Guy Odishaw was a great guest the fist time and he’s back to share his knowledge about thermography. Guy told me about this technology in a conversation we had off camera, and knew immediately that I had to try it.

In this episode we discuss my results as well has how you can use thermography as a noninvasive technology to help you identify problems very early while you have time to prevent future health issues.

Guy is the founder of Bhakti Wellness Center and the cofounder of CerebralFit Brain Training.

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Cheryl McColgan (00:00.37)
I need to get a shirt like that. Hey everyone, welcome to the Heal Nourish Grow podcast. I am back today with Guy Odishaw. He is, you’re actually the first guest I’ve ever had on twice, which is a great distinction. So excited for our show today. And I was, I was just, after I hit the record button, I was just telling Guy that I’m glad his

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (00:02.37)
Yes.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (00:14.707)
interesting

Cheryl McColgan (00:22.834)
Logo is showing because as you heard in his bio, he is part of cerebral fit. He talks all things brain health, which is one of my favorite topics. But today we’re gonna chat about something slightly different. It actually came up in our conversation either before or after we recorded last time. And I said, I feel like a lot of people don’t know about this topic, and I would love for you to come back and share this information. And so it’s all about thermal imaging. So I’m not gonna say too much about it other than I went and did it so that we could talk about this.

But first I’ll let Guy tell you about what it is, what we use it for, and why it’s not standard practice to use this imaging, because it’s kind of interesting. So I’ll let you take it away from here.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (01:02.99)
All right, thank you. And thank you for the opportunity to come back and talk with you and for going off and trying my crazy idea and the whole thing is very, very brave of you. So this falls kind of in the general area of bioelectric medicine as I define it, which is really when we use technology in the area of healthcare. So it’s a very big umbrella. But here, what to say about…

thermal imaging. So I just want to say a little bit about imaging in general. So most of us are all familiar with X-ray, and then, of course, MRI. And then depending on how involved in the health care system you’ve been, you’ve maybe heard of a CAT scan, a PET scan. If you’re really, in a sense, unfortunate, you’ve heard about a SPECT scan, because it’s a very specific scan for the brain.

And then there’s the kind of neuroimaging we do in our clinic, which is QEEG. So EEG neuroimaging So we have all of these different devices for doing neuroimaging and then probably well ultrasound I shouldn’t leave that out, you know, so a host that I haven’t mentioned, but these are common ones and And thermal imaging goes right in there with all of these other kinds of imaging We think of MRI is maybe kind of our gold standard. I think everybody think well an MRI

That’s the top of the food chain. But there are things that MRI does well, and then there’s things that MRI is terrible at. And so you’d only want to use MRI for what it’s good for and not for things that isn’t good for. And an example of this would be, MRI is really good at detail of anatomy, but it isn’t really good for function. Now there is functional MRI.

So that’s a little bit of a caveat there. But still, if we think of something like a concussion, MRI is not good at finding concussion. Unless the concussion has risen to the level of anatomical damage, then OK. And then if we have anatomical changes, it can spot it. But even then, it just spots the anatomical change. Versus, say, something like EEG, which is

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (03:24.13)
better at looking at function. So it’s highly, in the time domain, very good at spotting brain function. So we can see functional changes, which may correlate with a concussion. So it’s the whole thing of using the proper imaging for what it does well, and then not for what it doesn’t do well. So thermal imaging is basically, I mean, it’s a camera that is detecting temperature changes on the skin.

So when you go for thermal imaging, you’re just standing in front of a camera, looks like a regular camera, and it’s just gonna take a picture of you. And so that’s nice, and there’s no contact, there’s no harmful rays, whether it’s X-rays, or in MRI, it’s the magnet, or you’re doing a CAT scan or PET scan, and you might have to take a tracer, and then you’re taking a radioactive something, so that’s not necessarily great for you. In thermal imaging, you’re just having a picture taken. So there’s no downside.

It’s not very expensive. So you’re not paying $1,500 or more out of pocket for your MRI. You’re spending more in the hundreds for your thermal imaging. But again, what it does well is it detects temperature changes at the skin level and then a little bit deeper than the skin. But the deeper you go into the body, the less reliable the

Thermal imaging is because that temperature has to migrate to the surface, so it diffuses. So a deep source of heat or cold will look more diffuse on the surface, whereas something on the surface could be quite accurate. So that’s what thermal imaging does well. And one should use thermal imaging for that and not for anything else.

Cheryl McColgan (05:14.79)
Yeah, and one of the things that I think, I’m sure we’ll get to this at some point, but I think people are kind of maybe wondering at this point, well, why would I use this? And so the context of how this came up in my previous conversation with Guy were two reasons. Somehow we got on the subject of there being a lot of cancer in my family, and one of the applications that you mentioned that this could be really good for is detecting breast cancer. So very early on, it’s much better at detecting.

things early or if someone has previously had cancer, it might be a tool that you want to use to follow up on yourself a year or two, three years down the road and just make sure that things kind of aren’t progressing in a negative way. So maybe you can say a little bit more about that in the context of using it as a preventative tool. And then the other area of interest that we were kind of talking about is people that have chronic pain. So I was mentioning how I have this.

ongoing jaw pain, we were talking about it in relation to dental work. So maybe we could just kind of focus on those two things. There’s probably many, many other applications, but I think that those are two that are probably easy for people to understand and easy to see how they could, you know, maybe this is something they might want to try.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (06:26.338)
Sure. So one of the most common uses is, again, breast cancer detection ongoing maintenance. And so, again, just to say a little bit about what’s happening in the body that would make thermal imaging even be relevant. So what happens early in the process, even before there’s a tumor, the body is moving in the direction.

of forming a tumor, those cells that kind of disconnect from the local mind, the local activity, say in the breast, it’s breast tissue, that are no longer functioning as breast cells, but are now gonna be the beginning of a tumor. They’re gonna call into place increased circulation because they have a higher metabolic demand. And it’s…

On one level, it’s that change in circulation and circulatory system that can be detected by thermal imaging. So just the increase of blood flow, blood is warm. So it’s going to bring more temperature to that area. That’s what gets detected. So one of the first changes that can be spotted, thermal imaging in breast cancer, is the change in the circulatory system. And now the actual cells that are

you know, in potentially heading in the direction of becoming a tumor, there’s, there are too few of them and too small to even be called a tumor at that point, or even to be detected by standard. If you went for a mammogram, chances are at this early stage, they’re too small to show up. And again, this is one of the advantages to thermal imaging is it has the potential and I want to say potential. There’s a lot of factors here.

that can pro-con around this that maybe we’ll touch on. So just take everything as these are possibilities, statistical possibilities that lean in the direction, given the pro-con of it, the safety, the cost of it, that in general make it worth doing. Catching it before it really has risen to the level of being a tumor, where it’s still very susceptible to changes in diet and lifestyle.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (08:52.782)
to be able to change the course of those tissues and move them back into being healthy breast tissue and not continuing down the path of becoming a tumor. And so to me, that’s the biggest advantage of it is that early detection. And if you look at the literature, there’s quite a range, and again, take everything as statistical possibilities and not absolute, but you’re looking at the possibility of picking up something that…

could potentially become a tumor about eight years earlier than it presenting as a tumor. And then we know from the research that there are people who’ve had thermograms that showed a positive who did nothing, and that did eventually turn into a tumor that had to be treated in the standard allopathic cancer process. So we have these longitudinal studies that show that there is truth to this, because it’s actually turned out this way in many, many hundreds of thousands of people’s.

lives. So the ideal is we can we catch it that early, we make diet and lifestyle changes, and we avoid the unwanted, you know, arising of a cancer altogether. Or catching it anywhere along the line earlier is always better. So it may be progressed enough that there is a tumor there, but that thermogram is what gets you to go and have a mammogram, which then they confirm maybe

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (10:21.038)
years before you would have otherwise, because again, you’re detecting it sooner in its life cycle, and it may not have been palpable, even if you were doing a physical breast exam, to notice it yet, so early detection. And then the other place is, so let’s say, you’ve had a tumor, you’ve had it removed, whatever, chemo, radiation, surgery, whatever the process was, now you’re on the other side of it, and now you wanna…

kind of keep an eye on things. So again, thermal imaging becomes a safe and affordable way to do those preventative checks on a more regular basis because the medical community has its pacing of how often you do a mammogram and then it kind of drops off over time. But the patient might have a sense of kind of anxiety, which I see this, you know, pretty much 100% in my…

post-cancer clients is the ongoing fear of it returning. And so this is a way to kind of give you a little bit of a sense of kind of control and measure and being proactive, and you’re not just waiting for the scary news, you’re doing something. And again, it’s a very affordable way to do it. And it is medically helpful, can be medically helpful, but even if it isn’t, if it’s just psychologically helpful, that is…

highly valuable to the person going through this process.

Cheryl McColgan (11:51.45)
Yeah, I can, there’s a huge application there and just to share a little background with people. So because I do have that in my family and other risk factors for other cancers in my family. So for example, they’ve done my risk calculation and I probably have about it, depends on the model you use, these are all algorithms and all taking into account a lot of different things, but something like a 22 to 25% chance of breast cancer in my lifetime and on the yearly basis, I wanna say it’s like.

5% or something like that, but increased incidence over the general population, basically a one in four lifetime chance. So this is a big reason that I do a lot of the crazy health related things that I do because I’m aware of this and I’m trying to do the best I can to mitigate some of that. And so when you go to a high risk breast cancer group, which I had to establish a new one here in Salt Lake, their protocol for that is really a mammogram every six months and an MRI every six months. And because of what you said before, they each have their pros and cons.

For example, mammograms are awesome, but they’re not great on dense breast tissue. And then you have the MRI, but you do have to take a tracer. They think what you’re taking is safe, but they don’t really know. And then so adding something like this where it’s literally zero risks, it gives you peace of mind. I think this is a hugely valuable tool. And I’m kind of going through this process right now when I’m reestablishing this, thinking about, okay, am I going to use this as part of a tool?

Maybe I cut back the MRI with the tracer thing once every two years or something because I’m also doing this as an adjunct, for example. So there’s a lot of different ways to think about it, but I think that the mental aspect that you mentioned about it is absolutely a huge part of it. Because if nothing else, it makes you feel like you’re being proactive. It’s not super expensive. I’ll share with everybody the one I found.

here in Salt Lake to do the thermal imaging. They were having a deal. I just happened to catch it at the right time. So they did a full body for $200. I think, Guy, that you shared with me, you probably see anything from 200 to 500, depending on if they’re doing just breast imaging or doing the full image. But in the grand scheme of things, I know I realize everybody cannot necessarily afford that. But if you have a serious reason to do it, it’s often significantly cheaper than some of the other options. So.

Cheryl McColgan (14:11.238)
I think the mental health aspect is definitely huge. And I would love to hear, so when you’re working with patients or people in your clinic and they have this history of either increased risk or they’ve had breast cancer already, you mentioned, you know, trying to make things healthier, doing lifestyle changes, doing, you know, maybe different things with exercise. Can you share maybe some of the things that are maybe general recommendations? Obviously, that’s not medical advice.

but healthy behaviors people wanna do when they see, oh, I have this area of increased, it could be an early sign of something. What do I do with that information?

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (14:51.458)
So I wanna just loop back one step and talk about the oral side, and then we’ll kind of jump into the, you know, what to do about it with some of these findings. Yeah. So the oral piece and the breast piece are not disconnected, although they can be standalone, but surprising the link between an oral infection. So let’s say a root canal that has become chronically infected.

Cheryl McColgan (14:56.336)
Oh, yes.

what we do about it.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (15:20.318)
A person can be subclinical in the symptomatic presentation. So maybe the person has a sensitive tooth, but they’re like, oh, I had a root canal and it’s just that. There’s a lot of ways to just kind of wave it off as not a big deal and you just go through your day with a little bit of a sore tooth, but so what. But what’s happening in there, and we see this in the thermal imaging, is people go in and their jaw will be just bright red.

and then the streak running down their neck and then down the sternum and into a breast. And that’s the infection moving through the lymphatic system that’s now going down and pooling in the breast. There’s a strong...

Many people choose weight loss as a New Year’s resolution and often seek out keto as a way to achieve this goal. I started with keto myself in January 2017 and never looked back. In this episode, you’ll get a high-level overview of what keto is and isn’t, how I recommend you get started and what you need (and don’t need) to get started. Spoiler alert…most people way overcomplicate keto!

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In this episode, you’ll get ideas for how to improve your health in 2024. Some are simple and easy to implement, while others will take some time, focus and dedication. There are a lot of tools and products mentioned in this one, and you can find them all on the shop page.

Be sure to register for your FREE ticket to the Quit Sugar Summit starting January 8th, 2024. There are some amazing speakers this year and you get complimentary admission using my link.

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David Bean has a passion for health and wellness as well as technology. His personal regimen for wellness includes a low-sugar diet, CrossFit as well as intermittent and extended fasting.

As a laser expert, he became passionate about bringing professional quality results to the home market, without all the pain and redness of in-office procedures. This was a great conversation about wellness as well as technology!

Get an extra fabulous 20 percent discount with NIRA right now at this link and code HEALNOURISHGROW at checkout. This episode of the Heal Nourish Grow Podcast is sponsored by NIRA.

Be sure to check out my results with NIRA in these posts:

NIRA Review for Hooded Eyes

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Shawn Wells has done an amazing amount of work to improve his health. With numerous types of professional training, he’s learned that ultimate wellness is something that requires a variety of tools. In this episode, he shares his best tips for improving health including inner work, meditation, nutrition, supplements and more.

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In this episode, I share four components of health that are critical to focus on if you want to enjoy optimal health and longevity. I also share my best tips for getting started with these things, most just require more mindfulness, easy tools and a few minutes a day to get started!

Mentioned in the episode, please let me know if I missed one!

Mindful Drinking app, free to try!

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In this episode, I chat with Guy Odishaw about using neurofeedback. He has such an amazing amount of knowledge! It was fun to learn more about how these tools can help not only improve a normal aging brain but also help neurodegenerative diseases and traumatic brain injury.

Visit Guy at CerebralFit.

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Cheryl McColgan (00:01.034)
Hey everyone, it’s Cheryl McColgan, founder of HealNourishGrowth, and we’re back with another episode of the podcast. Today I am joined by Guy Odisha, and I am really excited to chat with him, particularly because you know about my love of all things, brain health, my background in psychology, and neuropsychology, and Guy actually is a neurofeedback practitioner.

and he has a lot of really great expertise he’s gonna share with us today. So welcome, Guy. And if you could just start by sharing a bit of how you got into this work and what is actually neurofeedback for those who might not know what that is.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (00:38.417)
Well, thank you for the opportunity to be here and chat with you. It was a delight so far. It’s been great. The little pre-show check-in was wonderful. So my background, so I’ve been practicing for a little over 30 years, mostly in the area of what’s called integrative manual therapies. So that’s my kind of my main orthopedic side, a lot of chronic pain and trauma. And…

Cheryl McColgan (00:45.855)
Yes.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (01:01.605)
Then slowly that moved into doing what’s generally bioelectric medicine. So things like microcurrent light therapy.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (01:13.425)
pulse magnetic therapy, things of that nature. So we’ve moved into the spectrum of bioelectric medicine. So that’s been for about 12 years. And then I would say the last six years been more focused on the brain with neuroimaging, neurofeedback, neuroSTIM. And we’d use quite a bit of bioelectric medicine in our brain health clinics, but they just changed the name.

when you do it on the body versus you do it in the head, they give it a new name. So nothing really changes in terms of the technology, but the name changes. And so, yeah, that’s, you know, I kind of consider myself a psychophysiologist kind of working on the brain side of the brain mind continuum. And then, go ahead.

Cheryl McColgan (02:01.758)
I was just going to say what type of things do people usually come to you for? You mentioned chronic pain, but now you’re moving more into the brain stuff. Are you more dealing with traumatic brain injury or just kind of natural aging processes or what is it that people are most seeking out help for?

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (02:19.485)
Sure. So I have three main clinics. I have five clinics, but three clinics that are brain specific. So in my one clinic, Bakhti Brain Health Clinic, we’re a little more omnivorous. So we’re seeing a full range of mental health. So anxiety, depression, OCD, you name it, you know, in the across. So mental health. Then I would say probably our next biggest

Children, learning disability, we kind of put ADHD in with learning disabilities just because it doesn’t have a great place to go otherwise. So it might be dyslexia, dyscalculia, just slow reading, and anything that comes up in the school side, academic side. And then again, we put ADHD in there. And then traumatic brain injury, we do a fair amount of traumatic brain injury.

And that can be anywhere from kind of serious that gets the TBI down to say, post-concussion syndrome, which is a less significant injury, but not necessarily less impactful on the person who has it. Just the nature is quite a bit different than that spectrum. Um, and then peak performance. So we do a lot of peak performance. So people who don’t have a problem, they just want to be better at whatever they’re doing. So maybe that’s executives. Um,

We have some students, I have a doctor who is kind of a peak performance in his professional role, so he wanted to, you know, getting a little older, he wanted to kind of, you know, brush up that little bit that he felt he was losing, which is a whole funny story, just that one person in the peak performance. Somebody who’s like right next to perfect. But I want to be perfecter.

But the good news is, I mean, the technology is so good that it can do that. It can take somebody who performs above average on every measurable metric and help them be better. So this stuff isn’t for people who just have problems. It’s for people who just want to do better whatever level they’re at. So that’s kind of that Bakke Brain Health Clinic is that. It’s kind of an omnivorous clinic. Then I have a Bredesen Clinic where we do the Bredesen Protocol.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (04:44.625)
And there we do primarily dementia, prevention and treatment, but that usually leads into also some Parkinson’s, dystonia, ALS like that. So brain related neurodegenerative conditions. And then I have another company, Cerebrofit, main one I’m here to kind of talk about today, Cerebrofit. And we do primarily like virtual. So instead of having a brick and mortar where people are coming to us.

Ours is all device-based, so I do a Zoom consult, I put together a suite of devices, ship it to somebody, teach them over Zoom how to use them, and they do at-home treatment. And what we find is that that’s, for the most part, that’s where the better outcomes are, is when people can use these therapies for, say, 30 minutes a day every day, versus coming to the clinic, where maybe they’re coming to the clinic twice a week for an hour each, that model works.

but what works better for the most part, especially for the neurodegenerative conditions. Treating people at home, it’s more cost effective, for them ultimately, outcomes are better. And there’s just a lot of other positives that work for that population because of some of the restrictions and what’s going on for them.

Cheryl McColgan (06:06.814)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and as in many things, consistency is so key. And so if you can do something for a little bit every day, it makes perfect sense that would be much more effective than just coming once or twice a week to the clinic. You said so many things there that are fascinating that I want to follow up on. I’m going to try to narrow it down a little bit. So the one that I have in mind that is really relevant for the people in this audience is the peak performance aspect, because a lot of people listening to these types of podcasts

are looking for things that can give them that last edge. So they already kind of do healthy behaviors. They know about a lot of this stuff, but they’re like, what’s the next biohack or what’s the next thing that I can try to really, not just, you know, survive, but actually thrive and really optimize their experience. So I’d love if you could share a little bit more on the types of practices that you might have people do.

that are looking to optimize their brain performance. And if you want to share that story about that doctor, that might be a good way to elucidate some of, hopefully that’s the right word, illuminate some of what you were describing in peak performance type situations.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (07:17.977)
Yeah, so I will just quickly tell the doctor story just because it’s just one of my happiest client stories of all the years I’ve been doing it. So he comes in, he’s a combined degree, so his engineering degree, medical degree, so right off the bat, this is a peak performance, high performing person, has performed for his entire career kind of at the top of the career field. We give him all the neuropsych testing, the neuroimaging, everything, everything comes back.

Cheryl McColgan (07:24.814)
Thanks for watching!

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (07:47.605)
Again, he’s above average on all the neuropsych testing. When we do neuroimaging, obviously there, that’s where we see some dysregulation, right? So things aren’t optimized. And so he’s got his list of things that he wants to have improved. You know, again, he feels he’s slipping a little bit at work. He’s not quite as fast, not quite as on point, not quite getting things as quickly as he would normally kind of grok them and move to solution. So that’s his list of concerns that he expresses.

We start, in his case, we did neurofeedback. So we go, we do 40 sessions of neurofeedback. Well, at some point, he comes in and he’s just excited. I can tell he’s kind of glowing. He’s like, you’re not gonna believe what happened. I went to a party last night and I told a joke and everybody laughed. And then I told another joke and he said, for a good 30 minutes, I was able to just hold the group’s attention and just keep them laughing.

He said, I have wanted that for my entire life. I’ve taken classes, I’ve read books. I said, but my timing is always off. I get nervous, I forget the punch line, and it just never goes well. And so it’s just been this, this thing he can’t accomplish. And he said, it just happened. I didn’t even try, there was no effort. And so this whole story. And then as the weeks went on, he’d come in and he’d have more stories of how

kind of his social anxiety was winding down and he’d had a conversation with his ex-wife who had said, you’re the man that I thought I was marrying. Like, how come you’ve shown up now? Right? And so what changed is not so much these like engineering list of functional things that he wanted to get better in terms of speed and performance at work. What changed was his whole

whole social life and the improvement with his partner, with his son, with people at work, with patients, and then just, again, just on the social side. So that was, it was really a wonderful story because again, I had this sense of like, how am I gonna help this guy? And yet, it’s not hyperbole to say it changed his life. And so yeah, one of my happiest stories.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (10:17.257)
So from a peak performance standpoint, the way we look at the brain, and again, whether this is peak performance or we’re looking at kind of pathology, if we’re looking at somebody who has a diagnostic label, we don’t really think of anxiety or depression. What we think of is dysregulation. Is the brain regulated or dysregulated? Is it moving energy and information around the networks?

a neurotypical way or not. And so we don’t really think about diagnostic labels. We don’t think about pathology. We think about regulation and dysregulation. And so, no.

Cheryl McColgan (10:57.162)
And is that something, sorry to interrupt, but is that something that you’re now more easily able to see with functional MRI or some other kind of imaging, this like a dysregulation pattern, just because it has been probably 25 years since I’ve been back in school. So I’m curious to hear what’s new in that arena.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (11:11.846)
class.

Yeah, so we in our clinic use 100% EEG. Now we’ll refer out for fMRI or SPECT if that’s needed, but EEG is the best for being able to see in the time domain. So it’s not very good spatially. MRI is really good at anatomy. It can tell you what’s where and does it look like it should look like. But it can’t tell you anything about function, just that it’s there.

or not there, right? So if you have a tumor, fantastic. If you have a tumor, EEG, not great. So we don’t see anatomy, we see function. But we see function down to the level of milliseconds. And we see what information is moving from what part of the brain to the what part of the brain, in what brain wave, in what time sequence. And since this is a large part of how the brain communicates, we

we get to see this really important conversation that’s happening that you don’t see in other forms of neuroimaging. So EEG does this really well. But again, it doesn’t do any of the other things. And so if you need those, you should go have those. But for this, it’s fantastic. So yeah, so we’re using EEG. And then we’re doing resting state EEG. And then we’re also doing task-based or ERP event-related potentials. So we can look at the brain at rest, the brain.

doing something and then see how is that brain moving energy and information around the networks. And then we can look at that raw, just how is that brain doing it. But then we can also do that compared to a database of neurotypical brains. And so, you know, most brain databases are based on peak performers. So West Point graduates, you know, so really kind of elite brains.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (13:12.057)
we’re treating and this database of peak performance brains. And we look at the difference. But we also hand analyze the data so that we’re bringing our own experience of looking at EEG and brain function to it. We’re not just relying on databases and a lot of artificial intelligence, machine learning being used now in the analysis site. So yeah, so we’re looking for dysregulation.

And the ways in which the brain can kind of lose the plot are virtually unlimited because of its complexity. You know, we have billions and billions of synapses with information flying all over the place, multi-dimensionally within the brain, thin the layers. And so there’s a lot of ways for that to get off just a little bit. And so…

common kind of analogy that is used is the idea of Grand Central Station. So you’ve got all these trains kind of coming in and then people getting off the trains getting on other trains and the trains going out. So you’ve got that happening and if somebody came in and just changed the timing a little bit you can imagine what would happen. You come in, you get off your train but the train that you’re gonna get on has left already. Well you don’t get to where you’re going to.

If that’s information, then that means the information flow is missing the information that didn’t catch the train in time. And so this thing called the thalamic cortical loop, the timing mechanism of the brain, that can get knocked off by having an infection. Having a viral bacterial infection can throw that off. Having a high fever can throw that off. Having even something that doesn’t even register as a concussion, but a blow to the head can throw that off.

let alone having a more significant one. So the brain is so sensitive, it can get knocked off just a little bit and the person feels like they’re fine. They have no sense of loss of function deficit symptom, or they might, but it’s very easy for us to, again, have COVID, so you’ve got a virus, a virus that we know affects the brain, have potentially a high fever, come out the other side and think I’m fine.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (15:34.853)
but actually not be. Your thalamic cortical loop may have been knocked off kilter by 2%. So you have a 2% degradation in function. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that shows up in cognition. We always think of the brain as our thinking, but our brain runs everything. So it’s running our hormone system. It’s running our digestion, our temperature regulation, our blood sugar. It is running also all of our.

thinking and emoting and it’s got its finger in everything. And so if that’s off a little bit, then we can see a degradation in performance over time. And again, performance isn’t just cognitive performance. If one’s hormones are off just a little bit over years, that can have a serious impact on how we age, on longevity, but not just longevity, the quality of those years.

the likelihood that we develop a medical condition that we might not otherwise, because the system...

Join me for a solo episode where I share about Wild Health genetic testing and health coaching. I recorded this immediately after I received my genetic testing results from Dr. Carl Seger. I’m sharing some of my initial thoughts about the results as well as my first impressions of the Wild Health service. Receive 20 percent off of a Wild Health package with code HEALNOURISHGROW.

Watch on YouTube

Stephanie Hilfer is the founder of Viim, a branding agency. Success in her health journey affected her business and ability to be an effective entrepreneur. Join us to learn about the practices Stephanie put in place that allowed her to find more balance between her personal and work life. You can find the 10-year values and goals worksheet mentioned in the podcast here. Our free Ultimate Wellness Workbook is another great tool to create more balance and happiness in your life.

Watch the interview on YouTube here:

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Cheryl McColgan:
Hey everyone, welcome to the Heal Nourish Grow podcast. I’m Cheryl McColgan, the founder of Heal Nourish Grow. And today I am here with my lovely friend, Stephanie, who I met through her podcast. And she does such amazing work in the world of branding, which is a little bit unusual for this podcast. And we are going to talk about that at the end. But what is not unusual is the fact that Stephanie has really had quite a bit of a health journey that she’s going to share with us today. And I think it’s really relevant to this audience because many of us are entrepreneurs or just work in a very busy job, very busy lifestyle. And I think Stephanie is going to have some great information and takeaways for us about how to better balance your life if that’s possible. But anyway, Steph, could you introduce yourself and share a little bit how you got to this place where you started to really focus on your health again.

Steph:
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the great introduction. I’m Steph Hilfer. I do go by Steph. It’s not offensive to call me Stephanie. My mom birthed me Stephanie, but I love the informality of being Steph. I love that we’re just already friends when you call me Steph. So I am the owner, founder and creative director at Vim, as you said, a branding agency. And that, and I will say Vim has been a catalyst for me to continue. to focus on my own, not just health journey, but on myself. So as far as like what we talked about at one point was, in 2018, no, excuse me, 2017, prior to starting my own business, I was at this point where I was in full-blown tears, pretty much daily, around eating, around using the restroom, just constant feeling gross and icky. And I know we’re diving deep into some like super TMI, probably stuff, but I know that your audience is probably going to resonate with some of this. Um, and I was just to this point of there’s nowhere else to go. I have to do something. And luckily I had, um, my best friend since first grade and my sister-in-law who had worked with a holistic nutritionalist coach to kind of work through all of that. Wasn’t necessarily for weight loss, but obviously I think there’s always when you start to look internally at your health, I think that I definitely saw a benefit in that area as well. But I worked with this particular coach to really diagnose what was going on in my gut. We did a kind of handful of blood tests, stool tests, and we determined that there was some foods that were really not serving me well. And so I spent the better part of 2017, so 250 days of 2017, I essentially went whole food. Like just truly if the ingredient listing says banana, then you can eat it. But if it says flour and rich such and such oils, right? Not a single ingredient food. And my nutritionalist, her, or nutritionist, her program for me was not to just go 250 days eating this clean, but I’m not a good rule follower apparently. And I started feeling so good. Essentially I cut out caffeine, I cut out sugar, I cut out dairy and I cut out gluten. And then on top of those cutouts, I just ate whole foods. And I spent that whole year feeling the most, the word I would use for it was optimized. I felt so optimized and healthy and I know that if I hadn’t been in that really healthy, beautiful place that Vim would have never came to be. Now Vim actually happened in 2018 after I had slowly started introducing more foods back into my world and eventually as probably a lot of us, I went back to like full blown eating whatever I want to eat. And it was probably, I mean, I’m sure I had some not comfortable days in 2018, but it was definitely the early part of 2019 where I was like, I am back to that really unhealthy, you know, eating things that I know doesn’t serve my body well, drinking like a coffee every morning, which was the trifecta or the quad-fecta bad for me. Caffeine is bad for me, my body particularly. Dairy is bad for my body particularly. Sugar is bad for my body particularly. And coffee bean in particular, the actual bean itself was an inflammatory food for me. So I was drinking this like quadfecta every single morning drink that was just setting the tone for my day to be not optimal. And so through feeling just like that, I finally started realizing what I didn’t like about that journey was that I did lose so much weight. I lost so much weight that I lost any of the like curvature or shape that I happen to enjoy about myself. And so I set out to start working out with the intention of getting back to that diet. So that’s a really long answer, but that’s like in a snapshot where I’m and where I’m out today is I’m still… focusing really hard on that physical part. And I’ve layered in a really beautiful mental part. And so that’s where I’m at today, but we can dive deeper into whatever you think would serve your audience best.

Cheryl McColgan:
Yeah, no, you highlighted so many things there that I think are so important because part of the power in sharing, I think, is that you realize that you’re not alone. And I think for so many people, it’s for so many of us, it’s like this lifelong journey of health, right? That includes some times where we’re quote unquote, super good. Like

Steph:
Yeah.

Cheryl McColgan:
I’m putting that in air quotes if you’re not watching on YouTube, because you’re being on point with your diet and whatever. you know, things happen and I’m going to guess you didn’t share this and that this is just again pure guess. But then, you know, when you started your business, starting a business is very stressful and very demanding. And so I’m sure for a time, your focus shifted much more to your business and kind of away from your health journey. But the point of that all is to say is that it is a journey and then we just keep coming back to it. Like I shared recently, I think I’m going to be on my maybe seventh weightlifting session of since I started up again. And it’s something

Steph:
Nice.

Cheryl McColgan:
that I’ve probably started 5,762 times in

Steph:
I’m

Cheryl McColgan:
my life

Steph:
sorry.

Cheryl McColgan:
for whatever, for whatever reason, weightlifting and strength training has just never been something I’ve been able to get to stick because I love being outside and I’d rather just like, I love going, I’d rather go on a 10 mile hike than be in the gym for half an hour. It’s just the way I am, but I realized the importance of it. So it’s just kind of keep coming back to that. But anyway, I think one of the things that you highlighted there as well, and maybe you could share a little bit more about this is that. Wheat in particular can be so inflammatory for people and damage the gut lining. And so once you started to make some of these changes, you figured out what you had sensitivities to. Can you share kind of the effects physically and mentally when you shifted away from those? Like, were you really able to tell a huge difference in your body?

Steph:
Yeah. So the first week I was prepared by my nutritionist, she was, you know, she really explained to me this first week is going to be a bit of a detox. So I was prepared to be frustrated and maybe discouraged. And it was a challenging first week, but I will say within the first 24 hours, I immediately started seeing changes in my gut. And then within the first three days, I started feeling better, just, just kind of lighter. And then within a week, my mood started shifting. I felt clearer. I felt, once again, optimal. And I also got to this point where, I mean, I did get to this point to be transparent that I wasn’t eating enough. And so we did work through, you know, how to do something that’s that strict, but still get enough calories in. And I did lose 30 pounds. So everyone I talked to was like, well, clearly you were in a calorie deficit. But I was eating So much food. My plates were so filled that my husband was like, are you gonna eat all of that? And I was like, yes, I am. I know I’m gonna eat it. I have pictures of these full plates, like lobster tails, steak, basically a whole head of broccoli, a sweet potato. And I would eat every ounce of it. And I felt full and I felt fulfilled. And I know… that I was eating enough calories, but my body was just using every single thing that was in me. So when I said earlier that I know that Vim wouldn’t have became, you know, it wouldn’t have happened was because when it started, it wasn’t me alone. I had a friend who approached me about starting a business. And like I said, I was about maybe six months off of, kind of reintroducing foods. And I still felt so optimal. I still felt energetic. I had clarity, my mental space was just in such a good spot that I would have never said yes to that if she had asked me today. Well, maybe today, but like that prior, right? When I said I was in full-blown tears, it was April 17th, 2017. I will never forget that day. I finally made that. That was the day I made the commitment. If you had asked me a day prior to that about starting a business, I would have said absolutely no. I’m in no place. energy, I don’t have my spark, my creativity. So I feel like it’s kind of a roundabout way of answering your question, but the answer is like I absolutely within 24, 3, and 7 days or 24 hours, 3 days and 7 days felt big shifts and those were big enough to push me into sticking with it.

Cheryl McColgan:
And then, you know, life intervenes, like we talked about, it’s a journey. So what really brought you back to, okay, I need to do this again? Was there a particular event or was there a certain way you were feeling or something that happened in your business where you just had this shift again, like, hey, I need to get this focus back on my health again?

Steph:
Yeah. I mean, I will say I have like clearly some body dysmorphia because I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life and I feel wonderful about that. Do I want to lose weight and do I want to be a little healthier in that department? Yeah. But when I look at myself, I still feel really proud of me. But at the same time, I wasn’t feeling… good. It’s so hard. I know you get it and I’m sure your audience gets it. But this like just not feeling good in your own skin and knowing what you’re putting in your body is not serving you. It was just this constant like reminder. And before my body image pushed me so much to make some of these decisions in life. And maybe it was my age. You know, I’m sure there’s lots of reasons why we use looking a certain way to fuel us to make healthy decisions. But I was at this point where I just knew that I wasn’t showing up for myself in the best way. And I do want to, and I still do, it’s still part of my journey, which I love that we’re talking about this being a life long journey. I do still want to go back and prioritize my food intake and what I’m eating in conjunction with lifting weights. But it was… I’ll be honest, it was seeing a couple particular people on my feeds showing up and women in particular working with my trainer now, showing up every day, recording themselves, putting it out there and being really transparent about, I don’t know what I’m doing or I’m just learning what an RDL is or I, you know, this was a heavy weight for me so I’m not going to do that next time. Whatever. Just really transparent. And I reached out to her and I said, who are you working with? Can I get their information? I’m really inspired. And I’m very low, I’m like you, super low impact, right?

Cheryl McColgan:
Thanks for watching!

Steph:
I wanna hike, I wanna do yoga. If I can stroll with my dog, swim, paddleboard, like you name a low impact exercise or sport, that’s my jam. And I never, and I look at weight training and I always thought that’s too tough for me. That’s high impact, that’s heavy. I never considered how much of a low impact, and I could be wrong, right? Somebody in the fitness world could tell me that’s not true, but for me, it fits within what I think is low impact. You know, like circuit training or some of these boutiques that have you hooked up to a heart monitor and they’re like, go, go. That. To me, even if you’re doing weights and that, to me, I consider that high impact. I’ve tried some of those, I’ve tried cycling, too high, I love mountain biking, by the way, but cycling and those kind of boutique circuit, like heavy, like go, go fast paced environments, not for me. My heart races and my heart rate gets so elevated when I lift, I don’t need a coach screaming at me.

Cheryl McColgan:
Right.

Steph:
telling me to go, go. Now I’m not knocking that because I know that there are a lot of men and women who thrive off of that. And that for them, for their mental space, for their body, for what they’re looking to achieve, it’s a beautiful fit. But for me, this scary, not for me thing of weightlifting, seeing somebody else, and that’s why I love your show, right? I love that you’re giving people an opportunity to just be real and tell their story. Seeing somebody else doing something that to me felt so, I’m gonna say not feminine. We don’t see a lot of females out there lifting weights. It seemed hard and heavy. Seeing her talking about, yeah, that was hard. So I’m gonna do this next time. Or that was, I didn’t ever think I could do that. But look at me now, comparisons from her first January hip thrust to her. July hip thrust and seeing her progression, it really was inspiring. And I just, I’ve learned, so when somebody very early on, when I started Vim, somebody asked why, like, why are you starting your own company? And I know this is like the most backwards answer. People might think this, but I said, and I stick to it is, it’s not my ultimate why, but reason for me starting it was I want to We have such a negative connotation around the idea of being selfish. And for me, starting my own business was me allowing myself to be the priority. Myself to be the priority to do the business how I want, to prioritize what I need as a human, to show up for my people and run my business the way I want. I wanted to, you know… just be selfish in my own mental health and my physical health and put me first. And I think as a woman, right, we don’t do that a lot. And then I think in society around careers and business, you don’t hear a lot of people saying that, oh, I wanna serve others and I wanna help others succeed. And yes, I absolutely do. But I was at that point where I wasn’t put the mask on myself first,

Cheryl McColgan:
Right.

Steph:
you know? And I knew I needed to do that. So yeah. Once again, kind of a tangent roundabout way of all that.

Cheryl McColgan:
No, but I love that. And I wish that there was a better word, like not a better, but a different word than selfish because it’s not, I mean, I think you put the nail in the head and I’ve quite often said this in the past, you really can’t serve others when you’re not taking care of yourself. So if you’re not putting on, you know, the perfect analogy, like you said, is putting on your oxygen mask before

Steph:
Yup.

Cheryl...

In this week’s episode, I speak with Mahryah Shain, CEO of More Hari Naturally. He shares about what can cause hair loss and why DHT plays an important role. Visit More Hair Naturally to learn more about Mahryah and the company. They also offer free hair loss consultations.

Watch the interview on YouTube

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

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Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts! 

21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight 

Avaline Wines, Tested and Clean, Sugar Free

Drinking Ketones

Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life 

Clean Beauty 20% off first order

DIY Lashes 10% off 

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Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life

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Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode

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Cheryl McColgan (00:00.93)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Heal and Nourish Grow podcast. I am the founder of Heal and Nourish Grow, Cheryl McColgan. And today I am joined by Mariah Shane, who, as you heard in his bio, is the CEO of a hair health company, but he has kind of made this his passion in life. And he’s going to share with us today some insights and things that we can possibly do to help hopefully make our hair a little bit healthier going forward. So

Mahryah Shain (00:09.265)
who, as you heard in his bio, is the CEO of a hair health company, but he has kind of made this his passion in life, and he’s going to share with us today some insights and things that we can possibly do to help hopefully make our hair a little bit healthier going forward. So, welcome, Ryan. Could you just share with everybody kind of your background a little bit and how you got into this field?

Cheryl McColgan (00:25.438)
Welcome, Raya. Could you just share with everybody kind of your background a little bit and how you got into this field around hair health?

Mahryah Shain (00:32.581)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me here today. I’m very happy to be here. So basically, here’s how this, it happened organically, I should say. So just growing up, I’m from California, I’m still in California. And growing up in California, I’ve always been raised with the philosophy that everything our body needs to survive exists in nature.

that we have survived millions of years of evolution synergistically evolving with nature as we go. So when our bodies and our bodies are designed to survive, we are designed to live and to thrive. So I’ve always had the approach that when something’s non-optimum with my body, my goal is to make my body strong enough to handle that situation.

you know, and that exists in nature. That’s always where I go first, is that area. How can I strengthen that area of my body so my body can fix what’s going on? Now, hair loss is in my family. Every man in my family is totally bald. I am thrilled to have what I have because I should be like cue ball bald today. So when my father started losing his hair, we were like, oh, he was like, I wanna fix this. What’s happening?

And so we started looking around for remedies. And this was probably the 90s, I’d say, mid 90s in there. So we started looking around for solutions and remedies. Cause we’re like, okay, so he’s losing his hair and he’s trying to fix it. And like everyone else does, he was kind of panicking and stuff cause it’s a big deal for people. And there was nothing there. There was nothing in the natural realm that really was game changing. Like there were…

there were lots of stuff like rubbing onion on your head and you know little cures like that but nothing really substantial that was like this is going to change my hair this is going to help it so he went down the drug route the popular route the same drugs that were made in the 70s the same drugs everyone’s using today he went down that route and he started getting sick he started like you know his body he started getting very tired he his immune system dropped he actually started developing breasts because it started altering his hormones

Mahryah Shain (02:57.669)
And so he was like, this is not cool. This is not, this isn’t, this isn’t what I want. And we were all the same, like, no, you gotta, you gotta stop this. And my mother’s from Italy. And so we have cousins in the Lake Como region and she was just talking to them casually about, you know, life and catching up. And she mentioned what’s going on with my father. And they said, well, there’s this little, there’s this little pharmacy, it’s a little lab they call pharmacy, here that’s doing some kind of neat things in this area of

of hair loss in the natural realm and stuff. And she’s like, oh, well, send some to me. So they sent it over and eventually we became their North American distributors. Cause they work, it worked great. And we’re like, oh, this is cool. And so we, that was our entrance into the, that was our entrance into the hair loss world. Now, from that point, it was a matter of like, once you’re in, then you start

exploring and you start realizing what you actually need and what you actually want. So once we got into it and we became the distributors, then we started studying and then we started figuring out like, what is this? What is the actual, what’s the real issue? What’s the real problem? And then once we started looking at that, we started looking at like, because once we understood the real problem, we said, there’s got to be a better solution. Because what we had worked, but it wasn’t like amazing.

but it worked, you know? But we’re like, how do we get amazing? How do we get incredible? And that was the question that basically started our journey to where we are today.

Cheryl McColgan (04:36.462)
That’s fascinating. That’s so wonderful that you found somebody in the family that had like this natural solution for you. And then obviously, since then, you’ve done a ton of research and a ton of study. So before we go into the, like, eventually, we’ll obviously talk about why these ingredients work and kind of what you discovered along the way. But what is it that you’ve learned about just general hair health? So before we even go to hair loss, what is it that makes a healthy head of hair?

Mahryah Shain (04:42.622)
Yeah.

Mahryah Shain (04:46.86)
Right.

Mahryah Shain (04:53.501)
Yeah.

Mahryah Shain (05:01.661)
Absolutely.

Cheryl McColgan (05:05.91)
what is the kind of the normal functioning and how it works. Cause I think a lot of people don’t give a lot of thought to this, right? Like your hair just grows out of your head and kind of people take it for granted. But I think it’d be interesting to go into some of the, a little bit of the science behind it and kind of your understanding of how hair growth works.

Mahryah Shain (05:22.117)
Yeah, totally. And I like to keep things really simple. I don’t because I think any understanding comes from simplicity. So I just keep things very simple in this area. So when our hair grows, there’s three stages. There’s a growth, a resting, and a shedding phase. We all have this. It’s totally natural. So what happens is the hair starts to grow.

and then it stops. And so you get your hair grows, it grows, it grows, then it stops and that’s the resting phase. And what’s happening is underneath it, the hair is actually detaching from the follicle and the new hair is growing and that new hair starts pushing that old hair out. So that old hair, it looks like it’s still growing because it’s still in the skin, but it’s actually in the shedding phase. And then eventually it falls out and sheds.

and a new hair comes out. And that’s the continual cycle of hair. Totally natural, totally normal. We all, all mammals have that. Anything with hair has that cycle. It did the part where it gets, where it becomes something to pay attention to is when there’s all of a sudden more shedding than normal. You know, you start noticing more hair than normal. Now the big, like the big underlining factor is nourishing the

follicle itself. And generally, that’s just done by blood flow, the blood is flowing to the follicle, the blood has all the nutrients the follicle needs, and the blood flow keeps the follicle strong and healthy and producing strong healthy hair. So in a nutshell, that’s really what it is on a simplest basis. If you never did anything for your hair, and the body’s just going as it’s going, the blood’s constantly being delivered to the follicle delivering it all the nutrients it needs to continue its growth cycle.

And then, but the problem is, is sometimes when people start losing their hair, is that blood flow to the follicle gets blocked. And that’s where the issue is.

Cheryl McColgan (07:32.994)
have you been able to discover, I mean, and they’re probably multiple, but the kind of the root cause of that, is it the blood flow? Is it nutrition? I’m sure it’s a combination of factors, but I’d love to hear more about what you’ve discovered actually causes that lack of blood flow.

Mahryah Shain (07:33.809)
able to discover.

Mahryah Shain (07:45.228)
Yeah!

Yeah, it’s here’s, so in 98% of the cases, it’s something called DHT. Now, the actual term is the hydrotestosterone, but everyone calls it DHT. If you Google hair loss, you’ll see DHT, DHT. Now, what that is specifically is when your body breaks down the male hormone testosterone, it creates a byproduct and that byproduct is DHT.

and that’s just excreted through the body. It’s not necessarily a big deal. However, what happens is when it passes by the hair follicle, it gets stuck in a little pothole on the follicle. Now, when people say hair loss is genetic, what’s actually genetic are these potholes. This is an inherited trait. So you can inherit tons of these potholes, but if your body’s producing very little testosterone, you’re gonna be producing very little DHT.

which means that the amount of time it takes for enough DHT to actually stop the blood flow is gonna be very long. So you might not see hair loss till very late in life. Or you can inherit very little of these potholes on the follicle and produce tons and tons of testosterone, which means you have tons of DHT and then you’re still gonna have hair loss, even though maybe like no one else in your family has hair loss, but you might still have it because you’re producing more testosterone than other people in your family.

So it’s those little potholes that are the determining factor. Now, what happens is when the DHT gets stuck in the potholes, over time, as more and more DHT gets stuck, it starts to cut the blood flow off to the follicle. So in doing that, less and less blood is delivered to the follicle and the follicle gets weaker and weaker and thinner and thinner, and then eventually dies. And a dead follicle is when somebody’s totally bald, like just shiny, shiny bald. That means the follicle has died.

Cheryl McColgan (09:38.154)
Very interesting.

Cheryl McColgan (09:46.914)
So, okay, I have two follow-up questions around this. So I think people hear testosterone and they automatically think of it as a male hormone, but it’s actually really very important for women as well. So it might seem like since women have naturally lower testosterone that they might not deal with this problem as much. And that certainly seems to be the case. Women do still have hair loss, but not to the same degree that maybe men do from having higher testosterone. Is that pretty accurate?

Mahryah Shain (09:49.865)
Yeah.

Mahryah Shain (09:55.07)
Right.

Mahryah Shain (09:59.272)
Mm-hmm.

Mahryah Shain (10:13.813)
That’s very accurate. That’s the reason why women will experience hair loss later in life or during menopause or during hormonal fluctuations or times of great stress because the balance of their hormones is just in flux. So a woman can have, may have inherited a bunch of these little potholes on the follicle, but they, I mean, potholes is not scientific, but it’s a great, easy visual. You know what I mean? So they may have…

Cheryl McColgan (10:40.162)
Right.

Mahryah Shain (10:43.293)
inherited a bunch of these little potholes, but because they’re not producing a lot of testosterone, they’re not seeing hair loss in their 20s or 30s, takes till their 40s, 50s, 60s before they start to experience hair loss. But it is when the body breaks down that reproductive hormone that we all have, because women, it actually there’s…

It’s not just in women, it’s not just testosterone. There’s other reproductive hormones that when they break down, they can produce DHT as well.

Cheryl McColgan (11:23.182)
Okay, interesting. And the second follow-up question, and this is actually in relation to, I’ve been experiencing this myself lately, which is obviously one of the reasons that I wanted to have you on the show, but got, went to a dermatologist, had it checked out, and this was the explanation. And I find this to be such a poor explanation, so I would just love your insight on this. But she said that sometimes your hair follicles just get tired.

Mahryah Shain (11:31.62)
this myself, which is obviously one of the reasons.

Yeah.

I went to a dermatologist and checked out, and this was the explanation. And I find this to be such a poor explanation. So I would just love your insight on this. Sure. She said that sometimes your hair follicles just get tired. And they’re quite working as well. And now when I was thinking about the way that you described the follicle over time going to the completely dead phase, is there a way, once the follicle is dead, or say it’s just tired, if that seems like a way to wake them back up? OK. So.

Cheryl McColgan (11:48.926)
and they quit working as well. And now when I was thinking about the way that you described the follicle over time going to the completely dead phase, is there a way, once the follicle is dead, or say it’s just tired, if that’s even a thing, is there a way to wake them back up again?

Mahryah Shain (12:08.689)
So just to keep it positive in terms of what your dermatologist is saying, what I would maybe interpret that as, there is a dormant phase. I wouldn’t use tired necessarily. I wouldn’t use that phrase, but there is a dormant phase. So when the follicle, but it’s different because the dormant phase may look like your follicles dead.

You may see scalp, you may have shiny, shiny baldness there. But before the follicle actually dies, it does stop producing hair. Because lazy implies that it’ll come back. Lazy implies like, oh, I’m just taking a break till the movie’s over and then I’ll go exercise, you know, or something like that. But the, uh, but a dormant, a dormant follicle is a phase before the follicle actually dies. It’s a little.

haven’t found anything conclusive in terms of how long a follicle lays dormant. I’ve seen everything from you know six months to six years. I haven’t really found a conclusive like this is what a dormant follicle is. But once the follicle dies then there’s nothing can be done. A dead follicle is just dead. It can’t be revived.

Cheryl McColgan (13:28.586)
Okay, good to know. So maybe some of these therapies that we’re going to talk about next. I mean, I don’t know if there’s any actual controlled studies of this, but there’s certainly plenty of anecdotal evidence at the very least that certain things that maybe stimulate blood flow to your scalp, for example, can help with hair loss and obviously hair growth, kind of both ends of the spectrum there. I think I remember reading that you had run into something with acupuncture and some herbal therapies. Can you share more about that?

Mahryah Shain (13:44.135)
to your scalp for example can help with hair loss and

Yeah. I think, yeah, I remember reading that you had run into something with acupuncture and some herbal therapies. Can you share more about that? I didn’t. I didn’t, but I can talk about it. Yeah, so in terms of the idea of stimulating blood flow to the follicle, that’s correct. You want to do that. That’s a good thing. By all