Hair Biohacking with Dr. Bauman

Today I am speaking with Dr. Alan Bauman on all things hair biohacking. We dive into why we lose our hair, what we can do about it and how to get thicker and healthier hair.

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SHOW TRANSCRIPT

KAYLA BARNES (00:00)

Dr. Bauman, it's such a pleasure to have you here with me today.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (00:03)

It's great to be with you, Kayla.

KAYLA BARNES (00:05)

Absolutely. I've been wearing your turbo laser cap every day. I'm doing it, like, religiously because I know that it works. Actually. I have friends that have used it and have I've seen a tremendous benefit. So I'm so excited to ask you all of the hair biohacking questions today.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (00:22)

Awesome. So we can biohack baldness. I'm ready for you.

KAYLA BARNES (00:26)

I love that. So first of all, let's talk a little bit about your background. What got you so interested in hair?

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (00:34)

So I was born with hair, as most of us were, and I learned to like it and love it. But the issue was really I didn't know anything about hair loss and hair restoration except that I watched my dad go bald when I was a teenager, and his dad, my grandfather, I never met the guy with hair. So I figured, especially since my mom's dad also had a big bald spot, that this was coming for me, but I didn't really know much about it. My first love was plastic surgery. I was lucky enough to have a mentor in plastic surgery. He kind of showed me the procedures and treatments that were life changing for both men and women in terms of body contouring and skin and so forth. But he didn't know much about hair. And it wasn't until I was in my residency program in surgery that I actually encounter someone who had had a hair transplant, and I was completely blown away and unable to tell that he had had something done. And so that kind of started the journey, if you will. In my mind, that was the turning point because I had this amazing conversation with him.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (01:37)

He explained it in layman's terms how he had gone and had a hair transplant, and I was basically trying to figure out on his scalp where his hair was transplanted, and he was telling me how it had been done with single follicle implantation and all that. I was totally intrigued by the possibilities of recreating hair that looked totally natural, like these patients. And then the second thing that he told me about was essentially how it changed his life and how it affected him socially and professionally. And that was something that really stuck with me, and I decided to look into it. And so that was the beginning fork in the road, if you will. Like, the path opened up to me, and I started to do more due diligence and research into it, reading textbooks and Journal articles and kind of keeping an eye open when I was at different conferences for cosmetic surgery, which was my first love, and learning a little bit more about hair. And the more I learned about it, the more I got interested in it. And I ended up teaming up with a physician out on Long Island because I was born and raised in Jersey, College in California, medical school in New York.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (02:42)

And that's where I did all my internship and residency training. I ended up doing a Fellowship in hair transplants out in Long Island. And I never looked back, actually. And so that was kind of the turning point in terms of not going back to plastic and reconstructive procedures. I just got super involved in doing hair transplants and loving it and just knowing that I just had to dedicate everything, all my energy, effort and willpower towards hair restoration for both men and for women.

KAYLA BARNES (03:11)

I love that.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (03:12)

So that's the short version.

KAYLA BARNES (03:13)

Oh, yeah. I'm sure we'll add all your credentials and everything in the show notes, but I love this because we can talk about biohacking, our internal biology, which is amazing. We all want to have great energy and feel amazing, but looking amazing is also kind of a part of this, at least. As for me, having thick hair and good skin is so important. So I'm glad that we're going to get to dive into it all. But can you tell us a little bit about why hair loss happens? Can happen for a variety of reasons. It's always genetic stress. What's the deal?

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (03:48)

Hair loss can be complicated. And of course, in recent times, you hear about alopecia, and alopecia is the scientific term for hair loss. But just like scientific terms, for many different things in medicine, alopecia is just a symptom. It just means that the hair is falling out. It doesn't tell you why. Just like if you had vertigo. Oh, my God. My doctor diagnosed me with vertigo. Well, it just means you're dizzy, but it doesn't really tell you why. And there could be a million reasons why you're having vertigo or headaches or something like that. And same is true with hair loss. But there are obviously some things that are more common than not when it comes to hair loss that we see kind of garden variety day in and day out in the practice. And then there are other things that are more rare. So let's just start with how hair follicles work, right? Hair follicles are under the skin, and what they produce is kind of like what your fingernails produce, this hard substance. It's like a hard, thin fiber. And your body spends a lot of time, effort and energy and resources to make that hair fiber happen.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (04:48)

And most people are born with about 100,000 to 150,000 hair follicles on their head. They cycle on and cycle off. They use a lot of energy. So things that can interrupt your energy or availability to create these kinds of hair fibers, all of this energy. If something interrupts that, like, for example, poor nutrition or inflammation or lifestyle factors like toxin exposure or poor sleep, wake cycles, things like that. Your hair follicles are so highly metabolic that they're very sensitive. They become a very strong barometer for your overall health. And wellness. But things can put those hair follicles at risk. And of course, as we know, genetics play a big role, and genetics can essentially make your follicles more sensitive to certain hormones. And so for men, for example, male hormones are the primary trigger for miniaturization and loss of hair follicle function. And in women, it's not so simple. There are androgen effects, but there are many other things that also affect hair as well. So in a nutshell, if you've got some kind of receding hairline or you have a loss of coverage or you're seeing a widening part line, or you have symptoms like a shrinking ponytail or shedding like crazy, the most important thing to know is that you've got to find out why, and you've got to seek out a medical professional who specializes in hair loss.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (06:17)

And sometimes this is not going to be your local dermatologist. And I know I have a lot of dermatology friends, and many of them will agree they're not that expert on hair loss. They're not board certified in hair restoration. So you've got to get a consultation to figure out what's going on. That's the most important thing to do. So we can figure out what is the cause, what are the risks, and then what to do about it.

KAYLA BARNES (06:41)

I love that. And I also love that you mentioned so many holistic kind of modalities or influences here nutrition, sleep. I am a firm believer that most things don't just really happen, especially not overnight. So if you're taxing your energy centers and now that I know that it takes so much energy to produce this beautiful hair that we have, that's a really great analogy. So I appreciate that. So what about treatments that are on the market now? I know that many people look for a supplement to try to boost hair growth once they feel like their hair might be thinning. Are there any natural kind of ways to approach it before you go right to potentially getting, obviously, a hair transplant or something of that nature?

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (07:27)

Well, absolutely. So we start with the diagnosis. A lot of patients will consult with me. Virtually a lot of patients will come in for hair loss measurements. So we can actually use our AI powered microscopes to count the hairs on their head and literally monitor exactly what the hair caliber is in different locations. And those kinds of evaluations, as well as blood tests, biomarkers, genetic testing and such, gave us a bit of a clue as to what's going on. Signs and symptoms will tell us also what's going on. Do you have inflamed scalp and things like that? So based on all of that information, well, then we can move into therapeutic modalities and treatments. But yes, absolutely. There's nutritional things that we can do. I mean, let food be thy medicine, right? I mean, we know that there can be a huge impact on our body in terms of what we put in and how we eat. So just as a great example, we have collagen replacement protocols because as we age, we make less collagen. And you know how important that is for skin? Well, it's important for hair too. And every year after, let's say age 30, our collagen production goes down.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (08:32)

So we need to supplement that. We may have issues with biotin metabolism, and that's something that we can help elucidate through genetic testing. But if you have trouble producing biotin in your gut through a healthy microbiome, or if you have trouble with biotin and activity, which is an enzyme, then you can supplement with biotin. Those are some of the offensive treatments that we use nutraceutically. And then what I would consider other, like defensive would be things to help mitigate the effects of stress, like adaptogens, such as ashwagandha or things that would boost your immunity. We have mushroom compounds and things like that. And we also have things that mitigate or reduce inflammation in the body, like curcumin turmeric. We've got to address the allostatic load, which is all the additive stress that's going on in modern life. We have to try to reduce that and deal with it and try to reduce all that anxiety that comes with it, because sometimes the anxiety can cause the hair loss and sometimes the hair loss causes the anxiety and it can be a vicious cycle. So a lot of our nutritional interventions kind of focus around that.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (09:42)

And of course, as we mentioned androgens before, there are Nutritionals that can help modulate hormones for both men and for women. For example, like salt Palmetto. Salt Palmetto is an anti androgen that you can take to reduce DHT, dihydro, testosterone. And that can be very helpful. So there's, like I said, these offensive and defensive types of Nutritionals that we typically recommend. And we've got on the Bowman team, so to speak. We have the nutrition Bauman, which is a variety of different Nutritionals that we can prescribe. And I also use a lot of others as well, like neutral fall and VIVIS Gal and things like that in the practice.

KAYLA BARNES (10:21)

Wonderful. You bring up a point about collagen. So of course, there's so many collagen supplements in the market. And this question is asked to me all the time, is collagen legitimate in terms of just the powders and then how much do you need to take for it to actually be effective?

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (10:39)

Yeah. So, I mean, this is going to be a different answer for each person in terms of how much they need to replace. Right. But yes, collagen is effective. I think there's plenty of data in the literature now that can show that. We can certainly put in the show links, if you would like. The show notes, the links to some of the more robust clinical trial work about supplementation with collagen. I like a multi collagen peptide compound, and there's a specific one that we use for the practice obviously, you're not going to get a vegan collagen. It needs to be animal protein, but it's very popular and it's very, very helpful. I find in a variety of patients who have some issues with their nutritional status. So again, that has to be taken patient by patient. And if you're not seeing good results with the collagen that you're taking right now, then maybe you want to try one that's specifically designed for hair. And we call that one the Builder. That's the Bauman branded collagen.

KAYLA BARNES (11:43)

Great. You can get that on your website?

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (11:46)

Yeah, it's on our e store. And again, we can put the links there. But what I do recommend is that we start with the evaluation first before you start grasping at straws, because there's a hierarchy. We want to make sure that your scalp is healthy, that you have good soil for the plants first off. And then nutrition is kind of also foundational, but maybe not as powerful as things that you mentioned before, like laser light or even medications and so forth, or regenerative medicine like platelet rich plasma PDO grow and exosome therapy, things like that.

KAYLA BARNES (12:19)

Absolutely. So I want to go back really quick. So when you talk about genetics, what are there are there specific genetic snips that you're looking for, gene variants that you're looking for? If someone has their 23 and me test, I know this might scare people, so maybe you don't even want to check, but what genes are you looking at?

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (12:36)

Yeah. So I can tell you the exact snips, if you would like. But we do a test. It's called tricoteest, and that's probably the easiest way because what that does is it takes into account some of the epigenetic factors. It makes you fill out a form first, and then it combines that with your genetic test, and it tells us exactly what metabolic pathways might be influencing your hair loss and therefore, which metabolic pathways we can target specifically to improve your hair growth. So I'll give you some great examples I hear all the time in the practice. I tried Rogaine. It didn't work. Okay, well, first let's figure out what you mean by that. Did you just stay the same? Did you continue to get worse? Because staying the same with hair loss is actually an okay result. Maybe it's not a great result, but it's better than losing ground. But what we know is that about 30% to 40% of folks out there may not respond to the minoxidal. That's just in the generic bottle. And the reason for that is that there's a certain amount of enzyme activity at the level of the scalp called sulfotransferase activity.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (13:43)

And this is what converts minoxidil that comes out of the bottle. Right. Fda approved minoxidil into minoxidal sulfate, which is the active ingredient or the active metabolite. Right. At the level of the skin, which triggers hair follicle function. And so if you have low sulfate transpose activity, you're not going to convert to minoxidil sulfate that easily. And 2% or 5% or 10% menoxidal is going to have very, very little effect or less effect than you would expect. And so how do we figure this out? Well, this genetic test can help tell us if you have a propensity for low sulfur transferring activity. And if that's the case, then we have to compensate for that. That means either adding another type of modality or beefing up the monoxidel topical with a compounded version that has a sulfotransference booster, something like Trent non, for example. But there are others, too. So that's just one example. That's just one snip that could explain why 40% of folks who have tried overthecounter minoxidil didn't get a great result from it.

KAYLA BARNES (14:44)

That's an incredible point. What about the biomarkers? Are there any specific biomarkers that you're looking for? I mean, I'm just going to throw an example. If your vitamin D levels are really low, then potentially you might have a propensity for more hair loss.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (14:58)

Yeah. Bingo. So today there's a lot of data on vitamin D and hair loss. And some of my colleagues in the international site of hair restriction surgery have done studies on this. There's a lot in the clinical literature on vitamin D. So that plays a very important role. If you're anemic. Right. If you're low in iron, for whatever reason, you're not carrying enough oxygen in your blood, that's going to starve the follicles of an important nutrient. Right. That's the fuel that your follicles need to burn. And there could be many other things. If you have a thyroid imbalance, if your testosterone or DHT levels are exceptionally high, if you have thyroid imbalance, if you have a variety of different things. And we can look for even autoimmune markers in the body. Right. There are certain antibody tests that we can look at and see if you have a propensity towards autoimmune disorders or if you know that you have an autoimmune disease in the family. We would definitely want to take a look at that.

KAYLA BARNES (15:57)

Well, this is amazing. People might come to you and actually get like two benefit. They might regrow their hair or make their hair thicker and find an underlying condition, it sounds like. Which is.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (16:10)

Kayla. Actually, hair growth is an important sign, as we said, of health and vitality, not just of youth and fertility, but it's a very strong barometer. So oftentimes we see hair loss and hair thinning, and women occur around the stressful situation of childbirth, but then it can also occur again around the time of perimenopause and menopause. So often we're identifying these fluctuations and hormone levels at the time when hair loss is occurring. And in men specifically, we can see other issues, other problems that occur, maybe even lifestyle factors like toxin exposure, smoking or poor lifestyle choices, lack of sleep, you know, a type personality. Again, this alistatic load that we talk about, which is the sum total of our stress response. That's overactive stress response, chronic stress response. That's not good for the body in many different ways.

KAYLA BARNES (17:09)

Absolutely not. Basically silent killer, realistically, it just has such an impact on the body. Stress. Absolutely. So let's talk about red light therapy. So why is it this cap just seems to be amazing to me. So easy to use. You can do it while doing other things. But what is some of the science on red light therapy and hair growth?

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (17:33)

Yeah. So low level laser light therapy, which is really the science of photobiomodulation, which is the use of wavelengths of light, usually visible light, but not always to have an impact on cellular metabolism. This is something like 25, 30 years ago when I went to medical school 30 years ago, they didn't really teach us any of that in terms of what the light had. If the light had an effect on the human body, what we knew about was photosynthesis, and that was about it. But today, thanks to people like Dr. Michael Hamlin, who is just the ultimate research guru, PhD, brilliant scientists, and all of the thousands of his colleagues and tens of thousands of papers now that have been written on photo biomodulation, we now know all there is to know about how light really affects cellular metabolism. And so years ago, we did not know that visible red light had an effect on the mitochondria, which are the energy centers within the cells. We didn't know that the cytochrome C oxidase in the electron transport chain of the membrane of the mitochondria was the photo acceptor molecule. But we know that today. And now we know that there's a huge cascade of events, not just an enormous burst of ATP, which is the fuel that the cells use, but also antiinflammatory properties, improvements in blood flow and acceleration of wound healing.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (18:57)

It's just amazing how many great effects, not just red light, but also near infrared and foreignfrared can have on the body. I mean, look, I'm a volunteer for veteran group here in Boca Raton for us vets and active military. And we use photobiomodulation to help them with traumatic brain injury. And we use transcranial photobiomodulation on them and do a lot of testing. So this is some real solid science. Now, this is not Hocus Pocus. It really does work. And I helped design the turbolaser cap, which is the one that we sent over to you with the help of Dr. Michael Raven, who is an MD and the inventor of the original laser cap, which has been knocked off a zillion times in China and elsewhere. And the turbo laser is really designed to be convenient so that you have the shortest treatment time, cover the scalp. Totally. So it has about 25% to 30% more coverage than any other device on the market. It's designed to be portable, so you can pack it, you can disassemble it in a minute. And it basically packs completely flat for travel. It's cordless and rechargeable and it's packed with over 300 pure laser diodes.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (20:09)

So we're not talking LEDs, which you can see in many of the consumer devices. Yeah, they're a little bit more expensive to put in there, but they're the ones that are going to generate that really huge increase in ATP production, which is the energy that the Follicles are then going to use to make better quality hair.

KAYLA BARNES (20:29)

That's great. What about blood flow when it's related to hair, does that play an influence? Because I talk all the time about the importance of blood flow and brain health. What about for hair health?

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (20:40)

Absolutely. I mean, look, if you have an area, let's say, that's been scarred due to trauma or surgery, like a burn victim, I can tell you, as a hair transplant surgeon, you have to be very careful how you apply transplanted hair follicles into a zone like that. You can't just go gangbusters and Willy nilly into a zone like that. You have to treat that area very carefully. There are things that we do to improve blood flow in those specific cases, like nitrogen nitric oxide, oral supplements, topical nitric oxide releasing agents. We use red light therapy, we use PRP, we use a lot of things to make that ground more fertile so that it will accept the transplanted hairs. So if we dial that back a little bit and we think of poor blood flow on the scalp, there's a lot of reasons why that could be happening. Maybe you have inflammation and micro scar tissue at the level of the scalp that needs to be rectified or at least addressed to get better hair growth. And the thing also is that as the Follicles start to weaken, they actually demand less blood flow. So there's less blood flow going into that zone.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (21:48)

Just by nature of not having a lot of hair there, if you can crank up the hair growth, you can actually increase the blood flow. So it's almost like a chicken or the egg thing in some ways.

KAYLA BARNES (22:00)

Yeah, that's super interesting, but we can definitely probably say that exercise and improving blood flow that way is good for hair health.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (22:07)

Yeah, it would be great to study that. I think that there's probably a little bit more data on massage of the scalp and treatments that we do directly to the scalp to track blood flow. I have actually a handheld ultrasound machine, so we can actually attach my iPhone. We can actually look at the occipital vessels and we can see what the blood flow and the Doppler flow is in those vessels. If we're curious about that, we can do transcranial oxygen saturation, so transdermal oxygen sensors are available so we can check the blood flow there. We can also look using infrared photography to see if there's enough blood flow in those areas, let's say, in a scar tissue and we can check profusion the old fashioned way, which is basically to push on the area with your finger until it blanches white. And then you let go of it and see when and how long it takes to get the pinkness back. Just like if you pinch the tip of your finger, it takes a couple of seconds for the color to come back. So we can do all of those things as a surgeon to see what's going on there.

KAYLA BARNES (23:18)

Very cool. You talked about PRP, and I've done PRP before for skin health, and I actually have had them put some injections before into my hair. I've also done it with exosomes. I would love for you to talk a little bit about that. And then you also mentioned one other thing. You said PRP. There's a couple of topical treatments. What was the last thing that you.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (23:39)

Mentioned in our regenerative medicine category? And I'm a huge fan of regenerative medicine. I've been involved in the American Academy Anti Aging for over 20 years and the Age Management Medicine Group. And I've been one of the first stem cell certified physicians from the aforementioned, I took one of the first classes that they ever offered in terms of certification. So World Stem Cell Summit is a conference I go to a lot. But the point is that I love regenerative medicine, and that's the biggest area of improvement and change in the world of hair loss and hair restoration that I've seen in the past, let's say five years, ten years. That's where most of the improvements have really come about in the area of regenerative medicine. So we have PRP. We've done over 10,000 PRP in the practice for nearly almost 20 years, 18 years or more of PRP treatments. And of course, they've changed and evolved over time. Now we also have what we call PDO grow. And that's the use of PRP, plus the threads, the PDO threads, Poly dioxinone threads at the same time. And you mentioned Exosomes, which are, of course, the messages that the stem cells give off to tell the tissue what to do, how to regenerate, how to repair.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (24:52)

And we have Exosomes, you know, basically in our cryopris -80 that we can thaw and use either with the PRP or as a standalone treatment, topically, if we would like, for hair regrowth and also for wound healing after hair transplantation is very popular as well.

KAYLA BARNES (25:11)

Yeah, the PRP, I think everyone calls it liquid gold. That's at least what I call it. But I've done micro needling on its own, and then with the PRP, and it's incredible how much quicker the skin heals with the PRP versus just micro needling.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (25:29)

Come on. That goes back to the Kim Kardashian vampire facelift from a long time ago. It's probably 15 years ago. Right. So we knew that something was happening with the use of platelets. And platelets are the body's own workforce for tissue regeneration and repair. Just think about it. If you get a paper cut, the first guys on scene are platelets to clot the blood. And then to stimulate tissue regeneration and repair, we can leverage the payload of literally billions and billions and billions of platelets to do our bidding. Right. Whether it be on the skin of our face to improve the tightness or texture or glow, as well as on the scalp to improve hair follicle function. I mean, that's super exciting.

KAYLA BARNES (26:17)

Certainly. Can Peter P actually regrow the hair, or is it mostly just keeping that, as you said, kind of the bed fertilized or really healthy, or can it actually prompt hair regrowth?

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (26:29)

Well, remember how I explained to my patients, think about PRP, like fertilizer in the garden. Now, from the top floor of the building, you may not be able to see that blade of grass growing down at the street level, but if that blade of grass grew taller and thicker and stronger, then you'd be able to see it. So sometimes you might have hair that you're not really able to proceed with the naked eye that could grow better and thicker and stronger and give you coverage again, which is really nice and exciting. But sometimes it's hard to tell without a microscope whether you have hair there that's viable that could be rejuvenated or not. And so that's kind of why we need to look at your scalp under the microscopes. That's what these are, right. As well as our electronic microscopes, our dermiscopes, we call them the hair cams and such. And we have a variety of different ones to really tell what areas are most likely to respond to PRP, because, for example, you might have a variety of different zones. So if you start right at your hairline, you may have an area that's completely depleted.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (27:30)

And unfortunately, if it's severely depleted, PRP is not going to change it. But right behind that, you might have an area of severe miniaturization. So you have high density, low quality hair. Well, that may not giving you much coverage right now, but PRP could really enhance that or other non invasive PRP plus laser PRP plus topicals. And then you may have other areas which are at risk but have not been miniaturized yet that we need to protect. And PRP can do that very well, keeping those follicles as healthy as they possibly can be. So you may have different zones that respond differently. And we see that all the time when we measure the scalp hair growth using hair check tools. So we see areas that respond amazing, and we see areas that are just kind of maintaining or improving. Just 5%, that's great.

KAYLA BARNES (28:21)

And you can do that all with these specialty microscopes and lenses that you have. You can just kind of spot check how the hair is doing in each area, right?

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (28:30)

Yeah, we have microscopes that are AI powered, so we can do a photograph of an area of scalp. That photograph gets sent to the cloud in a millisecond and comes back. And that photograph is then analyzed, and it tells us exactly how many hairs each hair is identified and sorted in terms of their thickness, in terms of microns. So it gives us a rating scale of whether those hairs are super small, small, medium large or jumbo, basically. And it gives a whole graph on the screen of what's going on. And then I have another microscope that actually gives a virtual tattoo so we can take a picture of your scalp and then come back to that same zone. It could be, let's say, even a couple of days later, and the computer will know exactly matching hair to hair. And so I guess someone once said all the hairs on our head are numbered, right? I think that's a biblical verse. But this microscope actually tracks hair to hair matching. So if you want to know if hair 422 got more pigment or less pigment or got thicker or is missing now, and it was there before.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (29:38)

I mean, this software is so sophisticated, it really tells us exactly what's going on. So we'll know, like, in your particular case, what's working.

KAYLA BARNES (29:46)

That's incredible. I love you know, it's almost like bio individuality with hair. So what's going to work? What won't when it comes to I guess this is applicable for men and women, but brushing our hair is obviously something. I mean, I do it every day after I wash my hair. Is there a specific way that we can brush our hair better? Do you have any tips on this for women?

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (30:09)

Well, what you want to make sure is that you're not brushing your hair when it's in a fragile state. So what we've talked about so far is the function of the hair follicle. But we really haven't talked too much about what the hair shaft is all about. So the hair shaft is that long fiber of, let's say, collagen and other things, protein, keratin and so forth go into that to make it the flexible, subtle, shiny, but yet beautiful fiber that it is right in mass when you have 1000 of them. And so the interesting thing about the hair fibers is that when they're wet, they're absorbing the moisture of, let's say, your shower, your shampoo, what have you. But they're also very fragile when they're wet. So if you're combing your hair strongly when it's wet, you're actually more prone to break the hair at that time. So we want to be just very careful when you're combing your hair wet. Even how you dry your hair can make a big difference. So, I mean, we have special towels for those with long hair, men or women, actually. And we have special brushes that we recommend as well.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (31:14)

But really to figure out what's going on with your hair fiber. And is it performing well? Is it dull? Is it shiny? Is it rough? Is it smooth? Is it the right color? Is it the right curl? I have a full time psychology Department with a certified psychologist and certified hair coach on staff and her team to actually evaluate all those things. In addition to the health of your scalp, she handles the beauty of your hair as well. So that's totally different than what we do on the hair growth side, which is really my specialty. So it works handing a lot when I have a licensed cosmetologist who's also a trichologist in the practice to help do that. Trichology is the study of hair and scalp, and it's not as popular here in this part of the world. In the United States, it's a little bit more popular in the UK. But more and more psychologists are becoming certified here in the US. And I think it's going to be a big part of how we take care of our hair as a society, especially as hair surgeons get busier, they're going to want to have a trichologist on staff like I do.

KAYLA BARNES (32:17)

I agree. That seems like a very valuable position. So we've talked about kind of why we lose our hair really quick to touch on Gray hair. Is there anything that guys can do or women, too that can help prevent Gray hair, or is it just all genetic? And by the way, I was very excited to learn this the other day. But my mother is 50. She has not a single Gray hair. My grandfather is 79, and he only has some Gray hair in his beard and none on his head. So I feel like genetically I have a good runway there.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (32:53)

Yeah, well, there is a huge genetic component. And don't forget also, that allostatic load. So keeping your cool, so to speak, in terms of keeping the stress level low is going to help maintain the pigmentation of those hair follicles. We've all heard the anecdotal reports throughout history with stressful situation, and it seemed like their hair turned Gray overnight. All you have to do is look at some of our presidents before and after and see if that's the case. I think Barack Obama certainly looked a lot more Gray after he was done than when he started. But, yeah, what you can do, there's not a lot you can do at this moment. There's a lot of research ongoing. There's some things that we can't really talk about today yet. But I know that there's a lot of research happening in the world of pigmentation and such. So some of that is still top secret. So I'll ask you to just stay tuned and we can reveal some of that as we go forward. But there are certain pathways, like Cadillacs and so forth that people have been talking about, which really require a little bit more research.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (34:03)

And so that's what's going on nowadays. So stay tuned. I think we'll figure this out. But until then, obviously, we have to make sure that again, we maintain good nutrition and keeping our static load under control, keeping our stress level low, and then resorting to color when we need to. Unfortunately, if we want to keep our hair looking dark and strong.

KAYLA BARNES (34:27)

Absolutely. So for men, let's say that they've tried everything. Their nutrition is good, and unfortunately, they've just lost their hair. So they can, of course, come to you in the early stages, which I think getting ahead of any issue is what you should do. If you notice something going awry, you should address it right away, get a consultation with you. But what are the kind of different options for men and women for hair transplants in your office?

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (34:53)

Yeah, and you make a good point. We say in the field of hair loss, that time is follicle. So every moment lost in time, you could have an irreversible degradation of a hair follicle. And since we can't duplicate hair follicles yet, although there are some friends of mine trying to work on that, we can move a bunch of them around, but we definitely want to try to preserve what you have. And so, of course, our first part of our conversation today was just how to preserve the hairs that you have. We went through nutrition and red light therapy, regenerative medicine, and of course, there's medications like minoxidil and finasteride, endocasteride and even prostaglandin analogs and things like that. But if the follicle is dead and gone, then we're going to need to move some hair follicles from the more permanent zones, which is typically the back and the sides of the scalp, into the thinning of the Balding area. And for men, it's a little bit more obvious, right? They have a receding hairline or bald spot in the Crown. We can take out a bunch of their hair from the sides and the back, maybe even up to almost 50% of it, to redistribute and create coverage once again in those spinning or Balding areas.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (35:56)

And today that's done without scalpel, without stitches. It's done with a minimally invasive style of hair transplantation, which is comfortable, by the way. It's not a torture Chamber, and it heals super quick. And it also comfortably with a lot less restricted recovery than the old days with the stitches or staples. We take the individual grafts, which contain as little as a single hair follicle, and we can implant them into the thinning zone. It's not just done haphazardly, and it's not like planting palm trees. You have to insert the grafts and make the sites according to Mother Nature's orientation, angle and position so that the end result looks natural. And so, of course, that's all completed under local anesthetic. While a patient is awake or snoozing or watching movies on Netflix or listening to music, it takes a number of hours to complete that kind of work. Sometimes it takes more than one day, and it takes about a week to completely recover before the crusting is basically gone and then the Follicles are in a resting phase for several months before they start to kick into gear. It usually requires about five to six months to see half of the result and about ten to twelve months to see the final result for most patients.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (37:07)

But in women, hair transplantation can be a little bit different. We have to make sure is there enough room in the female pattern of hair loss? Because female pattern may look a little bit different. They can retain the hairline, but they lose density in the mid zone or the frontal zone. I should say we want to make sure are they a good candidate, and do we have the right instruments and right approach to fill in those gaps and openings for our female patients? And that's why the evaluation is so critical. A lot of times our women are coming in with a high hairline or receding temples. Those are easy to handle. And we very often restore that through transplantation pretty simply using the same methods. But we can do for women, for example, a no shave hair transplant. We can take the Follicles without trimming any of the existing hair whatsoever and perform that implantation so that women don't have to shave their head, they don't have to trim their hair, change their hairstyle. And this is a relatively new style of technique that is now available for women, not just in the hairline and the temple areas or the Crown, but also in eyebrows and eyelashes and sideburns to fill in plastic surgery scars and things like that, too.

KAYLA BARNES (38:16)

So exciting. So you and I are going to do a little consult on my hair here in a few minutes. But before we move on to that, what are your thoughts on peptides?

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (38:26)

So peptides are super exciting, right? I mean, they can help us recover better from workouts. They can help stimulate growth hormone. You've got a variety of different peptides that are out there. Some of them are being more strongly regulated now by the FDA, or maybe the FDA wants to strongly regulate them. So I would caution any of your listeners to find a trusted physician who has trusted pharmaceutical compounders who can help them with the peptides. But there are some really, really cool peptides that work for hair. And this is not actually new if you've been in the field of hair restoration as long as I have, because 20 years ago we used a copper peptide called copper GHK or copper triptide for wound healing and for hair growth after hair transplant surgery. And it was a blue looking solution. It came in little kits that were like foil packets with gauze that was soaked in this copper peptide and bottles for sprays and spritzing after the procedure. And you could use it also long term after that as well. But the copper peptide was really amazing and had a lot of good science behind it for the wound healing properties and also for hair growth.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (39:42)

So copper peptide is not something super new. It's also been used in skincare for, like I said, almost two decades or so. But nowadays it's like what's old is new again, people are just discovering copper peptide. And I've seen that people are now using it injectably and topically and things like that. So there's some pretty exciting stuff that's out there. There's also peptides like thimeyland, for example. And there are some other ones that have been touted for hair regrowth. And I think we need a little bit more research on that, to be honest, to fully recommend them. But I know a lot of folks out there in the biohacking world are testing and trying those, and I wish them great luck. And I hope that we get a chance to measure and monitor them as well, because I'm a big advocate of peptides. I've had good experience with them in my practice and myself personally. So certainly think it's the way of the future.

KAYLA BARNES (40:42)

Absolutely. Yeah. It's a very exciting time. And I've played around with them a little bit. I was actually doing and you can tell me if I'm way off base and we're going to jump into this, but I've been telling my followers and anyone listening to the podcast, but I want to grow in hair here in this area. I told you I was basically born with my hair hair pulled back. So it's been super tight for a long time. I was doing like a dermal roller just in this area lightly. And then I was applying a peptide and then I was doing the cap after. Is this a decent protocol?

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (41:17)

Well, I like that idea. Well, micro needling, of course, we know, is very good for hair growth. I just get a little bit nervous when folks do it on their own because I wonder how well the devices that they're using have been sterilized and how they've been manufactured and how are they sharp? Are they not? Are they dull? Are they getting rusty? How are you sterilizing it yourself? How aggressive are you being? Because to be honest, let's think about this just in terms of micro needling. It deserves to be discussed. A micro needling tool, like a professional micro needling tool that a physician would use on you. And when you're in my practice, for example, we do micro needling after every PRP while the scalp is numb. We do a professional micro needling treatment, and we use a growth factor serum at the same time. And so that micro needling device that's like a $14,000 device, and it has a disposable tip that costs over $250 a piece. So it's a one time use disposable tip that is manufactured in such a way so it doesn't get caught on the hair. And it's completely adjustable in terms of depth down to the fraction of a millimeter.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (42:26)

And it's adjustable in terms of its vibration. And it's a corded device. It's not an old fashioned rechargeable one which were banned by the FDA years ago. So just compare that with what you might be doing at home and you might be thinking maybe I need a little bit of an upgrade. So I always worry when folks are purchasing these rollers and stamps and such online and even the mechanical tools again, the ones that were not approved by the FDA years ago, whether they're coming from China with the disposable tips from God knows where. How deep are you doing it? How are you keeping yourself comfortable while you're doing it at the correct depth? Because there's a thing that we look for at the level of the scalp when we're doing the micro needling. That tells us that we're at the right depth and that we've done enough. And there's kind of a little sweet spot. If you don't do enough, you're not going to get the result. And if you do too much, you're going to cause damage. And remember, if you permanently damage the follicle, you're out of luck. That's not so good.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (43:23)

You don't want to create a lot of inflammation. You want to just trigger a little bit of wound healing in that area. You just want to send a little signal to the local area to release the growth factors. You don't want to create a big bloody mess up there. So I get very nervous with my patience when I see the stuff that's going on on YouTube. So I guess that's just my little word of caution there. Sorry not to say that what you're doing is wrong, Kayla, but just be careful out there, okay?

KAYLA BARNES (43:50)

No, it's a great point. And I asked you, too, because I want an honest opinion because I actually don't use it on my skin at home for that exact reason. I know that in office, micro needling devices are going directly in and out of the skin versus that home. When you're rolling it, it's going in at an angle and it can actually make micro tears. I don't use it anywhere on my face, but that's a great point. Why would I maybe do it on my hair? I was just hoping it would get the peptides in there a little bit better. But you make a great point and I really appreciate it.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (44:20)

Yeah, the peptides are good. Like if you're using thimulin or copper peptide, that's great. Some of the other stuff with thymes and beta four, you want to be careful because there's some data that shows that the TB 4 may be good for hair growth but also may not be. Some of the studies at the University of Miami said that the TB four is maybe not so good. So that's one of those things where we have to watch the research now to see what the lion's share research is going to say because now we have some studies that say yes. And some studies that say no on the TV before. So be careful. If that's in there, you might be doing more harm than good. And I would rather you be doing something more like a platelet extract or something like that. Or come into the office. Let's use some topical exosomes that come from stem cells that are like super powerful, high concentration, tens of billions or hundreds of billions of exosomes to really get a nice effect for you.

KAYLA BARNES (45:18)

Absolutely. Well, I appreciate that. Can we do a quick little analysis, maybe like a 15 minutes one?

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (45:24)

Sure.

KAYLA BARNES (45:24)

I know that usually like an hour, but. Okay. As I told you. Should I pull my hair down?

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (45:30)

Yeah, for sure. Let's take a look.

KAYLA BARNES (45:32)

So I don't color my hair. I don't do anything to it. I just get a haircut, a very simple, plain haircut, by the way. My hair was pulled back. But this is the area. Let me adjust this. This is the area that I do have some thinning the rest of it, I don't know. You tell me what to do.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (45:52)

Yeah. So I mean, first, what I always like to hear from my patients is what their history of hair loss is in the family. So mom side or dad side, we try to get a nice genetic picture if they have siblings with hair loss or not, male, male or female, what's going on with their hair situation in the close blood relatives. Right. Because that's going to help us figure out your genetic risk and then always get an idea of an overview of the health status. And I know you're a biohacker, and so you're really on point with all that stuff and you live a Zen lifestyle.

 (46:26)

Zen.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (46:28)

Exact. Or trying to. Right. So all of those things are going to be really important. So we just try to get that overview, and then we kind of want to hear the inventory of symptoms. So sometimes patients will say, yeah, I'm receding here, or it just looks a little thinner to me, or I have a wider part line or I'm shedding like crazy. So those are the kinds of things that we want to hear to start with.

KAYLA BARNES (46:46)

So mother side, there is no baldness at all. Like I told you, my grandfather, not only he does not have Gray hair, but he also has a full, thick head of hair. My father, though, actually did go bald. I don't know exactly at what age, I would guess probably late twenties, just standard male pattern baldness. My mother full head of hair. And in terms of symptoms, I really don't have any symptoms. I always want to be better at everything in my life, I guess. So I would like thicker hair just because I get compliments on my hair often. So I'm not losing a lot of hair. The main area that I would say is just around the temples. And I believe it's because maybe some breakage just from having it back for so many years on end. That's an area that I want to focus on. And not only that, but also, as I mentioned to you, the eyebrow. This has been on my mind for a long time. I think it's the coolest thing. So, ladies, if you've been thinking about microblading or you've had a bad marker Blading experience or something of that nature, if you whack your eyebrows way too much over the years and you want them back, I think this is one of the coolest options that we have is being able to actually transplant the hair back into the eyebrows.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (48:11)

Yeah. So one of the things that we would do if you were here in the office and we would obviously assess the back and the sides of the scalp to see what the density and the quality of the hair is back there compared to the front. Obviously, in the front, we can see that it's a little bit weak. And so sometimes we wonder what is the hairline? Was it just there very high to begin with? And then now it's weakening and receding as we go further back with age. Sometimes that can happen if we want to uncover any medical issues or medical problems. So if you've been treated with any medical issues or aware of any medical conditions on the first visit, obviously we want to get that information and history from you. If you have not been diagnosed with anything, we may elect to do a little bit of biomarker, blood tests and so forth through even a genetic test to see if there's anything at risk there. But if we're looking at the level of the scalp, let's just say we see that there's a lot of weak, wispy hair and you have a history of either tight braids or some women have worn extensions for many years or have worn hair.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (49:12)

It could be different ethnicities, wear different hairstyles like braids and cornrows and things like that. Sometimes that extra pulling and traction on the hair follicle causes the follicles to weaken over time. And so what you end up with is a much shorter whisper hair coming out of that follicle repeatedly again and again. It doesn't really grow long again, ever, unless you treat it with something medically or otherwise. Right. So we want to try to identify that. Is there an area where the density is very low? If there's weaker quality hair there, what can we do about it? And so some women actually just prefer to have a lower hairline. And then we're just talking about, okay, maybe you don't have too much of a risk of hair loss, but we just want to lower the hairline. Then we would be talking directly about hair transplantation. But of course, we've spent a lot of time earlier in our conversation today about the different modalities. So we want to elucidate. Did you ever try anything like as you said red light therapy or different vitamins or Nutritionals, how do they work for you? Or if you've tried an overthecounter monoxide or topical medication, how did that go?

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (50:19)

Did you have any kind of irritation or anything like that? So we'll get through some of the things that what you have done in the past, if anything at all, those lifestyle factors, if we can uncover those risks and then a little bit about what you're trying to accomplish. For example, if you say, well, I just want my hair to be better, that's okay. Most women and men who like their hair want their hair to not just stick around, but be the best it could possibly be. So that's where we start with the noninvasive therapeutic interventions to try to fortify the function of the Follicle and to protect it over time.

KAYLA BARNES (50:53)

Absolutely. So I started using the red light therapy cap about one month ago or so. I do already see little new baby hairs coming out. So it's super exciting. But what I think, I think it should come down for a visit. And we do like a full hair analysis and look at the eyebrows and see what can be done here.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (51:15)

Yeah. We always encourage that. Some of our patients can easily make it down to Boca Town, Florida. Pretty simple if you're on the East Coast of the US. But we do have patients from all over the US and all over the world that do come and visit us. Here what some folks have called the hair hospital, over 12,000, almost about 30 team members here to help you maintain and preserve your amazing head of hair. And the measurements certainly can help us. Right. But there's a lot of things that you can do. Like you said, you've already started red light therapy. We often do that from a distance. Some patients will do topicals growth factors, even the micro needling or stamping and such at home. We call that virtual PRP because it's not PRP that you do in the office with your own blood, but it's with a growth factor cockpit that you can do at home. And then maybe there's some of those Nutritionals or other oral medications that we could use depending on your particular situation. But if you have eyebrow loss and that could be a concerning symptom, if your eyebrow loss is due to plucking or waxing or other issues like trauma, then we need to look at it and see, can we replace those Follicles using transplantation from the back of the scalp?

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (52:30)

But if you haven't had a history of all of that, then we would look towards maybe autoimmune conditions or inflammation. And there's some pretty dastardly scarring types of alopecia that could occur that could hurt the hairline and leave you with just scar tissue there and also affecting eyebrows and eyelashes. While that seems unlikely in your particular case, Kayla, that's definitely something that we're on the lookout because it's becoming an epidemic and epidemic proportions. And then the other thing that we talk about these days is what's going on with COVID. So did you have COVID? Did you get the vaccine or not? Were you locked down and stressed out? So I've treated over 1000 coveted hair loss related patients, and we've seen all of the above accelerating male pattern, female pattern, autoimmune condition, scarring, alopecia, telogen, effluvium shedding phases going crazy. Long covered patients who just have this continual shedding cycle for months on end, and they need aggressive treatment to stop that cycling of loss.

KAYLA BARNES (53:35)

Well, yeah, that's super interesting. I had COVID, but I don't think that my hair thinning around this little area is related to that. But that's incredible. Well, Doctor, this has been so great. I think that we really covered a lot today. I'm certainly going to leave a link for your clinic in the show notes, and maybe we'll add some of those collagen studies in there. But this has been incredible, and I can't wait to see you soon in person.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (54:02)

All right, Kayla. Well, we're ready for you. In the meantime, I want you to continue with the laser cap and tighten up those nutritional regimen. Okay. And maybe we can just make sure that your scalp, hair and scalp hygiene is on point. So when you come in, we can do a really nice evaluation for you.

KAYLA BARNES (54:17)

Absolutely. One last question. So when you say haircare and scalp care, do you have products on your website as well that you recommend we do?

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (54:26)

The newly reformulated Boost line, which is a shampoo and conditioner, has a lot of really cool new technology. There's been some new science that has told us that hair follicles actually smell, that they are responsive, they're chemoresponsive to certain odors in the environment. And so we've included these olfactory triggers in the shampoo and the conditioner in the Boost line, as well as some other more traditional approaches to the hair loss situation, like DHT blockers, for example, saw Palmetto, and then stimulators like caffeine and green tea and things like that. And then I have another line which is called Soothe and the Shampoo. And the conditioner on the south line contains CBD and some other antiinflammatory properties to it, in addition to, of course, some hair growth ingredients, too. But those are mainly designed to kind of soothe the scalp and calm down the inflammation that is very common out there. About 50% of people have some kind of scalp condition, whether it be itching flaking oily or something, and that could predispose you to hair loss as well. So the Boost line and the Smooth line is all available@baumanmedical.com. You can check it out on the e store if you like.

KAYLA BARNES (55:35)

Absolutely. I'm going to make sure to include that note because honestly, I feel like I spent years and I'm still trying to figure out what's the perfect shampoo. At first, I found one that was all clean ingredients. But now I want something to boost hair growth so I'm sure you made it really simple for everyone. Just you already did all the vetting for us and I'll make sure to include that link in the show notes.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (55:55)

Oh, absolutely. And of course, there's no one size fits all everybody's scalp chemistry is different and that's one of the reasons why an in person appointment is so valuable. So when you come in, we'll make sure we do a complete psychology scalp analysis and we'll probably put you through a scalp makeover program as well just so you can experience that do good, feel good treatment of the scalp makeover that we do here at Bauman medical.

KAYLA BARNES (56:19)

Sounds incredible.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (56:20)

Yeah, it's like a vacation for your it's like a vacation for your hair and scalp and brain all within 90 minutes.

KAYLA BARNES (56:27)

I love it. Well, thank you again for being on my show.

DR. ALAN BAUMAN (56:30)

Oh, it's my pleasure, Kayla. Thank you so much for having me.

KAYLA BARNES (56:33)

You're so welcome.