Holistic Approaches to Hair Loss - Dr Alan Bauman

welcome back to another episode of Christian Natural Health today I'm excited to have Dr Alan Bowman with us

Dr Bowman is an accomplished hair restoration physician known for his expertise in treating hair loss and his

pioneering work in the field his state-of-the-art hair Hospital in downtown Boca Raton Florida covers 12

000 square feet and is recognized worldwide for its Advanced Hair Restoration Technologies his dedication

to the field of hair restoration has earned him many accolades throughout his career he is one of approximately 200

Physicians worldwide to have achieved certification from the American Board of hair restoration surgery he has

pioneered numerous Technologies in the field of hair restoration Dr Bowman's expertise has made him a highly sought

after speaker and guest expert he's been featured in hundreds of news stories in the media Dr Bowman has also been

recognized for his contributions to the field of Health Care receiving the 2020-2022 Lifetime Achievement Award and

hair restoration and being named one of the 10 CEOs transforming Healthcare in America by Forbes welcome Dr Bowman this

is fantastic thanks thanks so much for having me Lauren it's great to be here with you for sure so uh first let's talk a little

bit about root causes for men and women for hair loss um what would like like let's start with men first of all what's usually the

underlying causes and where do you kind of start in terms of digging up all of that sure well you know first of all

about 50 of men are going to experience hair loss by the time they age 50. so

it's a big concern out there there are tens of millions of men who are struggling with hair loss the interesting thing is that it's primarily

genetics so in men we know that it's a genetic sensitivity to their male hormones specifically

dihydrotestosterone DHT that triggers the miniaturization the weakening of the hair follicles over time and eventually

pushes them Beyond repair so that they do not provide any coverage by creating

the hair fiber so over time anytime after puberty actually depending on

their genetic propensity for male pattern baldness they could see a receding hairline or thinning in the

crown and it's Progressive it's chronic it gets worse with time without treatment and it can cover it can

progress to Total baldness across the top of the scalp but usually spares the hair around the sides in the back so we

call that androgenetic alopecia and that's the primary trigger uh or primary cause for male hair loss although

there's others you know there's autoimmune conditions spotty hair loss scarring things like that

so and for guys like let's say a guy comes to you who doesn't have a family history but he starts losing hair

younger is there anywhere that you would start in terms of like digging for root cause in that situation or what would

your first thought be in that case well it obviously depends upon what kind of hair loss they're experiencing so I

do have young male patients who are literally in high school who have a bald spot in the back of their Crown uh we

certainly look for root cause in fact I have an entire functional medicine uh Department inside my practice so we're

looking yeah we're looking at everything uh from sleep wake cycle disorders to nutritional problems to metabolic

diseases and as I mentioned before there could be autoimmune diseases that could be triggering hair loss and making the

hair follicles just you know difficult a difficult job to to perform the uh the hair growth uh function so we're going

to be looking at all that but if there's that pattern that I mentioned either receding hairline or balding in the

crown that tells us that there's at least a genetic underlying tendency and that our primary treatment option might

be uh something to block the androgens in the scalp you know whether that's a nutritional or nutraceutical or

prescription product uh you know we may we might go down that road but certainly uh we want to look at lifestyle style

factors as well because you know some of these young men might be doing things that are boosting their testosterone

levels um you know maybe not even naturally obviously but even just resistance training and sports training and things

like that can disregulate hair follicle function we have a lot of athletes in the practice who seem to have an

excessive and aggressive male pattern baldness interesting okay so things that

accelerate it could also be uh illness so if they've had covet recently or multiple bouts of covid that certainly

dysregulates the circulation and the hair follicles it creates a cytokine storm if it's severe if they had a fever

absolutely we're going to see some shedding um you know and anything that makes the spike protein you know and everybody's

favorite jab uh include included uh you know can dysregulate the hair follicle

so treated over a thousand coveted hair loss patients and so my understanding is

with covid hair loss it's usually has to do with the the telogen of fluvia is that also your understanding of it or is

there more to it than that well tilogen effluvium is just the name of a fancy word really for hair shedding when the

follicle shuts down and in between the New Growth phase the hair fiber is

exuded it's it's extracted from the hair from the hair follicle and basically falls out so if fluvium is like a wave

so if you have a wave of shedding that's higher than normal guess what you get diagnosed with teal genifluvium but that

does not tell you the root cause so uh if you've had that high fever of course

that can shut down hair follicles um if you've been exposed to like say general anesthesia that could also be a

trigger if you've had a sudden change in hormone levels that can also trigger an effluvium but what's interesting about

the effluvium with covid is that it seems to dramatically accelerate in many

cases in these cases I've seen German radically accelerate male and female pattern hair loss

so once you've done caused rigor like give me a couple of

ideas of what you might do like let's say somebody has an inflammatory issue such as that like a cytokine storm or

they have an autoimmune condition where do you where do you begin in terms of helping to calm things down and get

their body back to a reset button to where it was before yeah sure so um the interesting thing is

that we do have some therapies and treatments that could immediately address an effluvium let's say so if

they did have a covet infection or dealing with long Covenant shedding or even postpartum a lot of women will I'm

sure we'll get it deeper into female hair loss um you know we can actually do a treatment immediately to address

shedding and that's kind of different than TR than therapies that we've had years ago we have a treatment called Ted

trans epidermal delivery of growth factors and peptides using a technique called sonopheresis which is ultrasound

that breaks the stratum corneum or disrupts it I should say and allows us to push those very powerful growth

factors and peptides right through the skin in office treatment with no needles no pain very relaxing just vibration

essentially and one treatment per month the first thing that they notice is the

shedding starts to slow down and eventually stop um but obviously you know from a functional medicine approach uh you know

my team will uh look at overall body inflammation look at the diet look at

things that are in the environment I want to deal if we're dealing with a stressful situation is there stress

management skills that we could use sleep the Swiss army knife of Wellness uh is a tool in our toolbox to obviously

help that but there are you know even nutritionals that can help with inflammation curcumin turmeric getting

on a good probiotic and we have those under the Bauman Brands specifically for hair and providing good uh fuel if you

will and nutrients for good hair growth is obviously critically important in those early stages before we move on to

something more aggressive so yeah so and for a guy where it's just in the family it happens to everybody at about that

same age if he's had hair loss for a really long period of time like he's got a full-on bald spot he's not losing it

it's it's gone uh is there anything that can be done at that point where do you where do you start in that situation

well well look uh you know hopefully we can do some things to protect the hair that he has but if he's already got a

growing bald spot and and then get bigger with time like on the crown they start small and then they get wider we

will put them on some medical therapy regimens so if we're dealing with the nutrition and nutraceuticals it could be

saw palmetto and some of the other things that I've mentioned we could put them on a good hair care product making sure that the scalp is not inflamed and

then we get into other therapies if it's medications like minoxidil or finasteride those can be applied topically or orally minoxidil is a

potent hair growth stimulator for men and women can be used topically as we see from the old Rogaine but also now is

available orally which is nice with a very very low very very low safety very high safety protocol very low incidence

of side effects with a micro dosing and for men finasteride is another medication obviously that we can use

very effectively to lower the DHT production in the body or specifically

right at the level of the scalp we can also use red light therapy low-level laser light has been a part of my

practice for over 20 years and that's a very common treatment to stimulate hair follicles to grow thicker and better and

stronger over time and other treatments like regenerative medicine therapy platelet-rich plasma Ted as I mentioned

previously exosome therapy PDO grow these are all things that we do in the office to try to stimulate the existing

hair but you asked what if there's a bald spot yep and so the answer is if there's a bald spot we have to talk

about transplants got it okay so at that point you're at that level but in if you're in the process of losing then

there's things you can do to mitigate and maybe even regrow because the follicle isn't totally dead is that is that about right

absolutely because the hair follicle miniaturization process typically takes years and years so if we can catch the

hair follicle before it's totally Beyond repair and there are some ways to figure that out by looking under the microscope

so using very very powerful magnification even with the help of AI powered microscopes today we can see

exactly what the hairs are being produced in terms of their thickness which is a really good indicator their

length another good indicator their pigmentation as well as the density in

each of the different zones so that's something that we do in the office called hair metrics uh very powerful AI

microscope using the artificial intelligence to get all of that data so that helps us with the diagnosis because

obviously areas that are looking good just need prevention areas that are starting to weaken you may not even know

that it's weakening out in those areas those need the rejuvenating therapies and areas which are severely depleted

well then we're going to have to move some hair follicles around from other places to fill in the gaps

okay so let's go back to the the LED that you're talking about or the red light therapy tell us a little bit more

about how that is like what what is this device what does it look like um and how do people utilize it how does it help

with hair follicles yeah so the first thing I want to differentiate is that there's a lot of red light therapy out

there in the market uh for overall Wellness some people use LED blankets and things like that but what we're

really talking about for hair we need more than just what an LED provides we need laser light okay so the lasers that

we use they are laser emitting diodes so but they are not incandescent lights so

uh like if you've got a Juve device for your house in your closet or something um you know that's not going to grow

your hair back very substantially you'll need a laser cap and so laser caps were

invented by Dr Michael Rabin those are typically head worn devices that kind of have a shape of a dome maybe fit

underneath a baseball cap traditionally but the newer ones that we've worked on are a lot more portable a lot more more

powerful much shorter treatment times and are all FDA cleared for hair

regrowth so these are units that are highly flexible imagine like a device that could pack completely flat but then

you curl the tips over and then you can snap it together and put it over your scalp so it's not like a baseball helmet

it's not like a bicycle helmet um or baseball hat I should say but something more flexible and portable and

that's called the the turbo laser cap and so what does that do it provides this red light that's non-burning

non-cutting completely side effect free and red light affects the mitochondria

that are located within the cells of the hair follicle and so just like red lights used for Rejuvenation of the skin

to decrease inflammation in an injured joint to speed up healing after a procedure or treatment or surgery we can

use red light to stimulate those highly metabolic cell populations which are

located in the hair follicle making beautiful healthy hair fibers hopefully and so for providing that extra bit of

energy through ATP production right at the level of the mitochondria is what red light therapy actually does and you

get a thicker stronger healthier hair that's awesome with only one caveat as we said before if the follicle is dead

and gone or Beyond repair you know then uh you're out of luck on that

gotcha okay and so for women what are some of the most common causes of female

pattern hair loss or not even necessarily female pattern per se but just female hair loss in general if it's

a small systemic so yeah so I would just say uh starting off that the female hair

follicle is much more sensitive uh than male hair follicles to a lot of different dysregulations so problems

with nutrition uh issues with inflammation uh medications that you might be taking hormone changes

obviously things are a lot more complicated when we talk about women and hormone optimization and lifestyle

factors very often times so there may be more influences also women do things a

lot more aggressively to their hair they might wear hair extensions more often than men they might use chemicals on

their scalp to straighten the hair certainly to color it more often than men they may use high heat on the hair

fibers so sometimes we get hair breakage and the hair breakage has nothing to do with the hair follicle it's just how

you're treating that dead fiber it's just like you know mistreating your fingernail obviously it's you know not

going to be good so if you mistreat the cuticle of your hair fiber it could lose its aesthetic value and that will not

self-repair so it's really important to grow good hair from the beginning we talked about female pattern hair loss

that isn't typically some Androgen sensitivity but it looks different in women than it does in men so

androgenetic alopecia in women typically doesn't create a big bald spot in the crown it will actually just deplete

diffusely through the frontal Zone and eventually you might see a little bit of a recession in the temples mainly

because the density there starts out pretty low and so it's a more sensitive area to loss of coverage so a woman

might notice for example that her ponytail is shrinking that she's got a wider part line than she used to that

the hair caliber is changing so that she has to change her hair style or as I said you know receding hairline in the

temples perhaps and she's got to change her hairstyle to kind of cover it over to provide an aesthetic frame of the

face a lot of women are also born with a high hairline to begin with and just simply

through no uh genetic other other genetic tendency or even sensitivity or other illness or dysregulation they just

have a high hairline and they don't like the way that looks and so there's a lot of reasons why patients and uh patients

may come to visit us here at Bowman Medical men and women depending on what's going on women also can lose

their eyebrows and eyelashes uh and not to mention things that can go wrong after plastic surgery uh leaving you

with scars or or changes in the hairline and other things like that that need to be covered with hair so I know that was

a lot but autoimmune conditions are very common uh the hormone uh obviously uh

dysregulation and imbalances are something that we would look at you know are how's your thyroid hormone what's

going on with your your female hormone levels and take a look at all of that what's your nutritional intake are you

on a special diet you know if you're following a restrictive diet like even just vegetarian or specific vegan it's

very difficult to maintain good protein intake and if you're a little bit iron deficient or prone to that you know

sometimes it's even worse so you start stacking all these things together um the most recent uh trigger I think uh

in terms of like man-made hair loss is ozempic or they semiglutid weight loss

programs which seem to be kind of a quick fix for many people I don't recommend it long term but it can really

trigger a lot of hair loss yeah yeah it makes sense so um and for women is there

a difference in terms of the way that you would approach it it sounds like it's really individualized for each individual person as far as what you do

from a functional medicine standpoint but how would you go about deciding who gets what of the act the additional

actual treatments that you're talking about so you talked about quite a variety sure how do you narrow it down

right so I mean it all starts with that basic algorithm that I kind of LED you through a little bit like the background

the medical history hair loss in the family we might do genetic testing and then what are the signs and symptoms

that we're dealing with and then we look at those lifestyle and holistic factors what are the hair styling habits and

then we talk about what are we trying to accomplish here you know maybe we look at the scalp and there's like all kinds

of inflammation there's dandruff or there's irritation there's you know it's very oily or very dry on the other end

um and so a lot of the scalp Health stuff that we find has to be mitigated first because that's the soil for the

plants right that's the garden right so we have to get the soil right before we work on the plants and so sometimes

patients will go through a process with my trichologist in-house to rectify that and then we can start a more robust hair

regrowth regimen now if they're local uh and the hair loss is mild then they may

just start those uh you know the functional medicine program get their

nutrition on point might start with nutritionals and nutraceuticals some of which we curate some of them which we

produce you know get that protein intake up and let's track it over time or they

may elect for something like the Ted procedures that we've just talked about which are very you know they're not invasive at all in fact they're very

relaxing on the scalp or we might need to do something more aggressive like a PRP injection uh to get things going in

the right direction but again if the follicles are dead and gone or we have a scar or we have an area where it's really you know a receding deeper

seeding hairline then we might need to do some degree of transplantation or at least plan for it sometime in the future

so for the Ted procedure versus The PRP sounds like PRP is more aggressive so do

you do microneedling for that or do you do injections for that or both so um the Ted has none of that obviously

which is really nice it's just the uh the instrument itself on the skin that vibrates and and disrupts the stratum

corneum layer which is the moisture barrier right and allows us to push those growth factors and peptides that

literally come out of a bottle uh into the scalp so it's a very very consistent process and that's just that's once a

month for four months and you'll see some really nice improvements in hair regrowth thickening of the follicle uh

thick the lengthening of the hair even a darkening a repigmentation in many cases or what we're seeing which is very very

nice yeah um but PRP we've been doing for many many years 18 years of PRP

treatments uh will apply a um uh we'll take a blood draw of about 60 CC's we'll

use local anesthetic while that's going on and we're doing a dual spin to harvest out about 10 to 12 billion

platelets and it's injected into the scalp in a painless way so it's local anesthetic a complete scalp block not a

painful process but it is injections my PRP process finishes with a

microneedling pass across the skin we do inject a calcium chloride releasing

agent which basically triggers the platelets to do their business and then I love to microneedle the skin just a

little bit just to trigger that repair process to let the platelets know hey we've got to do our business right here

right at the low of the scalp and we also use laser light therapy before and

after our PRP treatments and very often we might even use perinatal biologics or exosome therapy in conjunction with the

PRP or even some synthetic scaffolds like PDO threads to put in Under the

Skin at the same time I'm not familiar with that what are those pediofids oh PDO is amazing technology

polydioxinone is a synthetic slow absorbing used to be a suture material back in the 1980s anybody who's gone

through surgery and had like a a purple Stitch placed into their skin or their belly knows that it lasts for about six

months so it's a very very slow absorbing suture material it's used in cosmetic procedures today to improve

wrinkles and cellulite sometimes to tether the skin in different ways with varying results obviously you know as a

visit visit an expert for that kind of thing but we can put those synthetic uh tiny little threads in Under the Skin

just below the hair follicles and as they absorb over the course of six to 12 months you get a boost of hair growth

and so that really it's a really exciting technology to include with PRP oh interesting so it's kind of like

you're you're stimulating blood flow based on the fact that you've got something for in there that needs to be absorbed is that kind of the concept

well we don't exactly know the full mechanism of action but we do know from

by biopsies in the laboratory on and also even on mice that this material

first of all is very very inert it doesn't create a big reaction at the level of the skin and that's one of the

reasons why it was FDA approved back in the 1980s as a slow absorbing suture material and it's used as mesh for um

you know for hernia operations it's used in many many different places probably millions and millions of surgeries over

the course of decades obviously and millions and millions of patients across the world so it's a very very safe

material it does not create a reaction in fact looking for skin reactions from

polydioxinone are very very rare you can't even find them in the clinical literature it's very difficult

um so it's a very safe material essentially to use in the skin and so it dissolves over time I mean maybe there's

something with the enzymatic degradation that the body is doing to kind of take care of that that little tiny thread

that releases growth factors and triggers the body's natural healing process which therefore enhances hair

growth in many cases so doing that with the PRP and even our PRP alone we're

going to have about 10 to 14 months of Boost from a single treatment instead of a series of three or four or five or

every month coming in for a therapy got it got it and so all of the things that you've just listed it sounds like you do

a lot of like stacking of different types of Therapeutics if somebody has like micro follicles for example like

they're they're smaller than they should be will this cause them to become more robust or more like more dense hair

growth or what exactly or do you just do you expect it at the microscopic level to change

sure so you know when we look at the scalp under the microscope as I mentioned before there's a whole

gradation a whole spectrum of how good the hair could be right the best best hair is like thick like an oak tree and

and you know and and tall as a sequoia right um but as you go weaker and worsier than you know that tree becomes

thinner and shorter over time and actually less pigmented you can see right through it so we go from a in many

cases a very very very thick hair that would normally live around the sides in the back of the scalp to a super thin wispy hair that we would see perhaps in

the temples or in a thinning Zone uh near the frontal area and so if the follicle is beyond repair we're going to

let you know that but if it's just miniaturized then there's a great opportunity to trigger regrowth and a

lot of dark choices may have to do with your lifestyle um you know a busy college student may

opt for a PRP treatment because it's a set it and forget it therapy you know for the year he's good he doesn't have

to worry about topicals or using a laser in his dorm room or something like that um you know busy CEO same thing for for

our women you know who are you know busy at work and doing their things you know uh you know PRP is a great treatment

especially when there's a lot of weak hair sure but then again we're very realistic we know

um after a certain period of time we're not going to see much more results from the PRP so what's happening have we

stabilized the situation we've improved it quite a bit but we need still need more hair well then it's time for the

follicular unit extraction transplant process and uh and that's changed a lot over the years okay so and how has that

changed how is hair transplant kind of evolved wow so in the 25 years that I've been in the field of hair

transplantation it's changed light years so years ago we were stuck with only what we call strip harvesting so we

would have to take a strip of skin out of the back of the scalp and suture or staple it closed and then use that

tissue that donor tissue and dissect it under the microscope into individual

grafts which retain small groups of hairs but today we now have instruments

that are smaller than the tip of a ballpoint pen which allow us to extract the follicles directly from the donor

Zone that's where the hairs are good and redistribute them into the thinning or the balding areas in a very comfortable

process in a very repeatable process and in a completely natural way that has a

super fast and comfortable recovery so we're not dealing with a linear SCAR or stitches or Staples or some you know

staying out of the gym for a month forget about all that you could be back in the gym in three days after this procedure and completely healed in six

days wow that's a amazing so and it used to be I think at least as I've seen some of

the old older pictures that hair transplants were sometimes fairly obvious that they had been you know that they'd had a graft or something but it

sounds like yeah that's a whole lot more natural looking I would assume right so back in the 80s and 90s when the grafts

were much larger either they were taken out using a big larger punch like the size of a pencil eraser you have these

pluggy looking you know now Barbie doll hairs you know and it's a you know it's a Barbie summer so we got to talk about

Barbie um so not no longer are you gonna have that Barbie doll look uh we're using as

little as a single hair follicle but more importantly than that is the Artistry involved with the transplant

and that's the key to the whole thing the design the the shape of the hairline you know for women it's not just this

like semi-circle around the face it's a it's a curve and it recedes and then it bulges and it recedes back and there's

changes in hair hair direction that are nuanced and difficult to appreciate

unless you've studied it and so female hairlines are very intricate and I take a lot of pride in creating female

hairlines that look beautiful and natural and completely undetectable and

then post surgery what you mentioned that people can do right back in the gym or right immediately afterwards what do

they need to do in order to nurture I mean when you when you transplant a plant from one pot to another you gotta

kind of be careful for a little while is what's the process look like yeah so so the grafted area let's just say the

recipient Zone whether it's a hairline or an eyebrow or even eyelashes or some scar that you have uh it's fragile so

you have to be careful with that area no friction or trauma unless we're doing under direct guidance here in the office

so many patients will come in once a day after their procedure until they're completely healed so that first week you

might be visiting us if you're here in town uh if you're going home then you're going to use a no friction washing

protocol and you're going to have an entire healing kit that we provide so these are ointments sprays lotions and

so forth not only just to keep you comfortable but also to accelerate the healing from the process that we've done

so what have I not asked do that you want to make sure you leave with our audience oh my gosh well we did Cover a lot I

guess you know sometimes when you're struggling with hair loss out there you know you tend to look for that magic vitamin or you know some some super

shampoo or something like that and unfortunately that can be very distracting because there's literally thousands and thousands of things that

are out there on the market that are geared towards people with thinning hair and I'll be the first to tell you that look you know nutrition and Hair Care is

certainly important uh first it's aesthetic value and to provide enough nutrients and fuel for the hair follicle

but if you're really struggling with hair loss you might need to look deeper and so sometimes it's not so easy to

find a board-certified hair restoration physician and that's why you know I often get invited on interviews and

podcasts to be able to spread the word because there usually isn't a local hair

transplant surgeon or board certified hair restoration physician with a holistic and well-rounded approach or even one that treats men and women uh in

your local neighborhood right and so that's why 50 of our patients do connect

with us first virtually online and so uh I guess I would just encourage any

listener anybody in the sound of my voice if you're struggling with hair loss or you know somebody who is uh you know pass the information along that uh

that there is hope and help and that is we're well beyond the snake oil age we're well beyond the hair plug uh you

know era of hair restoration and treatments and procedures and the only caveat I guess would say you know just

be careful out there in terms of medical tourism you don't want to be traveling you know to distant lands where they

don't have regulations and protocols and cleanliness and you know things to get to a great result not and things good

that could put you in danger in your in your life so uh so there is uh you know there is some Nuance to finding uh

Physicians out there but uh you know being board certified and having uh experience and expertise and focusing

exclusively on hair restoration to me is the way to go and that's that's what's

built my practice over time awesome well thank you so much and where can people go to learn more about you

yeah so if there's if you're out there and you're struggling with hair loss certainly baumanmedical.com

b-a-u-m-a-n-medical.com I've written over uh literally thousands of pages of information over the past 25 years in my

practice and and applied it there you'll see videos and frequently asked questions about hair loss men and women

children even and all the other things that we do to help improve people's lives through maintaining enhancing and

restoring you know their own living and growing hair and so that's the place to go you can request a consultation if

you're done watching the videos and and seeing what we do or or follow me on social media and slide into the DMS

there if you've got a question I do answer all of my own uh uh direct messages and private messages on all the

social media channels that you can imagine thank you so much Dr Bauman this has been very informative really appreciated

time all right Lauren well it's been great to be with you thank you are you looking for a holistically mind

cause rather than sentence oppression unfortunately even in the all the alternative healing professions this

isn't a given that's why I've created wholehealthdoctor.com a resource to help connect patients to Health Care

practitioners in their area who share a root cause philosophy alternatively most of the practitioners listed also

practice Telehealth so if there isn't anyone local to you you can still find a great practitioner to help you regain

Optimal Health go to wholehealthdoctor.com that's whole healthdr.com type in your location or

adjust the specialty that you're looking for and find the practitioner who's right for

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