 Good morning everyone. This is a time I often not hear on Facebook live but I'm so excited to meet you here today and talk about something that not only is super relevant and I had planned this talk before the relevancy in the news lately of alopecia and hair loss has become such a topic of conversation but I know many of you listening out there have either experienced this or someone you care about has experienced this and I feel like many many more of my patients are seeing issues with hair loss so I wanted to talk about that subject today and I couldn't think of a better person to bring in than my amazing stylist Gwen who's at in Vogue Salon she's live on site today with lots of great solutions super excited to introduce her in just a minute to talk about some of those solutions but first just a little background you can hear me here on YouTube you can also catch this podcast on anywhere you listen to podcast stitcher itunes etc and of course right now we're live on Facebook this is Dr Jill live you can find all of my blogs articles in about 10 years of information on my website at Jill Carnahan.com all kinds of free resources there and I actually just a few months ago wrote an article about causes of hair loss so if you want more information or want to read in depth there you can find that on my blog at JillCarnahan.com Today we're going to talk about some amazing salon products and solutions that Gwen has and takes care of her clients with but you can also find products and solutions on DrJillHealth.com there's one particular product we we actually use for hair loss and we'll talk a little bit about that later so excited Gwen to have you here today we met a couple years ago kind of right in the midst of the pandemic and you've been amazing in my life because I feel like quality of the hair my thickness the health of my hair to a new level and it's been so fun to work with you and to do try new things and to learn new things and I just consider you an expert in the field and obviously an advanced stylist you have a long client list and it's it's I just feel lucky and blessed to have you in my life in that way so welcome. Thank you so much I'm looking forward to having this conversation with you and just gathering client needs and solutions for our clients to have thicker fuller more beautiful hair. Yeah so it's again it's so exciting what I wanted to just share today on all levels is first of all I might just share just a little bit about the causes of hair loss because I believe that lots and lots of people are experiencing problems with thinning hair hair loss even complete alopecia which is you know totalis where you lose everything on your scalp I also just wanted to share briefly I have been there you may think right now you know I have this lovely hair that's all growing out but I wanted to share Gwen I don't know if I've even shared this picture with you just really quick and tell my story 20 years ago I think many of you know I've had cancer but this was me right after chemo I don't know if y'all can see that picture totally bald that's one of these types of hair loss called alopecia and I'm sorry it's the alopecia that happens after chemo so you the chemo causes that hair follicles to fall out and you lose all your hair so all this to say I actually have been completely bald before in my 20s when I had cancer and chemotherapy and I know what it's like I mean it I told Gwen the other day was we were talking and when I was in her chair getting styled I said you know it's I had breast cancer so I had scars and surgeries on my breasts which as a woman is very personal part of my but you know image and how I feel about myself but the hardest thing about that cancer was not surgeries not the impact of scars on my breast it was having no hair and I know maybe some of you have dealt with that and dealt with it better than I did but it was really hard to go out bald and obviously at the time I had wigs I had all kinds of things I could do but I remember one particular incident when I was going through the airport security and they're like ma'am take off your hat and I had a hat that had beautiful hair so I looked really normal and I was like okay and I take off my hat and I'm completely bald and it was just like there's a lot of shame and embarrassment in that situation walking through and obviously they didn't know that they weren't trying to single me out but it was one of the things that sticks in my mind because there's something about our hair that makes us feel human and beautiful and connected and I think especially as women you know for me this it's just lovely to have hair again I also always joke because I found a word at that time bald is one thing right it's just kind of this you know four letter word but there's another word that means hairless and it's called glaborious and I always use that word because I thought it was so much more fun to say well I'm glaborious than bald but like I said this is close to my heart because I have been there and I've had experience at people can have all kinds of types of hair loss and I'll just share a couple of those because part of the issue with hair loss is figuring out what might be going on and what kinds of hair loss might be happening because if you can get to the root cause then you can have a solution one of the things that is happening a lot right now is uh telogen effluvium what happens with most of our hair is about 90 percent of our hair is in this growing phase for anywhere from two to eight years and it's just growing doing its thing and then when it gets to the end of its cycle it goes into this telogen phase and it falls out so usually only about 10 percent of our hair is falling out at one time and we notice there's a few hairs in the shower the sink but it's not like we're getting handfuls but Gwen I'm sure you've been hearing have you been hearing more and more clients with handfuls of hair or a lot more hair than usual like falling out I'd love to hear like when you have clients in the chair what kind of things are you hearing there in the salon for hair loss and experience of your clients. Absolutely it's one of the main causes that motivated me to want to have a conversation and seek out your expertise in this field because after two decades in my industry it's a huge concern and growing and growing even more I hear women say things you know they're it's not as full as it used to be they're you know just as really thinned out over time sometimes they're scalp exposure sometimes it's just the overall condition but luster the density the fullness the body that seems to be changing over time and there's various factors that they're looking to me for answers and that's again you know why I look to you to help me help them with why is it happening and also what can we do about it to help help everybody look and feel their best. I love that and I promise you hang in because we've got some amazing solutions from Gwen she actually obviously has a hair model there with the the wig and we're going to talk in depth about what what you can do if you had hair loss just briefly if you're having this so telogen and flubium if you've ever been pregnant in three or four months after you lose a lot of hair that's the same thing that happens with this it can also happen after an intense fever or illness so I'm seeing a lot of people that got sick with COVID and two or three months later if you look back one of the first questions I asked my patients is if they have a lot of hair loss they say when did it start they might say okay it started in January so I said go back three months from when it started did something happen in your life a death of a loved one a high fever illness or some other thing that happened because often they can pinpoint it back to some event in their life like being ill and then they lost the hair and what I can usually say in that case if I look at their scalp and there's no big bald patches which is a whole other topic I can tell them you know what your hair is going to grow back so if you're listening now and that fits you it will grow back it's just that all of a sudden things shifted from that 10 percent of hair loss all of a sudden to about 50 percent so it feels like tons of hairs coming out but all those hairs are just in that cycle of falling out instead of growth they will come back and it may take a little while as far as for you to get that fullness back because all of a sudden 50 percent of your hair is just starting over but the truth is it will come back in the coming years other thing I see is nutrient deficiencies and things where whether you have inflammation or gut issues we need zinc and selenium and vitamin A and vitamin D and biotin and choline so I always make sure nutrient wise the patients have the right nutrients because a lot of these whether you have a gut disorder where you're having malabsorption or other things you can have issues with nutrients and if you don't have the basics in your diet and too much is sometimes just as bad as too little so if you have access toxicity of copper or zinc or selenium that can go that way too a few of the other really common causes would be issues with hormones and thyroid and of course if you haven't had your doctor check your thyroid hormone like TSH and free T4 and free T3 those are some of the really important things to check and make sure a lot of issues with low T4 will cause hair loss but if you excessively get prescription medication for thyroid and your hyperthyroid that can also cause hair loss so either end of the spectrum with thyroid can cause issues and finally as we age I'm in my 40s our hormones change and with women especially loss of estrogen or menopause can cause thinning of hair lack of luster some of the things that you talked about Gwen that you hear and then there's something else that's really it we call it male pattern baldness but women can have this too and it's if you start converting your testosterone into dihydroxy testosterone or DHT this can cause the hair loss that's kind of on the sides and the scalp here so it thins out and there's usually a little bit of a peak here you can actually look at it probably Gwen and tell the kind of male pattern baldness and some women get this too and this can happen if you are a lot of women now supplement with hormone replacement therapy and if you get testosterone in your body converts it to DHT or dihydroxy these are measurable in the blood so other tests that you can ask your doctor for so you can check all the vitamins I mentioned in the blood you can check the testosterone estrogen DHA cortisol and the DHT the dihydroxy testosterone and then like I mentioned the thyroid those are some critical things you can do so basically we have this falling out from illness the telogen effluvium we have hormone related thyroid adrenal and female and male hormones and this other spectrum this is probably the most difficult one and briefly mention it and then we'll go to solutions is the autoimmune or the scarring alopecia so sometimes people can get a disease like lupus or fungal infections or things and these can cause scarring of the hair follicles and hair loss usually this is patchy and there's big bald spots and they're kind of shiny you don't see any of the follicles there anymore this can be permanent and this is much more scary because you're getting these big patches and you don't see any new hair growth now even with that there's a lot you can do with steroids to calm inflammation with functional mess and looking at the root cause and reversing inflammation I have a 14 year old patient who lost all of her hair after a mold exposure and that can be related to high histamines and issues with molds I remember also after I had mold I lost about an inch half an inch of my scalp hair because it kind of pulled back and fell out and it all came back in after but histamine which is part of mass cell activation can also cause hair loss so that's a very brief but very broad overview of a lot of the things that we're seeing and Gwen would you say in the last two years with the pandemic and more and more people experiencing COVID is that one of the things you're seeing is um as a hair loss in the last two years even I think it's increasing stress levels are up people have gone through a lot in the last couple years and it's showing in their hair yeah so let's talk about solutions I want to dive into some of the things that say someone comes in like I say I came in either you know post chemo thinning or um and maybe we talk about someone who really has the scarring the the glaboriousness where their massive hair loss and their hair is so thin they need a real solution for that and then we can talk about products and options for if they're just thinning or lacking luster absolutely one of the things I wanted to start out with was a couple of images of clients that up before and after just so someone could imagine what could that look like for me and what's out there that could be a solution to get more information to our clients I wanted to show this picture here this is a before and after you can see yeah so this was brought by an educator from hair talk and this is featuring a product called hairware so it's a semi-permanent piece that is applied to the top to involve more density and more volume on the top of the head so I'll show you what this piece looks like so essentially this can be worn semi-permanently or daily to take on and off and for temporary wear or for monthly maintenance it can be applied of various different ways and this comes in various different sizes and it's able to instantly change the way that your hair looks and likely how you feel so it's going to be applied over the top and a stylus that is trained in this method is going to apply this they're going to custom order the color cut it and blend it and so you're going to be looking very natural wow I love that and do you see a lot more like on this scalp area where it's thinning up top is that where the you know there's there's multiple places that people can be lacking density it can be on the top it can be on the sides the bottom sometimes it's very obvious in one specific spot which is where the topper would be a great option just to kind of get awareness out and know that that's an option for people I'll go ahead and show the second image should give you another client that this would be an example for so you can see with her hair she is really starting to get a separation on her part line so there's more scalp exposure and thinness in general to the point where it's almost getting to a balding situation so again a top applied and instantly changes the way that the hair looks that's amazing and it looks so natural like even the color there the ombre kind of blending it's obviously you guys are a pro at that but that looks amazing I think that the client wants to definitely feel secure that no one's going to notice it's going to be very discreet and very natural looking in that they don't have to share unless they choose to yeah oh that's amazing I love that what else would you say as far as people what about just all over like for me it's interesting because even this last year you and I talked I think it was around September October I started having like a lot of hair falling out of the top and I started using several different products and things just and I think in that case it might have been the little conversion to DHT stress post COVID like a bunch of different things are playing into that and now it feels like it's starting to come back to normal what kind of products or recommendations would you have there so I'd like to showcase just a couple of products for us because the needs are so diverse and different things that people go through so anywhere from overall thinning wanting more volume dealing with breakage dealing with loss of density loss of fullness hair stocks came out with a product called density so looking for thicker fuller hair I'll go ahead and just give you an image of this product so this is for clients who are thinning and just would like to have more fullness more body over time so this is a shampoo there's a full line of products that they can use this is just one example they can really help increase that in hair growth for clients secondly some people deal with hair falling out they might have a lot of hair in the brush possibly in the shower sometimes it's even on their clothing items so Genesis this is another product that cares to us makes and this one is going to really really help reduce the breakage in your hair and the hair fall that's been very very common in clients I've noticed initially it is a super hair serum so this is something that I think would be a go-to for anybody just looking to have more hair healthier hair fuller hair and this is going to be applied weekly and over about two months period of time will make your hair feel thicker and feel fuller now if you're wanting to kind of take the next step and just you know maximize everything that's out there available the care stops makes a product called specific so these are going to be scalp treatments that are applied to your hair weekly and they're going to be kind of like a super serum so you can grow as much hair as possible and these are suitable for women they're suitable for men and it's really going to talk to when you're dealing with something kind of along these lines where the hair is spreading apart more scalp exposure and they just like to see even small hairs start to cover and give more more density more fullness these treatments are applied to the scalp and can really help with that well love it and I've used some of those I love the pink one is that there's just such a variety of products that can be customized and used for people so it's not something that you have to suffer with and there are solutions yeah and there's a solution um let's see care stops has that uh blue one and do you remember is that because I love that one too I was I've been using that I was going to share with you the two um I'll share another screenshot because those care stops I literally have those in my shower I love them there's also uh I mentioned earlier I have a product of my own that I've been found really helpful if you guys can see that that rapid regrowth serum down here at the bottom I'll try to blow that up um for DHT dihydroxy testosterone if you're having the male pattern stuff um that can be really helpful at blocking the DHT so I've what I found in the beginning when I was having that thinning I used that serum now I'm using the kerosene serum and it's just great for maintenance but it's really I feel like I have my hair back it's like 80 percent back to where it was so super super important and those serums there's also I brought these to show these are actually in real time these are um prescription peptides that also work on the scalp level so we have all these things and I literally combine them with patients you know you can use a great like a line like care stops you can use um some of the growth serums like the Dr. Jill line and then these peptides are super powerful they're by prescription only and they also will enhance one of them is particular like if you really have lost your hair like you said it'll help the regrowth of the hair at that follicular level and the other ones are those dihydroxy testosterone blockers and I think a lot of even the over the counter products have those DHT blockers in them because it's such a common thing and when we get women to menopause what happens is our estrogen usually drops that can cause thinning and lack of luster of the hair so one of the things you can do with your doctor is you can talk about hormone replacement therapy because if you check in your levels are really low like we said low estrogen you might want to replace that because that's going to be something that really helps skin and hair a lot of the elasticity of our skin and the strength of our hair is related to hormones so as we go through menopause and those drop you can replace those at the physical level and then like we said thyroid is a key and some of the ingredients that make thyroid hormone are zinc and selenium those are absolutely key so if you don't even know where to start with nutrients at the very basis I would say usually zinc is appropriate vitamin D and vitamin A can be appropriate and interestingly too some of the fat soluble fat soluble vitamins which are A, D, K, and E all of those are important for hair growth so if you have an issue with your gut where you're not absorbing things or you've had Crohn's or Colitis or you've had gut inflammation sometimes over time just a lack of nutrients because you're not absorbing them will lead to hair thinning and loss what about this is one that's real common and I've had this off and on where I just feel like oh it's kind of dry and brittle and lacking luster what would you recommend or what would you do with someone who has just dry brittle or kind of lack of shine anything in particular there that you would recommend yeah dryness is just very common for our climate and I'm noticing it in almost every client that I have in this law so I would say a deep conditioning mask would be a great place to start something that you can do weekly and just apply to your ends leave it in about 15 minutes carastos has 10 different ones to choose from and just really get your hair looking lots of shine and beautiful condition it does it's amazing when I come back from this one like I don't know what you did Gwen but in salon we carry a fuse with dose treatment so if you're just looking to address a variety of concerns we have products that are for thinning for losing hair just wanting more body we also have them for dryness we have them for brittle ends if your hair is splitting or breaking or damage from chemicals we have a fuse you a dose product that you can have applied in the salon whether you're going to have your hair blown out if you're going to have a color service done and it's going to really improve the condition of your hair instantly and last over a month yeah that's the truth like literally I don't know what is in that stuff and I was like oh what is this this is amazing yeah you also gave me a serum I don't know if you remember it was a carastos the real shiny stuff it's in a bigger bottle kind of that what is that because I love that I've been using that in my hair fiber architect a blue product duals treatment serum so it's really going to address any sort of damage from heat if you're over styling your hair excessive brushing or if you just have general hair that tends to split and break on the ends some hair just naturally does that so that's a really great solution I love to apply it dry after your hair has been blown out or styled and just absorbed that into your hair and it also has heat protection up to 400 degrees oh wow that's amazing because yeah in Colorado you have an extra hard job I think because it is so I always go to you know say I'm flying to speak in Orlando or somewhere more it's much more literally my skin and my hair I'm like well what happened it's like new because that moisture in the environment and we just happen to live in an incredibly dry climate that's laid out there if you're not using really good sunscreen it is I mean all of these things that we do in the moisture it's such a big deal especially in Colorado where we live because it it's common that people have both issues at the same time sometimes what's going on at the scout can be completely different than what's going on at the end so they might be experiencing dry ends and also fitting at the same time so they might have oil through the top which can clog the follicles and prevent hair from growing and then also have dryness and breakage at the bottom yeah and that's where those treatments can probably really work because you can treat even yeah the physio dose are excellent we have you know a variety of products there's even specific shampoos that will help treat the condition of your scalp we have scrubs any sort of different things to address what might be happening at the root in the midst and on the ends wow this is amazing and I know super helpful to people who are experiencing this and like I said you know the main thing that we want to do is bring hope and unsolutions but wherever you're at on that spectrum of hair loss like I said I've been there too I've been bald so I know what it's like to not have hair at all um any last words of wisdom Gwen or things that we didn't talk about that would be ideas or solutions for patients or clients I guess in your case I would like to just encourage anybody listening or even you know if it's a friend or family member to not be shy against asking for the things that are concerning to you whether it's booking a consultation with a stylist or if you're already seeing someone regularly and you know bringing up the things that are bothering you because likely they're bothering other people and you're specialist like myself I've been educated on multiple different hair extension methods topper methods products even sometimes just blow dry tips and a physio dose you never know what can make a difference so I would suggest a complimentary consultation I would do that absolutely I'd love to meet anybody who's interested in that or just wants to talk about it because there's so many things out there that can really change how you look and feel about your hair Gwen you're amazing I know you've changed my life um because when you feel you know like your hair looks good and you feel good it really makes a difference and as I've been you know doing live and talking and speaking it's it's really one of those things that's kind of in the background and it's sometimes hard to be able to talk about but it really does matter and it makes a difference in your confidence and how you appear so thank you not only for what you do for all of your clients but personally I am so grateful to have you in my life and as an expert in my hair to help me take my love and even ask some pretty color we've been experimenting with colors and it's been so fun so thank you for taking the time this morning to share with us thank you for all your expertise and Gwen is at Envoke Salon in Denver so if you're local as she mentioned she is one of the best thank you so much for your time today thank you so much