Getting To The Root Of Male And Female Hair Loss: A Functional Medicine Approach

one of the most common signs of an under active thyroid is shifts in your hair so we see more thinning of the hair the hair can become more dry and brittle and you know the eyebrows can shift welcome to the doctor's pharmacy i'm dr mark hyman and it's pharmacy with an ffa or macy a place for conversations that matter and if you suffer from hair loss or you know someone who suffers from hair loss or you're worried about hair loss this podcast is going to matter to you because it's one of our special editions of the doctor's pharmacy called house call with my friend and colleague dr elizabeth boehm here at the ultra wellness center in lenox massachusetts where we see a lot of hair loss and it's a very common condition dr boehm is a colleague and friend of mine we've worked together for almost 20 years she's what every doctor should be she's a md an rd registered dietitian and an exercise physiologist she's one of leading teachers in functional medicine around the world mostly now through zoom but she's uh been such a centerpiece for some of our key educational programs at the institute for functional medicine around nutrition and i'm just so honored that she's my colleague and partner here at the ultra wellness center and the medical director and welcome dr boham thank you mark it's great to be with you okay so let's get right into it hair loss it's a big problem it freaks people out now there's some things it's male pattern baldness which is hard to deal with but a lot of causes of hair loss can be really addressed through functional medicine and it's very different than traditional care so let's let's talk about how common is this problem and what is your traditional doctor going to do if you come in complaining of hair loss yeah i mean it's estimated that about 50 of men and women have dealt with hair or will deal with hair loss at some point in their life and so it's it's something that's really common and you know many times it's you know you the response the patients come and tell me that they were told is well you could try some rogaine or um or you know you're just getting older and that's why your hair is getting thinner and um and so i think functional medicine is a great thing that we can use to address hair loss because there's so many different causes and we need to take each person as an individual and look for their underlying root cause of of why are they losing hair and what can we do to help their hair look better and and potentially many times regrow yeah absolutely and i i can tell you it's one of the most satisfying things i had a patient come in once with complete hair loss it's a very unusual kind of hair loss called alopecia areata which means you lose or totally which means you lose hair under your arms you know your facial hair if you're a guy i mean your hair on your head your eyebrows i mean you lose everything uh this woman came back a year later after i treated her and i will get into what i did but she came back and she's wearing a hat but i'm like oh you're wearing a hat and then she like did a reveal and picked up her hat and she had a full head of hair and it was so gratifying because this is something that traditional medicine just doesn't do well with so let's talk about the different types of hair loss because there's male hair loss and male pattern baldness which is you know common and obvious a little hard to deal with but then there's all the other kinds of hair loss which are often really responsive that occur in men and women to a functional medicine approach which is looking at the root cause so you want to look to see if somebody has a diffuse hair loss or do they have patches of hair loss right so if there's a patch of hair loss like there's a circular area where the the scalp is really smooth and you have a you've lost hair in patches like that then you're thinking more of an autoimmune process and then the more common that people come in with is a more diffuse hair loss or either a male or female pattern hair loss and so with male pattern hair loss it's more you see the receding hairline maybe the the crown of their head there's hair loss because because our hair follicles some of them are more impacted by our hormones so um the androgens testosterone and dhea can impact hair for certain hair follicles more than others and then female pattern hair loss is is more of a you know what what women will notice is that part in their hair is getting wider so they'll notice this this their part it seems to be getting wider on the top of their head and they're like that's strange so um it can be a a slow process like that as well so you know we we really don't know all over all over we see thinning all over a lot and then of course we can see hair breakage we pay attention to that as well there's all sorts of different causes depending on how that person is losing their hair or quality hair too yeah that's not just hair loss but the quality of your hair depends so much on nutrition and other factors yeah right and then like you mentioned the autoimmune diseases those are more severe hair loss where like the case i mentioned which is total body loss or just lost on your head and and those are those are autoimmune issues and and so so typically you know how how are doctors treating these problems with traditional medicine you know i mean i think that sometimes they're recommending uh steroid injections for certain types of hair loss they're recommending rogaine if it's more of a diffuse hair loss or as i said before sometimes they're saying well you know that's just it looks like you're just aging hair loss so they'll use propecia for guys which is like a prostate medication that they re-label for for hair loss because it blocks testosterone yes right yes yeah and for women it's kind of hard right there's not a lot of options yeah i mean and i think it's really important to get a good history from our patients to get a good timeline you know that's what we always focus on with functional medicine is really getting their full story when did this start how long has it been going on what kind of patterns have you seen you know and then really looking at what else is going on in the body you know what is their diet like how is their digestive system working how are they digesting and absorbing is there concerns that there may be issues with digestion and absorption um and is there other signs of inflammation going on in their body do they have if it's signs of autoimmunity then there's a whole cascade of things you're looking at you know you're you're questioning the microbiome you're questioning intestinal permeability you're questioning exposure to certain toxins and chemicals from the environment that can be triggers and these can be triggers for all autoimmune diseases absolutely and you know you're depending on you your genetics whatever you might get one autoimmune disease and somebody else might get a different one from the same causes yes yes right you know um right there's always that that triad of autoimmunity we're paying attention to are you genetically predisposed do you have increased intestinal permeability or leaky gut and has there been some trigger that may have triggered this autoimmune process to occur so you know that's not as common as what we see all the time you know we're seeing what we're most commonly seeing is you know that diffuse hair loss where people are coming in and they're they're uh or or male pattern hair loss in women we see that a lot too and we'll review uh review some case on that as well um and and those are things we can really do a lot to improve pretty quickly so so when you when you see someone come in with like let's say let's just take a woman for example which is you know often more common to see hair issues than other than male pattern baldness um you know what what is the list that goes to your head from a functional medicine perspective of things that you need to think about like what is the diagnostic list and how would we approach these patients differently than just saying take rogaine or you know good luck or get a hair transplant i'm thinking about their hormones right right we're thinking about their hormones and how is their hormones balanced or unbalanced what's going on with their thyroid um what's going on with their digestion digestive system what's going on with their nutritional status you know where's what's their iron like we're wondering about levels yeah iron deficiency which is really common um you know we're worried about uh issues with gluten so sometimes you know anything and then other inflammatory foods that can cause inflammation and impact digestion and absorption we see that pretty frequently actually um so there's so many so many aspects that we're looking at absorption low protein intake often yes you're vegan sometimes this can be an issue over time and you mentioned hormones i want to loop back to that so we've got you know we've got thyroid you mentioned you mentioned hormones you mentioned the gut you mentioned gluten you mentioned inflammatory foods you mentioned nutritional levels like iron and there's other things like bite that may be relevant let's go back to the hormones because the this is i think probably one of the biggest drivers uh particularly in women and so talk about the main hormonal changes let's get to thyroid in a minute but let's start with the other major hormonal changes you see what's driving it i mean one of the most common reasons that women have hair loss that's hormonally related with in terms of their female hormones is when they develop this process of polycystic ovarian syndrome or pcos and insulin resistance because their hormones shift in their body and they start to have higher levels of testosterone and dhea and so then their hair starts to change they'll notice that they may have a receding hairline they'll notice some thinning on the top of their head they also may notice that they're that they're growing hair in places that they don't want to right on their chin on their belly they're they're a normal um fine hair on their chin and belly is starting to get darker and um harder and they you know so that that could be a bald and grow a beard that's just no fun it's terrible it's no fun it's terrible you get it in the places you don't want it and you lose in the place you want it yeah and and so what you're saying is that this thing of insulin resistance and we'll get to about what's causing that a minute causes your testosterone to go up if you're a woman and your dhea which is another hormone that's like an androgenic or male like hormone that actually causes hair loss so what so this isn't really a hormonal ovarian problem per se right it's not like a right it's not like a sex hormone problem although it it becomes that right we call it polycystic ovarian syndrome but it's really a dietary problem right because it's driven by insulin resistance it's driven by that high level of insulin that occurs when we're when we're eating the wrong foods when we're eating that really processed refined carbohydrate diet where we're eating a lot of high sugar foods um there are also some toxins that are associated with insulin resistance like bpa certain pesticides um so changes in the microbiome have been associated with insulin resistance which is which is fascinating but a very common reason in this country is is the poor diet so the sugar and the starch which we eat about 152 pounds of sugar and 133 pounds of flour which is almost a pound a day per person per year if you're doing that and you have this belly fat it's causing your insulin levels to go up which then screws up your sex hormones and leads to the hair loss right and it causes this polycystic ovarian syndrome which is this a whole bunch of stuff going on where women will notice they lose they're losing hair on the top of their head they're growing hair where they don't want it but it also messes up their their period they'll notice their periods are all out of whack they're irregular and then for some women they have problems with fertility yes and it's this cascade um so the hair loss is telling us you know i mean they may be most concerned about the hair loss but there's all sorts of other issues that this can that this can lead to your belly fat is basically causing you to lose the hair on your head yeah uh so so this is fascinating and i think that that we really see a lot of this and it often can be reversed and i and i feel horrible when i you know it's not hard to uh see when you're trained right i see women who have little belly fat hair is thinning and i just want to go up to them say hey just cut out the sugar in the starch eat good fats your hair will come back but you know you can't go up and just do that to people uh but it's like it makes me so mad because i know how how hard it is for people to suffer with hair loss it such it affects their self-esteem affects their mood their sense of well-being uh their attractiveness and so i think it's a it's a real issue for a lot of people and i yeah and it's and it's so fixable and it's it's often the stage is often set when they're so young right so you know we see this a lot when at a young age they're getting fed you know they're they're giving being given food for whatever reason that's really refined and processed or too high in sugar and then it just leads to this cascade that is um you know hard in terms of like you said their self-esteem and their you know it causes that the weight gain around the belly and the hair loss and it can be that stage can be set at such a young age unfortunately yeah and there's really a you know a way to diagnose it that we use in functional medicine because sometimes it's a little tricky to diagnose they're not all following the same pattern but if you do a glucose tolerance test measuring insulin you can see high insulin levels that's the most sensitive you can look at testosterone free testosterone dha other things that we look at to help something called dht so we look at a very comprehensive hormone panel that looks at your risk of having this pcos issue you look at your fsh lh which are hormone levels from your brain and they can be altered so we basically get a very different picture and then we can dig into why is it your diet like you said is it you know the bpa from all the plastics uh that we we consume is it gut issues there may be other factors that are driving it but it's really important to sort of dig into that and then it's easy to treat with diet and lifestyle sometimes some supplements um let's talk about thyroid because that's a that's a big issue we've covered thyroid before but i i would like really to sort of dive into this issue because it's often overlooked and it's often subtle and it's often confused with just sort of aging or normal decline that we see in people so how common is thyroid and and and you know how how do we do it differently in functional medicine and how is it related to hair loss yeah you know one of the most common signs of an under active thyroid is shifts in your hair so we see more thinning of the hair the hair can become more dry and brittle and you know the eyebrows can shift so when you see that that loss of the outer third of somebody's eyebrows you're you're thinking thyroid part of your eyebrow just kind of disappears yeah yeah and you're like okay i've got to really pay attention to this i've got to look deeper at this person's thyroid and like you said it can be really subtle because sometimes if you just do a tsh for screening and you don't get a good enough detailed history and tsh might look fine which is the thyroid stimulating hormone which is a you know the standard screening test sometimes thyroid issues are missed and so we often sometimes are often i mean listen it affects one in five women yes and one in ten men and fifty percent are undiagnosed crazy and of those who are diagnosed i would say probably half of them are not adequately treated right and so we're seeing a pandemic honestly yeah of thyroid issues in this country and and the causes are many right it could be gluten it could be environmental toxins it could be genetics there's a lot of factors nutritional deficiencies vitamin d selenium and so forth but what we uh but we know how to deal with these differently in functional medicine we look at it differently yeah and so so if you go to your doctor and your tsh level which is all they'll do if it's quote normal even if it's in the high normal range they'll go you're fine nothing to do yeah but it may cause a lot of really vague symptoms including thinning of the hair hair loss cracked nails dry nails brittle nails dry skin constipation fluid retention muscle cramps fatigue morning tiredness low sex drive high cholesterol you know depression cognitive function issues i mean you just go on and on that was a good list i mean and they're all they're all like they're all like big subtle little things and it's sort of like the frog that gets put in cold water and you turn the heat up slowly and they boil the death because they just feel like they slowly kind of accumulate the heat that's what's happening with thyroid people just don't it's not sort of obvious right it's like you have an obvious it's not always obvious right and giving people the right treatment often can not only help their hair but everything else yes uh so so it's really important to get the right test which now includes the thyroid uh tsh but what other things will we look at we'll look at the free t3 we'll look at the free t4 so the t4 is one thyroid hormone but then your body has to convert it into t3 which is the active thyroid hormone and um and so we want to look and see how much t3 do you have are you making that conversion well because we know that when people have deficiencies in selenium iodine vitamin a um you know just to name a few that conversion won't happen appropriately and then there's also genetic reasons why people don't make that conversion so their their thyroid levels may their t4 and their tsh may look okay but that active form of thyroid may be they may be low we look at thyroid antibodies too absolutely so the doctors won't often look at thyroid antibodies until the tsh is high right which which is kind of late because i see backwards normal normal levels of thyroid on the test but their antibody levels are really high at a patient like that yesterday yep i should all these vague symptoms and the doctor's like oh you don't really need to treat it i'm like no no you are symptomatic because you're having an autoimmune disease against your thyroid hey everybody it's dr hyman thanks for tuning into the doctor's pharmacy i hope you're loving this podcast it's one of my favorite things to do and introducing all the experts that i know and i love and that i've 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something else like gluten which can cause autoimmune disease for thyroid in many many patients so we do a really deep dive in functional medicine and and i've written a little report called the ultra thyroid solution years ago probably still up to date um which which looks at how we can actually deal with this differently but it's so it's so important to think not just oh it's normal because because uh you know even even our lab tests aren't showing us what's optimal right yeah you know if you're two years old or 92 years old it's kind of the same range right and the traditional endocrinologists go well you know we used to have a level of five being abnormal for tsh now is three and a half but what what's really optimal is it one is it two you know is it point seven i don't know it's probably not three right so how do we tweak everything to be ideal and i think you can do that and you sometimes don't need to get thyroid replacement you can use other functional medicine approaches but sometimes you do and it can make a huge difference with hair loss absolutely so let's talk about uh another factor which i i think is so important which is diet and hair loss so you mentioned some nutritional deficiencies we'll get to this but let's talk about uh diet and the role it plays uh and some of the big triggers that you could be eating and also things you're not eating that you need that causal could trigger hair loss yeah i mean i think that one of the biggest triggers is gluten um gluten is uh can can definitely be associated with hair loss especially when people have celiac disease or or early celiac disease or a lot of inflammation because of the gluten that they're eating you know this is not everybody who's eating gluten but for some people it's it's resulting in them not having optimal digestion and absorption of their food and so then then hair loss is just one of the side effects that we see so it can be you have a full-on autoimmune disease like alopecia areata yeah which is hair loss everywhere totalis and that can be from gluten it's causing autoimmune disease one of the manifestations of celiac but you don't actually have to have celiac in order to have this problem you can have non-celiac gluten sensitivity and still have the hair loss absolutely and then the other thing we see is if you're if you're if you're not eating enough protein we often or if you're not digesting and absorbing it well enough which is actually something i see probably more frequently um um is that that people might be eating enough but they're just not absorbing it because of uh of an autoimmune disease in their stomach parietal cell antibodies or because they're uh they've got inflammation in their gut and that's yeah that's resulting in their digestive enzymes not working well um and and and so we so in a sense they have low protein levels in their body when we check for amino acids we see low amino acid levels and and so when somebody what that's probably one of the biggest benefits i see with hair is when i treat people with amino acids yeah then your regular doctor is not measuring your amino acid levels right right we check that in functional medicine here at the ultra wellness center it's not a test you're going to get a regular doctor but i do see that and i see low amino acids and like you said they're not eating adequate protein or more likely they're not absorbing and digesting it very well because they're guts yeah and and and so for those people when we give them amino acids like a complex or sometimes specific amino acids and you give them between meals i see huge benefits for their hair like that's where they go oh my gosh my hair is so much better because um because because of those amino acids absolutely absolutely and there are other nutrients that are also important one of them is biotin yes which is produced by bacteria in your gut so if you're not healthy you might be getting adequate levels but that that can also be helpful right yeah when biotin is low a lot of times people will see that their their hair is breaking or they also notice their nails are breaking because it's it's more they're more fragile or dry in a sense and biotin uh is can be that's why biotin is helpful for some people with with problems with their hair absolutely and and i think you you mentioned a few other things that are really important to check for people that often are not checked right like your iron status your ferritin level is very very important because that particularly menstruating women or people have gut issues if you have gluten issues you may not absorb iron that can also be an issue right absolutely and you know a lot of times you know this is something i see a lot that people will come in and they've just had a cbc done they've just had their hemoglobin and hematocrit checked and their doctor says well you're you're not anemic and they don't necessarily go to the next level and do a full iron panel yeah and that full iron panel gives us a lot more clues so you can you know all often do a full iron panel to look to see what's somebody's ferritin what is their iron saturation because you need to there's there's never one perfect test right and so we need to really look at all of the tests together with the clinical picture to help figure this thing out sometimes and so ferritin is the marker of iron stores in the body and we want that ferritin in general to be you know around 50 to 70. you don't want it to be too high because that's not good and but you definitely don't want it to be too low and and and so especially if somebody has is more low iron low ferritin and they've got hair loss often we're working to get that ferritin up to 50 to 70 maybe seven to help with that hair regrowth i think this is really important because the nutritional doctors when they do testing they look at sort of the first layer yeah if that looks okay they'll sort of move on right oh you're not anemic right your iron must be fine but you know when you you look at your blood count right your hematocrit hemoglobin it's sort of like measuring what cash you have in your pocket that was in your bank account right yeah fahren is like your iron stores how much savings you have in case you need more iron but even if you're not anemic it really turns out that low iron can uh in stores like low ferritin can lead to fatigue insomnia hair loss and just other mild symptoms that are often ignored right you need iron for your thyroid that t3 that active thyroid to be produced you also need iron in your mitochondria for you to make atp from your energy there's so many benefit you know there's so many you know metabolic processes that require iron in your body and um it takes it's a long time to become anemic from low iron like you know it takes a long time for your for many people to actually see those low hemoglobin hematocrit low um you know anemia from being low in iron you know it can take years and um often if we just are doing a cbc we're missing what's going on with that person's iron status right so we've gone through the list we found a lot of hair losses from sugar and starch and insulin resistance pre-diabetes and pcos it can be from thyroid issues it can be from inadequate protein intake or absorption because of gut issues it can be from low levels of certain nutrients and vitamins like selenium thyroid iron vitamin d vitamin a uh and more and um and and and yet you know we see we see this as a problem so often that can be pretty readily dealt with uh when people are really frustrated and are not getting good answers so what what do we do with delta wellness in here and you you want you want to share a case of a patient this young woman who who became a vegan and ended up having hair loss so talk about that because a lot of people are vegan they think it's healthy for them and and there are some real risks to that yeah so you know she came to see me when she was 35 and she had been vegan for the last three years but you know the reason she came in was because of the hair loss and she really wanted to address it and um and and when i gathered all her history i realized that she had become vegan three years ago for both the environment and for her own health and it was over the last year that she started to notice that her hair started to not look the same it was getting thinner it was looking drier she was also noticing her nails getting more brittle and you know she was frustrated with this because she was she thought she was doing what was right for her health and so why was her hair not looking as good and so when when we did her we did some lab work we did some serum amino acid levels and we did that full iron panel and we found that her serum amino acids were low so as we've spoken about amino acids they are the um when protein gets broken down it gets broken down into amino acids so amino acids are those building blocks of protein and amino acids are easier for the body to digest and absorb you know if you're having a problem with digestion and absorption they're already broken down so when we looked at her serum amino acids which is a special test we can do she was low across the board she also had a ferritin of six so we were talking before about how we want it you know maybe 50 or a little higher for hair regrowth she was definitely iron deficient which is not uncommon because a lot of the absorbable iron comes from meat heme iron right right right right so you know when somebody's been vegan for a while they have to be a little bit more careful about certain things and and many times like you said it's it takes a while for us to start to see signs of deficiency if people aren't being really careful with their diet and some of their nutrients so we have they have to pay more attention to iron they have to pay more attention to zinc they have to pay more attention to omega-3s they have to pay more attention to protein and yeah yes and so sometimes um you know especially if they're eating out or eating quickly or not really being very careful with their diet we start to see these deficiencies and this is what we saw with this woman so she was she was low in protein low in amino acids and low in iron now is it any amino acids or the branch chain amino acids you know for her we saw it across the board we saw the branch chain were low but we also saw some of those amino acids that build neurotransmitters were low like tryptophan so we saw lots of different amino acids being low the branch chain seemed to be more important for hair right mm-hmm and where do they come from they come more from animal protein right they do yeah so so a lot of the protein from beans and grains has lower levels of certain amino acids that are really critical for for building muscle and also hair growth yes and so you know if you are a vegan you probably need to supplement with additional amino acids in the form of branched chain amino acids or other things you're not getting and i think you know there's there's really good data i know there's just a lot of sort of propaganda out there and a lot of different sort of controversies but you know you and i have done this for decades and you know we're not philosophically opposed to being vegan but we do see the consequences and people have been vegan for a while of initially they'll do better because they're getting off the american crappy diet but if you just got on a whole food diet and it wasn't vegan you'd probably do as well and then they end up with these late stage deficiencies whether it's b12 amino acids and so forth loss of muscle and it can be concerning and it really isn't really good for their health over the long term unless they really are diligent about supplementing with those things that they're missing you know and what we did is we talked to her about ways that she could feel good about her health and the environment and add in animal protein and and you know when when you know she listened to more of what you've been talking a lot about being a genitalian yeah and um and and you know and you know she she she switched to more of that pagan diet where she added in some animal protein we also for a while supplemented with iron and amino acids because because though over time her diet was going to help her get what she needed she really needed a boost right now you know she was really deficient and she needed a boost right now so so we gave her a good source of iron as a supplement we gave it with some vitamin c to help with absorption um we gave her some of the amino acids between meals to help with absorption and um and and she's she noticed huge improvements right away in terms of her hair that's incredible they had another another patient with slightly different issues because yeah hair loss is not hair loss it's not hair loss and and this was another young woman who was 35 but starting to look like a guy losing all her it was a totally different picture right so she was another 35 year old woman who came in to see me but she was really frustrated because she was seeing her hair was she had this receding hairline she was losing hair on the top of her head and um and so when we started to dig deeper we also realized that she was having irregular periods her periods were irregular she had to start to go get laser therapy for the hair on her chin and her belly because it was getting darker and thicker so she was frustrated with that um she had been trying to get pregnant over the last year and she hasn't gotten pregnant yet so she was she was really concerned about her fertility as well and the fact that her periods were irregular and so um she also noted that you know about 10 15 years ago she gained some weight and that she has not been able to it was around her belly yeah so she when we did her waist-hip ratio was a little bit high it was at you know 0.85 and we want for women their waist tip ratio to be less than 0.8 and you know she fit that classic picture of polycystic ovarian syndrome of insulin resistance causing her hair loss and so she um uh you know it was really important for her when we focused with her diet is we pulled away those simple refined carbohydrates you also found like you measured her blood levels of insulin which most doctors don't do and it's the kind of stuff we look at at the ultra wellness center here and and you found what her fasting insulin was 15. yeah you know and she was 35. it should be it should be five right five or less now we and 15 is definitely too high and um and we did do a glucose tolerance test with her which you know her her one and two hour insulin went up into like 150 to 200 so it was it was definitely she was making way too much insulin and that was why she was having a hard time with losing the weight that was why her hormones were all out of whack her testosterone was a little high her dhea was a little high triggering this male pattern hair loss triggering the shift in her periods and her fertility and so for her that key was okay we've really got to pull away those refined and processed carbs for her we even pulled away some of those whole food carbohydrates that you know aren't necessarily bad foods but they were bad for her right now yeah you know so somebody said so this is an important point to say because some foods are good but they may be bad for you depending on what's going on with your health right and when you have insulin that's so high you know you really don't tolerate a lot of the carbohydrates even if they're healthy carbohydrates like brown rice and and um you know buckwheat and quinoa aren't you know they're they're fine to have incorporated into a good healthy diet but when your insulin is so high we often drop those lower because that helps the that helps that insulin drop lower which then helps the female hormones rebalance helps they helps you lose weight um helps sure hair grows back the hair on your face yup your periods start to get real more regular and for her she saw good improvement in her her hair and then you know her hormones rebalance she was able to get pregnant you know all because of shifting her her diet and some and sometimes just additional things that you wouldn't think of you know or that traditional doctors don't look at that can affect insulin resistance and in this case she had you measured something like bpa right which is pretty unusual to measure but it's something you can look at in your urine so what is bpa and why does it have to do with insulin resistance and hair loss bpa is that hard plastic right that bisphenol a that was used and is used in so many of our hard plastics and they realized and water bottles and you know it's banned in europe right right i mean they realized this at tufts when they were doing research on breast cancer and they realized that the test tube was influencing their results because there was something in the test tube and that's when they realized oh there's the plastic in the test tube called bpa and that was really impacting their results and so these are xenoestrogens these are estrogens from the environment that impact your estrogen receptor but what we're learning is that bpa also causes can cause insulin resistance and diabetes totally associated with toxins can cause diabetes yes whether it's lead or mercury arsenic bpa other plastics environmental toxins we know that environmental toxins are a huge factor so people may have more complex stories it may not just be that they're eating sugar and starch they may have these other issues and often they're overlooked and here at the wellness center we are able to actually look into these issues and help you identify because you know where do you get this stuff not just from plastic bottles but from credit card receipts your receipts from your your gas station machine i mean i i when people said you want your receipt i'm like no thank you right now to touch the receipts right use gloves i think it's really it's really scary how much stuff we're exposed to on a daily basis right absolutely you can measure it in your urine yes yes and i mean even things like you know we thought that those those oh those tea bags are so cool because they're you know they're standing up on their own and then you realize oh no that that's really not good that's a that's because they're using a micro plastic in the tea bag so you know it starts to sneak in everywhere right really so yeah there's nice tea bags that stand up yeah those are they're plastic so then you pour hot water on top of them and then the microplastics are sneaking into your i mean that you know and and you know i think it's interesting there's so many bpa-free water bottles out there now but you know they may be putting other chemicals exactly it's another plastic it's a slight they make a slight manipulation of that plastic to be able to call it bpa so go for water bottles that are glass or stainless steel exactly and that's what we had to do with her we had to switch her some of her her exposure you know because she didn't really realize how much that water bottle was impacting her health that's true you know so this has been such a great conversation because hair loss is so common like you said half of people have it it's so heartbreaking for people yeah um i mean if you're a guy and you go bald i mean it's unless you get a hair transplant it's hard to deal with male pattern baldness you know there's drugs that can help but for other kinds of hair loss which are really common they can range from everything from hormonal issues from diet like sugar and some resistance to thyroid gluten which is really common it can be from issues like nutritional deficiencies like protein and various nutrients in our diet and it can be from gut issues that leaky gut and other sources of inflammation so really a comprehensive approach that we look at in functional medicine is really the way to go when trying to understand what's going on with people on hair loss and i i'm just really grateful at the ultra wellness center here in linux that we get to do this kind of work that we actually have a roadmap which looks at root causes it's not just putting a band-aid on things and that we collectively have probably 70 years of experience as a group of doctors and providers in taking care of these complex issues and getting to the root and i it just makes me so happy when my patients come back and they got a full head of hair when they've had full hair loss or when they have thinning they come back and they're so happy i mean it's it's so gratifying for me and i'm sure for you and i i think for the patients to actually see that there is a way through this so if you're suffering from this if you know anybody who's been suffering from it you know there is a way and there is hope uh so if you're up for it you know we'd love to see at the ultra wellness center here in lenox massachusetts we're doing mostly virtual consults now so you don't have to travel even and we certainly can help you and uh it's just been such a great great time talking to you about this problem which is so heartbreaking for so many people yeah thank you mark thanks for having me of course so if you've been listening to doctor's pharmacy and you love this episode please share with your friends and family and social media leave a comment have you suffered from hair loss have you dealt with it what's worked let's not work we'd love to know and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and we'll see you next time on the doctor's pharmacy [Music] you

Channel: Mark Hyman, MD

Views: 39,428

Rating: 4.9453034 out of 5

Keywords: hair loss, elizabeth boham, stress, hormonal balance, mark hyman, the ultrawellness center, functional medicine, health podcast, the doctor's farmacy

Id: SFdhs9bACog

Length: 39min 7sec (2347 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 16 2020