Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Wama podcast. I'm Katie
from waldnesswama dot com and I am back today with
Arroz con for a round two. If you missed our
first episode, we tackled how to combat thinning hair, and
in this one we dive deep on the topic of
gray hair, which I admit is not something I have
personal experience with yet. I'm grateful for seemingly good genetics here. However,
(00:21):
it's something I will potentially encounter in the future. I
actually love the idea of having white hair one day. However,
not everybody wants to have gray hair or to gray early,
and he dives into what are some of the root
causes of graying hair, especially early graying, and what can
be done about it. I think you will learn a
lot of this. I certainly did, and it turns out
that a lot more is in our ability to affect
(00:42):
change than I would have thought when it comes to
when and how much our hair goes gray. So let's
jump in and learn from him now, ver Oz, welcome back,
Thank you for being here.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Again, Thank you for having me Katie.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Well, if you guys missed it, we had a really
amazing first episode, really deep diving into the root causes
of hair loss and how there's so much in our
control that we can do to not just reverse this,
but really like improve in such a dramatic way, and
you shared your personal story and amazing results as well
as I feel like some really not well known tips
that seemingly make a tremendous difference. So that is linked
(01:16):
in the show notes. If you guys missed it, highly
recommend listening. And in this one, I'm excited to learn
about a topic that I know relatively little about, and
I'm excited to know more about, which is the topic
of gray hair. And I would guess there is a
genetic component here, and I'm thankful that I have seemingly
hopefully good genes in this category, but I have people
my family who don't, and my kids may not have
(01:37):
the best of genes when it comes to not getting
gray hair early. So I'm guessing there's a lot that
goes into this as well. But what are some of
the things going on when people get gray hair?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah, totally. So there's the premature gray hair that happens early,
and then there is the regular time that you go gray,
and the regular time for most folks is Caucasians will
start to go gray in their mid thirties to generally speaking,
and Asians will start to go gray late thirties, and
then the African American or Africans globally you will start
(02:11):
to grow gray early to mid forties. So that's how
it plays out in terms of going gray. We don't
know why, but maybe there's more pigment to begin with.
That could be a reason, but science has not proven
one way or the other. Now, premature grain happens when
you go gray earlier than your time. So let's say
you're supposed to go gray mid thirties based on the
(02:33):
studies of the populations, and you're going gray when you're
twenty five. That is certainly premature hair grained. And so
there's many reasons why you could be going k wway
prematurely one of them or a list a few of them.
There's some risk factors. If your parents went gray prematurely
before their time, then that's a risk factor for you
mother or father. It can come from both sides. If
(02:54):
you have or if you drink a bunch of alcohol,
which prodic kids do early on in life, then that
puts you at a risk factor for going gray early.
There's also smoking and pollution that blaze in. So if
you're smoking or you're using a lot of beauty products
that have these iffy ingredients in them that can damage
your scalp for example, or damage your hair that can
(03:15):
cause gray hairs. There's the presence of chronic disease, if
you have something going on in inflammatory or chronic that
can also cause premature gray hair. Of course, stress is
always a factor in everything, the hair loss, with gray hairs,
and just with the body in general, and so if
you are higher stressed at that time in your life,
(03:36):
then you could go gray hair early. And then a
couple of interesting ones. If you have a higher education,
so if you got a master's or a PhD, or
you got an MD, then the risk of you going
prematurely gray is high. And then finally I think age,
which not age, but your height, which threw me off.
If you're taller, then you tend to go gray early
(03:57):
as well. So those are very interesting factors, a lot
of that you can now do a lot about, but
especially with stress in particular, that seems to be a
common threat across many of these. And then of course
chronic disease, you can kind of address that you have
some control over it. But coming back to your original point, Katie,
when it comes to genetics, we believe about twenty to
(04:18):
twenty five percent of gray is controlled by your genetics.
But you have quite a few levers you can pull
to kind of at least delay or gray. So nobody
has beaten gray hairs yet, but we can delay a
lot of thing.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
That's good to know that genetics do play a role,
but potentially a much smaller one than a lot of
people might think. And of that list that you gave,
at least a lot of those things are within our
control if we get to choose if we smoke, and
drink and stress we're all apparently dealing with in the
modern world. I think that one's going to be a
constant journey for many of us. But what can happen
like if we are willing to address these factors A
(04:50):
what does that look like in addressing them in a
way that's tangible and that actually can have a measurable
impact on the rate at which someone goes gray? And
or like do these things actually help stop grain? They
actually reverse grain? I know I've heard of cases of
this haven't. I have no direct experience here, but I'm
so curious and what's happening in the hair itself or
in the body that's causing the gray, Like what is
(05:11):
actually the shifting in the body that makes the hair
gray in the first place?
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah, I love that. I love that question. So let's
start with the last one, which is what's happening in
the body if that's causing at your normal time or
even prematurely, but what's really causing the grays to increase
and go gray? This is the one mechanism. So hair
growth and gray hairs are kind of linked together because
when the hair cycle starts, both of these stem cells
(05:36):
have to link up together. And so it's interesting that
we lose hair pigment earlier than we lose hair, which
is like we both. We probably know people that are
in their eighties or nineties that have a full head
of hair, but they're all gray. And so what causes
your body or to go gray you know, at thirties
or forties, as opposed to keeping your hair all your life.
(05:57):
And there's a few reasons why we go gray. And
the first one, the most important reason why we grow
gray is because of hydrogen peroxide, And what happens in
every cell of your body is that your mitochondria are
producing energy, and as a byproduct of producing this energy,
they create this particles called ROSS or reactive oxygen species,
(06:19):
which is actually very damaging to the mitochondria itself and
damaging to the cell. And so your body obviously has
mechanisms that then clear this out pretty quickly, and there's
this two step there's two step mechanisms. So the first
step clears the ross into something into hydrogen peroxide, and
then there's antioxidants that the body makes, like glutathion and
catalase that take the hydrogen peroxide and convert it into water,
(06:42):
which is harmless. But as with anything and as with aging,
as we get older, the amount of hydrogen peroxide starts
to pile up in our cells because there's not enough
antioxidants to clear them out. And so when that happens,
then the hydrogen peroxide starts to damage the cell and
especially the pigment cells, and then they cannot do their job,
(07:03):
and therefore your hair starts to go gray because the
pigment is not being produced. So that is the main
reason why most people go gray. The second reason is
that there's high stress levels, and these have been shown
in experiments at Harvard University to increase your gray hairs
because they increase the hydrogen peroxide levels. Interesting fact also
(07:26):
with stress is that there is one study they did
where they found that a high amount a very high
amount of stress can cause nor norpeffern to get activated,
which is a neurotransmitter which is connected to your scalp
or it's in your scalp and it's connected to the
stem cells, the melanocytes, stem cells, which are the pigment
producing stem cells. So if for some reason you have
(07:48):
very high amount of stress for a short amount of time,
this snorpan neeffin can excite the stem cells for the
melanocytes and cause them, all of them to differentiate and
become cells. You completely lose the stem cell niche, which
you know every time your hair grows, those get converted
into a few lanocytes or pigment cells which keep treating pigment.
(08:10):
But this could be stress can cause all of them
to come in and there won't be any more stem
cells left, which means that after that hair growth cycle,
the next cycle will not have any any pigment at
all because those stem cells are gone, so that's rare,
though it doesn't happen a lot. There is this Marie
Antoinette syndrome of the late French queen who was imprisoned
(08:33):
and executed and people, some people say that she went
gray overnight. Well, that is physically impossible because your hair
is dead. You can't color a hair that's already out
of your hair follicles or that's already out, and so
you cannot gray. You cannot go gray overnight. It has
to come with time as hair grows out. So that's
(08:54):
the stress aspect of fit, and of course with environmental factors,
as we talked about using the wrong beauty products, drinking, smoking,
or other products that you're applying in your skin, even
that can cause grain and this includes bleaches, this includes dyes.
So the way that you're able to dye your hair
is also hydrogen peroxide unfortunately, and what happens there is
(09:16):
when you're applying hydrogen peroxide to your hairs and to
your scalp, it damages some of your scalp, which can
ironically cause you to go gray faster because your cells
are getting damaged. So that's something I kind of think about.
And then what is surprising to me, Katie was also
homo systeine levels. If you have high homocysteine levels, this
can cause increased amounts of gray because this prevents it
(09:38):
pollutoth ion from clearing out the hydrogen peroxide. It reduces
polutothion in your body. And so it's simple to kind of,
you know, address the homosysteine, but most people don't know
they're high in homosysteine, and so that's one other thing.
And then the last thing I would say when it
comes to gray hair is for root causes is the radiation.
And this could be either from sun, this could be
(10:00):
from DNA, but most of us are not getting X
rays on our scalp very often, so that's not a
huge factor. But if you're sitting out in the sun
for long periods of time without protecting your scalp, then
that could cost some ionizing radiation which could damage the
DNA of the melanosyte stemsalls that could cause you to
go gray faster. So those are some of the root
(10:20):
causes we can get into. You know, what results can
you expect, et cetera if you want.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yeah, that was definitely some factors that I didn't know
about it. I'll say, like, on a personal level, not
advice at all, but the one I'm willing to take
as a risk factor is the sunshine. For all the
other reasons, I'm a huge fan of sun exposure, so
I'm like, and I also look forward to the day
when I have white hair. I feel like I've earned
it with six kids. However, I know a lot of
people don't want to rush into that, and I'm already
almost forty and have zero gray hairs, so I will
(10:46):
not be rushing, I guess if I get there one day.
But how does one slow down or reverse gray hairs,
especially if someone graying early and doesn't want to be
and doesn't want to just be putting chemical dyes on
their hair for the rest of their lives either.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah, that's a great question. I love what you say
about the sunlight. It's so important. We're hiding at home
all day long, we're not getting enough sun I totally
get that, and that's why most of us are deficient
in vitamin D. And the question a lot of people
ask is what is the Goldilocks zone? Like how much
sunlight should I get versus how much not? And I
think typically getting a little bit more is better than
(11:18):
not because we're we're not getting enough in today's day
and age. So the question is like, what do we do?
How do we reduce this right? And then the earlier
question you'd ask is how much of a difference can
I see? So typically, if you're less than thirty percent
to gray, if you're in the early stages of going gray,
then you can see some results from your efforts. The
(11:40):
results would be twofold. One is you slow down the
existing rate of going gray, so you will see less
gray hairs every six months than if you did nothing.
And then two, you will see a decrease of substantial
decrease in the amount of gray hairs on your scale.
This will of course take a few months because you'll
see new darker roots growing in as time goes on,
(12:00):
But within ninety days you can start to see darker roots.
And how much will you reverse? If you're less than
thirty percent gray? As I said, you can have good results.
I'm not saying you'll go back to dark hair, but
you can result you can you can reverse quite a
bit of your gray hairs at that point. But if
you're more than thirty forty fifty percent. Then it's it's
(12:21):
going to be tougher because you're almost you've lost the pigment,
you've probably lost the stem cells, you've probably lost the
you know, the pigment producing cells from melanocytes, and at
that time it might be more difficult to get that back.
So if you're early on in the grain process, and
luckily for you, you're not even there, you haven't even started,
then this can really have a good effect on you.
(12:42):
And so the way to do this is you want
to one you want to reduce the stress levels because
we see stress as as a through line through so
many of these issues, including hair loss and gray ears.
So you want to balance your stress levels. Anything you
can do at home, you know, walking out, getting some
some getting some grounding, getting some meditations, and that'd be great.
(13:04):
I do all of those, and I also take you know,
some ashoganda plus alphianine. Those can help balance as adaptogens
can help balance the stress levels in your body. So
that's a twofold approach you could do for stress. In
terms of making sure you're not in a high inflammatory state, well,
you want to you know, take maybe eat anti inflammatory foods,
(13:25):
or you can even try supplemented with curcumen or something
of that nature, which reduces inflammation in your body. Interestingly,
people taking anti inflammatory drugs have reported in some cases
going you know, reversing a lot of their grace, which
which miraculous to researchers that at that time, because one,
(13:45):
they were not looking for a great reversal, they were
just trying to reverse inflammatory conditions in the body. And
these were people that were older that you would not
expect them to reverse their grace. So something about these
individual use cases, this is not widely widely known, but
some of these individual use cases were able to reverse
their grades with anti inflammatory meds. I don't want to
(14:06):
use anti inflammatory meds, and I'm sure most listeners don't either,
but if you can do that naturally, then that is
something that can help us improve or reduce your chances
of going great early, but also help maybe you fight
some of that as well. And then of course you
want to address all the root causes, so you want
to address anything that can help, you know, reduce the
(14:26):
damage to these stem cells, reduce your oxidative stress, add
or increase antioxidants in your body. So there's very good
antioxidants that are cheaply available like vitamin C, alphalopoic acid,
even spermidine is a compound that's really well starting to
gain a lot of traction as an antiagen I mean polyamine,
and so that is something that is very interesting to us.
(14:48):
But there's natural compounds that you can take in a
supplement and or serum form that can help balance all
the five root causes of grain here. And that's the
approach that I recommend. But before we even go there,
it's like, we want to make sure we're doing everything
cleaning out the medicine cabinet, cleaning out you know, the
beauty supplies, to make sure it's all clean. We don't
(15:10):
have any chemicals that we're putting out your scalp. I
would urge questions with hydrogen peroxide bleaching of the scalp
if you can, and also just you know, reducing your
stress levels. After the basics are done, then we can
start to incorporate supplement or a serum combination that helps
address all these root causes even further.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Amazing, and I know that, just like with the hair thinning,
that you have done a lot of work to develop
products specific to this so that people don't have to
go search out all these things individually or address them
one by one. Can you share what you've created with
this and how quickly it tends to work for most people,
and or like, are there any other things to do
within that protocol that are helpful as well?
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah? Yeah, totally great question. So this is a quick
story I want to share. I am good friends with
doctor Sandra Kaufman, who has written two books on longevity
and anti aging and so, so you know, we would
talk all the time, and I was in Miami, I
believe this was in twenty twenty two, early twenty twenty two,
and we were having lunch and then we were walking
(16:09):
to her a hospital where she worn't And I remember
this day because this was an intersection we were standing
at and I get at her. I'm like, Sandy, you've
done all this research on how to what the pathways
of aging are and how to slow them down and
how to reverse them using nutraceuticals or supplements. Surely there's
a pathway for her gray hairs, and surely there's one
(16:31):
person that can find the answers. That's you. Because she's
an excellent, excellent researcher just like locks herself up in
her she calls through the closet, but it's a room
in her home in Miami. She just locks herself up
and just researches for weeks and weeks, goes to Google, scholar,
looks at all the scientific studies, and then just maps
out all these pathways of how things are happening in
the body. And that's how she wrote her antiaging and
(16:53):
longevity books. And so she said, yes, there's got to
be a pathway, let me go find it. So she
goes into her closet to speak, and then a month
later she calls me. She's like, Okay, I've figured it out.
I've got all the evidence that there is available at
this moment on the interwaps and with the research studies
on this, and so here's how it works, right. So
she laid out all these root causes. That's how I
(17:13):
learned about them. And then I asked her for help
in creating supplements and serums that address all of these
root causes directly. And so that's what happened. As a
result of that collaboration with her and all of her research,
we pull together a supplement and serum combination that we
believe is the most effective on the market. When it
(17:33):
comes to delaying your gray hairs but also reversing your grace.
So the way that you want to use is, of course,
as I said, you want to do the natural stuff
first at home, lower your stress, make sure you're eating
an anti inflammatory diet, make sure you're not harming your
body with these beauty supplies that maybe have these bad ingredients.
(17:53):
And then after that you want to address and add
on the supplement in the serum that go after root
causes of gray hairs. And so that's the products that
we came up with. We also have a ninety day
bundle for both of those products that you can buy
together for three months, and typically for gray hairs it
will take two to three months, so you see darker
roots coming in. So I urge you to take these
(18:16):
you know, to use these products for at least ninety
days to see results. A lot of people do see results.
And again we offer the same four month money back
guarantee for the anti grays as well, so try them out.
If for any reason it doesn't work for you, then
you can return the products and we will refund your money.
I am not going to come to your home to
ask you did you use the products every single day
(18:36):
where you compliant, that's not my business. We are here
to help, and I would ask that you do your
best in being compliant and using them as much as
you can, but there's certainly going to be no checks
on how many days out of the ninety days you
use these products.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Amazing well, just like I said with our other episode
on hair thinning and how do to I encourage healthier, thicker,
longer hair. Naturally, I'm excited to try those products, and
I'm excited to have these available, But sounds like there
is a preventive aspect that's really important as well, and
that there's also some overlap, which I think is really
cool and it makes sense of like supporting our stress levels,
our nutrient levels are all these things help in both
(19:14):
categories and for people with specific pain points. You have
very specific solutions to each of those that people can try,
and all of course, make sure that is linked in
the show notes so people can find it. And I
know you have offered a special discount specifically as well
as that money back guarantee, so I'll make sure people
can find that easily. If you are listening soon after
this episode airs, you can also find those links on
(19:34):
social media right now. But this has been really enlightening.
I didn't even really realize that gray hair was something
we could do much about beyond genetics. It makes sense
now that you've explained it, and I know for many
people this is something that is very top of mind
for them. So I love that you've created a solution here.
Any parting advice or things we didn't get to talk
about that you.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Want to leave the audience with, Yeah, thank you, Katie.
This hair loss and now gray hairs. I've struggled with
a hair loss for twenty five years, and my mom
gave me the gift of fair loss. And I really
resented her for many many years because she gave me
this gift and it got in the way of everything.
It got in the way of me getting your girlfriend,
it got in the way of me within my best life.
I just felt so constrained by this problem, and I
(20:15):
really once I've figured out the answers for myself and
for a few friends, and now for a lot of people,
thousands of people that are using their products, I just
felt like it is an opportunity for me to give back,
and so that's why we have this four month money
back guarantee. We want to make sure we take care
of you because I've been through to the worst of
it in many ways, not taken away from anybody's experience,
but in my own personal story it was pretty bad.
(20:36):
And so that's why if you use the Good Wellness Mama,
you will get fifteen percent off on all products on
If you want to buy the Anti Grade bundle as
well to try it out, we will also throw in
a full sized collision for free that we are throwing
in with the other bundle. It's an excellent product. I
think it's the best collison on the market. But I'm
just here to serve and if there's any feedback on
(20:58):
the products that you know you're like, oh it's a
little bit this or that or the other, just reach
out to us. And if you say you came from
Wellness Mama or Katie you heard us in Katy, then
we'll take extra extra special care of you. So thank
you very much for having me on the show. Dadie.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Oh, thank you, and thank you so much for being here.
This has been, as always with you, such a fun conversation.
I hope you get to have more in the future.
For today, thank you so much, for your time. Thank you,
and thank you as always for listening and sharing your
most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention
with us today. We are both so grateful that you
did and I hope that you will join me again
(21:32):
on the next episode for the Wellness Mama podcast. If
you're enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes
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Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which
means even more moms and families can benefit from the information.
I really appreciate your time and thanks as always for listening.