VIDEO: Hair + Scalp Health Global Wellness Summit Instagram LIVE w/ Dr. Alan Bauman

Hair Loss Expert, Dr. Alan Bauman, was a recent guest of Global Wellness Summit on #WellnessWednesday with host Kim Marshall discussing the importance of hair and scalp health on our well-being.

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-TRANSCRIPT-

Global Wellness Summit Instagram LIVE on #wellnesswednesday #fiveinten w/ Dr. Alan Bauman MD

00:02 Kim Marshall: Hi guys. How are you? It is presently Tuesday at 9:30 AM on the West Coast. We’ve changed the time of our Instagram Live today to accommodate our wonderful guest, Dr. Alan Bauman. He is a hair and scalp expert from Boca Raton, Florida. And we really wanna talk to him today because we know that COVID has caused a lot of stress, but where do we see stress? One of the places is on our hair. So just to tell you a little bit about Dr. Bauman, he was named one of 10 CEOs transforming healthcare in America, and he was voted the number one top hair restoration surgeon by Aesthetic Everything. So he owns also and runs a 12,000 square foot medical center in Boca Raton, Florida. He’s treated nearly 20,000 patients and done 8,000 hair transplant surgeries. So when we talk about someone who knows the industry, that would be him. Okay Dr. Bauman, let’s see if we can connect. There we go. The other thing, my favorite topic is scalp love. How many times have we given our scalp the right attention? Hi Dr. Bauman.

01:29 Dr. Alan Bauman: Hey Kim. Great to be with you.

01:32 Kim Marshall: Great to be with you. The last time we were together…

01:33 Dr. Alan Bauman: Great to see you.

01:34 Kim Marshall: Yeah. We were together on Global Wellness Day. Let’s see, was that June 13th, then you gave a wonderful presentation on their 24-hour Livestream?

01:45 Dr. Alan Bauman: That was super exciting. Although I think the guy before me did a base jump or something like that with a wing suit, so that was a pretty hard act to follow when you talk about hair and scalp wellness.

01:56 Kim Marshall: I know.

01:57 Dr. Alan Bauman: Yeah, no, it was really great to be with you, obviously. Hopefully people… I don’t know if people who were tuning in for the wind in that guy’s hair were sticking around to see the information on hair wellness, but it was great. It was awesome to be a part of that. Super exciting.

02:11 Kim Marshall: Well, you know what, this is a… We all have hair, right? We all have a scalp. And I personally think bald men are very attractive but often they don’t think so, right?

02:23 Dr. Alan Bauman: Right. Men and women love their hair and usually wanna keep it.

02:29 Kim Marshall: [chuckle] So, that’s where you come in. Now, we have so much to talk about. We met because you are the actual hair doc for a new resort on Palm Beach, in Palm Beach County on Singer Island called Amrit Ocean Resort & Residences. This is not open yet but you will actually be helping their scalp spa, which I love that name, and looking into specifics about how you’re gonna treat hair there and how you treat it in your center in Boca. But first of all, we’re here to talk about surviving COVID. We wanna be inspired by leaders. So, tell us, Dr. Bauman, as the world slowly emerges from the pandemic, how has your business or your industry have been affected?

03:12 Dr. Alan Bauman: Yeah, so obviously, as a physician who performs elective procedures, and we obviously were coming in close contact with patients, the COVID situation, it was quite concerning. And here in Florida, elective procedures were basically banned, forbidden for about six weeks or so on the order of the governor. So my practice was physically shut down in terms of surgeries and other treatments like regenerative medicine technologies and such. And around the world, it was very much the same. So when we would gather with physicians, Zoom conferences and things like that, we would hear about how many physicians just closed their doors completely, furloughed their employees, sent their employees home, and were kind of floundering. We did something a little bit different. I kept all of my employees on staff, and we came up with some pretty innovative ideas to be keeping in contact with our patients by phone and by virtual conferencing and Zoom and you name it, to keep in close contact with them. So, it was a pretty tough time for the industry. The quickest way to make a surgeon crazy is to tell him he can’t operate, you know?

04:27 Kim Marshall: Right, right. And you’re so comfortable, when we interviewed you on Zoom, you’re very comfortable, and it’s nice. I had a doctor’s appointment and we did it on, via phone, and I was like, “Well, that was kinda nice.” Tell me, we’re gonna jump around because we have so much to talk about. Tell me through all of this, what was your toughest day as a leader, and what was your best day?

04:49 Dr. Alan Bauman: Well, I have to say that the toughest day was actually my birthday because that was the news… The day I got the news from the Governor that elective procedures were gonna be on hold, so we had to make a very… I mean, we knew things were coming to that point, I think. There was some inkling that that was going to happen. We didn’t know exactly when it was going to actually take effect. So, we had already been in preparation making things different at the office in terms of the way that we saw patients, separate patients, protect patients, protect the staff as well. But that was the day it became a harsh reality, an executive order comes down from the governor of the state of Florida.

05:31 Dr. Alan Bauman: And so, we had to make some very tough decisions at that moment, how we were going to proceed and make a decision as to what exactly to do because it’s a bit unknown, right? So someone says, without your consent essentially, as an entrepreneur and business owner and clinic owner and building owner and so forth, with 20 mouths to feed, meaning that I’ve got my staff, I have over 20 full-time staff, “What are we gonna do with them?” And so, we really put pen to paper and said, “Let’s make a plan here based on our best available knowledge and move forward with it.” But that was a shaky time, I have to say, and a scary time. Because in the beginning when I started the practice, obviously, we didn’t expect to have any patients when we started. But to have a practice that was up and running and then to be essentially paused and delayed without a lot of warning, and of course, everybody’s life is turned upside down by the situation. That was a tough day. Yeah, for sure.

06:37 Kim Marshall: I bet.

06:39 Dr. Alan Bauman: There was no birthday cake going on.

06:40 Kim Marshall: No, no, no.

06:40 Dr. Alan Bauman: I was blowing out the candles hoping that the practice that I worked to build over the past 25 years would still be here to talk about in a few weeks or months. So, yeah, that was some tough stuff.

06:53 Kim Marshall: And now, what was the best day you’ve had, since the shutdown? Don’t say Global Wellness Day ’cause I know that’s probably it.

07:00 Dr. Alan Bauman: Oh, well, that was a close second. That was exciting. No, I’d have to say getting the word that elective procedures could resume and that we could basically move forward with our plan actually even a little bit earlier than what we had thought. So, without going into great detail, essentially what we had planned was a certain amount of time to be paused and delayed, and I had rescheduled patients for that time that we anticipated to be back open. And to get the word from the Governor was pretty exciting. Our phones were buzzing literally, as soon as the words elective procedures left his mouth during the press conference, we had patients who were ready to go. Obviously, there’s quite a backlog when you’re down for six weeks.

07:43 Kim Marshall: Right, right. Well, the Global Wellness Summit and Institute does research and they have identified as of 2020, that the global wellness economy is a $4.5 trillion economy and I never cease to be amazed that personal care and beauty is 1083 billion. It’s the biggest sector of that economy. And when you think about the way people feel, there’s a four-year initiative that the institute did called Beauty To Wellness and it linked your emotional and mental health to how you feel about how you’re presented in the world. So how does that lead to hair health? What would you say? How many people, on an average, lose hair in a year? And what do you do about it?

08:28 Dr. Alan Bauman: Yeah, well, to sum it up, my dad said it best, “Look sharp, be sharp. You feel sharp.” So that would be his quick answer. But hair loss affects nearly 100 million American men and women out there, and almost equally between the sexes, about 50 million men and 30 to 46 million women out there. But what we do know is the effect on the quality of life. And so that’s what you’re seeing when you look at those numbers in the wellness industry, that people look at their hair as a sign of expression, as a sign of how we communicate as human beings to each other. And not to say that it’s mandatory because certainly not mandatory for life, there are many alopecia patients who are proud to go completely bald and wear their hair shaven. And men can shave their head and be socially acceptable.

09:24 Dr. Alan Bauman: Yeah, maybe a little bit easier for them if they have a goatee, or an earring or a motorcycle or something. But if that look is not the right one for you, and you would like to look better and feel better with hair, then you’re gonna seek some kind of treatment, and hopefully some kind of advice from a qualified professional.

09:43 Kim Marshall: Yeah, I really love all the tips online. I didn’t bring them here today, but there’s many things you can eat, soybeans, protein, nuts. There’s so many things that can feed the biotin and feed the protein in your hair. But beyond a diet, which does take a while, what sort of things do you tell people to do to keep their scalp and hair healthy?

10:06 Dr. Alan Bauman: Yeah, so nutrition is obviously important because hair follicles are one of the most metabolically active cell populations in your entire body right up there with bone marrow and your GI tract, and so forth. That’s one of the reasons why chemotherapy knocks that out, right? So rapidly dividing cells, hopefully, cancer, but these other things can cause some side effects. But what we do know is that there’s a lot you can do if you have some disruption of hair follicle function. First of all, we would like to measure it, so that we would like to take a look at your scalp, we can measure it very, very specifically now using microscopic magnification to look at the quality of the hair or the density of the hair that’s growing on the scalp. We can also look very carefully using instrumentation to physically measure how much hair is growing in each different zone. And that will help us create a diagnosis as well as benchmark your treatments over time but basic categories of therapy can fall into simple things like risk reduction.

11:03 Dr. Alan Bauman: So just like as you said, nutrition, well, of course, reducing your stress and the impact of the stress or being more mindful, reducing those stress spikes can certainly help grow better quality hair and eliminate the shedding. You can make sure that your scalp is as healthy as it can be. So if there’s inflammation or itching or irritation there, let’s get that taken care of. If there’s some disruption in your sleep cycle, we know that the body clock is the master clock, the circadian rhythm, if you will, has control over these other micro clocks, if you will, or peripheral clocks, like the ones that are in the hair follicle that turn the follicle on and off over time is really, really critical. So there’s a lot that we can do to address the hair loss issue, even before we get to medications and medical devices like lasers and things like that that are non-chemical and regenerative medicine technologies like PRP and platelet-rich plasma and so forth.

12:04 Kim Marshall: It is amazing…

12:06 Dr. Alan Bauman: Obviously. You know, if the follicles are dead and gone though Kim then obviously, we need to do some transplants. So the idea is to try to protect your hair when you can when you still have it.

12:15 Kim Marshall: Yeah, and I don’t think people are thinking that way, prevention, and jumping right in there like, I even saw here in LA a couple of years ago a scalp spa and I was like, “Take me there.” Now here’s some of the treatments on the on the written menu from your brilliant mind: Purifying, rebalancing, soothing, and also… Those are for scalp, and hair loss. And there are stem cells that are applied. What is the name of the hair science? It’s not riding a tricycle. What is it?

12:49 Dr. Alan Bauman: Trichology, yeah. So all of those things that you’ve just mentioned are based solidly in the science of trichology which is, yeah, not riding a tricycle. Trichology would be the study of the hair and the scalp. So literally the health and wellness of the scalp, which is considered the fertile ground, right, for good quality hair growth. It’s where the follicles are embedded, the follicles are alive, literally micro organs. And hopefully you’ve got about 150,000 on there up on your scalp, in your forest, if you will. And those follicles are gonna produce hair, which is a dead tissue, kind of like your fingernails. It’s really important for that environment that the follicles are living in, that microenvironment, to be super healthy.

13:32 Dr. Alan Bauman: We know for sure, science tells us if there’s inflammation, if there’s some activity detrimental going on that’s unhealthy at the level of the scalp, you’re not gonna grow good quality hair. So, those treatment modalities that you mentioned are based on an evaluation protocol. We can measure scalp pH, moisture level, sebum level. We can look for signs of inflammation, flaking, dryness, scaling, sores, things like that, even acne on the scalp is common. And so, we wanna rectify those things and treat them over time in order to improve hair follicle function.

14:07 Kim Marshall: Well, tell me, can you ever grow hair back after loss because women, especially facing menopause, a lot of women get really thin in the hair. Is there any hope for that or should it be… Is there only one way to go?

14:22 Dr. Alan Bauman: Well, no, no, no. Of course, there’s hope and help. Obviously, you wanna identify your risk factors genetically, or is there hair loss in the family, some of the things that we talked about in terms of lifestyle, ahead of time before we wanna evaluate that. But if the follicle is still there, not dead and gone, then absolutely, we’ve got a lot of opportunity to protect its function and to enhance it in all the different modalities that we just mentioned, whether it be reducing risks, making sure the scalp is healthy, could be non-chemical treatments, nutritionally, could be medications that we apply topically or regenerative medicine technologies like platelet-rich plasma, things like that. And all of those things can really help protect and enhance hair follicle function. These are all modalities Kim, that we didn’t have years ago when literally everything else was just transplants or not.

15:12 Kim Marshall: Yes.

15:14 Dr. Alan Bauman: And today if we need to, of course, women who have depleted density and men as well can undergo hair transplantation where we take the individual follicles one at a time from the back of the scalp. It’s not like the old days. It’s not a plug procedure. It’s not painful. It’s not gonna leave you with a nasty linear scar or something like that. No stitches or staples. We actually have robotic technology and other tools that we use to move those follicles around to relocate them in the forest so-to-speak into the areas that are thinning and balding.

15:45 Kim Marshall: Wow.

15:45 Dr. Alan Bauman: But there’s a lot that we can do to help regenerate the function of those follicles, absolutely.

15:51 Kim Marshall: Since not everybody listening, ’cause we have a global audience, will be able to come and see you, can you give us five tips, like what should we do every week. I stand in the shower and I wash my hair, I’m like, “What should I be doing for my scalp right now? What am I not knowing to do?” What would you say?

16:06 Dr. Alan Bauman: Yeah. Well, first of all, just for people who are distant from us here in Boca Raton, Florida, I think it’s important to note that one of the things that the pandemic helped us do is refine our virtual consultation process. We do consult with patients from all over the world virtually through Zoom and other modalities to really see what’s going on. And of course, if there’s something that we identify that they need help with in their location, we try to refer if we can, but we certainly wanna connect with them. But five important things that you can do, I mean, gosh, number one, you wanna make sure that if you’re at risk for hair loss, that you seek advice from a hair restoration physician, someone who’s qualified, you know? Number two, don’t panic. You don’t wanna be out there searching for some magic vitamin or some sexy shampoo that’s really doesn’t have any therapeutic value at all, especially if we don’t know what necessarily the problem is. Again, don’t wait. Early treatments are the best treatments. If we’re gonna start something like a topical medication or laser light device, we wanna make sure that we get that started as soon as possible for sure.

17:21 Dr. Alan Bauman: Probably number four would be to measure. Get access to a measurement tool so that we can track the progress over time. And that’s one of the benefits of actually physically coming into the office. Many of our long distance patients will take the trip maybe twice a year, once or twice a year for sure, to benchmark and know how their treatments are going. And I guess, probably again, the most important thing is to connect with an experienced, certified, credentialed hair restoration specialist out there. And that’s probably not your local dermatologist or your local plastic surgeon out there. Someone who does hair restoration on a full-time basis is gonna be able to have those tools, and techniques and opportunities to give you really the best evaluation, diagnosis, risk assessment and build a very appropriate and powerful treatment plan for you.

18:13 Kim Marshall: Well, we have a question that keeps coming up. Do you know anything about Nizarol, N-I-Z-A-R-O-L shampoo? What is that?

18:21 Dr. Alan Bauman: Nizoral is an anti-fungal shampoo that contains ketoconazole. And so, for many patients with irritated scalps, dermatologists will often recommend an anti-fungal shampoo. But it also has an interesting other benefit, and the other benefit of ketoconazole is that it’s an anti-androgen. And we know that androgens are really critical in degrading the hair follicle function if you’re susceptible to that, if you’re androgen sensitive, right? Male and female pattern hair loss is called androgenetic alopecia and it’s a sensitivity to those androgens. It can have a two-fold benefit, the ketoconazole shampoo. As I said before, anti-inflammatory as well as anti-fungal as well as this anti-androgen component. But there’s one major downside to the Nizoral shampoo and that it’s very, very harsh on the scalp and on the hair. So even though it has this therapeutic value, it has a lot of cosmetic detriments. So people find it… I’ve used it myself. I found it very difficult to use. My hair is a bit long and it dries out my scalp, my scalp happens to be very sensitive. So I find that it’s untenable for me and for also many patients who are trying to have a nice style and condition their hair properly, especially if they have thinning hair, it can be a problem.

19:50 Dr. Alan Bauman: So Nizoral is not necessarily the greatest idea for that reason. We do have therapeutic shampoos that contain ingredients like caffeine and saw palmetto and green tea, which can affect the health of the scalp. The Bauman MD line of products, which is a product line that I developed starting back in 1999, has a therapeutic shampoo, that is a DHT control shampoo, DHT meaning the dihydrotestosterone or androgens out there. And that’s gonna be a little bit more cosmetically friendly than ketoconazole or Nizoral.

20:21 Kim Marshall: So, what about hair care, what are your tips? Someone wrote in, “Is washing your hair every day okay? Is wax on the hair okay? What would you say?

20:31 Dr. Alan Bauman: Yeah. So it’s a magical question, right? And everybody wants this answer. What’s appropriate in terms of how often they should shampoo and what should they be shampooing with. And so it’s a very difficult question to answer because just like skin, your scalp is very personal, it’s very unique and it also changes with time. So the skin care regimen that you may use as a teenager or 20-year-old is not the skin care regimen you’re gonna use with 50 or 60-year-old, and the same is true with the scalp.

21:01 Dr. Alan Bauman: So the way to answer that question is to really have that trichology evaluation. So we need to look at the scalp under the microscope, we need to look at the scalp pH level, moisture level, sebum level, as we mentioned, to really take a look and decide what’s the most appropriate type of hair care shampoo and conditioner and the most appropriate frequency. But what I will tell you is that it’s a myth that you’re shampooing too much or too little, that there’s no one right answer. Because if you’re working out and you’re getting… Or you’re using a lot of product in your hair, you need to shampoo that stuff out, you need to exfoliate the scalp. And many of our treatments will have that exfoliation type of therapeutic intervention with it, for example. But if you’re shampooing too much and your scalp is a little bit more dry, you’re not producing as much sebum, then you’re gonna have to use a more deeper or more prolonged or what we say durable conditioner on the hair if your hair is particularly coarse, or curly or kinky. If you have ethnic hair, you’re gonna have to condition it to a much greater degree and be more gentle with it.

22:08 Kim Marshall: I can’t use conditioner, I have really fine hair, I cannot use conditioner ’cause if I do that… So, it’s individual. Also…

22:15 Dr. Alan Bauman: Yeah, very individualized. And remember, conditioners are like… There’s a whole range, right? So you’re gonna have a very light-weight conditioner on this end of the spectrum that doesn’t weigh the hair down. So I encourage you to try one of those, the Bauman MD one might be good for you. But then there’s other conditioners that are literally more like creams that again are much more durable for thicker, coarser, curlier, kinkier hair.

22:36 Kim Marshall: Well, you’re a very positive person, and I can tell that from dealing with you, and hair can make you feel good or bad depending on what’s going on. I also think that maybe changing a shampoo every so often is good because your scalp gets too used to it, I don’t know your opinion on that, what do you think? You think too?

22:56 Dr. Alan Bauman: Well, I’m a bit of a… Yeah, I’m a shampoo slut as they say. So I’ll try something new and different just on a whim maybe because the way it lathers or smells, and if it doesn’t work for my hair, then obviously I’ll make the switch back. But so, yeah, I do believe in rotating shampoos. And that may also be because of the season. So if you live in an area where there’s seasonal changes in humidity and temperature, it’s very, very important. Your scalp is your skin, so treat it like skin. So you’re gonna have to adjust your shampoos and such depending on your lifestyle factors, your environment, how you would like to style it. And certainly, yeah, there may be shampoos that leave a certain type of residue and you need a clarifying shampoo, or an exfoliation once in a while. And that’s why this whole science of trichology is so fascinating, ’cause every month we’re learning something new and something different.

23:51 Kim Marshall: Well, I will tell you that there’s so many questions here, like laser caps, threading, Theradome, we could go on and on, but we invite people to visit your website, is that right?

24:00 Dr. Alan Bauman: Yes, absolutely. So if you have a question about hair loss, the best way to get an answer is from me at baumanmedical.com. So B-A-U-M-A-N medical.com is the location, the website that patients should go to, if they wanna become a patient, I should say, and they can request or schedule a consultation from anywhere in the world.

24:25 Kim Marshall: Well, our last question, ’cause we’ve really enjoyed your time, tell us what during this shutdown has inspired you? What book, podcast, TED talk, whatever, what’s inspired you, Dr. Bauman, that keeps you positive?

24:37 Dr. Alan Bauman: Yes. So, yeah, I listen to a lot of podcasts. So probably the best ones, I would say during the pandemic are the physician ones. And yeah, I try to stay positive. I’m a bit concerned about the censorship that’s happening in big tech right now, videos on YouTube and accounts on Twitter are being censored and removed. Videos are being removed and things like that. And whether you agree with some of those videos and content, I think it’s a big mistake to remove content in that way because we might find that in a year from now, that content might have been very valuable. And so science is not… It’s not easy, it requires… And I think the general public has kind of realized that it’s kinda messy, right? There’s a lot of dissenting views. And that’s how we come to the truth, right? So there’s multiple sides of the information.

25:31 Kim Marshall: It’s a journey. It’s a journey.

25:34 Dr. Alan Bauman: It’s a journey. Yes, a journey to the truth. It’s not a straight line. And people look for scientific facts. A good friend of mine and someone I look up to, Dr. Peter Attia always said, “Facts have a half-life.” And so I would encourage people to check out Dr. Peter Attia’s podcast, the Drive. He’s amazing, intelligent, articulate physician who is really keen on longevity and has a unique platform there in his podcast to investigate all of these different things that not only affect us currently with the pandemic, but also affect our lifestyle and our health, everything from sleep to fasting, which I’m a big believer into biohacking and all of that. So Peter Attia is probably…

26:22 Kim Marshall: So Peter Lattia of the Drive. That’s…

26:24 Dr. Alan Bauman: Attia, A-T-T-I-A, Peter Attia.

26:26 Kim Marshall: Okay. That’s fine.

26:28 Dr. Alan Bauman: And probably the other one I would say would be Dave Asprey, Dave Asprey’s Bulletproof podcast. He’s probably the godfather or grandfather of biohacking, which is… He’s not a physician, but took it upon himself to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to self-experiment with different longevity techniques and health and wellness, I’m sure you know. And so, I’m a big fan of Dave Asprey as well.

26:54 Kim Marshall: And you like butter in your coffee, I take it. [laughter]

26:56 Dr. Alan Bauman: I do. I just had it about two hours ago. It’s delicious and great.

27:00 Kim Marshall: I cannot do it. I tried, I tried. Well, and today, Amrit’s Facebook page has a nutrition Q&A because it does come back to you, you are what you eat in many ways, especially with the hair. So Dr. Bauman, we have to cut you off, we’ve gone way over our 10 minutes, but we wanted to because we had so many questions. So I look forward to seeing you in person soon and keep up the good work. Anyone can contact you, they can see your smiling face online just like us, so thank you for your time.

27:27 Dr. Alan Bauman: Thank you. Thank you for having me really, it’s been a great experience, and hope we reached a lot of people today with some great information and you keep up the good work too.

27:36 Kim Marshall: Yes, I will keep massaging my scalp. Okay, talk to you later.

27:39 Dr. Alan Bauman: All right, see you.

27:41 Kim Marshall: Bye-bye.

27:42 Dr. Alan Bauman: Bye-bye now.

*Each individual's treatment and/or results may vary

If you or someone you know has hair loss, hair thinning, baldness, or eyebrow / eyelash concerns, click to start either a long-distance virtual consultation OR an in-person, in-office consultation with Dr. Bauman. You can also Ask Dr. Bauman a Question or simply call Bauman Medical Group  at +1-561-394-0024.