This is the Art Beauty podcast, where we are always reaching for truth and beauty. Remember, the brands and the people on the show are not paying to be here. So we get to asking the questions. We know you want answered because you deserve to be informed so you can make the best choices for yourself. With that said, I'm Amber, and today my fabulous co-host is Dr. Alan Bauman.
He is the CEO and founder of Bauman Medical and he is a world one of the world's leading experts when it comes to hair restoration surgery. We are so honored to have you on here today. How's it going, Dr. Bauman? It's going great. Thank you so much for having me on. It's great to be here with you. I mean, I know you're in sunny Boca Raton. I got to tell you it here in New York, I feel like it's been raining normally. September is my favorite month, but it has just been raining nonstop.
That's hard. Oh, my hair out. Except we know that you don't want to do that. No, please don't pull your hair out. That would not be good. So we are here today talking, you know, about hair loss, hair restoration. And this is something that I think has become more in the conversation. You know, there's many more options out there, including things at home all the way up to surgery and different supplements. So I'd like to touch on some of that today.
But offhand, do you happen to know any statistics on hair loss in women and men? How many people are actually dealing with that? Yeah. So the American Academy of Hair Restoration Surgery has really taken a look at this. And they know that about 80 million Americans are dealing with hair loss and suffering from it. So about 50 million men and 30 million women.
But I think that those numbers undercount the amount of people who are really struggling with everything from hair shedding to scalp health issues and and other things related to hair. And especially here we are, I would say, post-pandemic and and with every single news cycle, we see some new kind of medication or thing that's causing hair loss. So I really have seen it over the past 25 years in practice.
I've seen a huge increase in the amount of people who are coming to us complaining of hair loss and hair symptoms and scalp symptoms, but also so many new triggers that it just seems like everything is working against our hair sometimes, you know? You know, it's funny, we talk a lot on this podcast about, you know, we talked with nutritionists, other doctors and dermatologists and even though everybody listening, you know, to us, our hair is incredibly important.
Really when it comes down to biology. Our body doesn't think it's that right. So if your body is fighting for nutrients, if it's trying to fix your internal organ, the hairs, the hair and the nails and sometimes the skin are like the last things that our body is going to pay attention to. Yeah, that's that's so true.
And I think that's what and evolutionarily it's probably hardwired into our psyche that, you know, when someone has good healthy head of hair, that that's a sign of youth and vitality and fertility and all of those good things.
And that's one of the reasons why Hair, I think, is so valuable as well as it being a way of self-expression, you know, whether it's a buzzcut or a mohawk or dreadlocks, you know, all of those different ways that you change your hair over time, you know, to express ourselves, to express yourself or ourselves makes a big difference. But when you start losing it, wow. Yeah, it can cause a lot of distress for sure.
You know, I have a good girlfriend who was actually on the show who at a very young age was having thyroid issues and lost a significant amount of hair, you know, And as a woman and as a young woman and as a beautiful young woman, I think that that was I watched her and it was crushing. She has since taken she fix the problem. Right. So so I don't want to focus too much on her.
But, you know, are you are you finding that when it comes to hair loss these days, that that it's really runs the gamut of ages? Are people noticing it younger? Is it more men than women? So I think what happens is that, you know, men, sometimes they suffer in silence when it comes to hair loss. And then sometimes they just decide maybe it's time to shave their head and they kind of move on from it.
Obviously, women who are suffering from hair loss don't typically have that option unless they're going to turn to wigs or weaves or something like that. So I think women sometimes suffer a little bit more. Are there more people suffering now than before? I think we touched on that, absolutely. And I see patients today in a much younger category coming in and wanting to do something.
Now, is it because we have such better options, you know, early interventions, ways to measure hair, or is it really happening at a younger age? And I think it's a combination of all of these things that's really driving patients into seek hair restoration and, you know, but unfortunately, you know, there are, you know, many sponsors and even sometimes your local dermatologist are saying, oh, yeah, we can fix your hair.
But but, you know, unfortunately, they don't have the training, the expertise or even the treatments on hand to really do the job. You know, we're certainly see a lot. Let's get into some of these causes, right? You know, is it is it genetics? Is it environment? Is it a combination of both? Yeah. So hair loss can start with genetics for sure. Male pattern, hair loss, female pattern, hair loss.
We know that there is a huge genetic component that's passed along from the mom's side or the dad's side, and that is your predisposition. But of course, there are so many other factors. And we say that hair follicles are a very, very sensitive organ.
So let's just say in women, for example, changes in hormone status, whether it be PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, which can occur during your most fertile years, supposedly your most fertile years, it's the most common hormone abnormality of women of childbearing age can disrupt the hair follicle and, of course, childbirth. Everybody kind of knows that.
Oh, gosh, once the child's born, you're going to see some shedding as those hormone levels crash back down to normal And and your beautiful pregnancy hair starts to fade a little bit. And then during perimenopause and menopause, again, hormonal fluctuations, right. But there's so many other things that can affect your hair as well, your nutrition, your diet. What are you taking in? What are the nutrients and fuel?
Because as we said, the hair follicle, maybe that the hair follicle is one of the most highly metabolic cell populations in the body. And that's probably why it's so sensitive to so many things, especially nutrients and fuel and hormones and you name it, even poor sleep, poor lifestyle choices, toxin exposure, autoimmune issues. I mean, the list goes on and on. And then also how we treat our hair, right.
So using chemicals and heat on the scalp and even just braiding or tight hairstyle nails or wearing extensions, hopefully. Now, that sounds familiar, but if it does, those are all things that could put your hair at risk. And then, of course, stress. In the modern age, you can't avoid the stress. The stress is all around us, but we have to make ourselves more resilient to stress.
We have to work on our stress management skills so that we can lower that cortisol level as we go into the evening hours and not have that lingering high level of cortisol that, you know, deadly stress hormone really over time affecting our hair follicles, too. I mean, you know, that's like we know stress is the killer. It's so hard. But like, how do you really not be stressed in this day and age? I mean, we can do our best. You know, when it comes to hair loss.
It's a whole nother podcast. And, you know. Just maybe we we've done a lot of them. You know, when it comes to hair loss, there are different types, right? So you talked about male pattern balding. But I know personally at a young age I had alopecia areata, right? A small patch of hair loss due to stress, which, knock on wood, finally came back. But man, that was not fun. Can you run us through some of the different types of hair loss? Absolutely.
So let's just be clear about male and female pattern hair loss. Can look different. So the traditional male pattern, you can recognize it from across the room, right? You have a receding hairline thinning in the crown. The bald spots get bigger and then it could eventually wipe out all the hair on the top of the scalp, sparing the hair around the sides in the back. For men, you know, in women, when female pattern hair loss occurs, usually it's a more diffuse pattern in the frontal zone.
But from the measurements, we can tell that the hair around the sides in the back stays relatively permanent. Now, sometimes there are exceptions. Sometimes women can recede their hairline, especially if they're exposed to excessive androgens, let's say, during hormone optimization therapy or PCOS, where they become more sensitive to androgens, they can actually recede their hairline. Well, that usually happens much later on in life. Autoimmune hair loss.
What you mentioned, alopecia areata can happen in little spots and they can sometimes resolve on their own, triggered by stress or some other allergy to something in your environment or something you ate. And but they can also be treated with things like PRP or corticosteroids which shut down the the immune system in that area if it tends to progress to alopecia.
So tallis which is loss of the total hair on the top of the scalp or universalis your whole body then you need systemic medication like JAC inhibitors. Janice kinase inhibitors are now FDA approved to reverse alopecia areata totality universalis, which is kind of interesting and basically works by shutting the immune system down.
But there's other types of alopecia too, traction alopecia which can be caused by pulling and tugging on the hair So tight braids, as I mentioned previously, or clipping extensions even, or wearing hairpieces. These are all ways that the follicle gets damaged from the outside in, meaning that you're pulling on the hair, perhaps even tearing that the hair fiber out of the follicle, and over time that could damage it. And then, of course, we see scarring alopecia.
Some ethnic populations are more prone to this in Africa than those of African descent. We can see scarring. Alopecia is occurring centrally in the crown area and then expanding and it's way out. We think that's probably due to exposure to hair relaxing agents or those chemical agents that are often used. They used to call it hot comb alopecia, but it was really probably due to the chemical exposure.
But scarring alopecia can also occur from things such as plastic surgery like brow lifts and facelifts, or, God forbid, a trauma to the scalp. If you've had a facelift or a brow lift, an incision was made somewhere. And if that incision was made in a hair bearing area, it could affect the follicles in that zone. And so very often, especially here in Florida, we're asked to repair kind of plastic surgery. Cicala if you will.
You know, the things that typically happen after plastic surgery, which would be scarring. And so we can fix all of that. So every patient needs a, I guess the point is in so many different types of alopecia is that you need a good diagnosis and evaluation and measurements to kind of sort through all of this. Oh, and not to mention things like COVID, which can cause a telogen effluvium, which is a synchronized shed.
And now we're seeing synchronized shedding from general anesthesia or crash dieting or ozempic and other semaglutide injections or even bariatric surgery. Weight loss surgery can affect your hair in that way, too. And so a synchronized shed can sometimes reveal an underlying tendency towards male or female genetic hair loss. And so we have to figure out how much of each component is really responsible for what's going on at the level of your scalp. I mean, you said it before.
What you have made clear, you know, is that we could probably talk about this one for 5 hours, Right. Because there are so many different types of hair loss, different causes for it. So, you know, for those of us listening here, when when do you think it's like, okay, I need to now go into an expert versus, you know, when does that amount? Like what are the signs we should be looking for?
And, you know, sorry to make this about me, but, but as my hair got longer, I would notice more hair in the shower. Let's say. But I actually, like, talked to one of my very best friends who used to be a co-host of this podcast, who was a hairstylist and had hair restoration surgery and knows everything when he was like, bring it in to me. And he actually was like, it's just because it's much longer, right? Like, I don't think you're losing as much.
So with all that said, you know, how can we know, Hey, something here? I need to go see an expert. Right? So usually you'll have a gut feeling that something is out of whack. Something is abnormal when it comes to either the shedding or the receding or lack of coverage. Maybe you have to change your hairstyle to cover a widening part line. You know, there are many different signs and symptoms that can occur.
Obviously, if your scalp is irritated or inflamed, you know, that could also trigger this kind of a problem. But it's important to note that shedding is not always a bad thing. So sometimes people have seasonal shedding where they just notice in the fall or even sometimes in the spring, they have a seasonal shed where they tend to just lose more hair around that time.
And the reason why shedding occurs every single day in your brush or on your pillow is that hair follicles cycle on and cycle off. If they didn't, everybody would be walking around with hair all the way down to their heels. And so it's kind of amazing. Yeah. And there are some Instagram women out there that do that. So, yeah, you know, they're Guinness world record holders, I guess. Right. But the point is, is that normal people have a growth cycle that lasts about 5 to 7 years.
And so that would be a ponytail, Right. And then the follicle shuts down and then we'll produce another hair in about three months. So there's like a three month lag time when the follicle has to let's just call it reboot itself, right? And going from the resting phase into the growing phase. And as it transitions into that next growing phase, at some point, the hair fiber that we see, which is basically dead keratin tissue like your fingernail is going to shed, it's going to come out.
What's interesting is that her fingernails don't do that. That would be kind of interesting, right, If her fingernails shed and then grew another one, that would be weird, but hair does. But if you have a synchronized shedding, always, we want to look back, hey, what happened six weeks ago? Because usually that's around the time that something happened. And, you know, unless you had, you know, chemotherapy, God forbid, or something like that, usually it's a little bit further back in time.
So you're blowing my mind right now because I. Did you say 5 to 7 years is the hair normal growth. Cycle. Okay. Because I was in the impression that hair in general you then you mentioned six weeks is on this like 6 to 8 week kind of maybe it's just eyelashes. Eyebrows are more of like the 6 to 8 week cycle cycle. But your hair on your head is 5 to 7 because I guess it makes sense. You wouldn't be losing your hair every 6 to 8 weeks. That would be traumatic, right?
So just imagine, you know, a quarter to a half inch a month, how long it takes you to basically grow out a thicker ponytail. It could take a lot of time. Right. And so even a hair transplant, when we when we implant those follicles, it does take a full year to see the final result from that procedure because the hair grows at about a centimeter a month or quarter to a half inch a month on an average basis. So and then remember, it's going to grow about 5 to 7 years.
It's going to produce that hair fiber. And then at some point after that, it's going to shut down that reboot cycle, which takes about three months. So when you're talking about eyelashes and eyebrows, the growth is typically a little bit slower in terms of how fast the hair is produced. And the growth cycles, typically for eyelashes, for example, are about 100 days. And and then those will shed out. So it's normal to again, also lose eyebrow hair and eyelashes with time.
But theoretically, it should be replaced by other follicles kicking in just like on your scalp. If you're losing 100 to 200 strands per day in a normal head of hair, which is about the average, you should hopefully be replacing 100 or 200 strands a day as those hair follicles are then kicking back into action from their resting phase that had started three months prior.
But the problem is, is when that gets out of whack, when it's out of balance and your ponytail volume starts to decrease and you see a lot of thinner, weaker, wispy your hair, people often say, oh, my hair is breaking. You know, they look and they see they part their hair and they see these little tiny spikes of of hair sticking up more than they used to, but not really breakage, except it's really the hair follicle not growing that five years. It's only growing a little bit of time.
You're only seeing that half inch of hair and then it's turning off and then turning on again. Again, you're seeing only that short amount of hair. Wow. You know, I know that like I said, there's so much information to take in here. But, you know, when if we start to notice something, if we're feeling like something's not right, do we immediately go to a hair restoration expert or a hair expert, or is that something you would start with, like your GP? Well, unfortunate.
Well, look, if you know that you're having some kind of a medical condition, you feel like, you know, you've come down with something or like, God forbid, you, you know, you had COVID or something. I mean, what if you know that there's something wrong with your health and wellness and of course, go see your primary doctor? Unfortunately, however, they're going to be very ill equipped to determine what's going on with your hair.
So, I mean, I've yet to find a primary doctor with a microscope that could actually look at your scalp. And obviously, that's something that we've been using here for almost 20 years. Right. Video microscopes have been available since 1999 and before that, it was a handheld scope. So, you know, we can look at your scalp and see what's going on. Today. We have a high powered microscopes that literally count every hair on your head.
I have a device that can actually number the hairs on your head and go back to the same area again and again, even to see what hairs are growing or not, what new hairs are growing or not in that area. And even to track pigmentation in those zones. You know, I was going to ask you, because there is that old adage, no, going back to this 5 to 7 year thing where if you pluck a gray hair, you know, three more are going to grow in it in its place. Is that is that true? Is that no life scale?
Well, whether you pluck it or not, I have to tell you that you're going to continue to get more gray. I mean, that's just a progressive condition. That's like saying, you know, if you if you zap a wrinkle, you're going to have three more. You know, the wrinkles are going to happen right? So we have to fight against the graying.
I think there have been things, you know, like maybe the use of zinc and such, you know, around the time of the pandemic to kind of boost our immunity that have maybe displaced copper in our bodies. And that's one of the things that we're really interested in, is using copper peptides for improving pigmentation. Maintaining pigmentation. We can get into how we kind of do that here in the practice a number of different ways. You can do it at home and also in the office.
But the bottom line is, is that if you think that you having a hair problem, if you're running to a dermatologist who's not an expert, not board certified in hair restoration, you're likely not going to get a full evaluation there. So it takes us an hour to do an evaluation for hair. When was the last time you spent an hour at the dermatologist speaking to the speaking to the doctor, maybe waiting an hour for him in the waiting room, but you know, or her.
But a hair restoration specialist is going to have a unique ability to dissect into your medical history, your hair loss history, your hair health history. And you know what we do here in the practice? It's a very, very holistic approach these days. We're very keen on prevention, We're very keen on looking at other things that might be influencing your hair. I have an entire functional medicine department inside the practice.
I have a psychology department which is a hair and scalp health department inside the practice. And so very often patients will start to connect with me virtually first. And obviously we can't do our measurements over the Internet, but just like we're talking today, you can send me some photos, some medical history, I can ask more detailed questions. We can send a DNA kit out to you if we needed to, to do that.
There's a lot of ways to figure out what's going on before you physically come in the office. But eventually, if you have a hair problem, it doesn't get better on its own, right? It's only going to get worse. So you need to take some action. And you know, when we say in the in the field of hair loss is that time is follicle. So every hour, day, week, month, year that you delay treatment, the more hair you're going to lose. So, you know, time is of the essence to get it sorted, at least measured.
So you know what's going on. So, you know, before we get into what happens with in your practice, you know, you mentioned before copper peptides. Are there things that we could be doing at home? Obviously, you know, we know that it's not going to be the same. What you're going to get in a bottle is never be the same as a needle, is never be the same as going under a knife. Right.
But but are there things that we could be doing at home to help protect our hair, whether or not we're dealing with hair loss to help boost it? And then, of course, if we are dealing with hair like are there things that you're seeing now as as technology has changed, as the world is changing that you would recommend to people at home? No, absolutely. I mean, you know, we've already spent a little bit of time talking to all those things that could potentially influence your hair.
And so whether it's your lifestyle choices, how good your sleeping, if you're getting very jetlagged from doing business trips or or maybe you're socially jetlagged, staying out late on the weekends, but, you know, getting up early during the week and things like that, you know, your nutritional status, are you losing weight, Are you taking good care of yourself? What is your what is your your plate of food look like on a regular daily basis and your overall health status?
I mean, obviously, there's so many ways for us to evaluate that ourselves at home now and even to the point where you could have blood tests ordered at home, you know, they can you know, you can have a phlebotomist come to your house and take a, you know, a routine blood test. And very often when patients start with us, virtually, you know, we order those things for for patients if they haven't been able to do it on their own. But let's just start with the basics.
You know, hair care is important for a number of different reasons. Obviously, the right shampoo and conditioner is important for that strand of hair to make it look okay and perform okay, depending on how much oil your scalp produces and the kinds of products that you use and your style and the thickness and the quality of the hair. So choosing just the simple right product can have a huge cosmetic effect on your hair. That doesn't necessarily mean grow more hair.
It means make whatever hair you have perform better and look better, look more voluminous. And that that's okay. We've got all kinds of stylers from salt sprays to to smoothing treatments, you know, that are under the Baumann brand that can be helpful for that, but most importantly, keeping the scalp healthy.
So again, if your scalp is inflamed, if it's irritated, it's itchy, it's dry, it's flaky, or it's overly oily or God forbid, you know, you have severe dermatitis or some other issue, you know, that has to be rectified, that has to be handled. If you're going to grow good quality hair, if you have inflammation at the scalp, like that's the first thing that we try to fix, right? So then we're into like, you know, the nutrients and fuels.
So I always think like, you know, what can we do for protein, whether it's protein, collagen, powders or or vitamins and minerals, is it probiotics to reduce overall inflammation in the body? And then we get into more specific things like what are the herbs, you know, should we be on anti inflammatory herbs like Kirkman's marriage? Should we be on ashwagandha for stress?
Should we be on, you know, something else that's going to help recruit stem cells out of our bone marrow, something specific for mitochondrial function? I mean, these are some things that again, we have under the Baumann brand and there are other things that we've curated that we have in our e-store that are very helpful.
And patients do find that if they measure their hair that very often, sometimes there's a little missing nutrient there and it really, really helps because again, if you're losing weight or you're protein deficient, I mean you got to have protein or you're not going to build hair. What are your thoughts on Biotin? You know, I don't know if it's like a placebo effect, but I took it for a long time that I stopped taking it and I felt like, wow, my hair wasn't as good and I'm back on it.
I mean, yeah. Yeah. Vitamin E, vitamin A, biotin or B7 part of the B complex, also often called vitamin H for hair. You know, it seems like we're all kind of born with this knowledge that biotin can help our our skin or hair and our nails. And so but unfortunately because biotin is cheap and it's like essentially generic big Pharma doesn't really care to do any kind of research. And so people say, oh, well, there's no, you know, super high quality science that shows that biotin does anything.
And actually that's not really true. There are some good studies that show that biotin improves nails, so the thickness of your fingernails improve when you increase your biotin intake. Is it true that biotin deficiencies rare? Yes. But it's also true that biotin is relatively innocuous. It's very, very safe. You pick it out if you're taking too much. Years ago, 2500 to 5000 biotin a day was kind of the standard.
Today, most practitioners will, if they do recommend biotin, recommend 10,000 micrograms. That is okay. So ten 10,000 micrograms is a pretty standard dose. But as I said, you know, you can't overdose on biotin. You're going to pick out what you don't need. And for you know, I know it's a controversial topic and I don't really know why there's such a controversy about something that's so safe.
But, you know, what we've noticed in our practice is that truly, again, if you measure hair color, quality, texture and shine, as well as her density hair volume, with all the different metrics that we use, very often we get a very nice improvement in those metrics. I'm not saying miraculous, but very often with a good quality biotin supplement consistent over time.
So, I mean, are you going to get it from GNC or Amazon or maybe I don't know if that's such great quality, I wouldn't recommend I don't take, you know, vitamins from from Amazon. I don't know where they've been stored. I don't know if they're even what they say they are on the bottle. So good quality supplements are critical and especially since there's very little regulation in that regard.
So if I'm going to take it myself, I'm not of that company that's producing it, the manufacturing process. I'm going to go and visit them. I'm going to look at their clean rooms and that's how we're going to curate and create our own, you know, vitamin supplements and so forth. And that's what we've done here in the practice over two decades.
So so you have your own line of supplements, and I hate to put you on the spot here, are there because most of us can't go to the clean rooms and can't do that kind of detail research. Are there other brands, you know, that may be in mass market that you feel like, okay, this kind of lives up to what it should? So something that's not under the Baumann brand that I particularly like is Nutrafol and people Oh, you know, I see that on TV. How could that be? How could that be good?
Well, actually, Nutrafol is one of the few nutritional supplements that's out there that actually has peer reviewed clinical research in the journals that support its use and the mechanism and the effects and the science and the data is there. And it's very, very clear now is a company like Nutrafol going to have something, you know, to the extent of like, you know, big pharma company will? Of course not.
But at least they have some good data that we can look at and we have some baseline measurements that we can take. And I'm very confident, having known the founders and the and the creators of Nutrafol, that I'm very confident in the proprietary ways that they put those things together. Very standardized, if you will. Herb salad, if you might think of it like that.
So I do curate nutrafol and there's a variety of different ones that they have now postpartum and for women's balance for for menopause and so forth. And then they have one specifically a probiotic specifically for stress and so forth. But so we like Nutrafol Allison years ago, I like to scale to also clinical studies, peer reviewed journals. These are the things that as a physician give me some confidence that I am getting.
I'm prescribing or recommending something that's good quality, that's consistent that I know about, and it also has some good science behind it. So those are the things that I particularly like. You just made me so happy. I take that as a pro every day. The pro, not the other one, but again, things that it wasn't so much that I noticed this great change, but when I stopped taking it, I was like, Oh, and that brings me to something, you know, there are all these at home treatments, right?
Everything from, you know, we've touched on supplements, but, but we know that there are now it's such a boost of hair growth shampoos and then you've got sort of the Minoxidil line. I always wanted to know, you know, and all of these companies that come out with these hair growth serums, I've tried a thousand of them just working for new beauty. You know, I just wonder, is there anything that we should be worried about? Right.
Like minoxidil specifically once you stop using it, can't there be some loss? Is that because of the minoxidil, is it not? I know this is a lot to kind of touch on quickly, but. So things like minoxidil and laser light therapy and nutritionals have a good positive effect on the hair follicles. But sometimes it's been if you especially if you haven't had a measurement, probably you're used to the new normal. And then all of a sudden when you stop that, you're like, Oh, I don't need it anymore.
I'm good, my hair is fine. All of a sudden you notice it's starting to change back. And so but what I want to impart to your listeners is that it's no spite response. It's not much worse because you were on the treatment. You still have the opportunity to get back on the therapy. So you're not going to be worse for having been on Minoxidil. The problem with Minoxidil in my opinion, is that the over-the counter versions of the liquid lotions and bombs are typically annoying to use.
They're irritating and they and very often they just don't penetrate all that well. So we use compounded versions of minoxidil if we're going to do a topical version that has a very special component to it that makes your skin more responsive to the marks and it makes the follicles more responsive. Right? A specific enzyme is what's located in your skin that converts minoxidil to minoxidil sulfate the active and you need to have good sulfate transferase activity. That's the enzyme in your skin.
And genetically you could be predisposed to have poor social transferase activity. And so then you could try Rogaine minoxidil. It may not work, but if you tried one that was compounded with tretinoin or other ingredients that can crank up that enzyme activity, you might have a much better response and sometimes it's dramatically better. While the other thing it's a miracle for patients, I would say, is oral minoxidil. But that does come with some concerns.
Obviously, it's not FDA approved as a hair growth drug orally, you should use a quality compounded version, not splitting pills from CVS or Walgreens, please, and be under the guidance of a physician because there are side effects if you do it wrong or worse, that no effect if you do it wrong. Also right, which I'm so glad that you're bringing this up.
You know, and I think that so many of us there's so many options out there, and sometimes it's hard to know who can they trust, where can they go? You know, before I let you go, I do want to talk on this idea of surgery. Right. So we come into the clinic you're going to do. You said you have this incredible eye technology that can actually measure follicles, number follicles. What? I've actually sat in on a hair transplant surgery before. It's fascinating.
I'm sure it's changed even since I sat in on one. What is that procedure like for people and what kind of downtime is required? Can you can you kind of give us that or. So I think the most common myth today is that a hair transplant is painful or some way unnatural. Looking in the proper hands artistically design with the right technology techniques and surgical skill. First of all, it should be completely 100% comfortable, not a painful process. It is a long process.
We do use minimally invasive techniques which take much longer than the old fashioned ones, so we don't take a big strip or big chunk of scalp out of your head anymore. With stitches or staples. We take each individual follicular unit or as little as a single hair, one at a time, and that can be used to enhance a hairline density in the crown. It can be used to restore your eyebrows or even replace eyelashes or put hair back onto a scar from a brow lift.
So eyelash, eyelash, eyebrows, scalp and even beard transplants for men are still are possible today with these modern techniques. And we can do hairline feminization for transition patients. We can do hairline lowering for women who are just born with a high hairline. And those are very, very commonly performed today, as I said, comfortably. So when you arrive in the office, I'm going to make a plan with you and I are going to sit together and we're going to look at the areas of concern.
You've already had your consultation, so we already have a basic game plan. But if we're going to restore hairline for you or maybe for your significant other who might be out there struggling with his hair loss situation, we'll design the hairline in an age appropriate way. Not, you know, not the turkey cookie cutter, which is a straight across hairline, which is a disaster always, but something that we remember from the. Commercials from the eighties. Right.
Right here where it was like, oh, boy. Yeah. And unfortunately, you know, that's coming back today with with those treatments that are being done through medical tourism overseas, you're basically getting a cookie cutter process. So I always caution my patients, look, you know, in hair restoration, just like in cosmetic surgery and most things in life, you get what you pay for on that. But I'm not going to spend any more time on that.
But we're going to create something that's going to look normal and natural and age appropriate for you that's going to be uniquely designed for you and your hair lines can be different than the last one that I did and different than the one before. And so out of the 13,000 patients that I've done a hair transplant on, no. To have ever been the same right. So what we're going to do is plan it out. And under local anesthetic, which is comfortably applied, the scalp is completely numb.
You're not going to feel anything but some tapping. We're going to make the recipient sites, We're going to harvest the hair. We're going to implant that hair over the course of about 6 to 8 hours. Yes. Now, some cases, larger cases might more than one day consecutively, but most of the cases are about a day long. And then what's the recovery like? Well, that evening, you're not in store for some, you know, crazy, you know, pounding headache or something like that.
Usually you feel a little bit of tightness or pressure. Sometimes it's from the bandage or the numbness wearing off. We the what we do today, we hardly even prescribe any pain medication because it's so comfortable that first night. We don't even prescribe narcotic pain medication. And it's not because we're sadistic, it's because we just don't need it anymore with these techniques.
And generally you're harvesting right from the back in many endless and I know every case is different, but one that I saw it was harvesting from the back to add to the front of the hairline. Correct. So where you have more than you need, we're permanently harvesting those follicles out and re implanting them into the thinning in the balding zone. It's done by myself and my team, so I can't do it alone and my team can't do it by themselves either. It's a team effort.
It's like, think of it like a coronary artery bypass procedure. If you're getting a heart bypass, you need a team harvesting over here, open the chest over here, implanting over here. And that's kind of how we all work together. Like a symphony. I thought it was the coolest thing. Right. So you had this a surgeon doing this. It was also like machine assisted.
I don't know if that's the correct word, you know, And yeah, and then you had the people who are literally harvesting with with their little tiny microscopes and individually taking each follicle and prepping it. It was brilliant. I mean, it was incredible to see. But yeah. So, so when you walk out of a hair transplant, you don't walk out with hair. You know, unlike the wig factory, I guess what you walk out with in the area of concern is the crusting and the scabbing.
And we do a lot of different things to accelerate the body's recovery process. You may know I'm a little bit of a biohacker, so we do encourage everything from red light therapy to the nutrition to the stem cell, stimulating nutraceuticals. We're using things like Nano V to improve our protein folding exosome therapy to provide signaling to the scalp, doing PRP and platelet rich platelet rich plasma along with some other things to enhance the recovery process.
But you're going to have crusting and scabbing and a little bit of swelling for a couple of days. Right. So once the crusts like off, which is about a week, you're basically back to normal. So you're back to normal life. You can do physical activities within, you know, 3 to 4 days, a little bit of like cardio, you know, like resistance training. No more fighting until those scabs are gone. Please. And so but once you're healed, then you've got to wait for the hair to grow.
And it does take about 4 to 5 months for that hair to become visible to the naked eye. Six months you'll be halfway grown in nine months. A little bit further along about 75% and about a year to a year and a couple of months to get to 95 to 100% of the final result. And then it keeps growing. It's permanent. So a transplant and hair follicle is immune to male pattern hair loss or female pattern hair loss, but your other hair is not.
So concurrently, we're instituting a regimen of treatment and tracking protocols so that you can protect the other hair that you don't need to keep coming back for more and more and more and more transplants. So when you're transplanting hair about how what is the percentage that will actually take or does it varies patient to patient.
We are well, obviously it depends patient to patient because, you know, we do see patients, you know, well up into their eighties and even some of my patients are in their nineties who are getting hair transplants today, which is which is mind blowing. But they're very vital and healthy elderly population and and and they're just, you know, 90 years young and they want great hair. So I don't blame them. I'll probably be the same.
But the point is, is that everybody heals a little bit differently. So we have to look at their overall health and wellness before we get started with a hair transplant. If we're concerned about, for example, blood circulation, we might use nitric oxide supplementation, tablets or lozenges, again, hitting them with PRP ahead of time, maybe some microneedling well in advance, maybe some exosome therapy well in advance.
Certainly red light therapy, no question for a for every procedure, but so well and well into the high 90% range is where we're going to get growth rates and remember that this is a very tiny, delicate organ. The hair follicle, you know, it's 4 to 5 millimeters long and less than a millimeter wide. And so it's a very, very tiny little thing that can easily dry out. And if you let it get dry, forget about it. That's certain death. Right? Right, right. So we are obsessive compulsive.
When I say we meet my team, I surgical team, keeping those grafts moist, handling them properly at the appropriate temperature, four degrees centigrade. We have thermal electric cooling trays that keep it exactly that temperature. We use special ATP solutions and storage solutions like you would use for transferring a heart or lung across country in a jet plane. You know, you put them in hypothermia, cell solutions. And so these are all ways to ensure the best quality growth.
So, you know, but it takes it takes a team to make sure that those follicles are counted, they're sorted the way that they're harvested, the way that they're implanted. And everything that happens in between is what gives us this really good growth rate as well as all of these healing therapies. On the back end. I mean, we can institute all kinds of things. We can prescribe hyperbaric therapy any day drips, we can do hydrogen inhalation.
I mean, all of these different things are, again, red light therapy to stimulate the healing process and to really accelerate it. Right. I'm but one of my also no, so much of this is not only in the hands of the surgeon, but also then in the hands of the patient afterwards. Right. You So that's also a teamwork expert. And I don't mean to cut you off being mindful of our time here, you know, so it's clear that this is a big to do, right, just like any other.
If you were going to go for any sort of cosmetic surgery or, let's say, like use the organ transplant, but we'll keep it cosmetic here. Right. So we know prices vary, but you've made this clear that there is a whole team here. So I have to imagine that this comes at at higher cost, knowing that prices can change where you are in the country or where you are in the world. What are sort of ballparks to begin something like this?
Well, that's going to be different for every patient, you know, because obviously the lifestyle changes are free, you know, getting better sleep, you know, maybe tracking your sleep with an aura ring or improving your nutritional status or, you know, getting off the weight loss program and getting on more of a stabilization program, making sure that your protein intake and your fuel and nutrient and vitamin intake is on point, you know that that's really a free service, right?
You know, you have to make those lifestyle changes yourself. I mean, Nutritionals obviously kind of know where they are. I would say that general beauty budget for those are going to be, you know, anywhere from less than a dollar a day to you know, 80 to $100 a month depending on what your the specialty products are. And then, you know, you've got different hair care.
And and of course, as we said, hair care is important and so appropriate hair care that doesn't contain nasty chemicals or things that you're allergic to, God forbid, you know, but can also make your hair look good and feel great and perform the way that you want it to. You know, sometimes good, appropriate hair care can be a little bit more expensive than what you're getting in.
You know, and even in the salon, you know, good quality shampoo like what we have under the the Bauman M.D. brand, you know, those shampoos could be, you know, 50 to $100 depending on what the ingredients are. If you're and if you're pairing it, shampoo and conditioner wise, you know, laser light devices. Another great example, you get what you pay for. I mean, you can see on Amazon there are these, you know, little plastic domes with a couple of lasers.
If they're even lasers, most of them are just LEDs, you know, not even laser diodes. And they range from a couple of hundred dollars to $800 or so. But a true medical grade, low level laser light device is going to be in the thousands of dollars, 3000 to $5000 for a good laser. People say, oh, my God, I would never spend $5,000 or 50 $200 on a turbo laser cap. But actually that's your least costly treatment over time and has your lowest risk of side effects. It has a zero risk.
And if you spend the money on a good one that has a lifetime warranty, you know, that might be the last laser you'll ever need your whole life. And so amortize out over time PRP treatments which are, you know, nonsurgical noninvasive can vary. You know what you're going to get at the med spa down the block with you know a clear golden PRP that you know Kim Kardashian used on her face or whatever. You know, that's probably not enough platelets to stimulate hair growth. Right?
You might have to do that every month. Yeah. To get any kind of improvement. And probably the the result is more from the trauma than the platelets, which is awful to say. And we've done all the testing on that having done over 13,000 PRP treatments on the scalp. So we know that you have to get 10 to 12 billion platelets in there. And so that can be in the 3 to $4000 range and other noninvasive therapies.
And that's a once a year, by the way, because our treatments last 10 to 14 months, when you do it properly. So you could add surgeries like surgical procedures. Well, if it's a small procedure in the practice, you know, a couple of hundred grafts, it could be under $5,000. Oh, eyebrows or eyebrows or $10,000 eyelashes or more hair transplants can range anywhere from 10 to $50000, depending on how much you need. So and you might need more than one procedure.
Right. But as I said, you know, these it all starts with a consultation because there's such a huge wide range like saying, well, how do I fix my house? Well, you know, until the contractor gets in there and starts taking the walls apart, you may not know what you're in store for. I love that you just said that. And you know what? I guess where I was kind of going with that is because I thought that it was like minimum 25.
But maybe I'm hoping that if people are thinking about this and they've been sort of reluctant to go see somebody because they think, oh, I can't afford this, you know, that maybe there are options that, you know, aren't to be. But certainly what I thought they were going to be, you know, talked about and it's clear, I mean.
They probably spent honestly, they're probably spending more, you know, over the course of five or ten years on their cable bill last ten years than they would spend on a hair transplant sometimes. So, you know, it's all about priorities. But the most important thing is to get it done correctly the first time, because the worst thing you could possibly do is sacrifice your nonrenewable, highly valuable resource, your donor hair. Right? It's a finite amount of.
Hair and undoing a poorly designed transplant is a heavy lift. So I don't mean to scare people, but, you know, unfortunately, there are non board certified folks out there, people that do these procedures once a month instead of three times a day, bringing in teams from across the country who are leaving that night, not going to see the next day or putting you back on a plane from God knows where, bleeding with bandages, you know, and saying good luck on your recovery.
I mean, that like the worst thing you could possibly do. So, you know, look, if you've got to scrimp and save or work out some financing, I mean, these are the things that our patients do because they know that they're in good hands with high quality team members, that my staff has been with me for 20 years. Right. You know, my dad always said you don't want to save on birth control or plastic surgery. That's two areas you just don't want to save on, you know?
But before I let you go, before and before we get into how people can find you, is there something if people want to look for a reputable surgeon, if they want to know, is there some place that they can go to that you would recommend? Yeah, absolutely. So American Hair Loss Association has a group of surgeons. The International Alliance of Hair Restoration Surgeons is about a group of about 150 to 100 of us.
Obviously, the American Board of Hair Restoration surgery is about 200 of us who are board certified in the world, and that's it. There's also lists like you can do a search for top hair transplant surgeons worldwide by AIP. Two gentlemen, for example, are proud to be listed amongst my esteemed colleagues there as well. For many, many years, places like esthetic everything that list top surgeons from around North America, America, Canada and so forth.
But what's interesting is that, you know, you really have to click and jive with your surgeon. And so if your surgeon is talking to you, you know, like, I'll give you a great example. Patient came in and says, you know, I went and I saw this other surgeon. The first thing he did is drew a line on my head. Yeah. I mean, if that's the first thing that your surgeon is doing when he sees you in person for the first time, I don't know.
I mean, if I was the patient, I would be a little bit nervous about that, Right? So that's why we spend so much time. Like I said in the beginning of our conversation today, over an hour, getting a detailed history of what's going on, what you've tried in the past, what are the measurements, what's going on in each and every area of the scalp before we even talk about what you're trying to accomplish, let's get a complete inventory.
And I think, unfortunately, that's been missed in so many clinics around the world. Not all There are many esteemed colleagues that do that. But if your surgeon is like jumping in with a pencil into your console room, you know, I would say run, run. You know, if people. Away. Want to come to you, it's clear that you have such great care. What's the best way to find you? How to how can they make an appointment with you?
Well, our physical location is in beautiful downtown Boca Raton, Florida, just about a mile from the Boca Resort, which is now called the Boca Raton, not far from the beach and such. And the mall, I should say. But most people start their journey at Baumanmedical.com “BAUMAN” how you spell Bauman and at Bauman medical dot com you can simply just peruse thousands of pages on that website that I've written over the past 25 years.
You can watch hundreds of hours of videos of me explaining about everything from soup to nuts about the procedure, the treatments, how that work, how the work gets done, or you can request a consultation there. But even if you just wanted to ask a question, Bauman Medical dot com slash ask is a simple form. You can put your name in with your email, write a question and I will get back to you through my team and we'll respond with whatever hair loss question you have.
And if we don't know the answer, we're going to go find it. But I promise. You that we'll. Figure it out. So I. Want to thank Oh, so you. Know what? That's awesome. And we have to wrap this up now because we've got another podcast right behind this. But Dr. Bauman, I want to thank you so much. It is clear you have so much information. I would love to have you back on. And I just want to say thank you for your time today. And of course, if you at home have questions you want me to pass on to Dr.
Bauman or his team? I'm always happy to do that. You can write to me at Hello at Art Beauty podcast dot com. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube at Art Beauty podcast. And as always, we will see you next Tuesday. Bye. All right, Amber, great to be with you guys.