← Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
Dr. Alan Bauman: Why Biohackers Are Losing Their Hair Faster Than Everyone Else
01:17:55
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- [00:05]
A
Welcome to Biohacking Beauty, the podcast where we decode the real science of aging well, from your hormones to your mitochondria to the way your skin shows it all, I'm your host, Amitai Eshel, co founder of Young Goose Skincare. And in this episode, we're going to dive deep into one of the most overlooked markers of biological aging, which is your hair. We cover why hair loss starts years before you can see it, how stress hormones and GLP1s are quietly accelerating it, and the Prevention first protocols that can help stop the damage before it becomes permanent. We also get into the latest in regenerative treatments, laser therapy, and even hair follicle stem cell banking. Joining Me today is Dr. Alan Bauman, founder and CEO of Bauman Medical, which is one of the most respected hair restoration physicians in the world. With over 29 years in practice and more than 35,000 patients treated board certified in hair restoration surgery, Dr. Bauman has been at the forefront of precision hair diagnostics, regenerative treatments, and the intersection of longevity medicine and hair health. And he is kind of the biohacker hair loss doctor. Unanimously. If you think hair loss is just cosmetic, this episode will change your mind. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Alan Bauman. Alan, first of all, it's a long time coming, but welcome to the Biohacking Beauty podcast.
- [01:47]
B
Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.
- [01:49]
A
Yeah. First of all, the reason you are here, aside from the fact that you're. I was treated by you and you're an amazing person off camera and off booth at a conference where we meet normally, I think I've had the best non surgical hair restoration result I've seen. I'm sure you've seen it. You're seeing it all the time. But that's my personal experience and we tried to get this going for a while, but everyone asks me about my hair, so it's only fair to bring you here.
- [02:24]
B
Oh, well, thank you so much. Well, you're a good and diligent patient and that's what makes it work, you know, because we're all about the prevention and preservation first and the rejuvenation regeneration, you know, you've stuck to the regimen, so.
- [02:38]
A
Yeah. So you know what, when we were talking, I was talking about, about this podcast with my team and a question that was asked is like, how does one become a hair doctor? And more, more than that, like, how does one become an exceptionally good hair doctor?
- [02:57]
B
Yeah. So that's an interesting question. Hair transplant. As a board certified Specialty. I would call it like an orphan specialty. That means that there's no direct path. No one wakes up. And certainly I didn't wake up in medical school and think, oh, I want to go do. Do hair transplant surgery.
- [03:13]
A
I had one, you see, Fabio one time and said, you know, everyone should be like that.
- [03:17]
B
Well, I knew I liked my hair. I knew that there was hair loss in the family. I watched my dad lose his hair. I never met my grandfather with hair. And so, you know, I felt always at risk that something was going to be happening to me. It was just a matter of time. But the same way, years ago that I found hair restoration as a specialty is many of the ways that people find it today, which is pretty much by accident almost, or kind of drops in their lap. I think my interest was always in plastic surgery. And I didn't really think about hair transplantation even as a viable procedure or specialty until I actually had the opportunity to meet a patient who had had a hair transplant. And I didn't do his procedure. I met him after he had his procedure completely done, and he was having something else. He was having another plastic surgery procedure by one of my mentors. And I had a brief conversation with him. It was amazing looking back on that day, because the first thing I noticed was that his hair transplant didn't look like a hair transplant. And this is back in the mid-1990s, when most of the time hair transplants kind of looked a little pluggy and looked a little bit unusual. At least that's what I was expecting to see. So he was excited to have the conversation that I couldn't tell that he had had a hair transplant. And he imparted to me a lot of information in a very short period of time why he chose the surgeon he did. Of course, he wanted something that looked natural and undetectable. He told me about single follicle implantation. And as a surgeon, I didn't really know anything about this. And then the other thing that I remember about that conversation is how he said that it changed his life professionally and socially. He said his life was never the same and it was completely different. He showed me pictures of his family. He's convinced he met his wife and had kids and blah, blah, blah, had this beautiful family because of the change in his hair. He told me about his. He was chairman of the board and so forth, CEO, whatever his position was. And his trajectory in life professionally changed dramatically after he got his hair restoration because he was in a pretty dark place with the hair loss. And then the hair restoration kind of turned around for him.
- [05:12]
A
Wow.
- [05:13]
B
So what I had to do at that point, I started to learn a little bit about hair restoration and looking at journal articles and textbooks. It seemed very old school, very rudimentary. And then I started going to conferences and learning who was doing the work at the time. And eventually I did a fellowship with a hair transplant surgeon. I was in training in New York at the time. I had found the hair transplant surgeon out on Long island, and I spent a year in preceptorship fellowship program with him to really learn about hair transplantation. And if I wanted to add that to my surgical repertoire or not.
- [05:43]
A
Yeah. And, you know, many, many years later, I'm sure a lot has changed. I mean, I've watched the artist's machine kind of evolve with the time when I'm asking, how does one become a good surgeon? Dr. Within that paradigm is a lot of. It is like the best equipment, which I'm sure is important, or is there an error? What are other areas determine the exceptional experience results, et cetera?
- [06:18]
B
Well, I think just like with any art, whether you're painting an object or something, you need to have the right tools, you have the right paint. The paintbrush is the canvas. That's really, really important before you even start. But like I told CNN back in 2002, or whatever it was, I said, this procedure is 90% ART. And the reason why I said that is because my original mentor in plastic surgery, he told me that if you want to be a good plastic surgeon, you want to be a good cosmetic surgeon, you have to study Mother Nature. So the things that mother Nature does right, symmetry, balance, you have to appreciate that, and you have to study that. If you want to recreate that for your patients, whether they are injured traumatically and you have to rebuild or reconstruct an area, or if they're just trying to enhance themselves cosmetically, you have to understand that. And so I think I had that inclination even very early on, that I wanted to do something artistic with the surgical skill. And hair transplantation became that. That pathway that I went forward with. That was more than 30 years ago.
- [07:20]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [07:21]
B
It seems like a blink of an eye, actually.
- [07:24]
A
Is it? Yeah.
- [07:24]
B
I remember. I remember that patient even before I did any hair transplantation. I remember that patient vividly.
- [07:31]
A
So, you know, going back to that patient and his experience, I got to kind of experience the beginning of hair loss and the conversations one has with themselves when noticing their body not functioning or the my will not being able to affect something that happens in my body. I think when you're young or just as a human being, that the same way where, you know, people saying, I don't need to learn a martial art, I just see red. And I can, and I can, you know, tackle everything that, you know, whoever comes in front of me. Many people, especially when you're young, you think that it is a matter of how much something is important to you. That way your body is going to respond. Whether it is, you know, again, hair loss, facial appearance, body fat percentage, whatever that is, I just need to want it hard enough. And I think that was my first time. For me, that it has nothing to, had nothing to do with the, with the way I, you know, with the way I, with my mental, mental or my feelings towards that. That just happened and happened over time. It happened very slowly over years until I dealt with it. How much do you feel this is a contributor on average? Because you see many people a contributor of self esteem as a whole. And how much do you think is a contributor to people's not success in life, but the way that the environment responds to them?
- [09:03]
B
Well, I'll tell you what we say at Bauman Medical is that hair is a very emotional organ and we're just pre programmed as humans to take care of ourselves, whether it be to groom ourselves, comb our hair, style our hair. Hair is a sense of identity. It's a matter of self expression. Think about all the different types of hairstyles. I mean, they define the eras. You know, the 70s, the 80s, the long hair, the short hair, the mohawks, the punk rockers. I mean, just look at all the musicians and all the different types of hairstyles. I mean it's self expression, right? Even shaving your head, the skin, head, so forth. It's very much a sign of self expression. And we also know that hair is such a defining character that when you want to oppress somebody, when you want to take control of them, the first thing you do is you shave their head. You know, many prisoners, they're with their heads shaved. In oppressive countries, communist countries, people are taken prisoner, they shave their heads. They want everybody to lose their identity. So I think evolutionarily, hair is certainly a sign of beauty and youth and many would say fertility.
- [10:05]
A
Yes.
- [10:06]
B
And perhaps it comes back to, you know, caveman, cave woman. You know, before we had ways to communicate verbally. You want to make a judgment call across the cave, if you've got a campfire burning, whether that person is an appropriate match for you to propagate the species. You know, there's a sense of non verbal communication and hair. Because the hair follicle is so highly metabolic, producing a thick, healthy head of hair is a sign of your nutritional status, your genetics and your fertility. It's just ingrained in our lizard brain, I guess that most people want to enjoy their hair, want to keep their hair generally and especially today in our youth oriented culture. Certainly you can bald max, as they say, you know what that is or you embrace the baldness and you shave and go. And I encourage people to, at least if they're going to give up the fight to take action and have that control. Because sometimes hair loss, when it occurs, it feels, feels like you're out of control. And that's the emotional spiral that can cause so many problems. First, the denial. Is it really happening? The panic. Women who are seeing shedding in the shower, their brush filled with hair. And this was happening during COVID for example. The shedding was awful and terrible. They thought they were just going to go bald, which probably was not the case. But they were losing massive amounts of density and coverage. It often feels like it's out of control. And the industry has unfortunately in many cases kind of taking advantage of that. And so for every person that's panicking out there searching Amazon for some magic vitamin for hair, there's again a delay that's happening. And I think one of the most important take home messages from our conversation today will be that time equals follicles. That if you delay, whether it's a week, a month, a year, every single day that goes by that clicks by without an appropriate diagnosis, treatment, accurate treatment plan and adherence to the program, you may be losing hair.
- [12:01]
A
Yes, exactly.
- [12:01]
B
And that's not a good thing.
- [12:03]
A
So yeah, before we get into, you know, kind of the, the reason different types of hair loss, etc. Let's talk maybe mechanistically, like what, what happens to hair or what changes to where we are starting to lose hair and like not make new in, in the most simple words that I can think of, what's happening there?
- [12:22]
B
So the most common cause of hair loss is hereditary androgenetic alopecia. That is the sensitivity that you inherit genetically from your parents to your body's hormones. And the hormones trigger a miniaturization process. So the hair follicle, think of it like a 3D printer. It's supposed to create this long, thick, beautiful fiber. There are many things that can dysregulate it, but primarily, especially in male pattern hair loss, when it happens anytime after puberty, is the follicle will then start to miniaturize in response to these hormones, and you get a shorter, thinner, weaker, wispier hair over time, and eventually you lose coverage. So for men, it starts very simply in the receding hairline. They could have some thinning going on in the crown area, but basically all the hair on the top of their scalp is at risk. And the follicles around the sides and the back are more permanent. Now, in women, it may look a little bit different, more of a diffuse loss in the frontal zone, still maintaining mostly the hairs around the sides and the back. And it typically happens a little bit later on in life, unless there's a hormone abnormality in women. Usually we see it a little bit later on, sometimes around childbirth or perimenopause and menopause. But certainly there are hormone abnormalities of childbearing age in women, which also can trigger and exacerbate female pattern or androgenetic alopecia. And that's just one type of alopecia, by the way. There's so many others.
- [13:37]
A
So from my also definitely ancient knowledge around that, and definitely not up to date, the hormone contributor is called dihydrotestosterone or dht.
- [13:50]
B
Correct.
- [13:50]
A
Coating the hair follicle and kind of impeding blood supply to the hair follicle. Is this still the thought around this?
- [13:57]
B
Well, DHT is the trigger.
- [13:59]
A
Yeah.
- [14:00]
B
What happens after DHT hits the follicle? We know that it miniaturizes it. So it's not like the DHT is clogging up the follicle. It's not really like that. I mean, the DHT is definitely the negative impact. We know that. Because if you take away the dht, the follicles are protected and many times, most of the time improve their function. So we know specifically DHT is the bad guy. As the follicle shrinks and weakens. Yes. You get less blood flow to the follicle sometimes. That's a chicken or the egg thing. Right. If the follicle is less metabolic, it doesn't need as much blood flow. And also on the flip side, if you put hair follicles into a balding area that has poor blood flow, the blood flow increases dramatically in response, the follicles demand actually more blood flow. And there's also treatments, obviously, that increase the amount of blood vessels in your skin that specifically grow hair.
- [14:50]
A
Yes.
- [14:51]
B
So as you. That same molecule, it's called vegf, by the way. Vascular angiotheater growth factor. If you put VEGF into the scalp, you get more blood vessels and you get more hair growth.
- [15:01]
A
Yep. Yeah, definitely. I was, you know, I wanted to talk to you about red light therapy later, but that was. I just wanted to make sure I'm covering the blood flow. Hair follicle dynamic. Before we do it, before we get into that, is that DHT as a culprit, is that across the board of hair loss as a whole? Obviously, you know, there are, you know, chemo and stuff like that, but as a whole, when people lose their hair, is it mainly dht, both men and women?
- [15:29]
B
Well, DHT is the primary trigger, but we know hair follicles are uniquely sensitive to a whole list of other things that could be going wrong. So your nutritional status, for example, if you're deficient in protein, you're doing some kind of a weight loss program. Potentially you're on a weight loss peptide like ozempic or other GLP1s, you're going to be taking in less nutrients, you're going to be absorbing less nutrients. And that obviously is what triggers the weight loss. But also hair follicles get the message that the body is starving and the body is conserving energy, not going to build hair. There's whole body inflammation. Inflammation that can occur locally at the level of the scalp for sure, can knock out hair follicle function. So if you have inflammation, itching, irritation, psoriasis, dermatitis, folliculitis, all of that, anything that your scalp is sensing in terms of discomfort, inflammation can shut down the hair follicle as well. Think about stress, cortisol. If you have elevated cortisol too long, too much over the course of the day, we know that cortisol is a direct inhibitor of hair follicle function to the point where if you're under a severe physiologic stress or severe perceived stress, meaning psychologic stress, that can trigger a shed. So there's a lot of things and there's medications, obviously. You mentioned cancer, chemotherapy, obviously those things are specifically designed to knock out the most highly metabolic cell populations in your body. Theoretically, the cancer, hopefully. Guess what? Your hair follicles, your bone marrow, your gut lining, all of those take a hit too, at the same time, maybe irreversibly, actually.
- [16:57]
A
Really? Yeah, yeah.
- [16:59]
B
So Taxotere is a common drug that was used for breast cancer patients very, very commonly in this country. And many women had permanent chemotherapy induced alopecia from that drug. There's a big class action lawsuit about that drug and about those consequences.
- [17:16]
A
That's, yeah, going to, you know, focusing on wider population things that you see. Do you Think that. And we'll put GLPs on the side here, because that's a whole different phenomenon now, especially when 20, like, supposedly 20% of Americans are on a GLP.
- [17:36]
B
I heard that 20 million Americans have tried them. Yeah, that's a huge number. And we know that 1 out of 30 experience hair loss, and then maybe even more. That's a huge number.
- [17:46]
A
In general, do you see hair loss as something that's becoming a problem, you know, earlier in life nowadays than it has before?
- [17:55]
B
We have seen that. So in the practice, had my own practice for over 29 years. And we've certainly seen a huge shift in aggressive hair loss in younger patients. Now, is that from poor nutrition, some, you know, hormone dysregulation, or, you know, the stress of modern life? Oh, we. I don't know the answer to that specifically. I mean, look, there's supposed to be less smoking so that, you know. Yeah, if you're smoking less cigarettes, theoretically, your hair should be growing a little bit better, perhaps, but maybe it's the vaping, I don't know. But our toxin exposure, our stress level is unlike any other time in recent memory. But the other thing I'll say is that I think younger patients are coming in for treatments because they're also becoming more aware that hair loss is a thing that's happening and also that it can be treated. Whereas years ago, what did you have? Hair Club for Men? That was about it. You didn't really have the discussion of true therapeutic intervention or specific medical specialties like we have today, board certification, hair restoration, such and so forth. And also patients who have gone successfully through treatment, let's just say 20 something years ago, now have kids who are of the age where hair loss may be a risk factor. There may be a risk factor for them. And so the parents are bringing the children in and saying, listen, I went through this hair transplant. Let's figure out your situation. You've gone through puberty, whatever. Let's make sure you keep your hair. So just like orthodontics and getting a nose job years ago was kind of a general plan of action for some folks. I think making sure that people keep their hair.
- [19:23]
A
Yeah.
- [19:23]
B
Is another plan of action that some parents have for their kids. You know, maybe because they just don't want them going through all the hassle that they did.
- [19:31]
A
That's. Yeah, that's. That's an interesting take. When you see people in the category of, hey, let's kind of make sure you don't get to the point of a hair transplant. Is your approach significantly different between men and women? Or at that point it basically looks similar?
- [19:49]
B
Well, let's just say we'll use some similar philosophy. Same philosophy for both. Right. Precision diagnosis is what we're going to start with. So that's the history, the physical exam, the examination with the microscope, the AI powered, AI driven scopes that tell us hair density, hair caliber measurements. We're taking a detailed medical history of all the things we talked about, lifestyle factors, even sleep, wake cycles, your nutrition, your stress level, your risk in the family.
- [20:12]
A
To stop you, what was really nice to me when I came to you the first time was that I was able to, it was very tangible to me, not only where I am. On one hand you're getting your, you receive a dose of positivity and feeling of being able to make good decisions and get yourself to a better place.
- [20:38]
B
Sure.
- [20:39]
A
That's called hope in a dose of hope. But also on the other hand, you understand there is a sense of urgency because you understand, you see color coded, et cetera, you see different stages of hair health on your scalp, different areas. You understand how it's going to look like.
- [20:55]
B
You're talking about the AI powered microscopes. So that precision diagnosis has been a game changer really. It's an AI driven consultation today. It's not like you call the nurse in and say, hey, do you think it looks better? No. We have the data. We know the hair density, we know the hair caliber, we know the sum of hair widths. You know, there's so much data actually that we need AI to figure it out sometimes, but very often it's very obvious on the screen. You know, if your hair is in the, the green or blue category, those are the thicker hairs. Right. 60 to 90 microns. If your hairs are in the yellow or red category, you know, they're below 60 microns and if they're in that red, they're less than 20 or 30 microns. So it's very clear on the screen in quick fashion, like you say, the urgency and also as a baseline measurement. Right. So that we'll know in a very short period of time, maybe just a matter of three months, how well treatment is working. So we move from the precision diagnosis and that would include genetic testing, by the way, and some other things too, lab work if we need it, to the preservation first strategy. So even if a patient comes in and needs a hair transplant, wants a hair transplant, we spend a huge amount of time talking about how to protect the existing hair.
- [22:02]
A
Yeah. Why would one need DNA sequencing? What Are you seeing in someone's DNA that would lead you to diagnose them differently or recommend a different course of action?
- [22:14]
B
So before we had DNA testing, I mean you have a standard of care, let's say a standard treatment regimen that you might prescribe. And I'm sure we'll get into minoxidil, finasteride and other treatments that are even more aggressive. The DNA test looks at 40 to 50 different markers, different metabolic pathways, not just if you, for example, are going to be a good responder to a topical minoxidil or not, but also your pathways of DHT production. So there's several different pathways in the body that create DHT. Two really specific enzymes, type 1, 5 alpha reductase, type 2, 5 alpha reductase. And if you are more likely to have more prevalent or a higher degree of metabolism on one of those pathways than another, we might choose a different treatment because you're more likely to respond to that treatment better and nutrigenomically as well. If you're more likely to be iron deficient, say you're a woman, you have low ferritin, low iron, you weren't sure, you didn't test it, you're a young healthy girl. But now the DNA test says maybe you should check your iron. So we'll check that more aggressively right off the bat. Even if you don't have symptoms of fatigue or whatnot, if you are likely to be deficient in other vitamins and minerals, zinc, vitamin B, vitamin D, these are all things that can show up on the DNA tests. It doesn't tell you that you're deficient, but it tells us where to look more aggressively so that we can fine tune the therapy.
- [23:37]
A
Yeah, methylation pathways are also part of it.
- [23:40]
B
Mthfr, very popular, you know, variant. And so as you know, you're going to need methylated B vitamins, you could probably still absorb the others, the non methylated, but it takes a lot more and it puts a strain on the system. So if you're, if you have that variant and there's, you know, there's a severe variant, then there's a mild variant and if you have a severe variant, you're probably much better off. Yeah, taking the B vitamin and not just for hair by the way, but for many, many other health reasons as well.
- [24:08]
A
And one of the cool things that I think this consultation teaches, you know, the patient is what could be saved and what cannot be saved. I don't, I don't know that I think it's not really common Knowledge, Right. Like when you meet a patient and you tell them, hey, you know, if the hair is, you know, in the red zone, basically it's a toss up. If we can save it, however, you know, yellow, there's a high chance that we can save that hair. Is that normally a moment of that people learn it for the first time there. That there is a. I think with
- [24:44]
B
the photography in the microscope reveals is areas of severe loss that have already severe by my measurements, that's not visible to the naked eye. Like, you have pretty much good coverage on your crown and you came in because you have a hairline recession. But we do the measurements in the crown area and we can show that nearly 50% of the hair is already gone. So in terms of coverage, you're barely hanging on. And maybe the only reason why you've been hanging on for the past five years or so is because your hair's gone a little bit gray perhaps, which changes the contrast between the color of the scalp and the hair, obviously. So as you're losing density, you're gaining a little cosmetic enhancement and coverage. Mother Nature's giving you a little highlight there. If you don't want to go gray, you could call it that. But the point is that the microscope elucidates the fact that if you don't do something about that area and you focus only on transplanting the front, we're going to have a pretty quick conversation in maybe just a matter of years, two to three years, that we're gonna have to transplant this other area pretty quickly. Whereas if we put you on a good solid medical regimen and we track it, make sure that it's working, obviously then we could save that area. Maybe you'll never need a hair transplant in that zone. It could be seven to ten years or more.
- [25:58]
A
Or even if you did have the hair transplant, at least you're keeping what you have until now. And it looks like you intended it to look right, because that's the idea. I know many people, you know, flew to Turkey or something like that to go to hair transplant. Then five years later that that's all the hair they have left. And it's extremely apparent.
- [26:17]
B
Yeah, that's a big problem. I mean, medical tourism is not new in this world. I mean, we know people, you know, fly here and there for liposuction, for teeth restorations. And you know, by the way, they killed people. They killed six people doing turkey teeth last year.
- [26:29]
A
Whoa.
- [26:29]
B
You know, and that's supposed to be a pretty benign procedure. You know, that's not that's not a common, life threatening dental restoration is not common cause of morbidity and mortality like that.
- [26:40]
A
You need to try hard.
- [26:42]
B
But the issue is that what's happened is that people have failed to realize that they need a long term strategy, not a quick fix for that procedure. But I think the tide is turning now. I think more people are learning that yes, you don't want to come back from a distant, faraway location. First of all, flying on an airplane, bleeding into the bandages, into the seat back at a low oxygen environment. In fact, we would prefer you to be in a hyperbaric oxygen environment, not low oxygen at 30,000ft altitude. But my point is that they realize what they're missing is that long term care, a long term strategy of prevention, restoration, preservation first before they undergo the transplant. Their transplant will look ten to a hundred times better if they keep the hair that they have. Not that it's going to. And not to mention it's going to save them a bunch of time, effort and energy and resources. If they can just keep the existing hair, they don't have to keep undergoing the transplant process.
- [27:36]
A
Yeah. So let's talk a bit. You talked about, you know, meeting that patient and you know, focusing on keeping the hair that they have. Are there different molecules? Obviously there are different molecules that do different things, but what are like the categories of molecules that would do that and also their delivery, their delivery system, tops.
- [27:56]
B
So let's just cover the tried and true. Right. So most people are familiar with minoxidil, finasteride. Those are the two FDA approved medications. Minoxidil was the FDA approved ingredient in Rogaine. So it's been available for many, many decades. And then Propecia was approved as the first oral drug for male pattern hair loss that contained finasteride. So minoxidil and finasteride have been around a long time. Minoxidil is a very potent hair growth stimulator. It increases, as we said before, the vegf. And so there's a lot of things happening, keeping the follicles in the growing phase, turning follicles that are off into the on situation and allowing them to stay on essentially much longer. So very powerful treatment. Today we use minoxidil most commonly, not as a topical, but actually as an oral microdose. And there are some companies that are working towards FDA approval for sublingual oral minoxidil. But currently microdose oral minoxidil is an off label treatment. But the most common, most easiest way to get minoxidil into the system is very consistent. And if you microdose it properly, you're going to avoid all the major side effects that you would see with the mega doses, such as blood pressure issues, headaches and dizziness, things like that. So keep you safe, keep the hair growing. Does very, very well. Finasteride is the other medication that I mentioned, decreases or inhibits the DHT production. So that's going to protect the follicles that are at risk by lowering the dht. Used to be a completely oral medication. Today we can now use finasteride topically if we want to, and that lowers the systemic absorption, reduces the common side effects and fear that people think about, which is decreased libido, mild erectile dysfunction, which is honestly very, very rare with the oral medications.
- [29:29]
A
Is it like a 2%?
- [29:30]
B
Was it less than 2% of patients on oral finasteride have those sexual side effects and they're reversible quickly. In a week they're out of your system. And that's what we've seen.
- [29:40]
A
Yeah, that's very interesting because it's a very popular topic to discuss when talking about oral finasteride.
- [29:49]
B
Right, absolutely. And people have an unfounded fear, I think mainly because of the chit chat on the Internet has kind of over exaggerated that in many, many different ways. And whether we trace the origins back to failed trials or class action lawsuits or things like that, that never came to fruition, what we know in the practice after treating 35,000 patients is that these drugs are very, very safe, very effective and can work very well to stop the progression of the loss. And many patients today are on even stronger medications than finasteride. They're using dutasteride, which is a much stronger medication, blocks both pathways to the DHT that can be used orally and topically or even injected actually into the scalp. So there's a lot of different ways to use that. And the question often comes, well, should I be using something stronger than finasteride? And the answer is, well, maybe let's do a DNA test and see how your metabolic pathways are likely to be performing and let's look at your hair measurements and see if we can squeeze out a little bit more growth from a non invasive treatment like that. But you know, today a lot of people don't want medications. And so that's where we get into the other categories. So peptides, for example, we've got some great topical peptides which are excellent for hair growth. Yeah, we use red light therapy, low level laser light. I notice I didn't say led, low level laser light therapy with medical grade devices and then the regenerative treatments.
- [31:10]
A
Okay, so let's talk about before we get into. I just have a question about testing. Are there tests that you, because yes, you're, you're, you know, you're, you produce great results. With me, I know anyone from Dave Asprey to other friends that have gone to you, but I think what makes you special is that you're, you're at the forefront of learning. You know, I think that's very unique and important that you have, that you, the person treating you is, is information hungry or information or extremely informed. Are there tests that you are interested in integrating or you wait until they, they, they get into a certain, to a certain level of efficacy or sensitivity that you would like to see come into a practice and you would like to run on people like metabolomic tests or stool tests, things that you feel will improve the way that you treat patients.
- [32:10]
B
Yeah, and I think that's a very important question because sometimes it seems like, especially in the world of functional medicine, you just sign up and you get like, you know, 20 different tests that are prescribed without reason. I'm a little bit more traditionally trained, so I'm probably in the halfway between category. What I mean by that is I like to get the history and physical exam really detailed. And so that includes all of the testing with the microscope and the measurements because that's the end organ that we really want to know. If the patient reveals that they've had some issue with digestion or gut health, then certainly we want to chase that down. And I don't pretend to be a functional medicine physician, but I do know the pathways to get there. So if we do need to dive in a little bit deeper, or maybe they've changed their diet, or maybe they're getting off of a GLP1 or something like that and they were trying to reboot the system. Maybe they need a probiotic, maybe they need a, a nutritional analysis, maybe they need that DNA pharmacogenomic testing, maybe they need the Nutra genomic testing to really figure out what's going on. So I'm not afraid of those tests. You know, someone comes in with stress or cortisol, maybe we think about doing Dutch test, cortisol testing, saliva testing to see what does that curve look like because we can take some action. I can't eliminate their stress in their life, but I can at least advise them that the stress is affecting their hair and maybe we need to do a little bit of breath work. Maybe we need to do a little better sleep or treat yourself to a massage, whatever it might be, a little yoga, exercise. All of those things can be helpful. And in the world of biohacking and health and wellness, we know there's a lot of tricks to improve our vagal tone and supplement wise Ashwagandha to make us more adaptable to the stress that we're experiencing. So I guess there's no one size fits all battery of tests. And I think in general, women in the postmenopausal category probably are going to get more testing done. They have more influences to the hair follicle than just something that may be just super simple and easy to elucidate through history. So, you know, I think we're itchier on the trigger finger for testing in the perimenopause and menopausal women. But certainly we test younger women too. We know a lot of them are vitamin D deficient, A lot of them are on an awful diet or they're on some kind of a weight loss regimen and it's really dysregulating their hair.
- [34:23]
A
So aside from the minoxidil dutasteride finasteride combo, what else do you like to have people take orally as a supplement to support hair?
- [34:36]
B
So our Dr. Alan Bauman supplement line is specifically for people with either nutrient deficiencies. So there's multivitamins and other things like specific supplements like biotin. We have collagen peptide proteins. If you're protein deficient, we think that you are, or you're in a state of weight loss. I love collagen peptides as a supplement. I think it's simple and easy for those patients. I mentioned the Ashwagandha previously. Other things that we can add to that regimen would be things that we curate. And I'm not opposed to adding something like neutrophil or extrasa gummies into a nutritional regimen. But remember that those are not nutrients and fuel.
- [35:12]
A
Yeah.
- [35:13]
B
Per se. Those are going to think of those more like herbal hacks to the system. Right. As we mentioned, Ashwagandha to deal with the stress issue. Curcumin, turmeric for inflammation, a little collagen peptide protein for messaging to the follicle. Things like that. Things that improve circulation. Nitric oxide. I love nitric oxide supplements. Especially if we're going to go and do some degree of transplantation or use a device like a laser light therapy. We really want to boost that circulation to the scalp.
- [35:39]
A
Yeah.
- [35:39]
B
So a couple of different things in There, you know, I would say the nutritional part of it is more foundational. I want to identify deficiencies and support with the herbal stuff, but it's not going to hold the strength and power of a, of a pharmaceutical or regenerative intervention. Same thing with hair care. Scalp health is not going to magically regrow all your hair unless you have a huge amount of scalp inflammation. I saw this today, actually, yesterday, actually. Patient came in, he's in the growth phase from a hair transplant. His scalp is very inflamed. He has a history of psoriasis and he was just totally flared up and his growth was a little bit behind what I would normally expect. And it was visible, not even on microscope. You could take a picture of his scalp from across the room and you could see that it was very irritated and he knew that he was dealing with that. So we'll put him into a scalp regimen. So he'll go to my trichologist, he'll go to that department, and he'll be seen until that's cleared up. And I know that that's going to improve his hair growth. But most people, you know, scalp health is just foundational. Let's get it organized so that the scalp is a fertile ground. Like, think of it like a, you know, a farmer needs fertile ground for the soil, needs to be fertile for the transplant and to grow good crop, you know, which is the hair.
- [36:49]
A
Yeah, that's, that's. You're, you're. You're also in hair agriculture as well.
- [36:55]
B
Exactly. I'm just a landscaper, but it's for the scalp. You know, we're moving palm trees from your backyard into your front yard. Yeah, that's how it is.
- [37:07]
A
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- [40:02]
B
So, I mean, look, we are in the health and wellness world. We run into biohackers who will inject just about anything into their body to get a biologic effect. But let's talk about the regular and safe and easy things to do first. So I'm a big advocate for copper tripeptide. Copper GHK has been around for a long time. In the 1990s, we used copper tripeptide to heal patients faster after their hair transplant surgery. We used to literally soak their heads in the copper soaked gauze and use copper gel along their old fashioned suture lines. Obviously we don't need that anymore, but we had copper kits that people would use, spraying, spritzing, soaking for those first few days. And it was a dramatic accelerant for healing and also as an adjunct or replacement for the basic topicals that we had back in that time, which were essentially over the counter minoxidil and some very rudimentary prescription versions. So copper tripeptide, I'm a huge avocado. There's a lot of science and data in the clinical literature about that. It's not a drug. So you're not going to see somebody putting out hundreds of millions of dollars to test copper Peptide and hair growth. But it's very, very well studied and the science is there. I love it. Zinc thymolin is another one that we include in our product called pep grow. So Pepgro is an AM&PM topical peptide formulation that you can use at home. It's a topical solution. It's got the AM version, which is the copper tripeptide, copper peptide and the zinc thymolin. And then the evening version is ptd, dbm, bound to methyl valonate and methyl valenate and pddbm. Easy for me to say. That's an evening dose. And it has also a lot of good data behind it when it comes to hair growth. So that would be a simple, easy, like no side effect treatment that people can use and grab if they want to avoid, let's say pharmaceutical topicals. And we use that or as an adjunct.
- [41:49]
A
Interesting. And have you ran into studies looking at peptides that make you lose more hair? Obviously we know there are risks with, you know, using steroids, things like that, but there are some people worried about using, you know, peptides like C Max, for example, and its effects on hair. Have you seen people like using peptides or hrt, things like that, and experiencing more hair loss?
- [42:19]
B
So the HRT for sure. So hormone optimization therapy, which includes replacement or optimization of testosterone, is going to increase levels. Wherever your testosterone baseline was, it's going to increase it hopefully into the normal range. You're feeling good and getting the nice benefits of the testosterone, but that's going to carry over into DHT production. So if you're sensitive to dht, which, remember, genetically predetermined, you may or may not have a severe sensitivity to dht. But if your DHT level goes up and you're slightly sensitive to dht, you're going to see more hair loss. So it's going to accelerate that natural androgenetic alopecia, the male pattern hair loss is going to go a little bit more quickly. This is a big problem for men who are dealing with a little bit of hair loss and then all of a sudden, really sometimes even get overdose. Like pellets, for example, have often a loading dose which can be super physiologic and they have to wait months for it to come down. Dave Asprey is a good example of that. And he thinks that the testosterone pellets that he took years ago accelerated his hair loss. And he will tell you exactly that. And maybe that's the reason why he needed a hair transplant to fix it, or maybe why he needed it so soon. And we have postmenopausal women and physicians who are thinking, well, maybe there's no upper limit to testosterone in men or for women. And again, they're getting either pellets or overdosed on testosterone for all the important reasons that we would want to at least consider hormone optimization therapy. But the problem is, if that woman is genetically susceptible to female pattern hair loss, you could have a massive recession of the hairline. Loss of the temple areas, loss of density in the frontal zone. You can see some significant shedding. And oftentimes it does not rebound on its own. It can be permanent, just like male and female pattern hair loss, but just an accelerated version.
- [44:04]
A
Yeah.
- [44:04]
B
And those patients are needing hair transplants in many cases. And certainly if they're going to be on hormone optimization, let's get them into a normal range, let's get them guided. Well, maybe they need a different route of administration, not the pellets, Something different, perhaps. And let's track their hair, make sure that we're protecting the hair at the same time.
- [44:20]
A
Yeah.
- [44:20]
B
And unfortunately, the hormone optimization folks that are out there sometimes neglect to mention that, by the way, this testosterone program could be affecting your hair.
- [44:30]
A
Yeah.
- [44:31]
B
Now, the other peptide question was GLP1s. And so it's not the peptide, it's not the Ozempic itself, semaglutide, that's causing the hair loss. It's not. We don't think that it's in some way toxic. Not at all.
- [44:43]
A
Yeah.
- [44:43]
B
What's happening is that you're reducing that nutrient and fuel intake and absorption, so you're going into a severe caloric deficit.
- [44:51]
A
Yeah.
- [44:51]
B
And we knew this. Even here in South Florida in the 1990s, we had the cookie diet. I don't know if you ever heard of that, but people would eat these cookies. They had, like, no nutritional value whatsoever. And so they thought they were eating something and they were getting nothing. And so they were losing weight rapidly and it triggered massive hair loss. Same thing's happening with GLP1s.
- [45:08]
A
Yeah, no, there is a neuropeptide for neuroplasticity that again, the bro science community has pointed to hair loss as one of the things that might happen. And I was wondering. I think it's probably. It's still below the surface. Like, I. I think it's a very close community of people use that to enhance brain function. But I wonder if that's going to be one of those things that in the future we're going to find out. A lot of people are losing the
- [45:36]
B
hair because of, oh, we'll have to look into that and watch it and see what happens, see what the sentiment is. Right? That Sam. Yeah, that's the thing. Because that's the signal. You know, I mean, we say bro science kind of like, you know, with tongue in cheek, but very often, you know, we get the signal from those communities of folks who are being a little bit more proactive and maybe a little bit more aggressive than they should be with these variety of treatments. So, yeah, we'll have to watch and wait and see what's all, what that's all about. But I would say if, to anyone out there, if you're concerned that any kind of treatment regimen that you're doing on your own might be affecting your hair, that's why you need the measurements. So the measurements will tell you exactly how your hair is doing. And you don't have to guess, you don't have to like look in the mirror and think, oh yeah, I look fine. No, because as I said, you can lose a boatload of hair without it being noticeable. So, you know, if you're a biohacker, you're not measuring your hair. What are you doing? Come on.
- [46:25]
A
Yeah. In general, I think the problem is, is that I don't think most biohackers know that the original name of biohacking self is self quantification. That was the original, I mean like Asprey, well done. You know, coin popular popularized the name biohacking, but for like a decade it was self quantification. It was mainly about testing and trying to change the test results. So if you're not testing, that doesn't. You're not in the club.
- [46:55]
B
Exactly. That's why we're wearing aura rings, we're checking our steps and we're looking at our deep sleep and our heart rate variability and everything else. So.
- [47:03]
A
So the base of the pyramid is obviously what we talked about until now, but you mentioned a few things like laser, like laser therapy. And you have probably the coolest looking helmet out there. Let's talk a little bit about in general, red near infrared wavelengths. And so what do they do to hair follicle and the difference between using LEDs, using low level laser. Maybe the difference between low level laser and, you know, what is called grade 3B lasers and other lasers to the extent. Because most people don't know the difference.
- [47:40]
B
Yeah. So let's just go way back in time. So we're talking in the early 2000s, red light and laser light therapy was being used in Europe for hair regrowth. Most physicians Thought it was bumped, that it was not true. We got our hands on a laser in 1999 and it was almost, I was sure that it was not gonna work. And we put patients, friends and family, and almost like a goof, we had them come in and do the treatments. And I'll tell you, even patients that had total baldness, that all they had was hair around the sides and the back of their scalp, even those patients had improvement on the treatment. So I turned from hardcore skeptic into hardcore believer very quickly. In fact, my patients were amongst the first that were presented to the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery, to the whole society of hair restoration Surgeons in an international conference in. I think it was in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, that year in 2001.
- [48:36]
A
Actually.
- [48:37]
B
It was like right after the. Right after 9, 11, I believe.
- [48:39]
A
Wow.
- [48:40]
B
And it was a slide deck, literally slides. Because, I mean, there were slides of patients of mine. But anyway, the point is that since then, and we didn't know why it was a signal, we thought something was happening. We didn't know why. Today we know exactly how 650 nanometer wavelength, which is red light, affects the cellular level. Right. We know it gets absorbed at the mitochondria, the cytochrome C oxidase. We get an increase in ATP production, which is the energy currency within the cell. A weakened cell gets more energy, it grows faster, thicker, better, healthier hair.
- [49:11]
A
Yeah.
- [49:12]
B
And today there have been so many randomized trials published in the literature on laser light therapy and hair regrowth that there's now multiple meta analyses of these trials. Which is the strongest level of science that in the clinical literature.
- [49:28]
A
Yeah.
- [49:29]
B
So it's pretty exciting to see that evolve over the past 30 years. Now, of course, the devices we had years ago were very rudimentary. The laser that we had in the office was $100,000 device and had like 60 little single point beams and it rotated around, it made a whole lot of noise, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump. And it spun around. And then we had a portable laser comb. It had literally one laser that was split by a plastic mirror into five beams. But patients who were diligent and disciplined, who used it, got results from it. And today, obviously, we've come a long way. You see the Chinese knockoffs on Amazon, most of them are LED devices, they're not true lasers, but we do have medical grade devices which are still in the low level laser category. Right. So they are safe. Not going to hurt your eye or laser yourself, by the way.
- [50:17]
A
Side note, you need a lot of energy to get out of the low level laser realm. Absolutely. It ain't easy.
- [50:24]
B
This is true. This is true. And those medical devices exist out there for pain and other things. And especially if you want to penetrate bone, if you're orthopedics and so forth, you're going to need a higher powered laser to get deeper. But the point is for skin rejuvenation maybe LED is enough. But if you want to get a hair follicle to rebound, you need a lot more energy density. And I think it was University of Arizona that just did the study which compared the head worn devices versus laser cap which the, which is the show that there's a dose dependent at the level of the follicle. Already knew. So the Bauman turbo laser cap, pretty.
- [50:55]
A
Yeah.
- [50:55]
B
But it's got a lot of power under 300 diodes, it's completely chargeable, covers 25 scalp than any other device on the market.
- [51:03]
A
Okay, here's a. You know, you've covered one of the two major, actually three major things that I think no one talks about within the scope of red light therapy. And I'll include laser there just like the wavelength of like 600 to 900 nanometers and what it does to the mitochondria. I think the first thing is temperature. I think when you switch the LEDs from lasers because of the surface area and because of the interaction between the beams, you're getting higher temperature. You're just getting a higher temperature per unit of energy. So you're limited in two things. You're limited in the amount that you can relay energy to, to the system. The system gets hot, you need to cool it down. And that's what you see with like big panels, they have cooling mechanism at a pretty low output. Like that's my, you know, if I have a friend on the line, it's like hey, which panel should I buy? I was like, just see that it has a vent in the back. Because that would tell you it's even mildly powerful.
- [52:02]
B
Yes. They get hot. Those things get hot. And I'll tell you, the original laser devices had duty cycles which is how long the device stays on or off. Right. And it had to be turned off for a fraction of a second because of the heat generated within the device itself. And so that's one of the challenges that was overcome by the latest iteration of the turbo laser cap.
- [52:27]
A
Yeah.
- [52:27]
B
So the turbo laser cap is wired, it's engineered in a different way so it can stay on constantly. And what that does it. First of all, if it's half the time if it's off and half the time it's on, you've basically doubled the treatment time. So that's why your old devices were 20 minutes, 30 minutes and so forth. Maybe even longer. Yeah, we were doing treatments in the office for sometimes longer than that. The turbo laser is a five minute device.
- [52:52]
A
Wow.
- [52:52]
B
Why? Because it can. It stays on for five minutes, it doesn't blink, flash, turn off. It's on consistently. And I think the other thing that people don't realize, a laser diode at a certain, say a 5 milliwatt eukaryote you can deliver, you don't have to delete to that diode, you can turn it down. If you deliver 2 1/2 milliwatt, it looks about the same shelf in your hand. You're looking at it on, but you're getting half.
- [53:16]
A
Yes.
- [53:16]
B
And most lasers that we've measured have tuned Cerebol laser cap is overtuned. What does that mean? That means that instead of milliwatts, which the diode is like giving it a search, giving it. We're. I call whether we're giving it 10 or 15, but 10. That's why lasers are delivering so much more than the standard Chinese coughs. And I don't know if it's just baked into the system, like baked into the knockoff. The counterfeit devices that have been, you know, duplicated in China and they just keep duplicating the same process or if it's something that the diodes are more expensive if you overdrive them. I just think they just don't know.
- [53:53]
A
I'll tell you two things. Number one, so it's mainly about wiring. So the system shares the diode, cares about the energy that it gets, but the system shares energy as far as like the energy that runs through the system. So capacitors, things like that, they share energy. You're getting a system that needs higher quality material. And then the diodes themselves, they have a lifespan of sorts, like how many hours they can work. And you need to use better materials, you need to use more robust conductors, et cetera, to have a good lifespan. So you're basically increasing, you're lowering the amount of customer service you need to do.
- [54:38]
B
Right.
- [54:38]
A
The third thing is, is that lower.
- [54:40]
B
Yeah, those, those cheaper diodes, lasers or production, they need less maintenance, they die.
- [54:47]
A
The amount of the thing about. I will. So we're going back to like, I would definitely pay double for a device that has customer service with it. Any device, if it has customer service. I'm willing to pay double. Not because I'm. I want to. You know, there's a cold tub company that I was speaking with my friend about the other day and he said I would never, ever, ever, ever buy from them again. They have a professional facility. Not because they. Not because the tub is bad. It's because customer service is the worst. So when something happens, that's the end. I've lost the entire thing. And the last thing is, is about the.
- [55:28]
B
And you know, the turbo has a lifetime warranty. So if, God forbid, a laser did burn out or your dog chewed the wire, we can get it replaced.
- [55:35]
A
Yes.
- [55:36]
B
Forever. Somebody's life. I don't know whose lifetime. Somebody. Somebody's like somebody's life.
- [55:39]
A
The lifetime of the company, maybe. But the last thing is, is about the actual wavelength. So I hate. Listen when I hear. When I see commercials of some rinky dinky like face mask and they say it's all about the wavelength. First of all, all the way that the Chinese know to read 6, 5, 0. Okay. Everyone knows that. That is not what I mean. What I mean is the poorer the, the diode, the poorer quality the diode. You're actually getting a range of 550 to 750. That's a, that's a like the worst spread that I've seen, like hundred each side. But I've seen like good diodes that. It's a 5 nanometer nanometer spread.
- [56:23]
B
Very specific. Exactly right. Very specific target. And that's what you need because the window for activation of the cytochrome C oxidase is actually quite narrow.
- [56:31]
A
Yeah.
- [56:31]
B
So the other wavelengths may, if, and if, if they're not penetrating deep, obviously they're getting wasted.
- [56:37]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [56:38]
B
And that's all that extra power, all that extra light that you might see. It looks like, oh, it's bright, but no, it's not doing anything. And that's the problem.
- [56:44]
A
Yeah. And you're dealing with follicle, you're dealing with different colors, you're dealing with different, you know, you need to go through hair. There is many issues there. The last issue is movement, which you mentioned, which is important. You see devices, even like laser devices. Like there is the device, you know, actually really like the idea behind the company. So I'm not going to burn the company, but there is a facial device that is a $2,000 laser that you move around on your face. There is an issue there because at the end of the day, you need you. Basically what you're doing is like you're giving enough photons to a specific mitochondria to, in other words, to flip it like the way CCO works, Cytochrome C oxidase is almost like vibration. You need to break a bond between. You mentioned nitric oxide. You're actually gaining nitric oxide by doing that. But you're basically like displacing stuff. You're cleaning it so, so oxygen can bind there. And that is, that is an accumulative process like, like power. If I push you gently, you're not going to move. If I push you harder, you're going to move. If I, I can't, I don't want to push you so, so strongly you're going to obliterate. That's like, you know, strongly. Right, so.
- [57:51]
B
And that's the difference between low level, a high powered glaze and by the
- [57:54]
A
way, the moat, the, the safety moat is enormous. That's what I alluded to before. But movement just destroys the entire premise because you need, you're moving, you're, you're accumulating some energy in the mitochondria and you're removing it. You're accumulating, you're removing movement. And mitochondrial interaction of light is the worst combination I have seen as an idea. The idea of wearing something like a cap that moves with you even. I don't even like the idea of laying and having like a, like a panel shine on your head because you're going to read your phone, you're going to turn to the side. Every movement that's associated destroys the idea of light. And the last thing is how close it sits to the head, which I really like the curved shape of it.
- [58:41]
B
Oh, absolutely.
- [58:42]
A
Because when you see hats, when you see generic, even great companies, amazing companies, I don't know, doesn't help you out
- [58:50]
B
there, but they're very far off the scalp. Most of the domes, most of the caps, they're very far off the scalp. So yeah, the turbo really kind of almost grips your head and the diodes kind of penetrate between your hair fiber. So it's really. Yeah, and that's why it's size adjustable actually. Even though, you know, some people like to, if they're sharing it, they might find a size that fits both people so they don't have to keep switching it. But it really should be almost kind of snug on your scalp. So hold it in place. But that's the difference between having a company and we'll just say Dr. Michael Rabin is the inventor of the original laser cap. He's the one that helps US design. We helped design the turbo laser cap. He has a team of engineers, of physicists, of people who've done the research in photobiomodulation. Those are the people on his team.
- [59:35]
A
Yeah.
- [59:37]
B
They're not looking to retro engineer, reverse engineer. That's what's happening overseas. These guys are the inventors. These guys are doing the calculations that you just talked about to figure out what is going to deliver the most amount of power to the scalp to get the best results for laser light. Yes, it's. It's important.
- [59:54]
A
Yeah.
- [59:54]
B
That's why the devices are not cheap.
- [59:56]
A
Yeah.
- [59:57]
B
The good ones are not cheap.
- [59:58]
A
They're not cheap. And there is a lot of. That's. That's the last thing the red light therapy market is right now as a market is right now at a race to the bottom because there are many, many, many, many, many, many companies, thousands of companies really, and, you know, hundreds of thousands, millions of users that basically share the same platforms. Like, you know, the reason Volkswagen owns like Audi and you know, Lamborghini and whatever, Skoda, which doesn't exist in America, but other companies is because when you're buying like a Toric or you're buying a Q7 or you're buying, you know,
- [60:38]
B
lumber, it's all made on the same assembly line.
- [60:40]
A
Same thing, different parts aren't like your brakes are not the same, but it's the same car at its essence. So they're making more money because they sold you 90% the same car. So they, you know, and that's the same in red light therapy. Everything sits on the same car on the same panel. And there is a. It's very difficult to in actual like, no pun intended, but to break the mold, to go into something that requires a. A different mold.
- [61:10]
B
A fundamental change.
- [61:11]
A
Yeah.
- [61:12]
B
Some kind of paradigm shift there is.
- [61:13]
A
There you're not there. There is a huge cost associated with that, actually. And we see it with companies that have tried to do it while being like a conventional red light therapy companies. The product that they have in a special mold, everything else there as far as like equipment quality, because they're trying to compete with their devices, with other devices in a very specific category. The devices are extremely low in power, extremely low in quality, break all the time because they had to compensate on that cost, huge cost of the mold. So it's true that red light therapy as a whole is great, great for the hair, but once you want to go like super specialized, you're going to have to pay the. There's a cost to that.
- [61:54]
B
So the Good news is in hair restoration, a good quality laser is a great investment. If you think of other things that you might need ongoing, whether it's, you know, heroic effort like a hair transplant, which could be tens of thousands of dollars, or regenerative therapies, you know, ongoing year after year, your turbo laser cap, which might seem like a big investment at the moment, especially when you're coming in for maybe an evaluation.
- [62:15]
A
Yeah.
- [62:15]
B
Actually that may be your least costly treatment over time.
- [62:19]
A
I agree.
- [62:20]
B
Because you're going to own it for 10, 15 years, maybe more, and you're going to get that daily use out of it. So you're going to get the mileage if you amortize it over time in your mind, if you calculate out how much that's going to cost, the cost of ownership, even over, you know, six years, seven years.
- [62:36]
A
That's why I say a lot about again, about newer products that are specific for nitric oxide and hair growth. If you don't own a laser cap, you are literally paying subscriptions to something you can own, you know, as far as like nitric oxide production. Right. So I definitely, I'm a big believer in that. That obviously is pet peeve that we share. But another thing that we both are big believers in, and I did this when I got treated by your staff, is the injectable bio stimulation, bio regenerative treatment that you can do again for hair restoration, which I think is incredible. And I don't know, you know, I don't know what to attribute, you know, percentage wise, what to attribute hair growth like my results. But I'm sure it has a big impact.
- [63:31]
B
Well, treatments like prp, platelet rich plasma, again, also those have been around for 20 years. So what we're doing today, far different and what was available 20 years ago, this is not your med spa monthly bit of business, vampire facial thing. Okay. This is a pretty sophisticated methodology. We just, it's called the same.
- [63:48]
A
Yeah.
- [63:49]
B
But obviously there's many different steps. And we've learned that the platelet density is really the key factor, the dosage. Right. So the dosage of platelets is really what makes the PRP work. And then the layering of that with other things like scaffolding materials, whether it's biological or synthetic, and then adding other things. Maybe we can do the peptides, your treatments at home, your lasers at home, or adding in exosomes such as stem cell derived therapies and things such as that. So pushing all of that together, platelet derived growth factor is a huge topic. And we know that that is a very powerful growth factor for hair growth. And the best way to get it simply is right out of your blood essentially in a one hour bit of business that has no recovery, no downtime.
- [64:29]
A
Veggies.
- [64:30]
B
Absolutely.
- [64:31]
A
Yeah, yeah. Because at the end of the day, what are platelets? Platelets are the first responders for any type of injury to soft tissue, especially like your skin, your hair, et cetera. So although I think, I think if you are a bro, if you're like a gym bro, and the first time you heard about PRP was when you tore your meniscus, you might rank it like in your, in your head is like many, many levels, by the way, financial tool, many, many levels below stem cell injection or whatever that is. But once you get to like hair restoration or skin, this is like the gold standard to what you can do biologically because it's so simple. Like you're amplifying the exact signal that your body needs.
- [65:19]
B
Right, Absolutely. It's your body's own pharmacy. So we're taking those platelets, separating them out with a centrifuge, eliminating the factors like the red blood cells that we don't need, don't want, that are inflammatory. We're preserving the monocytes in our protocol for preparations, a dual spin protocol, and deploying it onto the scalp during a lunch break. Right. So it's 100% painless with local anesthetic, zero recovery or downtime. And the way that we do it is going to give you, as you experience the boost of hair growth that's going to go for about 10 to 14 months with just a single treatment.
- [65:51]
A
Wow.
- [65:51]
B
So very powerful treatment. Great for men and women. Think of it like fertilizer in the garden. If the plant's already dead and gone, forget about it. You're going to need a transplant in that area. But even if we're transplanting, we would still do the PRP for healing and for hair growth for that next year.
- [66:05]
A
Yeah.
- [66:05]
B
And so women do great with our prp. Men do very well, as you've seen yourself personally. So it's a really, really exciting therapy that we still continue to evolve. I mean, we're using wavelengths of light at the level of the syringe before injection to release cytokines, release growth factors more proficiently and more productively from the platelets as we're doing the process. So there's some pretty interesting stuff that we're doing to those platelets before we even put them back into your skin.
- [66:33]
A
Do you think there is use of doing things systemic while this is happening whether it is simpler things like Myers cocktail or NAD infusions alongside that, or even, you know, obviously now it's pretty popular for people to go somewhere and spend a lot of money to get, you know, stem cells intravenously. Do you think there is a use of doing both systemic and local?
- [66:57]
B
So we've seen some good results with stacking those kinds of therapies. Just like we do hyperbaric oxygen after hair transplant, we use a nanov device for cellular messaging on the days of the procedures. So stacking those therapies certainly very beneficial. If you're talking about a stem cell therapy for hair growth.
- [67:14]
A
Yeah.
- [67:14]
B
I want to tell you about something new and exciting that we're doing. We're actually using our patient's own hair follicle stem cells as a source for treatment.
- [67:22]
A
Yeah.
- [67:23]
B
So, you know, that's really gonna be the gold standard moving forward. Instead of an off the shelf exosome that comes from a cell population that maybe you don't even know or someone says is an umbilical cord or whatever kind of tissue in a laboratory, you want your own exosomes, you want your own cellular messages for healing and for skin and for hair. We can get that directly from your own hair follicle stem cells. And that's the latest and greatest that's going to be an addition onto our traditional PRP treatments.
- [67:53]
A
And is that something that is a single use in air quotes, type interaction, or can I give you some of my hair follicles? Obviously, you take them, but can I give you some of those and kind of bank them for later? Because I would assume there is an age age factor here as well, where I want to harvest them sooner, maybe use them for later.
- [68:17]
B
Absolutely. So, I mean, our motto, time is follicles is because hair follicles age every single day. So I banked my follicles about three and a half years ago. And the point is that just like women bank their eggs for fertility purposes, I want to have a source material for eventually when we get to hair cloning. And I don't know when we're going to have it, but I know it's going to be about a decade or so out down the block. Hopefully. Hopefully, maybe sooner. I want my youngest possible cells as the source material. So that's the main reason years ago, people were banking the hair follicle stem cells. But today, what these researchers have done with the hair follicle stem cells is they've been able to create all different types of tissue. So, yes, a unique Cartilage or bone for an injury, perhaps the hair follicle will be able to deliver that. You need nerve endings, you need muscle, heart muscle, you need brain tissue, neurons. You want natural killer cells that work against cancer. They've already created natural killer cells in the laboratory from hair follicle stem cells.
- [69:17]
A
Yeah.
- [69:17]
B
So these mesenchymal stem cells, these mesenchymal signaling cells can be converted into every different type of tissue population in your body.
- [69:26]
A
Yeah.
- [69:26]
B
So your spare parts may eventually be your hair follicle stem cells.
- [69:31]
A
Yeah.
- [69:31]
B
But that's obviously in the future. Right. Today they'll take the hair follicle stem cells, they'll use those cells and they'll cultivate them. Take one strand of hair, which a hair follicle contains about 100,000 cells. Those will grow in a feed or free system in the laboratory to millions of cells, and they'll collect the secretome, which is all the messages that come from the cells. Lyophilize it, freeze, dry it, send it back to the clinic with your name on it. And then we can deploy that onto the skin for skin rejuvenation. We can deploy it onto the scalp for hair regrowth. And that is the latest and greatest biotech stem cell play. Biotech play in the industry right now. And they're already doing some clinical trials using those treatments as an injectable into the skin. So eventually we will be able to inject that into the skin. And maybe by the time this podcast comes out, we might already be doing that, but we can deploy it with microneedling and such. So autologous hair follicle stem cell treatment.
- [70:29]
A
And people could take some home with them, I would assume. Apply it.
- [70:34]
B
Yeah. So it comes in a 12 pack, it's freeze dried, it's in the fridge. We will defrost and reconstitute with hyaluronic acid that comes with it. And let's say we're doing a skin treatment. Okay. We may use a vial or two for the skin, maybe a vial or two for the scalp. There's a little bit left over. We put in a syringe for you and you can use it for the next couple of days. But it's literally your own body's signals.
- [70:54]
A
Yeah, it's pretty crazy.
- [70:55]
B
Super cool.
- [70:56]
A
Yeah.
- [70:56]
B
Dave Asprey was one of the first to have that done. He jumped on the train to get his hair follicles banked before we even knew we had this treatment two years ago. We banked them and then I think it was maybe even three Years ago we banked them and then a year ago they were making the secretome protocol. And so just literally within a month or two prior to the beyond conference or bionicking conference, at that time in Austin, the ACORN messaged me, said, yes, we can make it, we can do it. And so we brought it with us to Austin and deployed the treatment.
- [71:26]
A
Yeah. Side note, by the way, I spoke at a conference last year, it was Israel Tech conference, it was here in Miami. And there was a company that took those cells and can, by the way, make organs out of them to test drugs on those organs. Which would be your response to those drugs? Not a general response.
- [71:49]
B
Yeah, I mean, that's truly personalized precision medicine. We talk about personalized treatment regimens based on your DNA and your, and your hair loss analysis and all that other stuff, but actually testing your follicle to see how it responds to certain drugs or treatments. That sounds amazing.
- [72:04]
A
Yeah. Well, listen, this is definitely, I think, super. I know that there are people that are going to listen to this podcast and this is going to change their life. Because we started by discussing how life trajectory can definitely change through hair improvement. And it could be, you could call it, you can call it vein, as far as I'm concerned, you can call it flying elephants. There is so much research showing that the way you present yourself, look, et cetera, affects how you're being treated in many areas of life and affects how you feel. No, definitely the way you feel about yourself is the number one determinant on how you're going to be treated by the world. How does it work? Because for me, it was very simple. I drive down. Well, I know you personally saw I drive down. But how do people work with you? Is it location, location limited or how do people do it normally?
- [73:03]
B
So we have the office in Boca raton. It's nearly 13,000 square feet. Really. That's where you're going to get the most detailed deep dive evaluation possible. And of course, that's where we do all the hair transplant procedures. All minimally invasive follicular unit extraction, no scalpel, no stitch harvesting. Even long hair hair transplantation or no shave transplants are done today through that office. But I also have a location in New York now as well. So we can do evaluations and intakes there. We can also perform the regenerative treatments like the PRP and some of the other things that we discussed today. Lots of great new technology that we have available. But most importantly, most patients will start their journey at the website with a virtual evaluation so even patients that are, you know, within driving distance, they just may want to touch base with me, see how things are going. They want to get an evaluation started based on photos and a little discussion. They may have already started some kind of treatment regimen and just want to take that a little bit further. Yeah, so patients can go to the website baumanmedical.com b a u m a n medical.com they can start there. There's thousands and thousands of pages that I've written over the past 25, 30 years of information about treatments, procedures and so forth. They can watch thousands of hours of video of all different types of topics on hair loss and hair restoration. But of course they can justif they just want to ask a question, they can just fill out a simple form. Please put your email or phone number in there so I can get the information back to you. But most importantly, book an evaluation and get your journey started. If you're worried about hair, whatever you're seeing in the mirror, some receding hairline, thinning in the crown, your ponytails getting shrunk, you're seeing more scalp shining through, or even if you have other issues, eyebrows, eyelashes, beard, body hair, things like that, we can help.
- [74:44]
A
Incredible. And a side note is that the culture is top notch. The people that work for you are. I don't know what you're feeding them, but they're very happy.
- [74:54]
B
And feed them a lot, by the way, every day.
- [74:57]
A
No, it's McDonald's.
- [74:59]
B
That's my, no, that's, that's my grandmother. You know, gotta feed everybody. So.
- [75:02]
A
No, but they are extremely, extremely. They make a person feel welcome, taken care of. And again, like we spoke about customer service, that's extremely important when you get, when you expose yourself, when you talk about, you know, what bothers you, et cetera.
- [75:20]
B
Well, I'm blessed with an amazing team. Many of my 30 plus team members have been with us for decades. Even if they leave to have a baby or two, whatever, they seem to come back. So it's pretty interesting. But yeah, they're passionate about what they do. They're pretty professional group. They're amazing at what they do. I can't do it without them. Yeah, and it's required because we see literally thousands of patients each year that come through the practice. And so I need those, those team members to help. And that's, that's really important.
- [75:46]
A
One last thing that I will mention. You know, many people who listen to this then go to conferences, whether it is, you know, professionals probably go to like American Academy for anti Aging Medicine A4M coming soon to Florida or the biohackers or people who are interested in longevity, go to beyond conference by Dave Asprey, which is the major on their other ones. Your booth at conferences, aside from the fact that it's packed and people should probably like plan, coming early is extremely generous in what you can get done there or get tested there. So if you are at a conference, I'd get early to the Bauman booth. But you can get tested sometimes. There are like really incredible things as far as like therapeutics going on. So I highly recommend that.
- [76:32]
B
Absolutely. Last year, Dave's conference, you know, we had the AI powered microscope, so we were doing the density evaluations. We were demoing the TED treatment which is transepidermal delivery of growth factors and peptides. And you could add the exosomes to that. You could try on the laser cap. You can take a look at all the different products from the hair care line to the supplement line that we have. But even more importantly, I brought my trichologist and she was doing scalp treatments and scalp evaluations right there at the booth. So we were doing jet peel exfoliations and other therapeutic scalp things right then and there, you know, at the booth. Some of it you need like you say appointment.
- [77:09]
A
Yeah.
- [77:09]
B
If you want to make sure you don't get locked out on that. But it's always a fun time. Those are great conferences indeed.
- [77:15]
A
And one's coming up soon, so.
- [77:17]
B
Absolutely.
- [77:17]
A
Anyway, Alan, very nice meeting you. Very nice discussion. I'm looking forward to continue my hair journey. I hope many people do the same because it is life changing and we hope to have you here again.
- [77:33]
B
Well, thank you so much for having me. It's great to be with you.