#538 How to Fix Hair Loss and Thinning + Why We Go Gray
with Faraz Khan, MSC
Faraz Khan, MSC
There were tears rolling down her face because she was losing fistfuls of her hair and there was so much hair coming out that she was thinking she’d have to shave it off and get a wig, which is very, very scary for either sex, but especially for women, because hair is a big part of a woman’s identity.
Dr. Wendy Myers
So Faraz, thanks so much for joining the show.
Faraz Khan, MSC
Thank you so much for having me, Wendy.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah. So tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started in the health industry and anti-aging.
Faraz Khan, MSC
Yeah, totally. So I was a happy-go-lucky kid in college, and I just wanted to be popular with the women and get decent grades. But I remember one day, I was a junior, and I was washing my hair. I looked down at my hands, and I see my hands full of my beautiful dark hair. I had a freakout moment. As a soccer athlete at the time in college, I was kind of a little bit popular. That just sent shivers down my spine, my stress levels went from four to 11 right away, and I started thinking about why this is happening. Of course, I correlated this back to my mother; her three brothers were all bald, and I go, “Oh my god, this is in the family.” Even though my father’s side had great hair genetics, my mom’s side didn’t. So again, stress also added to that. I just stumbled my way for a few years with hair thinning. I tried so many things like holistic oils and biotin and shampoos and all the things that we do. I even tried onion juice for a while, and yogurt and egg yolks. At a certain point, I remember my grandma told me that if you shave your hair, it comes back thicker and stronger. So I ended up shaving six times. I was so desperate.
Dr. Wendy Myers
No, Grandma! No, that’s old wives’ tales.
Faraz Khan, MSC
But I didn’t know, and I don’t look good with a shaved head. So anyway, I did grad school. And then at the age of 25, I said, “Enough is enough of this. I’m tired of waking up with thin, fine hairs on the pillow.” So I went to see a hair transplant surgeon, and it was a female, and she was a great doctor. She calmed me down and said, “You know, you’re not ready for it because you haven’t lost a lot of hair in any one area.” But she said, “I’ve got a pill for you.” And the pill has some side effects. So I said, “No, no, this has sexual side effects; I’m not going to do it.” I went home, six more days of pain, waking up with hairs on my pillow, and I called her back and said, “Yeah, I’ll take the pill.” So I did that for 10 years. And then, when I got into anti-aging, I decided in LA, when I was living in Los Angeles, 10 years later, to quit my job and get into Anti Aging and Longevity because this is what I thought was the next frontier. It’s super exciting. So one of the first things I asked myself is what I can do in this field to better humanity and also focusing on myself first. My biggest challenge and my biggest insecurity was hair thinning and hair loss for, you know, 15 years. And so that’s what I did. I went to conferences around the world, I went to Thailand for an international hair restoration conference, talked to stem cell experts, and hair doctors and all the famous doctors in America.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I hear they have some smoking deals in Turkey on hair restoration, stem cell hair restoration.
Faraz Khan, MSC
It’s only $2,500 if you want to go to Turkey, and all of Europe is going there at this point. But anyway, so I went to this conference, and when I came back, I went to see each of these doctors in the United States, one by one, to their facilities. We talked for hours in front of and behind the camera. I learned some more, then I came back home and sat down and studied 200 scientific papers. I had a big aha moment at that point. I said the reason I’ve tried all these supplements, and I’m sure the listeners can correlate as well. You try a thing, and then you try a different thing, and you try a different supplement, and you try a different serum, and nothing seems to really work. The big aha moment I had is hair loss is a serious, complicated, and sometimes multifactorial issue. The best chance, if you’re serious about it, is to combine multiple things together and do it at the same time for best results. So that’s what I did. I took multiple supplements because I wanted the best of the best ingredients. Then I did multiple serums and then I also did derma rolling and hair brushing vigorously for months and months. Finally, I really had great results, and I had tiny baby hairs growing back. My hair felt thicker and awesome. And so I said, wow, this is great. My confidence was coming back, and I was smiling at myself in the mirror for no dang reason, which was amazing. Then I said, okay, cool. This works for me, but will it work for others? I had a few friends, some female, some male, and we did this on them as well, and they had good results. So I said, okay, maybe this is something we can bring to the world. This whole time, my mom’s texting me and saying, “My hair is falling out too. How are you going to help me?” So we decided to come up with something that’s multifactorial, that works together. That’s a whole system that addresses hair thinning from multiple angles. That’s when we created Fully Vital. That’s the company that we have, and that’s the system that we sell there. And then also, I have a podcast on longevity, which I’m so glad to be able to speak to experts like you and others that are really moving the field forward and looking our best and feeling great the whole way.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, fantastic. Yeah. And hair thinning is a problem for so many people, men and women, and it really is devastating. I mean, I know I’m very much into my hair, but thankfully, I’ve never had hair problems. I don’t have any gray hair. I don’t know why, but I’ve always been super healthy. I take lots of silica, and I take really good care of my health. So it shows in your hair, skin, and nails, etc. But for the people listening who are experiencing hair thinning, what are some of the primary reasons? you said it was multifactorial, So what are some of the things that are promoting this?
Faraz Khan, MSC
Yeah, so the #1 reason for men and women, when it comes to hair thinning and hair loss, has to do with hormonal changes. For women, they know this very well, at the age of 35, your hormones start changing and particularly estrogen and progesterone start declining, which leads to a relative imbalance with testosterone. This testosterone converts to dihydrotestosterone or DHT. Which then travels to your hair follicles, and according to the science, it starts to shrink the hair follicles, so it restricts blood flow, oxygen, and it starts shrinking them, which means your hair gets thinner and thinner and wispier over time. And in men, this translates to complete baldness, and luckily for women, it’s not complete baldness, but you see a lot of thinning, and you can see the scalp sometimes. And so that is the number one reason, but there are many other reasons. And the other question I get is how do I know if I have hormonal thinning going on? There is one simple test you can do. I have a friend, Lisa lives in Minneapolis, called me with the same question, and what I asked her to do is when you’re taking a shower next, just all the hairs that are maybe in your hand, when you’re washing your hair, just stick them on the tiles in the bathroom or in the shower curtain, for example, and just look at them. If there are 10 hairs, if there are two of them that are thinner than the others, or more than that, it can be hormonal because when the hair thins, it’s typically hormone-related. And this is the only type of hair loss that can be permanent, meaning your follicle can shut down. All the other hair loss types, you can grow it back. If you get rid of the underlying causes. So this is a particular one that everybody has to be careful with. The other one that we see a lot of is stress-related hair loss, and this could be, there are two subtypes. One is like, you have a massive trauma, like you get COVID or you have an infection or a surgery or a breakup. Either psychological or physical stress that causes your body to say “I am in deep trouble, I might die so I’m gonna pull all the resources away from my hair which is expendable towards the core organs”. And so that’s what it does that leads to hair shifting to a resting phase after which it has to fall out. And people freak out because they can lose up to 50% of their hair. Half their hair 2 3 months after the big incident. And it’s very important to try to do everything you can to bring it back at the end of that. Because normally it should come back, but there can be factors that prevent it. The other type of stress-related hair loss is just ongoing chronic stress, meaning elevated levels or high levels of stress. And so what you want to do is to bring your body back into balance, and do some meditations, take some adaptogens like ashwagandha or others that we have in our supplement, but just bring your body back to normal. It’s super important to reduce the effects of stress. And then I’ll say the other ones, I’ll just briefly mention one of them has to do with nutrients as well. Nutrition is very important. There are five big ones, nutritional aspects that have to be, you have to have in the right amounts in your body. And these are vitamin D3. You have zinc, iron, folate, and B12. If you can get these, these are called the big five. If you can get these in the right quantities in your body, you must be in the middle of the range, not on the low end and not on the high end. That’s what’s important for hair growth. That’s a big one. And I’m sure you come across this Wendy, as there are vegans now that don’t get enough of iron and even zinc and folate in particular instances. So you’ve got to be careful there and make sure you are supplementing or getting it from other ways. So those are the top three ways, and we can talk a lot more, but I’ll pause there.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, for sure. I agree. I mean, I’ve heard of a lot of people that go vegan with very good intentions, but it is a nutrient-deficient diet. People not only have their hair fall out, but their teeth start rotting out of their head as well, because they just don’t have the nutrients they need to support bone health. And it’s interesting, the nutrients that support your hair, skin, and nails also support your bones as well. Like silica, for instance, I think silica is really important too.
Any other causes of hair loss? I mean, you mentioned COVID related to hair loss. Can you expand on that a little bit more? Because I know there are a lot of people that had that and may have experienced hair loss afterwards.
Faraz Khan, MSC
Totally. We deal with this quite a bit. I met a friend of mine two years ago at the biohacking conference in Dallas, and she got COVID right in the middle of it. Then she came back to Austin where I live right now. We met up for lunch and I said, “How’s it going?” And she was, there were tears rolling down her face because she explained to me that she was losing fistfuls of her hair because of COVID that had happened two months ago. There was so much hair coming out that she was thinking she’d have to shave it off and get a wig, which is very scary for a woman. Either sex, but especially for women, because society values hair as a big part of a woman’s identity. And so it’s very important. So what happens with COVID or any other big injury, accident, surgery, all of those is your body goes into shock and says, “Your hair is taking up so much energy. I’m going to pull minerals resources away from the hair and to the core organs.” So blood, your heart, your brain, kidneys, lungs, especially so that you can survive as a human being. And then, the hair has to, because it’s now disconnected from the hair follicles and the blood supply, it has to complete, go through a complete cycle, after which it should grow back. But, here’s what happens, sometimes there are multiple causes of hair thinning going on at the same time. So you could have hormonal aspects going on, which are thinning your hair, but then you get a big shed from COVID. And now typically all the hairs would grow back, but they don’t because the hormones are blocking the hair from coming back. So you’ve got to address that, or you have other reasons like heavy metals, which we can get into that can, that are also preventing your hair from coming back. So it’s very important when you have a big shed to be very mindful of your hair and to do a lot of things. And if you’re serious, I recommend doing a lot of things regardless, because that’s when you get to see the best results.
Dr. Wendy Myers
And I also think about acting sooner rather than later, not waiting, getting to the bottom of it, figuring out what’s going on. Because you mentioned before we were talking that if you wait too long, if you wait years, that hair follicle dies and it can’t regenerate.
Faraz Khan, MSC
Yeah! What I noticed is when I was losing my hair, I was trying one supplement after another and another, or serum, where I tried minoxidil for many years. And it didn’t really work for me that well because I was just doing one thing. And so that’s what I found and what we found in our community. if you do three or four things together and each of those things is very well crafted, then you have the best chances. The other reasons can also be related, like I said, to heavy metals, which you’re an expert in, Wendy. But also you could be taking medications which can be causing hair loss. There are plenty of medications that can cause hair loss. There are too many to list, but you can look up and Google some of those. Ask Dr. Google. Those can be challenges and also thyroid, low thyroid or Hashimoto’s is something that we see and so there are two tests that I recommend when we work with women. And they’re having challenges with their hair. We recommend two tests to kind of rule out some of the underlying conditions. One is an iron panel, a complete iron panel. That’s important for hair. And it’s not obvious to most people that they may either be deficient in iron. And then the second one is a complete thyroid panel with antibodies. And so that gives us a really good indication of how your thyroid gland is doing if it’s compromised in any way. So we can, once those are out of the way, then you have a very good shot at getting your hair back. From a high-level standpoint.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah. And mercury really impacts the thyroid, just one metal that dramatically impacts thyroid functioning. And there are heavy metals like uranium, arsenic, mercury; those can all contribute to hair loss. Nickel can contribute to autoimmune alopecia. And, I know for me, living in California, anywhere in the Southwest United States, there’s a lot of uranium in the water that you’re absorbing when you’re showering. I had a period at one point where I had a lot of hair coming out, a fifth of my hair fell out. It’s the only time in my life where I’ve had a hair loss like that. I did a hair mineral analysis and I realized I had super high uranium off the charts. And then I discovered in my research that when you’re dumping a lot of uranium, you’re detoxing it. You can have a lot of hair loss, but the hair grew back, but definitely it freaked me out. But I just correlated that to the uranium dump that I was having.
Faraz Khan, MSC
It’s really interesting because I lived in Los Angeles too, and I did the hair mineral analysis while I lived there, and I had higher levels of uranium and also arsenic. It freaked me out a little bit because it’s in the water, like you’re saying, so we’re absorbing it. And so when I moved away, it was less of a concern, but it’s in the water. So you have to be careful and heavy metals are correlated directly with hair loss and hair thinning. So that’s another aspect that we have to look into to get the best chance of growing your hair back.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yes. Let’s talk about Rogaine or the minoxidil and those parts. Because that’s usually what your doctor is going to recommend when you go to them. And then people take that, it causes erectile issues in some men, and then when you stop it, all your hair falls out. What’s going on there?
Faraz Khan, MSC:
Totally. I can explain this really well. First of all, in studies, Rogaine only works in about half the people. I think the primary reason is not that it’s very bad, but there are two reasons behind it. One is that it makes your hair sticky. It’s got propylene glycol as an agent that’s required to transfer the minoxidil to your scalp. And so that’s a very sticky substance. So people just don’t use it every day. So compliance is a big issue when it comes to minoxidil or Rogaine. The second issue is that the minoxidil in the actual Rogaine needs to be converted to its active form, minoxidil sulfate. And so there’s an enzyme on your scalp that does the conversion and many people don’t have enough of the enzyme. And so that’s a second challenge with minoxidil, which is why there are not these amazing results with it. I have seen people get good results with 15% minoxidil. So for our male clients that come to us, we typically recommend a fifth and depending on how much hair they’ve lost already, if it’s a significant amount, then we will recommend a 15% minoxidil along with our protocol. But for women, our protocol seems to do enough or be great. So that’s the skinny on Rogaine. And it’s also important that some people or some women don’t want to use it. Again, because of compliance and two, because they don’t want to use any pharmaceuticals or chemicals, but I have used it in the past. I don’t use it anymore again because it makes my hair sticky and we have other ingredients in our serum that have been scientifically shown to do as well or even better than Rogaine.
Dr. Wendy Myers:
One, what’s the name of your product line and then what are some of the ingredients in the serum?
Faraz Khan, MSC
So it’s called Fully Vital. That’s the name of the company and it’s a whole system. What we recommend is that if anybody is struggling with hair thinning and wants to try our product then get the 3-month bundle because you get the serum, you get the supplement, you get the derma roller, and you get the hair brush. And they all have very important parts in hair growth which I can explain. But particularly for the serum, and I’ll just hold up a bottle here for people that can watch. It goes after a pathway, so everything that we do, we think about how many pathways we can go after when it comes to hair loss or hair thinning. So, for example, we know that hormones, or DHT in particular as a hormone, can cause hair thinning. So we’ve got ingredients in the serum that help balance DHT. We’ve got caffeine that is known to counteract DHT but also multiple peptides like Capixyl that help counteract that effect. So we get that pathway set aside. Then we talk about the antioxidants pathway, especially also with aging, that can have an impact. And so we have topical melatonin that can help reduce the antioxidant or can help with the antioxidant effects for the serum. Then we talk about inflammation. So we’ve got ginkgo biloba and other substances that help balance the inflammation levels on your scalp. Then what’s also important is circulation. Very important to have enough blood flow and circulation to your scalp. So you’ve got a couple of ingredients including methyl nicotinate that help increase blood flow to your scalp. So you have more oxygen, more nutrients. So that’s how we think about hair loss as pathways. So we’ve got 15 active ingredients in the serum. Other companies that sell stuff have one or two active ingredients and a lot of helper ingredients. We’ve got 15 actives that are targeting one or more pathways to give you the best chance possible of getting your hair back.
Dr. Wendy Myers
So realistically, when you start using these products, how long does it take before you start seeing hair regrow?
Faraz Khan, MSC:
Great question. It takes about 75 to 90 days for you to see baby hairs. So that’s the physical manifestation of little hairs coming out. But even before that, what you’re going to see is your hair quality getting better, your hair loss reducing in the first 30 days, and then in the next 30 days, which is day 60, you’ll feel your hair to be healthier. It’ll be thicker and growing faster. So you will see these changes over time, but certainly immediately within the first four weeks, you’ll see a lot less hair loss. You might also see more hair thinning in the beginning because what happens is that, especially when you brush, this is one question we get from women so much, they’re like, “I don’t want to brush my hair, I’m scared of touching it” because I was the same when I was losing hair. I didn’t want to touch it. I don’t want to wash it. I don’t want to do anything with it. Brushing really helps bring a lot of circulation and ingredients to your scalp, which are very important. The hair that’s coming out when you brush is already disconnected from the hair follicles, so it’s just dead hair. It needs to go anyway. And we’re taking it out so it can make space for new hairs to grow out from under it. So, we recommend brushing 100 to 200 times vigorously every single day because that again gets your scalp activated. And we can talk about some more science behind this. But touching, massaging, scalp massage turns on lots of genes in your body. And it tells your body that, “Hey, this is an important part. So let’s bring it more love and more blood circulation and all those good things.” So, you will see a little bit of extra hair loss in the beginning, but that’s by design. And then in four weeks, you’ll see a much reduced thinning. And then by 75 to 90 days, you’ll see a lot of hair growth.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yes, I mean, it makes sense to brush your hair, to massage your scalp and whatnot, to get that blood flow there. And it just completely makes sense because it’s an area that you just totally ignore. So even if you go get massages on a regular basis, like I do, they frequently don’t touch the scalp. Right, they’re just going over the rest of your body. But it makes sense, just like you do lymphatic brushing, to also be doing that to your scalp as well.
Faraz Khan, MSC
Yes, your grandma likely, like many women, told them to brush their hair a hundred times a day. And we believe grandma meant to brush your scalp more than your hair, right? Because that’s where all the magic happens. Hair grows out of your scalp. So all of our products are targeted at the scalp. And so we get this question, will it work for my hair type? Yes, because we’re going after the scalp. We don’t care so much about if you have curly, kinky, coily hair, it’s more about the scalp quality. It’s more about the health of your scalp and supporting you with ingredients and topicals to help you with that. And also, we have a four-month money-back guarantee. This is the one big thing that I want to address because a lot of companies that sell products have a 30-day money-back guarantee. So it takes you a week to get the product, and then you have three weeks to see results before the guarantee runs out. And we recognize this is a challenge and many women listening may have, or men may have tried many, many solutions prior to listening to me. And so that’s why we have a four-month money-back guarantee to make sure that we help you get the results. And for some reason, a small percentage of our women don’t get results, and we refund their money.
Dr. Wendy Myers:
And you have a supplement also for the hair. Can you tell us about that?
Faraz Khan, MSC
So the supplement helps balance your body from the inside and gives it support for all the nutrients that are important for healthy hair. Going back to the pathways, it’s important to balance the hormones from within, especially DHT. The supplement contains three ingredients that help balance the DHT levels, which is very important to do. Then we talk about stress, which we discussed earlier. It’s important to reduce stress so you have the best chance of growing your hair. We’ve got adaptogens like ashwagandha and schizandra in there that help balance your stress levels and bring it back to normal levels. Again, we recommend you do more meditation and mindfulness as well, but this is really good as a starter. Then I talked about the big five ingredients that are important for healthy hair. We’ve got those big five, vitamin D3, iron, zinc, B9, and B12. All of them are included at the right levels in the supplement. We also help balance inflammation because that has been associated with hair thinning. So we’ve got curcumin that helps balance inflammation levels naturally in your body. And finally, circulation is also important. So we’ve got pine bark extract that helps increase levels of circulation all over your body and that has scientific data behind it. That’s how we attack this challenge. Wendy is good. Go to the pathways, find the best ingredients that help support those pathways, and then launch products.
Dr. Wendy Myers:
And I know that some people, especially men, feel like they need to take testosterone to help their hair. What do you think about that in regards to hair growth?
Faraz Khan, MSC
Excellent question. Even women sometimes do hormone replacement therapy and they take testosterone. So, if you are going to increase your levels of testosterone in your body, that inherently comes with a risk of increasing your hair loss, because that testosterone is going to convert to DHT, unless you can help balance or reduce the conversion using either natural herbs, which we have in our supplement, or you could go the pharmaceutical route, which is more strong, it can cause some side effects, but that’s up to you to decide.
But certainly, I wouldn’t take testosterone without trying to reduce the conversion of testosterone to DHT. Otherwise, you’ll have hair loss.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yes, it makes perfect sense. You’re just kind of adding fuel to the fire, almost. And then what about red lights? I’ve seen the red light baseball caps and other things that people are trying to sell to those who have hair loss. How do those work?
Faraz Khan, MSC
So the red lights, and I’m sure you know this very well, but for the listeners, there are some wavelengths that have the potential to excite cells to increase mitochondrial energy, essentially increasing the energy inside the cell. And what does the cell do with that energy? It does what it’s supposed to do, which is grow hair. These red light therapy devices fall in the category of minoxidil, which is a hair growth promoter, as opposed to targeting the root causes of hair loss. So, I like to do both. You want to address the root causes, things that help address the root causes, like the supplement and some of the serum aspects of it. But then also you want hair growth promoters to add to your regimen, like anything that improves circulation, like minoxidil is one, and also red light. I believe it works because the data outside of hair loss is pretty sound. The data on hair loss is a little bit suspect because what they do is they start these studies at the end of summer or in summer and the study ends in the fall time. But that’s the period in which humans lose about 15% to 20% of hair as the seasons change. Okay. And so what they’re doing is they’re prolonging the hair cycle. So it’s not falling out. And then they’re claiming that we regrew 20% hair. You didn’t regrow 20% hair. You just saved and prolonged it from falling out. It will eventually fall out. But, so just take that with a little bit of a caveat that I’d like to mention. However, I still do support using red light caps. If you can, I just ask people to get in as economically as possible. Don’t pay $1000 or $2000. Because for the most part, what happens is you’re going to use it, you’re going to use it for a month, and then it’s going to sit in the closet for the rest of your life, just collecting dust. That’s how that works.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah! I think it starts like anything where it just, That’s just one thing that you can do. You still have to check all these other boxes as well, the nutrition and stress, etc. And then why not PRP? I know a lot of doctors will recommend that, certainly not as good as, you know, hair transplantation. That’s like the absolute last resort when you’ve tried everything else. But how does PRP work?
Faraz Khan, MSC
PRP can be good, and I’ll discuss the data on it. So what they do is you go to a dermatologist’s office and they’ll draw your blood out and then they’ll spin it in a centrifuge. Once it’s spun, all the platelets are concentrated. When you inject these back into your scalp with a needle, you have to do lots of injections in your scalp, that can help promote some growth factors that can help strengthen the hair. Now, what’s important to note about PRP is that this is typically a short-lived procedure. So you’re going to pay anywhere from $600 to $1,500 per PRP session. It can also be up to $3,000, depending on what part of the country you’re in. And you might have to do multiple of these and the best results you can get from PRP is maybe one year, maybe nine months of thick hair. And then your hair starts to decline back to the baseline. I’ve done PRP multiple times. Once I had good results. I paid $2,500 one time, which is a lot.
Dr. Wendy Myers
You could have gone to Turkey.
Faraz Khan, MSC
A whole transplant for that, right? Yeah! Instead of one-time PRP. So that helped me for about nine months. And then my hair started thinning again. And the second time I did it for cheaper and I got no results. When you look at the scientific literature, there are lots and lots of studies with hair loss and PRP. Some have good results, others have no results. Yeah. So it’s really hard to say. And what I’ve learned in my experience with talking to practitioners is if you root, use the right centrifuge, there are levels to this game. There are centrifuges that are made that do better, other than, some practitioners will just go to Amazon and buy a centrifuge that doesn’t seem to do so well. So be careful with PRP. You’re going to spend a lot of money and there’s no guarantee of results.
Dr. Wendy Myers
And then what about hair extensions? I know some people, in desperation, will thicken their hair through hair extensions. And it seems like it would be hard on the existing hair that’s already there.
Faraz Khan, MSC
Yeah. I believe in every woman’s right to look like a goddess with amazing hair. And also, I want to point out that it comes with its own challenges. If you’re going to put on extensions for extended periods of time, it can cause what’s known as traction alopecia. Traction alopecia is a condition in which you’re pulling on the hair, albeit a small amount, but you’re pulling on it for a long time. So, it kind of scars your follicle, which means your follicle is scarred and it’s dead, and this can’t grow any more hair. In fact, if you want to look up celebrities that have damaged their hair with extensions, look up Jennifer.
Dr. Wendy Myers:
Oh, Jennifer Aniston.
Faraz Khan, MSC
Jennifer Aniston. Yeah. She’s got a story online of how extensions ruined her hair. So be careful if you want to use them, use them for short periods of time and don’t have them on for months or years at a time.
Dr. Wendy Myers:
Yeah, I had a friend who did that. Her hair was thinning, and she got hair extensions, and her hair looks amazing. I didn’t really think about that potential consequence. They’re very expensive. You could go to Turkey. So, they’re very expensive. I was blown away.
Faraz Khan, MSC
Really? I didn’t know that. I have no experience in hair extensions or buying them at least.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Oh no, they can be $1000 to $1500 for hair extensions. They’re incredibly expensive. I was really shocked. It depends on the salon you go to, of course, the quality of the human hair, and some of them use human hair and whatnot. So, how do you know if hair loss is temporary or permanent? Because for me, my hair loss was temporary. A lot fell out very quickly, and then it started to grow back before I really had a chance to. I panicked for a second, but then it grew back at some point. But for some people, they need to make a call. Will their hair grow back?
Faraz Khan, MSC
I think that anytime you start to worry about your hair or you have this spidey sense that more is falling out, typically what I’ve found is it’s usually true because you start to see some signs and you know something’s off. So it’s very good to, as you said, Wendy, act early when it comes to hair, because it’s complicated. It’s not easy. And the only type of hair loss, as I mentioned earlier, is the hormonal hair loss that’s related to dihydrotestosterone or DHT. For women, the risk factor of that goes up the older you get. So 35 is when the risk of those hormone hair loss starts, but certainly as you get to perimenopause and into menopause, that risk goes up many, many fold. And so that’s just being in that age bracket, just be careful. And then, like I said, you could also look at comparing different hairs in the shower or afterwards. If there are thinner hairs and thicker hairs, it’s usually a telltale sign that you’re seeing hormonal hair loss. So you gotta act on it quickly.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah. And the hormones aren’t easy to fix either. There’s a lot of stress that can contribute. Heavy metals and chemicals play a huge role in interfering with your hormones. Also, after you have a baby, you know, a lot of women, they have super high estrogen. When I was pregnant, I had this crazy hair, like you have this high estrogen and you have this unbelievably thick hair, and then you have the baby and all that’s over. The estrogen just tanks, and then your hair starts falling out, and it’s really shocking, and it’s normal. But I know for some women, when they get very nutritionally depleted following their pregnancy, especially if they were kind of behind the eight ball before, plus the hormones, and the hair falls out and doesn’t come back.
Faraz Khan, MSC
Everything you said is spot on. The other thing that also happens is what we discussed with COVID. And if you have surgery, like having a baby is a huge shock to your system. So your body goes, “Oh, I don’t know what’s going on. I got to save this person from dying.” And so again, it pulls the resources from the most expendable part of your body, which is your hair. And so what happens two months after you have a baby? You lose all of that hair coming out and you lose fistfuls, right? All the glory, crowning glory you had during pregnancy goes away in an instant,
Dr. Wendy Myer
Done and gone in like a month or two. But it’s a shame. Yeah. But you know, some of us had a lot of hair. A lot of hair to begin with, so the loss wasn’t that devastating. For some women, it really takes a toll and they need to take some corrective measures, like using fully vital products. So tell us a little bit more about those and where we can get them.
Faraz Khan, MSC
You can go to fullyvital.com. If you’re looking to get thicker, fuller hair, or you want to regrow some of your hair, I would highly recommend getting the three-month bundle. It’s a 90-day full supply of everything you need. It includes the supplements, the serum, the brush, and the roller, and it comes with a 120-day money-back guarantee. So, we’ve got you covered. We want to help people get results. And that’s why we have the four-month money-back guarantee. Also, use the code “Wendy15” to get 15 percent off your order. So yeah, that’s where I would go. And if you have concerns about grays or you’re in the early part of graying, we also have solutions for helping delay and reduce gray hairs. The whole line has been designed by Dr. Sandra Kaufman, who’s a dear friend of mine, and she’s written two books on aging or longevity. So that’s something to consider as well.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Well, let’s talk about that gray hair. Because that’s a big concern as well. So what causes gray hairs and what can you do about it?
Faraz Khan, MSC
Yeah, so there’s multiple reasons for gray hair. But the number one reason is hydrogen peroxide. And what happens is, as every cell in your body produces energy, as a result of that energy, it produces these free radicals, these things that actually harm the cell. And so your body has defense mechanisms to get rid of these free radicals. And in one process, it converts these free radicals to hydrogen peroxide. The body has antioxidants like glutathione and catalase that help reduce that into water. So they make it harmless. But what happens over time is that your antioxidant levels in your cells decrease, which means there’s more hydrogen peroxide just lingering around your cells. And that is what ultimately harms and bleaches yourselves from the outside. Ironically, a lot of people use hydrogen peroxide in their bleaching products to change hair color on the outside, but that’s the same process that’s happening on the inside. So, the first thing you want to do is help increase your antioxidant status, so you can support your body in getting rid of these things. The other thing that happens is that there is a stem cell niche for gray hairs. It’s called the melanocyte stem cells. And every time you have a new hair come out, your hair growth cells and your color cells kind of work hand in hand to provide the melanocytes or the pigment cells that actually create the pigment. But for some reason, the melanocyte stem cells run out faster than any other stem cell niche in the human body. And so at some point you go gray because you can’t even create the pigment cells anymore. And so what’s very important is you want to kind of get to this on the earlier side. If you’re over 50 percent gray or you’re 100 percent gray, then it’s very hard to reverse it. But if you’re on the earlier side, less than 30 percent gray, we can do a lot of things to reverse it. The third thing I would just say quickly is that the enzymes that create the melanin also don’t work as well. And so if you can get antioxidants and other support to help increase the activity of these enzymes and you get more color going into your hair shaft. So certainly you can do quite a bit. I’ve had a 40 percent reduction in my beard by applying the serum that we have for anti-grey, but I will also admit that I was expecting it to go to zero. It hasn’t gone to zero. So at some point it’s maybe a challenging problem to solve and we’ve got the best science behind it. We’re going after all the pathways, but it’s still a challenging problem.
Dr. Wendy Myers
So try it out. And well, so let’s say it’s good to know that there’s something that you can do about it. You can address the stem cells, you can address the melanocytes, and things like that. You’re not just kind of stuck with going gray or prematurely aging.
Faraz Khan, MSC
Yeah, we’ve got six pathways we’re going after with gray hairs, and again, we’re coming up in time. But it’s very well researched, it’s very scientific. We’re even trying to protect your DNA from getting damaged from sunlight, because sunlight can damage your cells, and it can damage your stem cells, which then run out. And so, we’re trying to protect your stem cells, we’re trying to protect your melanocytes, we’re trying to get rid of hydrogen peroxide, we’re trying to balance your stress levels because that can cause grays as well. And try to reduce homocysteine levels. So again, there’s a lot we’re doing and with the hope that it can have a lot of benefits for a lot of people.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Okay, great. Well, everyone just go to www.fullyvital.com and check out the different options. I just highly, highly recommend Faraz and his products to reverse your grays and improve the thickness of your hair and the hair loss. He’s obviously really done his homework and has some fantastic suggestions and products. So go check that out, www.fullyvital.com and what is the coupon code to get 15% off again?
Faraz Khan, MSC
Wendy15
Dr. Wendy Myers
Perfect. Super, super simple. Well, Faraz, thanks so much for joining us. And again, tell us where we can learn more about your work and join your community.
Faraz Khan, MSC
Thank you so much, Wendy. So you can go to www.fullyvital.com as Wendy said, to get the products. You can check me out on my own podcast, Anti-Aging Hacks. We talk about very cool things like Wendy does as well. And my Instagram is also @antiaginghacks.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Fantastic. Great! Faraz, thanks so much for joining us and everyone I’m Dr. Wendy Myers. Thanks for tuning in every week. My goal with doing this show is to help you upgrade everything you’re doing for your health. And you know, my hope is you get just one or two things that can help you with your health issues and meet your health goals. And that’s why I do this. So thanks for tuning in.
Disclaimer:
The Myers Detox Podcast is created and hosted by Wendy Myers. This podcast is for information purposes only. Statements and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast, including Wendy Myers and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own, and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. If you think you have a medical problem, consult a licensed physician.
