female pattern hair loss, a little bit of testosterone can knock that hairline way back and that’s not too good.

[00:12:12] Rita Black: Because I have heard that testosterone for women can actually help hair. That’s not true.

[00:12:19] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: It’ll grow hair just about everywhere else, but not on your head.

[00:12:23] Rita Black: Alright, we we don’t want that. Okay, got it.

[00:12:26] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: In fact, like when women have androgen sensitivity in the years of childbearing age, like for example PCOS conditions, polycystic airing syndrome, right?

[00:12:34] They often have which is unwanted hair, could be on the face of the chin, right? Cyber areas, and that’s associated with acne. Weight gain and hair loss and that whole symptoms the whole simultaneous constellation of symptoms, which sometimes seems more inflammatory than anything else is an androgen sensitivity problem. And and can really cause a lot of hair loss problems.

[00:12:56] Rita Black: How about just like stress and emotional wellbeing? Is that a big one too?

[00:13:03] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: It’s huge. And I will tell you that stress affects just about every single organ system in the body. And of course, stress, our stress response is a survival mechanism.

[00:13:13] You’re in the Serengeti and there’s a, a saber tooth tiger coming after you. This, the stress, the adrenaline is gonna help you get away, hopefully climb the tree or whatever. You’re driving down the 4 0 5 highway freeway and someone cuts you off.

[00:13:26] It’s not exactly a, a life-threatening condition, but that stress happens also. So you’re in Southern California reference . It’s but perceived stress can happen anywhere. It could happen at home, it can happen at work, it can disrupt your sleep. And and all of these things are, and actually cortisol which is what we’re talking about, the release of cortisol is that stress hormone, as a survival mechanism, but too much, too often and too and without a break from the cortisol really creates a lot of havoc in the body. And certainly the hair follicle, in fact you squeeze a little cortisol into the Petri dish where you got some hair follicles that you’re testing in the lab. It’s the first thing, it’s the quickest thing to, quickest way to shut it down.

[00:14:05] Rita Black: Oh, interesting.

[00:14:06] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: I was gonna say it’s just in like folklore that you have like a stressful situation and your hair falls out. But we do know that is, if you undergo a severe either physiologic stress or psychologic stress, you can often experience a severe shed, which is called a telogen effluvium. That’s a synchronized shedding of hair.

[00:14:25] Rita Black: And that will eventually grow back, but it at the moment isn’t very pleasant to see with everything coming out in the shower or what have you.

[00:14:36] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: So most of the time, yes, it does stabilize and regrow, but other times, depending on when it happens and how severe, sometimes it reveals this underlying tendency that you may have had but did not know about towards female pattern hair loss, for example.

[00:14:50] So for example, I have women that come in after childbirth and they might say, oh, you know what my first child, I shed a bunch and it regrew and I was fine. But my second one. I had the baby and I shed like crazy and it’s never been the same since. So they say that a lot. So that’s something I commonly hear.

[00:15:07] So what’s going on there? It turns out that particular patient has some risk of hereditary hair loss in the family and that excessive shed at the time of the second baby, really exacerbated or revealed that underlying tendency towards female loss. And so what we do is we take some measurements, we measure the areas that are the most permanent, like in the back and the sides of the scalp.

[00:15:27] We look at hair density and hair caliber, and then we compare that to the crown, which is where the swirl is. And then we compare that to the front or the temple areas. And as we see those decreases as we go towards the front, we know that confirms some degree of female. Ope pattern, hair loss, and many times we can get it to rebound, with therapies and treatments, things sometimes you can do at home. And other times we need to take more aggressive action in the office. But it is very common. And again, it can happen around the time of childbirth, it can happen around perimenopause, menopause, post menopause.

[00:16:00] As those hormones shift, that’s when you’re going to start to see it. We saw it during the pandemic. People locked down. Oh. Knocked out, depressed freaked out. And, our ashwagandha products flew off the shelves. And that’s a stress adaptation, by the way. Oh. To help mitigate the stress, cortisol.

[00:16:18] And then, but many of those got better. And then of course with Covid, COVID being an infection with fever associated with it, that can trigger this telogen effluvium. And then of course the vaccinations and all the havoc that those things cost. We saw a lot of shedding in and around the time of vaccinations as your autoimmune system, as your immune system goes wonky for a bit of time.

[00:16:39] Rita Black: Wow. Fascinating. So now let’s shift a little bit and talk about nutrition because, we’re all nutrition aware other than thinking podcast. How does nutrition, how does that role, play out in hair and hair health and hair loss?

[00:16:55] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: So you’re born with about 150,000 hair follicles on your scalp, and that should be a healthy, good head of hair.

[00:17:01] And it does vary in eth various ethnic groups. Asian, African descent, you’re gonna have less dense hair, but thicker quality or thicker caliber. Curlier hair. Coer hair. Oh, interesting. Eastern European, you typically have thinner quality here, but higher density. So mother Nature kind makes up.

[00:17:18] Every follicle, which is about two to four millimeters in length on your scalp, usually around four if it’s in a growing phase is gonna contain about a, about 80 to a hundred thousand cells, about two two dozen different types of cells. And it’s one of the most highly metabolic cell populations.

[00:17:35] That means it’s rapidly metabolizing, duplicating itself to create this beautiful dried keratin fiber that we call the hair. Just like your fingernail, it’s dead tissue, right? But. It’s really important to understand that because it uses so much energy to do that. It’s rapidly dividing if you have some interruption in nutrient and fuel.

[00:17:56] For example, a caloric restriction. And that could be from a dietary restraint, it could be from an illness, it could be from a number of different things. It could be a medication like a GLP one agonist. If you are restricting yourself or if you’re protein restricted, especially, you’re not gonna grow hair and your body’s smart, it’s gonna start.

[00:18:13] Triaging nutrients and fuel to the core mission critical organs. And unfortunately your hair is like the luxury item of the body. So you know, it’s the last to get the to get the nutrients and fuel if there’s a, if there’s a deficit.

[00:18:28] Rita Black: Do you see then like vegans and vegetarians who might be more carb heavy, less protein heavy, having more issues like this?

[00:18:37] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Absolutely. I see it every single day. Now I have nothing against choices that people make, diet, plant-based diets and stuff. That’s fine. I’m all for it. But here’s the thing if you’re going that route, you have to increase your protein intake. And what I’ve seen is that some folks who really, desperately want to be vegan and plant-based or vegetarian, they, they simply cannot metabolize enough.

[00:18:59] Plant protein to make hair in good quality, right? And even if you’re slightly deficient in protein absorption your hair is going to suffer and lose its aesthetic value. Like you may still have hair, but that hair is going to be much weaker. It’s gonna be more prone to breakage. The cuticle of the hair, which is this beautiful protective armor coating that surrounds every single hair fiber, almost like a a row of scales on a fish.

[00:19:24] That’s how it lays down from tip to tail. What’s gonna happen is that cuticle becomes more fragile and then your hair becomes more porous and more prone to breakage. If you’re wet combing it, for example, it may snap. Or if you’re trying to style it with heat or with chemicals, or you want to color it a little bit differently, you don’t like the gray it, all of these things.

[00:19:43] Wear and tear on the fiber of the hair. And that’s important because if you break the fiber or you damage the fiber, you can’t. Self-repair that it’s I don’t know if you know what Bondo is when you bust a car door, yeah. And you put Bondo over it and then repaint it, it’s, it looks okay, but it’s not the same like steel.

[00:20:02] It’s, Bondo is like soft, like clay. If you tap it, it’ll break. Yeah. You’ve gotta be careful. There’s no way to repair the hair. You have to grow a new one. So you have to like, be gentle with your hair.

[00:20:13] Rita Black: What about, what are your top foods you would recommend for a strong, resilient head of hair?

[00:20:19] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Oh yeah so protein intake is really good, obviously lean red meat.

[00:20:22] If you’re not that kind of person then, maybe you need to get some fish. And so salmon, and then there’s, there’s nuts and other legumes and you wanna make sure leafy greens for iron and things such as that. So there’s actually a whole list on the website at Bower Medical, like food for food.

[00:20:35] Food for hair, like what you should be eating. And to be honest, it’s pretty, it’s not esoteric. It’s really pretty simple actually. It’s a variety of things that kind of touch all different points in terms of not only producing good protein, keratin, fibered hair, but also moisturizing it, meaning your body’s producing enough sebum in natural oil.

[00:20:54] So omega threes and things like that are really important as well for hair production and keeping your hair looking good. Yeah, but we do have, for example, we have a B vitamin complex, which we, as we call it, the A-list, which was just the group of all the vitamins that you want to invite to the party.

[00:21:08] And then the hero, which is biotin. And biotin got a lot of flack recently, about 10 years ago, they said that it disrupted some laboratory testing. Quest put out this alert and the FDA carried the. The torch, but most of the labs have figured that out. So biotin is not gonna interrupt your thyroid testing, but check with your lab.

[00:21:25] If you’re on a good high dose biotin, it can help your hair and it’s very safe, and it can also make your nails grow thicker better too. That’s we have our own collagen peptide protein mixture. It’s it’s got a triple collagen in there. Obviously that’s not gonna be vegan or vegetarian, but bovine collagen.

[00:21:40] There’s several different types of collagen that we put in there. And one, one of them specifically is for hair and the other one’s for joints is skin. But but there are some really good ingredients in that. And we call that the builder. There’s a whole wellness system that I’ve created over time.

[00:21:55] I mentioned quickly ashwagandha, that was our stress adaptogen for people who are super stressed out, right? Even probiotics that can help out with hair growth. So there’s some things that you can do nutritionally for sure. Whether you search those things out in natural format or you supplement with nutritionals.

[00:22:11] If you feel like, you may not be getting everything that you’re needing.

[00:22:14] Rita Black: So you would recommend collagen. So that would probably be a question on people’s minds is like, is this collagen that I’m buying and consuming, really doing anything? And your answer would be yes. For the hair.

[00:22:28] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Absolutely, because what we do is we measure, and so how do we know?

[00:22:32] People say, oh, I’m gonna come home and stand on my, I’m gonna do my yoga pose upside down every night and see if that helps out with my hair. And I go that circulation improvement sounds great, but why don’t we measure your hair and see if that’s actually working? And I don’t know if that’s working, by the way, I don’t endorse upside on yoga poses for hair growth, but my point is that no matter what you’re doing.

[00:22:51] Whether it’s the TikTok trend of rosemary oil or something more sophisticated, like a low level laser therapy device or regenerative treatment in the office with platelet rich plasma or exosome therapy or peptides or proteins and things like that directly through the skin, whatever you are doing.

[00:23:07] Or more traditional medications like minoxidil, for example.

[00:23:10] Let’s measure it. So come in the office, we’ll get some measurements done. We have an AI powered microscope that enables us to look at those different areas of the scalp, quantify exactly what’s going on in each area. I even have a microscope that measures hair to hair, so every hair gets numbered in that particular zone. It’s it’s serious.

[00:23:29] Rita Black: And that’s , it’s a real science. I get it. It’s down to the, I don’t know what you would call that. Every hair. Every single hair.

[00:23:37] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Every hair is numbered, as they say in the bible.

[00:23:40] Rita Black: I think since we’re talking about treatment, so it sounds like we’ve segued into that, which was my next set of questions was with people already experiencing thinning hair, what it sounds like you have a full library of treatments.

[00:23:55] Like what? Do you see are the best or was, is that a silly question given what you just said, which was It depends on. Who you are, what you are, where you are, and like all those. But if I were just like, I need something today. What do I do? What are maybe we can talk about like the traditional off the shelf if I was going and how effective they are and then these other deeper treatments that seem to, really target specific things.

[00:24:23] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Yeah. I mean if let us happen. If we think about the world of hair loss, most people think first like Rogan. Oh my God. Yeah. Why? Why did they think Rogan? Minoxidil was the first FDA a approved drug for hair loss. And okay, at least you’re on the right path towards something that has an FDA a approval.

[00:24:37] I’m not saying that’s the end all be all, because some people literally cannot metabolize Minoxidil out of the bottle in their scalp into Minoxidil sulfate, and that’s one of the things that we elucidate through genetic testing. People say, oh, I tried Rogan. It didn’t work well either. It could be that they didn’t use it properly.

[00:24:53] That’s possible that they didn’t use it as often as they should have, which is twice a day, every day, but they didn’t use enough of it. Maybe they put it on 10 drops, they should have used 30. Maybe they put it on their hair. They didn’t put it on their scalp by mistake. They didn’t understand. Or maybe they have a different type of hair loss condition that wasn’t related. To Minoxidil, for example, or genetically, they’re predisposed not to be able to convert Minoxidil into minoxidil sulfate. So unfortunately, there’s a lot of reasons why Minoxidil is not only the most popular, but also the most frustrating air loss treatment on the planet.

[00:25:24] And one of the things that we do oftentimes is prescribe, first after we elucidate what’s going on, like what is the actual problem here? History of hair loss in the family. In your situation, what is your medical conditions? What nutritional regimen are you on? How’s your sleep wake cycle? Do you have inflammation?

[00:25:41] Is there stress? You know what? All of these different factors together to fig, what’s your scalp health? If you have a little inflammation on your scalp and you put Rogan on there, it could be disastrous and you could be causing more harm than good.

[00:25:54] Not really because of the minoxidil, but because of the vehicle, the alcohol that the monoxide is dissolved in. So there’s a lot of things that we try to get to in the evaluation process. But I want to just dial back, okay. You tried Minoxidil maybe, and you failed for whatever reason. It was not your jam. And you don’t feel like you got a result from it. You’ve got some options. You can go to a compounded version of Minoxidil.

[00:26:15] You could get an evaluation and get tested to see if Minoxidil is the right thing for you. You could get your scalp evaluated to see if there is some scalp health issue. I. So there’s a lot of pathways. You could go to an oral minoxidil, you don’t need a prescription for that can’t just go down to, Walgreens CVS.

[00:26:30] And I don’t trust these cloud pharmacies to be honest, because they’re just after the, gathering up these consumers in large volumes. Not so happy with those folks either. I think it’s very poor quality. But we could put you, if you were a patient at Bowman Medical, we put you on a low dose.

[00:26:44] Safe version of oral minoxidil that could stimulate hair growth but also not create any havoc in terms of side effects or other symptoms. That’s just one basic thing that we can do.

[00:26:56] Rita Black: But that’s more safe oral than grafts, putting on top of your head, but just as effective.

[00:27:04] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: So what, I guess what you’re asking is the oral –

[00:27:07] Rita Black: If the oral is more effective putting it on top of your head?

[00:27:11] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Yeah. Theoretically, if you got the same dose into your body, it would be equal, but that’s not the case. What we find is that. People do better with oral medication because it’s simpler. It takes a fraction of the amount of time you just pop the pill. It doesn’t interrupt your hair styling regimen at all, right?

[00:27:27] It doesn’t interrupt your day. It doesn’t you barely even think about it. You pop the pill and you’re back to brushing your teeth or whatever you’re doing that morning, and so people are more consistent with it. It’s easier to travel. With a bottle of pills than it is a bottle of liquid.

[00:27:40] So there’s a lot of reasons why oral Minoxidil is a big winner. But you have to be careful. Microdose not overdose, look out for water retention, look out for low blood pressure. There are things that we are very careful with. So just don’t run out to your, internal medicine doctor or dermatologist say, oh, put me on a split pill of minoxidil.

[00:27:59] I’m off and running. You could have issues. So there are things that we do to figure that out. But that’s just one tool in the toolbox that, that seems to be like on the tip of everyone’s tongue because they’re thinking rogan. One of the, my favorite at home treatments is laser light therapy.

[00:28:12] Rita Black: I was gonna ask you about that. Is you talked to, so that’s a home therapy is laser light and is that red light? Therapy? Or is it? Yes.

[00:28:21] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: It’s Visible red. We measure the color by wavelength, so the wavelength of a red, six 30 to six 70, usually six 50. Those are visible wavelengths and they impart energy to the hair follicle.

[00:28:34] How do we do that? They didn’t teach us that in medical school 35 years ago, so I’m gonna explain to you what they found is the mechanism of action. The photons of light are absorbed at the level of the mitochondria, and this is true for skin as well as hair follicles. And the mitochondria will turn those photons into energy, a TP, which is the energy currency of the body.

[00:28:54] And you get, remember I said before, hair follicles highly metabolic. So if you provide a little bit more energy there, you’re gonna get a thicker, stronger, healthier hair. Now how you apply red light, man, there’s a million different ways to get red light and you, all you need to do is go on Amazon and look up red light therapy and you’ll see lasers all the way down to LEDs and a lot of garbage in between Chinese knockoffs and things like that.

[00:29:18] So medical grade devices in the realm of hair regrowth. That you would use at home, that those devices are gonna be thousands of dollars. We’re talking like three to $5,000 or more. Oh wow. $5,200 on the top end. And so as you can imagine, a $5,200 device is vastly different than a $500 device made in China.

[00:29:37] That looks like a bicycle helmet or something like that. So the Bauman Turbo laser cap is my favorite. I mainly because I helped design it based on all the years and years of use of the old laser caps that were originally invented by Dr. Michael Raven. So I love the Bauman Turbo laser cap. That’s my go-to device.

[00:29:53] Portable, rechargeable. It’s fast treatment time, five minutes a day, and has zero side effects, none.

[00:29:59] Rita Black: Oh wow. Were there side effects in the other laser cap? The doctor, what? What’s his name he just mentioned?

[00:30:07] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Dr. Raven. No, there’s never been a side effect from red light, low level laser light therapy or photobiomodulation.

[00:30:13] It’s the safest treatment for hair loss that I can imagine. It’s a very nice way to impart energy to the hair follicles. It just takes a little bit of time. You have to do the treatment typically on a daily basis. So fi five minutes every day with the turbo laser cap is enough to stimulate the hair follicles all the way from the front of your scalp through to the nap of the neck, which is nice.

[00:30:33] Rita Black: Is it enough for, I’m just curious ’cause I’m asking like if you’ve had let’s say. That patch of hair or that it is really thin in one part of your hair, that it’s going to. Be as effective as if you just had thinning, like you mentioned in the front of the brown

[00:30:52] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: yeah, that’s a great question. So a lot of patients want to know, is this treatment gonna work for my type of hair loss, right? So mostly what we’re talking about, again, just to refresh, is the androgenetic alopecia problem, which is male and female pattern hair loss, the gradual miniaturization or weakening of the hair follicle.

[00:31:08] Yeah. It’s not an automatic shutdown, like the light bulb goes out and that’s it. If the follicle’s dead and gone. You, the only thing that’s gonna work in that area to give you coverage and regrowth is a hair transplant. Okay? End of story. So what you need to think about is like your head of hair is like a garden, right?

[00:31:26] Sometimes you need extra fertilizer, maybe even, yeah. Sunlight and rain potentially. But the point is that if the plants in the garden are dead and gone and you go to Home Depot and you come back with a bag of fertilizer, you’re missing the boat. You need to go out and buy a bag of seeds and that’s the hair transplant.

[00:31:42] So most patients actually need a combination of both. And the reason is because they may already have some loss that has occurred. That’s irreversible. Maybe it’s a small area, but they also have a huge amount of risk coming up, in the near future, within the next five to 10 years of hair loss that’s coming their way that needs to be prevented and addressed ahead of time.

[00:32:03] And so most patients in the practice are, to be honest, on a, usually need a bit of both. Meaning they might need some degree of transplantation and certainly they need prevention and enhancement therapy over time.

[00:32:15] Rita Black: So for women, because I think it’s d different for man a man, like if they came in and they were bald and you were transplanting hair for women, it might be a little more subtle, meaning like you can have a transplant within your hair and people might not see like the plug or the, I don’t know a lot about this world, educate us who are like, oh, hair trans. I had never thought about that.

[00:32:39] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Oh, I never thought about a hair transplant ’cause I thought it was pluggy or painful or whatever. And that’s a common misconception today. So just so we’re all on the same page, hair transplants done today in an artistic way with the right technology are 100% undetectable.

[00:32:52] You should not see something pluggy or weird looking. That’s not to say that every surgeon performs things that way. We all know plastic surgery can be very obvious in unfortunate cases, but the best plastic surgery, the best cosmetic procedures are the ones that are undetectable and the patient just looks refreshed.

[00:33:09] And actually today that’s more common than not in hair transplant. But there’s a huge uptick in the number of hair transplants that are being done by non-board certified physicians. People who are doing it maybe once a month instead of, three times a day a full-time hair surgeon.

[00:33:23] And that’s where the risks lie. But today we can do eyebrow transplantation, we can replace hair into scars. If you’ve had a facelift or a brow lift, we can do eyelash transplantation. So the ability to move and to really align hair follicles into the skin with angle orientation position is so much different than it was nearly 30 years ago when I first started in this field.

[00:33:46] So we can, the point is that kind of bringing this home is that for women who have some loss of density, yes, we can transplant in between the hairs that you have provided, there’s gaps, right? And especially true for women with a deep receded hairline, maybe because they were just born that way with a high hairline, right?

[00:34:03] And they want a more feminine look or more youthful look, it can be done. Or if they’ve had an exacerbation of that hairline, meaning that it’s receded. Postmenopausally or they noticed around the time that they started hormone optimization therapy, maybe they added a little testosterone for all the great benefits and they’ve noticed that it’s receding.

[00:34:22] It happens very commonly with pellets. I’m not against testosterone or hormone pelleting. But I do think sometimes physicians overdo those without knowing it and they run into trouble. And some women are just very sensitive and end up needing hair transplants because of it.

[00:34:36] Rita Black: Wow.

[00:34:37] That’s crazy. Alright, so now it’s time we’ve held off on this. Let’s talk about Ozempic and the GL one drugs and the hair loss that you are seeing coming from those. That we’ve heard about, but I know you’ve seen this firsthand, fill us in. Yeah.

[00:34:54] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Look Ozempic is just the latest weight loss craze.

[00:34:57] I, I’ve been around long enough to see everything from the cookie diet.

[00:35:01] Rita Black: Oh yeah.

[00:35:01] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: To and everything in between. Even, I think even Fen fen was around when I first got started we’re talking about. Nutritional deprivation. Caloric deficits, because that’s the quickest way to really put your body into fat burning mode.

[00:35:15] But as we know, the GLP one agonists and it’s not the medication itself that, that causes the hair loss. Okay. It’s the nutritional deficit. Okay. And I think that’s important, at least I should say, there’s no evidence for the medication itself causing the hair loss. It’s the sequela, it’s the consequences of the medication.

[00:35:33] So GLP one agonists do what? They make you less hungry, they make you less, craving. There’s a lot of things that happen that also decreases your absorption. It decreases your stomach and gut motility so your absorption goes down. So all of those things slow down the whole digestive tract and make you not really think about food all as much as you did before.

[00:35:54] Also what’s interesting, and I love to bring this up, is that it also diminishes cravings for other things such as shopping. By the way that’s an anecdotal report. But a lot of cravings can be hit from these satiety mechanisms in the body. And there’s so many different ones now. It’s not just ozempic, right?

[00:36:10] GLP one agonists and there’s ones that are triple agonists and all these other things combined, right? But anyway, the point is if your body’s in a nutritional deficit, it’s gonna start to burn fat. It’s. It’s gonna start to eat muscle and it’s gonna start to degrade bone. And that’s what happens to folks who are on these weight loss medications.

[00:36:28] And when that happens, as we have said before. The nutrients and fuel that are going into the body are decreasing. Your body goes into kind of a crisis mode and it says, you know what, we gotta start going down to the cellar and burn some of that, lumber that’s down there. So the junk in the trunk starts to get burned.

[00:36:44] But the problem is that it doesn’t feed the follicle. And so for folks who are sensitive. Meaning that they have some hair sensitivity to nutrient and fuel intake, they can start that telogen process. So the shedding occurs usually within about a month or so, and it could be quite severe if you’re losing, let’s call it, two, two pounds a week, all of a sudden, in six to 12 weeks.

[00:37:06] That’s quite a bit of weight. And all of a sudden things are happening and you’re losing hair at the same time. And as you stay, oh, and this is very common also with bariatric surgery as I did not mention previously. So things like, stomach sleeves and ruin y these modifications to the GI tract, surgically balloons, all these things it caused the same problem.

[00:37:28] And it’s, it was very common in my world in when I did general surgery to see folks who were losing weight rapidly from their bariatric surgery, their weight loss surgery to then lose a lot of hair.

[00:37:39] We knew this was coming. The question is, what can we do about it? Yeah. Unfortunately, if you’re continuing to lose weight your hair follicles are still getting a signal that you’re starving, essentially and they don’t tend to produce such good hair.

[00:37:49] And that shedding process can continue. But hopefully once you re reach a maintenance weight. Even while you’re losing, you could hopefully fortify the function of the follicles with maybe some extra protein intake. Make sure your vitamins are on point. Make sure you’re absorbing those vitamins. So do your routine blood work.

[00:38:05] And please continue to work out so you, you’re not losing muscle mass and you’re not losing bone. You don’t wanna end up being like a fragile, thinning, thin, skinny person, like you fall over and break a hip. That would be terrible. So build your muscle, strengthen your bone at the same time you need to change your lifestyle.

[00:38:22] Rita Black: Okay.

[00:38:23] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: That’s fair enough. I’m I’ll step off the soapbox, but that, those are my, my those are my, that’s my advice.

[00:38:28] Rita Black: Before so one more question about what if a woman is wearing a wig or using hair extensions, does that impact hair follicles as well?

[00:38:39] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: That’s a great question.

[00:38:40] So what we do to our hair, and we talked a little bit about managing our hair color and curl with chemicals and heat and those types of things. But very oftentimes certain styles of hair, for example, tight braids for sure can put extra tension. On the follicle. There are ethnic populations that begin braiding hair, at very young ages to the point where it’s so tight.

[00:39:03] The children literally need Tylenol or Motrin to get through the discomfort of having such tight braids. We know that is causing traction. Alopecia. Traction alopecia means excessive tension on the follicle over time, over and over again, over the course of May. Could be not just hours, but weeks or months or years.

[00:39:21] And excessive tension is gonna. Could literally pluck the hair right outta the follicle or that extra tension just causes the follicle degrade its function. And hair extensions are the most common thing I see in the practice that does this. And it’s the longer, the bigger, the more Hollywood the extensions the more at risk you are.

[00:39:41] Of course there’s different types of attachments, different frequency of how you move them around. All of these different things make a difference. ’cause if you can distribute the weight a little bit more evenly, if you can move the tension around more commonly than just relying on one spot, like a weave, for example, is gonna basically glue to the front part of your head consistently and it has to be removed and then reglued.

[00:40:03] That’s gonna cause a lot of damage. No question about it. Hair extensions around the sides and the back. Again, if you’re wearing very large, long, heavy extensions, you’re gonna cause a problem with the hair follicles in the most permanent area, which eventually you might need those follicles. If you have hair loss someplace else, you need a hair transplant, you’re now destroying those follicles because they’re under tension.

[00:40:28] So I would never tell someone not to use hair extensions ever. Just like I would never tell anyone not to color their hair if they want to. But let’s be mindful of what the risks are. Because there’s honestly no safe cigarette here. There’s really o only upside risk. I. Downside risk and the upside potential is just how great it looks, right?

[00:40:46] And they’re addictive. Don’t get me wrong. Hair extensions on women look amazing. You want that Hollywood look, right? You want cheerleader hair, I get it. But let’s try to do it maybe less frequently. Let’s try to do it only when you need to for a special function and try to come up with other creative hair hairstyling.

[00:41:01] And if you need to wear extensions, please get on some kind of therapy or treatment regimen that’s gonna be protective to the hair follicle.

[00:41:08] Rita Black: And you would you say, so dyeing your hair also is going to have an impact on the follicle, obviously, right?

[00:41:16] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: So the chemicals associated with busting open the fiber which is the cuticle of the hair, not the follicle, but the cuticle can weaken the hair fiber.

[00:41:25] And we spent a little bit of time talking about that earlier, right? People that do repetitive hering. On their, of their hair straightening particularly can actually damage the skin of the scalp over time. And so what it does, it causes a mild chemical burn each time. And anyone who has had, let’s say, a strong perm even a keratin treatment, let’s say, if that stuff gets on your head.

[00:41:49] Gets literally on your scalp and you feel it burning your skin. You probably wanna let your hairstylist know that’s happening, and you probably wanna make some kind of modification and try not to do it again, because a mild burn again and again causes a scar.

[00:42:06] At the level of the scalp. And we, there’s certainly certain ethnic populations that do perming again from a very young age. And they have problems in the scalp called CCCA. That’s a type of scarring alopecia. Central centrifugal, psychiatrical alopecia is a long word that basically means that you burn the heck out of your scalp and the follicles are suffering because of it and they can die permanently.

[00:42:30] It’s very difficult to rejuvenate those follicles. Oftentimes, they’re dead and gone, so over time you want to be careful.

[00:42:38] Rita Black: Yeah. Oh good. Good. I’m just squeezing all this amazing information. You’re doing great. So now let’s, I wanna ask beyond products and treatments, what could, we take away what are some everyday habits that can keep our hair looking ama, thicker, fuller, amazing.

[00:42:58] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Yeah you’ve just gotta have perfect health. And so I always tell my personal trainer that if I didn’t have a day job, taking care of my health would be so easy. I could just dedicate all the time in the world to it.

[00:43:06] Sometimes that doesn’t always work. So we, we’ve gotta try to find those niches of time to help keep our health and wellness on point.

[00:43:12] Let’s get good sleep, let’s stay well nourished, let’s get our stress level under control. Be mindful, right? So those are holistic things, genetically we gotta choose good parents. Not always so easy to do. So my point is understand your genetic risk and then activate. Therapies and treatments that are in line with the severity of the situation.

[00:43:31] So of course, in as someone who is in the early stages of some thinning, maybe they don’t realize what, if anything’s really happening. Their hair looks pretty good, but their ponytail is thinning. Come in and let’s just talk about it. Let’s get some measurements. Maybe we don’t do anything, but just add a vitamin.

[00:43:45] Know, maybe we just do something simple, right? A nutraceutical system for hair. Maybe they have a little bit of stress. We gotta work on the sleep, we work on the nutrition and, just monitor it and see if that helps. If we can stabilize or improve without medications or other more heroic interventions, great.

[00:44:00] But let’s also be realistic. Someone comes in and they have a deeper seated hairline, or they wanna lower their hairline. We need to talk about transplantation. And transplants, cost, time and money. And there it’s a big investment for some but it’s life can be life changing. So if you have an area of a scar that you want to take care of, or eyebrows that you’ve over plucked or something like that, let’s talk about it.

[00:44:21] If it’s a hairline or receding temples or just a thinning spot that you can see the scalp shining through, there’s a lot of things that we can do. And that would go hand in hand with the other non-invasive therapies like so many great regenerative treatments that we have that we can do in the office, like platelet rich plasma exosome therapy.

[00:44:39] Trans epidermal, delivery of peptides and growth factors. That’s called Ted, no needles. That’s really exciting. We can even bank your own hair follicles if you think that somewhere down the line, you may want a treatment made from your own hair follicles, like your own growth factors, for example, deployed into the scalp.

[00:44:55] Or maybe in five or 10 years we’ll have hair cloning. That’s the exciting future of hair restoration and that we’re on the cusp of these huge breakthroughs in regenerative medicine and compared to what we’ve seen in the past five years, it’s unbelievable what’s gonna be coming in the next five to 10.

[00:45:10] Rita Black: It’s exciting. If we can only hold on until then.

[00:45:14] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Absolutely. But you have to start early. And so I guess my take home message is that time equals follicles. And what we mean by that is that if you’re prone to hair loss, as we started off our conversation, is that this stuff just doesn’t get better on its own.

[00:45:26] You know it, just like everything else in our body and actually in the world, entropy, it just degrades. Yeah. So our skin, our brain, our muscles, our bone, or whatever our bodily functions, we all need. A little bit of extra help as we get older and we enter into this time of our lives where hopefully we have time to enjoy our lifespan, right?

[00:45:45] And then our health span I want to improve your hair span. The time that you spend with your beautiful head of hair. And so if you delay, then you know, you might be leaning more towards more aggressive therapies. So where it’s easier to treat, if you’re in the earlier stages of loss.

[00:46:01] And that’s where I encourage people to reach out and just get the information that they want.

[00:46:05] Rita Black: Yeah, being informed always helps and that gives you choice. If someone was feeling hopeless about their hair loss today, what would be the first steps you would, or what would be like one message you would share with them?

[00:46:21] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Oh gosh. Don’t be hopeless because we’ve got so many great therapies and treatments and when applied correctly, they can be truly miraculous. And so we’ve changed, I’ve had a blessing of a career to be able to impact 35,000 patients in my practice here in Bo Raton, Florida. I’ve done over 14,000 hair transplant surgeries, over 14,000 regenerative treatments, including PRP and other things.

[00:46:42] So I’ve had a great blessing in life to be able to help people restore their confidence, their. Feeling of beauty, their self-esteem really to change a bad hair week, month, or year or bad hair life into a great hair day and a great hair life. And so it’s really truly a blessing. So I would say don’t be scared.

[00:47:01] There is hope. I know there’s a lot of noise out there in the world of hair loss and hair restoration. It just seem, and once you start searching for it, the algorithm just dumps it on you. It’s awful. But, go and search out good information. so@baumanmedical.com we have literally thousands of pages of information that I’ve personally written since the 1990s actually.

[00:47:20] We have hundreds of hours of video content, educational content about every type of hair loss and treatment that we provide. You could ask a question. You could just go to bauman medical.com/ask and just type in a question and I will get the answer. My team and I will get the answer back to you. Be sure you leave an email or a phone number so we can get the answer back to you.

[00:47:40] And don’t make sure it’s spelled right. And then, people often very much start their evaluations from their home or phone. Look, we can’t do a digital measurement of your scalp, obviously, from a distance. But what we can do is take this really important inventory of what’s going on in your life.

[00:47:55] We can get some blood work done. We can look at your biomarkers, we can look at your genetics. We can look at your health history and see with through the photos that you. Provide in the video that we can do even just today on Zoom and and your iPhone or Android phone takes great pictures, way better than what we used to be able to get and really start the process of education.

[00:48:14] And then hopefully we get a chance to see you here in Boca Raton, Florida, or I have offices also in New York and many other places coming soon around the country.

[00:48:22] Rita Black: Wow. That’s exciting. So we should check out, your website and I know in the show notes everybody, I will be putting all those resources.

[00:48:31] This has been great. Before we wrap up, what are three tips, top tips for women who wanna maintain their hair health for years to come? What are your three tips.

[00:48:40] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Yeah, I think if you wanna maintain your head of hair for years to come, the number one thing to do is get informed about what might be affecting your hair.

[00:48:48] So that’s important, the education information. So that’s really important. Number two, get an evaluation. And so we’re not talking about the evaluation that you get your derms, where they just look over you and go, oh, it looks pretty good. I think it looks better. I don’t know. We should use the same PRP that we did on your skin for your hair.

[00:49:05] No, don’t do any of that. Get someone who’s board certified in hair restoration, a specialist with expertise and credentials to take a look and get an evaluation. And then the third most important thing is take action. Do something. Don’t just sit around and be like, oh maybe next year I’ll do it, because as we say, time equals follicles.

[00:49:24] So education and information. Get an evaluation from a credentialed person, a medical professional, and then take action on it.

[00:49:35] Rita Black: Those are great tips. Thank you so much Dr. Bauman. This has been I feel so educated already and I look forward to going to your website and checking out the videos and all of that stuff.

[00:49:45] And I will put, like I said, that all goes in the show notes. So thank you so much for your time today. It’s been so enriching.

[00:49:53] DR. Alan J. Bauman, MD: Oh, thanks Rita. Thanks for having me. And if you do receive any questions from your audience, I’m happy to come back on and answer those. Or we can work out something, perhaps even on social media, get the questions back out to those folks and so forth.

[00:50:05] So thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it.

[00:50:08] Rita Black: Oh, you’re more than welcome. Thank you so much. That was so great. Fascinating. I learned a lot. And if you would like to check out more on Dr. Bauman and check out the couple of educational videos he’s posted on his website, please check him out.

[00:50:26] The website link is in the show notes. And that is it. Join us next week where I am going to get into travel tips, then thinking, travel tips for your summer by sharing some of my my trip, my recent trip to Spain. And remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door of the weight struggle is inside you.

[00:50:55] So keep listening and find it. I will see you here next week. Thanks for listening to The Thin Thinking Podcast. Did that episode go by way too fast for you? If so, and you wanna dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release, head on over to www shift weight mastery.com. That’s www shift weight mastery.com, where you’ll find numerous tools and resources to help you unlock your mind for permanent weight release tips, strategies, and more.

[00:51:31] And be sure to check the show notes. To learn more about my book from Fact and Thinking, unlock your mind for permanent weight loss and to learn how to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode.