Well with Arielle Lorre - 385: How to Treat Hair Health from the Inside Out with Dr. Isabelle Raymond

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

Dr. Isabelle Raymond is an author and scientific leader in pharmaceutical and biotech industries, more recently working in beauty and wellness. She has authored over 80 publications and textbook chapters and books in several therapeutic fields including aesthetic medicine, dermatology, sleep disorders and pain management. She is currently the Head of Clinical and Medical Affairs at Nutrafol. She joins the show to discuss the hair growth cycle, how our hair changes throughout different stages of life, and why clinical research is essential when it comes to nutraceuticals.This episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct, or indirect financial interest in products, or services referred to in this episode.Visit Nutrafol.com and enter code BLONDE for $10 off your first month and free shipping. Visit masachips.com and use promo code BLONDE to get 20% off your first order.Visit justthrivehealth.com and save 20% with promo code WellVisit oneskin.co/well and use code WELL for 15% off your first order.Produced by Dear MediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Sonders Sonderger Go to your Reisadviseur or SunnyCars. The following podcast is A Dear Media Production In a world of ever-changing wellness trends and information, what does it mean to truly be well? I'm Ariel Lorry and I'm going

to explore this with you. I am bringing you candid conversations that will equip you with everything you need to live your best life and look good doing it. Think of well as your go-to resource for all of the latest in wellness and me as your internet bestie. Well, let's get into it. Hi, everybody, welcome to the show. I have a really interesting episode for you today. because I am talking to Dr. Isabel Raymond. So Dr. Raymond is an author and she's a scientific leader in pharmaceutical and biotech industries. More recently, working in beauty and wellness. So she received her master's and PhD in biomedical science from the University of Montreal. She's authored over 80 publications and textbook chapters and books in several therapeutic

fields including aesthetic medicine, dermatology, sleep disorders, and pain management. And now she's currently the head of clinical and medical affairs at Nutrafall, which you probably know because I talk about them all the time, is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand built on a science-backed whole body approach. So in her role, she oversees Neutrofoil's rigorous clinical testing process and medical research publications. She also spearheads relationships with key opinion leaders across the medical industry. And we just had a really interesting conversation about not only what it's like to rigorously test products and the clinical research that goes into not only pharmaceuticals, but nutraceuticals as well. But we also talked about

hair health and different things when it comes to hair health, including the cycle, which I knew nothing about. So hair growth has different phases and those change as we go through different phases. We talked about how hormones affect hair growth. We talk about how stress affects hair color, how much is genetic and how much is environmental. We talk about how to actually grow hair. And so much more, it's a really fascinating peek behind the curtain, in my opinion, and I think you guys will really enjoy it. And if you want to try NutraFal, they are offering my listeners $10 off your first month's subscription and free shipping when you go to NutraFol.com and enter the promo code, Blonde. Please enjoy Dr. Isabel Raymond. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really looking forward

to talking to you because you have such an extensive background in the pharmaceutical field, the aesthetics field. So I would love for you to first just introduce yourself to the audience. I know that you've authored over like 80 papers, right? So tell us a little bit about your background and your trajectory. So my name is Dr. Isabel Raymond. I am the senior home. Vice President of Clinical Medical with Nutrafol. And I have been with the company for over five years now. My background, though, is not in supplements. I'm actually neuroscientist by training. I did my master's in my PhD in biomedical science at the University of Montreal. So French, Canadian, and then have been working in the industry on neuroscience, pain, sleep, but also that kind of led me

into aesthetics of all things. And I've been in the dermatology space for over 13 years now, working either medical derm, aesthetic derm, devices, drugs, and now supplements. So I feel like I've done it all. And this was kind of like a challenging, the road less traveled, if you will. Yeah. And I know that you've said that supplements traditionally are kind of the wild, wild west. And coming from the really medical, pharmaceutical background that you have, which I'm sure includes really rigorous testing and clinical trials and all of that, you can tell us. But I'm sure that your experience in the supplement industry was different from that? Absolutely. You know, it kind of also made me hesitate to join this area, which, you know, again, you just said having this background,

everything being regulated, you know what you need to do, you know what kind of studies you need to do, you know, all that is mandated by the FDA. Even for lasers and things like that, it's cleared by the FDA, but you still have to provide information. And it's, it's very well laid out what you need to do as a company to get products approved or even tested. When it comes to supplements, there are regulations, but not really in terms of efficacy and how to conduct your clinical studies, if at all. So applying that, you know, understanding where I could fit in and what I could do in the space, at the beginning, I wasn't sure how I would fit. But I feel like we've really brought a lot of that credibility from that world into supplements. Yeah, I've had other supplement founders on my podcast, one in particular that

thinking of is Kat Schneider from ritual. I listened to that. I listen to that one. And I feel like she's one of the only other supplement companies that I can really think of that has that rigorous testing and those standards. And I was shocked recording that. That was maybe two years ago at this point because I didn't know how unregulated it typically is. How it's tested and how it's verified is a little bit different than the farmer world because everything in the farmer will comes before. It's put on the market and supplements, it's a little bit more reactive, but you still have to follow those guidelines. I think it's just really hard for the consumer, even for me to understand what is regulated, what is not what we need to do, and what is necessary, and then on top of that, what can we do

more that is not required really was a learning experience and a learning curve. And also, it's kind of cool to be part of that foundation of how we should do things. and companies like us and what you had two years ago, it was still so relevant today. Can you talk about clinical testing? Because we hear that all the time, but I think that people don't really understand what goes into that. And I think that a reason why a lot of people,

especially in supplements, don't do it, is because it's very expensive, right? It's expensive. And there's so many different levels of clinical studies. And it's all put into one bucket, unfortunately, which then you mean you have to educate a lot more for drugs, pharma, you have to follow a certain path, and the FDA will provide to you the endpoints that you need to measure in the population. So you really kind of follow their recipe book for whatever you want

to do. For supplements, you don't have to do any of that. And so in order to show efficacy, what companies will do is they'll use ingredient studies that have been previously done to say like this ingredient is in our product. And so we can make this claim based on a study that's put in prior. So we don't really have to invest into clinical research for our entire product or if it has more or more ingredients, you can put those studies together and say, we have an ingredient that studies this. And so you can make those claims based on that. So you don't have to invest. If they want to push it a little further, what they'll do is they'll say, okay, we're going to do a perception study. So that's like a questionnaire study, which totally fine. It's very legitimate

in terms of what it shows. It has value. But again, it's not, you're not measuring like using instrumentation. So you're asking people, you know, do you feel like this changed or can you seen improvement, et cetera. It's anecdotal. No, not necessarily. An anecdote is of one or two people. You can do case studies, but when it comes to studying maybe 30, 40, 50 people with a questionnaire, that's pretty legit, right? It depends on the questionnaire that you use. Some questionnaires are validated. That means that if you apply this questionnaire, it's been shown to correlate with more objective measures. So instead of going through all the process of doing those objective measures, this questionnaire has been validated. So that's a tool that is a little more

robust, if you will, then a self-made questionnaire where you're like, hey, don't you love this product? Yes or no, right? So there's different ways of doing a questionnaire to get a little more rigor. And then adding instrumentation, again, is not necessary. If you say we did a clinical study, I always say, well, what did you measure and how did you measure it, right? Did you just provide a 10 question questionnaire that you made yourself or did you use a validated tool or did you actually do instrumentation testing, which is more objective, which you can't take away the results. You know, it is what it is. If you count Harris, for example, those results are going to stay the same whether one person does it versus another. So it's less subjective. And so when you put all of those

studies in the same bucket, it's kind of frustrating because you're like, no, we invested so much money in doing these objective trials, these randomized trials, these placebo control trials. And those costs, to your point, so much money and time and effort and energy and lumping that on the same bucket is kind of disingenuous because we really want to make sure that consumers can understand that. But I feel being part of this now, we really need to educate people on what a clinical study is and the different levels of it. Yeah, and nutraceuticals, which is I think what neutrophol would be considered, right, are definitely becoming more of a thing and I think will be more of a thing in the future. And especially for something like

hair thinning, hair shedding, those kind of issues, you know, I'm sure that it's, it does take a multifactorial approach, right? Because it's a whole body issue, and we can get into that a little bit as well. And I heard you on the ShiMD podcast. I love Dr. Aliobody. And, you know, they were talking about how, you know, you can treat hormones and you can treat diet. And then you can also incorporate something like a nutraceutical. And so they're going to be more and more part of people's lives moving forward.

And so it's so important that people are getting things that are actually rigorously. studied. Agreed. And that makes sense as well, right? So I think as you can study something, but if it doesn't make sense for you, so I think it really is understanding what is your issue, what is going on. And if we talk about hair sitting, for example, understanding what is the potential root cause. The company, Neuropel, has identified several or six of them that they've been studying for, you know, since they started, really looking at the contribution of each one of these root causes to hair growth. And so understanding that is very important because if you just, you know, touch on hormones or touch on stress, you're not looking at the whole picture. So they're really looking

at the whole body approach, which I think makes so, so much sense. But knowing, too, that those root causes are going to vary throughout your life, right, throughout your life stage, throughout, you know, if you're, if you're postpartum, or if you're a menopausal, or if you're, you know, if you're a man, woman, will also have different root causes in terms of how we address them. And so it's a smart approach, but also tailored. Everyone has the same root causes, but they're just affecting you a different ways at different times of your life. And I feel like hair issues, especially thinning, shedding, things like that have commonly been attributed to men, right? And so many women struggle with it, especially as we go throughout our lives and hormones are fluctuating and that really affects it.

So I would love to talk a little bit about like the hair growth cycle and how that changes throughout our lives. Yes. And thank you for bringing that up because I think it's very accepted for men to talk about hair thinning, right? But for women, it has been a challenge because no one wants to admit it. It's not very acceptable for women to have this. And so it's been a hard thing, I think, to bring up to your physician to anybody to admit that, you know, I have hair problems unless it really starts falling a lot. But just knowing that my ponytail is not as full as it was before. You know, and noticing these changes really is important to know when to start addressing it. But going back to your question about hair cycle, I think it's so important that people understand how the hair growth cycle works to understand how any treatment, whether it's medical treatments or,

supplements will affect hair growth. Hair growth is not going to improve in a week. It's not. It just can't because the hair growth cycle is very long. So there's three major cycles, if you will. So there's the antigen phase. That's your growth phase. That's when your hair is being fed and it grows. And that can last two to seven years, right? Because we want hair to grow longer, the longer it grows, the longer it's been in that stage. And then it goes into catagen phase, which is kind of like that resting phase in between telogen. There's only a few weeks where the hair follicle will detach from the bulb. And then you go into a telogen phase, which is about a few months, it will last. And that's when your hair eventually will fall out, right? And so it's normal to

have hair fallout on a regular basis, but every hair follicle is not in the same phase at the same time. Otherwise, you'd be losing all your hair at once, right? So every hair follicle is almost like a little independent organ that grows at its own pace. And so what we want to do is we want to stay an antigen as long as possible to grow that hair. And when we are to intubentate, telogen or we have a time where anogen, we go straight into a telogen, that's also a problem, because then we'll start losing a little more hair at the same time. And so we want to have that balance and understanding that all the root causes can affect that growth cycle is important to know. And understanding that when you're pregnant, for example, a lot of women pregnant women will

experience this is your hair is so much thicker, thicker and fuller during pregnancy because you're stuck in that antigen phase because of hormones, because of all these other factors happening to you. and when you give birth, eventually those hormones kind of go down and you can have a sudden shedding, right, of all that. So that's all related to hormones and relate to the stress that you had. And that's a very different phase than your normal life, if you will, as a woman, or if you're a menopausal, which is a completely different picture because now you're going on a roller coaster of hormones. And that will also affect that growth phase or that T-Legin phase. Since we are talking about hair health in this episode, we know that.

that hair health is as much what you are doing externally as what you're doing internally, and everything that we are putting into our body is going to reflect on the outside. So this is why I'm really cognizant about what I eat. I would say that I probably follow the 80-20 rule to some extent, but I have really cleaned up my diet and my snacking in particular. So I love a chip. I specifically love a tortilla chip, but most of the tortilla chips out there are not up to par for me, which is why I recently switched to masa, and I will never go back. So, Masa are classic tortilla chips made with only three ingredients, organic corn, grass-fed beef tallow, and sea salt. Mossa is basically like skincare for your gut. So they use clean, high-quality ingredients that support how you feel

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It also comes in capsule or a berry-flavored gummy. So there's an option for everyone in the family. You can even break apart the capsule. You can bake with it. You can put it in smoothies or oats. Or if you don't like taking capsules, you can sneak it in that way. Plus, it's backed by an industry-leading guarantee. So if you're ready to transform your health in 2025, take the 90-day challenge.

You will love the way you feel or get a full product refund. no questions asked. So to join the gut health revolution and take control of your health today, visit just thrivehealth.com and save 20% on your first 90-day bottle of Just Thrive probiotic with promo code well. Don't forget to check out all their other all-natural, clinically proven products to like their newest product, digestive bitters, focus in memory, gluten away, and more. That's justthrivehealth.com promo code well. So which hormones are responsible for that healthy growth? of the hairs at estrogen. I also know that drugs like spiroinolactone, which suppress. Yeah, dihydro testosterone, yes. Those can help hair growth as well, right? So it's not as simple as

that, because it's also about the balance. It's about the balance of all of it. And when you're at antigen, yes, estrogen progesterone will help you through that. And if there's an androgen dominance that can lead the thinning if you're predisposed to it. Androgen dominance means that you have more hormones that are associated with androgens. And there's a conversion that happens from testosterone to THT, which is dihydro-testosterone, which is the hormone that will affect hair thinning, really that will attack your hair follicle. So that balance is important to keep. It's not about having more estrogen. It's about having that balance between all of the hormones together. But when you start losing progesterone or when estrogen goes down, then that imbalance

will be to not only the antigen phase of hair growth, but also will be less protective against the androgen dominance. It's not. as simple as one. It's like, it's a whole picture, which I think makes a lot of sense. It's a whole body approach and it's a whole picture approach based on where you are. Yeah, that makes sense. And I think that people like to focus on one specific hormone, right? Especially with skincare as well, you know, like, oh, estrogen, estrogen cream, like that will help your skin be more plump. And estrogen is good for hair growth. But, you know, it is a balance, like you're saying. It is a balance. And too much of something can also be not, you know, not be great for use.

and everyone's going to be different at different phases. And so I think for women, we're unfortunately having to be a little more conscious of those things. It's like even in our cycle, right? Our cycle changes monthly. It's not about too much of one thing or less of one thing. It's about the whole balance during that time. Yeah. So you mentioned that all of our hair follicles are in different phases, which is a good thing.

So we should have some shedding. It's to be expected, right? But how can somebody determine what is unusual versus what is just normal? First and foremost, we always suggest, you know, when you know, when you notice something, it's always good to see a board certified dermatologist because they will be able to see if there's any other conditions. Is it a medication that you're taking? Like, there's a lot of things that could potentially be leading to that that is outside of just your body. And so once you understand those things, you can do something about it and address that problem.

If it's yourself, I think you know your hair the most. It's always frustrating to me when women say, well, I told someone, like, I'm really losing my hair or I'm noticing something when they have really nice hair. and people like, what are you complaining about? Your hair looks fine. It looks great. But you know, you know how your hair used to be. You know how you put in a ponytail that that width, if you will, has changed. I think as a person, you will be the first one to be able to recognize things are changing, whether it's in the texture of my hair, whether it's not growing as fast, whether it's noticing

more shedding because you know what you're used to seeing in the shower and versus how it is now. So it really is, I think, very subjective and personal to everyone. So you mentioned that there are kind of six areas that you guys have identified that contribute to hair issues, whether it's thinning, shedding, things like that. So we're talking about hormones. What are those other five? Yeah. So we have stress, right? And these, you know, the ones that we've been focused on are the ones that we know we can do something about it. So hormones, obviously, we have stress can impact not only the hair phase that we talked about, but also the color of hair. There's a, there was a study that came out. And if you see pictures of Marie Antoinette, for example, right, like her hair was white. That was a thing that happened to her before she was sent to the guillotine, but also like you look at presidential candidates for eight years or four years, they become very, very gray. So, and there's a paper that supports that. So we know stress can affect shedding, but also can affect color. I have a question about that. Sorry, not to interrupt you,

but is there any study that's quantified? How much of it is genetic and how much of it is stress when it comes to your hair color. That's a great, great question. I think I'd have to go in the papers a little bit more to see. I think there's a genetic predisposition for sure, but stress can exacerbate it, right? And we can talk about like the exosome and things that, you know, you have your genetic predisposition for anything, but the environment that you put yourself in will contribute to it or trigger it, right? And so I think for some will be easier to trigger than others, but it really is dependent on, I think, the environment that you're in. Okay. So you were saying lifestyle, I think. So lifestyle, yeah, so lifestyle that you can talk about, you know, the styling, the hot, what you do to your hair, all that like oxidative stress, like the pollution. So that's related to all of the environmental causes, but also your styling tools and what you do to your hair, how much you, you know, bleach it, things like that. And then we also have nutrition, right? We have the microbiome. That is a hugely important, probably to me, the most important one because, and more research has come in the last few years really talking about the gut microbiome.

and skin microbiome, but mostly, you know, how your gut health affects your skin, but also how it affects your hair. And if you're not absorbing those nutrients that are going to help with your hair, then that's a problem. So to me, it's almost like the base of, is your gut healthy to be able to, a, absorb the nutrients and also be able to contribute to healthy hair growth. So we talk about hormones, lifestyle, stress, nutrition. You mentioned like treating your hair, chemicals, hot, hot tools, things like that. Aging too, right? Aging is a contributing factor that, you know, we can't do anything about it, but we know that things change as we age. And so your supplementation will be a little

bit different when you are younger versus when, you know, especially during menopause, you know, your collagen starts going down. So there's so many things that happen. Do you recommend that people go and get like a metabolic panel, nutrient panel, all of that before they start implementing supplements or nutraceuticals? So I think everyone's going to be a little bit different, right? But knowing your body and knowing your baseline is always good for, anybody, regardless of if it's for supplements or anything else. I think knowing what your starting point is to understand what you can improve. And there's really no point sometimes of people like, oh, I need to take the supplement. Well, are you deficient in it? Like, do you need it? Right. And so I think

that's a question we need to ask ourselves. And, you know, 10 years ago, people were barely taking multivitamins. And now it's become to your point, like a huge trend and people are taking a lot of things. And I think there could be excess there. So really understanding where you are. Getting that panel is probably very helpful to understand your baseline. And then as you implement either, you know, vitamins, minerals or supplements specific like neutrophol, then it helps you know if you have any deficiencies where you need to maybe take a little bit more of something to really know your body well. Because I think even if it's not medication or drugs, we need to understand what we put in our bodies and why we're putting in our bodies. Most skincare products focus on surface level

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That is O N-E-S-K-I-N-D-C-N-C-I-N-C-C-L, and the code is well for 15% off your first purchase. Could you talk about like specific ingredients and why they are so helpful for hair health? Yes. And so the way Nutrifle was designed was really looking at those root causes and finding ingredients that would have shown benefits to this root cause. So for example, Sao Palmetto is an ingredient that has been shown to help with hormones, right? It helps with that conversion of DHC that we were talking about earlier. And there are studies that have shown alone, Sao Palmetto can help with hair. There's really no medication for stress.

You know, there's lifestyle changes. There's, you know, meditating. It's a lot more of a physical thing that we do to ourselves than to take something. But Aschalganda is a stress adaptogen that has been shown to be able to reduce cortisol, which is a marker of stress. So understanding that you can take something like that and really help with that root cause. We have vitamin E like topotrinos that are antioxidants, right? All these things to help with that lifestyle and oxidative stress to address that.

And there's actually data on an ingredient that it helps with hair. But the way the founders put these together is, yes, there's maybe some data on these ingredients to help with hair. But altogether, there was nothing. And so they really wanted to look at not only the contribution of those ingredients for the root cause, that will it even, will it grow your hair, right? Because that's the ultimate goal is to help with hair growth and not just address the root cause. But by addressing the root cause, you're addressing then your hair and the quality and the growth. Your studies have been done on the entire formulation, not just the specific ingredients, right? Correct. Yes. The science behind it is

important too, because you're not just going to throw an ingredient, just so this must help with this root cause. It's like it had studies on it to begin with too. And if it didn't, then it's like it's good for this root cause. And we could have stopped there. We could have, you know, just said, you know, we have enough information to be able to make claims because it's at the right amounts and all those things, but they wanted to push further and say, does this make sense? And how will it convert to a clinical endpoint of hair growth and hair quality? Was there anything surprising in those studies? Well, I think the fact that, oh my God, like this actually works because I think for supplements, people are just so that either you're a huge supplement person

or you're a skeptic. And I think the skepticism was so, I think it had been ingrained in us. We were like, oh, and we didn't know how much to expect in terms of results. Because if you think about it, if you do a drug study, for example, on someone who has hair loss and you're looking at an alopecia and you're giving a drug, you're starting with someone who is in a disease state

and you're looking to improve their disease state back to normal. With a supplement, you're there to help with structure function. to be able to see like how will this improve my body function. And you're starting from a relatively normal level and how much more, how much better can you get? And so it really is a different way of approaching it and looking at it in terms of like, this is not a disease condition. This is not like a full hair loss.

To us it was like, what are we going to see? And how much growth are we going to see and how much is a quality going to change? Because we can't compare it to a drug, for example. You mentioned earlier counting actual hair, strands or follicles or what was it? Yeah. So usually for studies, again, there's no model to study supplements. And so you have to borrow from the drug world of like how is this done and what are the endpoints that matter to dermatologists because, you know, we worked a lot with work with this channel a lot. They are our partners. The drug studies that are done like noxyl penestride,

anything uses phototrichograms. And what you do is you go in the same area, you pick an area somewhere. Let's say for women, it's here sometimes right, right? We're in the temple. And then you tattoo. to make sure you go back in the same spot all the time, and then you take a picture. And the picture of about one centimeter by one centimeter, so pretty small. And you go back to the area, so it's a small camera that will take a picture.

And from there, you will have this area that you're going to look and you're physically going to go count the hairs at baseline. And then as you go through the study, to be able to say, is there an actual improvement? So this is where that objective measure is of, you know, you see more hairs.

and then you extrapolate from that then, you know, from this little area, we saw so much more hair growth and so that just extrapolates to the head. But those are tedious and they're hard and we have to ask dermatologists to count hairs and we pay them a lot of money to do this work because they have to identify what's a terminal hair and with the vealous hair. What are those? But it's just the difference of is it a baby hair or terminal hair? And it just, it's based on the diameter. And a lot of veal's hairs turn into two terminal hairs. So it's just, identifying the difference between the two. Got it.

They do that. And even though there's AI now that will do all the analysis for you, those haven't been validated for studies. So even though people like, why don't you just do AI on those things, it'll be cheaper and more and easier, but they've not been validated. So we can't use that and just do AI. We literally still pay the dermatologists that we work with to count the hairs. I was going to say that same thing about AI.

But I feel like it probably takes a long time for the industry. to catch up to the technology. Yeah, and new technology comes out and it's great, but, you know, there's still error. I think it's a tool that are using clinical a lot, which is great because, again, it's not, you're not trying to do a study with it and really show rigorous results. You're trying to show improvement. It's okay if it's off, right? It's fine.

It's like maybe 10% off or 15% off. But for a study, we can't afford to be inaccurate. So we have to be very precise on how we do things. Are there any common myths that you see when it comes to hair, growth. I know that a lot of people focus on, you know, topicals and what you're doing to the actual hair itself. I know that scalp health is a big thing now. And I know that you guys actually have a product for that. Is there anything else that comes to mind for you? So to me, the myths, it's more about the expectations because there's so many, you know, ads out there that'll talk about, you know,

improved hair growth in, you know, a week. And like I said, that's just not, it's not going to work. It's not possible. And so I would say caution there, right? If you're seeing claims that that will promise you things, chances are it may not be accurate. And so the myths really are that you can change your hair in a short period of time. And this goes against a lot of things. It's very hard than to convince people to stay on something for three to six months. And whether that is a supplement or whether that is anything else. That is how the hair cycle works. And so those are the myths, I think, that are the hardest to address because there's constant noise. out there that says the opposite. And people like instant gratification. Yeah, but you know, but it's not like skin, right? Like we just did a study on skin and it was shorter studies because we know that it changes a lot faster and it makes sense to look at it at a shorter period of time. But hair is just, we just can't. So those are the big miss. I think that, at least to me, that are frustrating. Is there anything coming down the pipeline when it comes to hair growth that's really cool that you can talk about? You know, just going to meetings. I think what was so great about

as they came before a lot of things. You know, women's hair thinning was not really something that was talked about because, again, there's like this, this shame around it. Women were not bringing it up. And so, and there was very few treatments available. And so it really made sense to have a different solution in this market. And nowadays, I feel like it, because people are talking about it more, especially women are talking about it more, then there's more options and companies are really looking into this and see, like, what else can we do? Because if it has, it has, happens to women, then there's a market there to for us to develop products. So I think there's a lot of things in the pipeline in terms of medications that are coming out that are pretty cool. I think that the lasers

are something like there's a lot more out there. Those are so expensive, though, but there is, you know, data on them. I think what I'm told by my my colleagues in dermatology is that you want to do everything you can to save your hair follicle because we're all born with our hair follicles. We're not getting anymore. There's not going to be more felicals that grow. You get what you get, in the womb. And you want to take care of them because once you lose them, you lose them. And so you want to do everything you can in advance to maintain that healthy hair before if something is to happen. And so time, time is hair is the thing that we say a lot. And so knowing that now, there's just more things that that people are looking at in terms of either the lasers or

supplements or new ways of approaching with a supplement or new drugs that are coming out, looking at even more in depth as we understand more how the growth cycle works and the Wint pathways, then there's a lot more targets that can be looked into. And I think because of the interest and because people are talking about it, companies are going after it. Are there any other things that people can do to support those follicles? Because when you put it that way, it sounds a little alarming, right? Like you're born with a certain amount and that's all you're going to get, which makes total sense. But I think that, you know, a lot of us think like, oh, I can, you know, I can grow more and sounds like that's not an option. So nutraceuticals,

obviously lifestyle things. Yeah, I think there's, you know, there's what you do and then what you don't do. We always say that hair is a representation of your health. And so being healthy is going to help you for so many reasons, not only for your body, but for your skin and for your hair. So, you know, to me, it's like you can take a supplement, but if you're not treating your body, if you're not being healthy, it's kind of going to be a wash at some point. And so you really have to think about what you're putting into your body, how it's affecting your gut, how, you know, which we talked about will affect your hair. I think what I've learned with the supplement is that, you know, we, even if you think you're very healthy and you're doing all the right things, there's so much

that you can absorb. And so really focusing on those things and getting the right nutrition and the supplementation can enhance your best hair. And I think that's where we want to bring people is really to the best hair they have and then keep it there. That's a premise. That's, a little bit different than hair loss, right? It really is, you know, supporting your body the best way possible to grow hair and then, and then keeping it there. And then how you treat your hair, too, because, right, I mean, I went blonde right now. And that's probably not the best thing for my hair. But because I feel like it's really strong because of, you know, what I've been doing to, I could never do this before. I still am very gentle and I try not to do too much, but I'm very conscious of the fact that

the bleaching will kind of undo a lot of the healthy things I'm doing for my hair because I'm treating it chemically, right? And there's times in my life I probably shouldn't be doing that. So what you do, but also what you don't do, even if you're not going to get more follicles, you can really do a lot to keep the ones that you have. The blonde struggle is so real. I know it well. Someone told me you can either have long, thick hair or are you going to have blonde hair? Yeah, I know, and I'm realizing that. You know, I was trying to hide my gray and figure maybe this will help. You say, eventually, I want to see how the gray comes in, but then it's just like, oh, I want to try this. want to try that. And I think it gave me the strength to do that to my hair. I haven't highlighted mine

since December 2nd. I actually checked in with my girl yesterday because I'm like, I am so dark. I've never been this dark because I was trying to get my hair a little bit healthier. But I was like, I can't take it anymore. I'm going today. Yeah. And that's the thing. It's very high maintenance. I did not realize how high maintenance it was. And then, you know, then the styling on top of it. So I'm really, I really try to be careful because, again, there's the quantity of the growth of your hair that can help. but it's also the quality and you do want to have your hair looking good. And that I think comes to your point after like a lot of the products to support your hair once it's out. Because, you know, supplements will support the growth and the texture.

And, you know, our studies show that the quality of it changed as well, which, you know, to me was a little surprising because you're trying to talk about growth. But the quality was affected too, which was super great to look at. And this was compared to placebo. This is like a blinded investigator who's rating the hair quality based on, you know, the volume, the thickness, all of these things, and saying it looks better compared to placebo. So again, it's, but you could undo that very easily with doing what you and I are doing. Exactly. Well, that's so, so fascinating to learn all of us.

Thank you so much for coming on. And where can everybody find more information? You know, the best place is Nutifil.com. You have a list of all our products, the description, and all our studies are up there, too, for those who are interested in reading those. I know my audience always appreciates the science. And I love them for it. Same. Well, thank you so much.

Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you liked the episode, and if you liked the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes such a long way in supporting the show. Follow the show over on Instagram at well.pod. You can also follow my personal Instagram at Ariel Lorry. I'm always sharing great clips from the episode. episodes, and we also have full episodes on YouTube as well if you want to watch in entirety. Thanks for listening.

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