Are you Winning or Losing the battle?

As I understand it, I would say that the people winning the battle against hairloss on this forum is in the minority. So I wanted to see exactly who is winning (I consider maintenance winning) and what they are doing exactly.

My Battle:

26 years old now. Been on immortal hair top 6 (minus krill which made me shed constantly), ashwaghanda, luguls 5% iodine, culturelle probiotic, plenty of exercise, eat healthy, trying to eat as little gluten as possible, though it is tough. I've also done one round of humifulvate. No topicals, just the Ortho Organics Shampoo in the shower. I'm considering Classic Zix as I have all the ingredients. Been on this regimen for about a year.

My Status:

Losing the battle. In that time, my hair has gotten thinner, and my hairline has receded. At best, I would say I've managed to slow down my loss, as I do find the supps help with inflammation. But just slowing it down is not good enough for me, as I will still inevitably lose my hair. What I want is to halt it completely.


There are those on the forum that have halted it completely. Please come forward and offer some help.

Hi HelpMyHair,

Love the idea for this post by the way. I have only been visiting the forum for a few months so I don't believe my input will be astonishingly helpful. But I'll give it nonetheless.

I have been eating a mostly clean diet, supplementing with a whole-food multi without iron, zinc, magnesium, vitamin E, vitamin C, vitamin D3, alpha lipoic acid and acetyl l-carnitine, biotin, nettle root, and krill oil, off and on with curcumin and ecklonia cava. To date, have done no metal chelation.

I try to consume a primarily liquid diet throughout the day and then a solid food, protein rich meal later in the day after a workout. My liquid diet consists of green shakes (kale, swiss chard, celery, gelatin powder, apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, cinnamon, black pepper, cayenne pepper, various fruits, and some stevia).

Thus far, I have slowed thinning, but not stopped it entirely. I believe one of the issues I'm dealing with is consistency, on several levels. I need to be more consistent with exercise, supplementation (not going off an on the ecklonia cava, curcumin, iodine, etc.), and avoiding gluten (because I believe avoiding gluten for a week and having a gluten meal eliminates any positive effects). Unlike other things, I don't think moderation applies to gluten. If you're going to eliminate it, you have to do it and do it right. Also, my procrastination with metal detox could be hurting my chances also. Overall, I just need to commit to the entire regimen (not pick and choose) and stay committed.

Other than that, how are your stress levels? My hair started thinning early, but didn't accelerate quickly until my father passed away. For a few years after that during what I would consider myself to have been depressed, the thinning sped up a great deal. Since those days my stress levels have subsided somewhat and the thinning has slowed. I think the real issue with halting hair loss is controlling hormones (eliminating estrogen dominance and balancing cortisol/adrenals), battling stress (both psychological and physiological stress coming from food sensitivities, pathogens/infection, and the inflammation caused by high cortisol and estrogen), and eliminating toxicity. Its a viscious circle where physical stress and psychological stress both potentiate each other.

My hair has definitely improved during the last year. Last June I noticed hairline recession at the temples, and a small thinning area near the crown. I also had a severely thinning area right in the center of the mid-scalp region marked in this diagram:



I've read that this area of the scalp is particularly susceptible to hair loss induced by stress. This is consistent with the fact that I'm one of those chronically stressed people. I also took a lot of stress from academics during the last several years.

After one year, the thin areas in the mid-scalp and near the crown have filled in nicely. But I don't think I've stopped the hairline recession. I don't know for sure because nowadays I make it a point to not examine my hairline in the mirror.

Interestingly I've noticed a significant reduction in dandruff, and I think this is a definite indication of progress. And I don't notice hairs on my pillow either.

I still experience occasional itching near the hairline, though. I believe that it's mostly caused by stress.

My current regimen...
Supplements: curcumin/resveratrol daily. tocotrienols (tocosorb) several times per week
Diet: almonds, carrots, dark chocolate, apples, celery, onions, garlic, avocados, grass-fed beef, pastured eggs, wild salmon, sardines, white rice (occasional), green tea, and coffee.

I also do scalp massage and scalp exercises.

ir, where would you say most of your calories come from?

In terms of macronutrients, I get most of my calories from fat. But recently I've been eating more fruit.

*Winning*

Hey pancacke,

Do you have any recommendations for improving the hairline?

thanx pancake, for the best laugh id had all year. r.e. winning.

'i was banging 7 gram rocks. WINNING!''

'r u bipolar?', ' im bi-winning', 'winning there, winning here', winning everywhere' WINNING' hahahaha

lmao.

imprisoned-radical wrote:In terms of macronutrients, I get most of my calories from fat. But recently I've been eating more fruit.

Do you think it's more diet or supplements that have helped?

imprisoned-radical wrote:Hey pancacke,

Do you have any recommendations for improving the hairline?

-fighting all pathogens that habitate soft tissue and/or are associated with hairloss of any kind(E. coli, TB, Jeff Sutherlands "bald virus")
-real chelation with cutler, focus especially on mercury, lead, thallium and nickle(first 3 are covered with cutler, nickle needs R-la and l-carnosine)

That's kind of it.....I fasttrack regrowth by taking b2 and niacin but the above needs to be done correct and consistently.

Do you think it's more diet or supplements that have helped?

The progress was so gradual that it's hard to say what helped and what didn't. Actually I didn't even notice the improvements as they occurred, but I'm almost sure that my hair is better than it was a year ago. Subjective evaluations are always suspect, though.

Last summer I would comb my hair forward for a few minutes over a white sheet of paper, and I remember there would be a mountain of hair, dandruff, and brown flakes afterward. This doesn't happen anymore.

I really recommend avoiding commercial shampoos. Those chemicals don't belong on your skin. I just wash my hair and scalp with cold water, and it feels great.

I eat a lot of super-foods, and I think this might be an important factor in whatever success I've had. You can google "green tea x," with the x replaced by any ailment known to man, and you'll probably find some studies showing that green tea has some non-trivial benefit. Of course this could just be due the antioxidant role of catechins in green tea, in which case there would be no benefit in consuming green tea that can't be obtained from having other antioxidant-containing foods. I have no idea though.

As for the effectiveness of supplements, I do remember during the summer I ran out of curcumin and resveratrol. Since I season my meat with turmeric and get some resveratrol from dark chocolate (not much), I thought I would wait a while before ordering some more curc/res. After several weeks of not supplementing, I started shedding hair.

I wish there was some solid proof that the curcumin/resveratrol combination helps with stress-based hair loss. So far I've only seen speculation that it might inhibit substance P, which mediates neurogenic inflammation. I don't know if we can take seriously the claims made in a patent for a new product...the people trying to acquire the patent have some incentive to speculate/exaggerate.

I forgot in my original post to mention that I take about a gram of krill oil everyday.

I-R, how do you get away with washing your hair with water? My hair would be a greasy mess. I couldn't go out in public. I wish I could say I was winning, I have drastically slowed my loss down with all my supplements and topicals but no regrowth.

pancacke wrote:

imprisoned-radical wrote:Hey pancacke,

Do you have any recommendations for improving the hairline?

-fighting all pathogens that habitate soft tissue and/or are associated with hairloss of any kind(E. coli, TB, Jeff Sutherlands "bald virus")
-real chelation with cutler, focus especially on mercury, lead, thallium and nickle(first 3 are covered with cutler, nickle needs R-la and l-carnosine)

That's kind of it.....I fasttrack regrowth by taking b2 and niacin but the above needs to be done correct and consistently.

I just looked up Jeff Sutherland's theory of a "bald virus" and found this on curezone:

Why Do People Go Bald?
By Dr.Jeff Sutherland

Intrigued by comments on hair loss and frequency effects I analyzed many different cases of Alopecia Areata. Recently, my son returned from Baghdad with an itchy scalp and sure enough, he picked up the "bald head virus!" It was a good opportunity to test him carefully and update the frequencies.

In every case of complete hair lost I found a virus with frequency 365466 and in most cases of partial hair loss, I found the bacterial form of the virus predominated with frequency 254466. As you will recall from previous postings with a photo of the SV40 virus attacking a cell, there are four components of a virus that can be seen in the photo. So you need four frequencies.

In testing a few people with little hair loss I found the same organism so the virus is quite widespread. I suspect that the observed genetic predisposal to hair loss is confounded by the fact that familial infections are common.

In any event, the following F100 program wipes out the virus. If you have a plasma device that only operates below 10000hz, then devide the frequencies by 64.

repeat 60
dwell 60
duty 50
pulse 64 75
converge 23 1
365466
254456
155646
65636
end repeat

I can't take this seriously. First of all, I'm pretty sure viruses don't have bacterial forms. At least that's what I was taught in my 7th grade biology class.

Even if alopecia areata is caused by a viral attack (this hasn't been shown in any studies I've come across), what bearing does this information have for those of us with androgenetic alopecia?

imprisoned, my thoughts


infection -> hormonal mess up -> hair loss

It could be a virus and/or bacteria attacking another part of the body, not the scalp.

When I hear someone talking about bacterial form of a virus(or vice versa) I expect just as well to hear about Area 51. I am also very skeptical about a baldness virus unless you are talking about Lichus Planus/Planea which has been found to cause patch hairloss(1% of all cases in hairloss are considered to be related to Lichus). If a person "caught" a virus that induces baldness I think it tells us more about the overall health of the individual as he or she is vulnerable to it for some reason. What I do find a more likely reason is that if you have a severe infection that it might jack up your cortisol levels that in turn affect everything else, ie. not direct causation.

Here is an interesting notion: A group of women with mercury fillings were experiencing hair loss that couldn't be helped with hormonal treatments or drugs. All mercury fillings were removed and 68% of them recovered from their hair loss. No chelation, just the composite that was available at the time, and no anti-fungals or anti-bacteria or anything else. Fillings swapped, majority found success.

Klobusch J, Rabe T, Gerhard I, Runnebaum B, "Alopecia and environmental pollution" Klinisches Labor 1992, 38:469‑ 476; & “Schwermetallbelastungen bei Patientinnen mit Alopezie” Arch Gynecol. Obstet., 1993,254(1-4):278-80;& G. Kunzel et al, “Arch Gynecol. Obstet., 1993, 254:277-8.

Now, the ages of the participants was not revealed or their diet so maybe those who didn't get success either had a bad diet or other problems. The point is, 68% of those women experienced success regardless of any elaborate contraptions or protocols. You want to hear one little detail? This was in Germany which means that there are going to have different dietary differences and focuses(especially when this was done in 1992 which probably predates anything written by Cutler).

Another interesting anecdotal study that isn't related to hair loss but hormonal level. A Belgian man was able to increase his testosterone levels by 120% by overeating/overfeeding for several months but focusing on saturated fats and carbs and food that had real nutritional value(ie. not junk food at every turn). He reduced his insulin resistance, got more testosterone, and still looked like he had no fat on his body.

What if the problem is that you aren't feeding your metabolism right? That you are actually practicing a type of starvation that has been culturally induced by both the media and the medical establishment("Thin people are beautiful.", "If you eat that lard boy, you'll get clogged arteries!", "Fat is bad. Carbs are bad. LIVING IS BAD!"). Remember Candida that Hoppi was focusing on? That same guy I mentioned above actually had a candida infection. There was yeast growing on his dick for crying out loud and it apparently went away when he started to supply his body with nutrients and lots of food, including the dreaded gluten that is supposed to feed candida. I admit this is anecdotal(you can probably find the blog article looking for "Belgian" and "Carb Face"). I also did find other people who experienced the disappearance of candida after they starting overfeeding. The reason they all state: My body was finally getting energy to work on healing itself. Recovering from hair loss was very common for women when they started eating much more(overfeeding slightly).

What would be interesting is to see the temperature numbers of anyone here having problems. It could interesting to see if this could be in many ways related to thyroid issues like CS has often mentioned. Also remember, even though you get your temp and thyroid levels to better levels due to supplementation you might not experience any success unless you can provide the energy(through food) to power the new metabolism. I wouldn't be surprised that men and women with thyroid problems who get theirs addressed through medication(Armour Thyroid etc) and don't see success do so because they are still eating energy deficient food(regarding calorie intake and nutritional value. Men tend to eat nutritionless food and women tend to eat too few calories.).

imprisoned-radical wrote:

I can't take this seriously. First of all, I'm pretty sure viruses don't have bacterial forms. At least that's what I was taught in my 7th grade biology class.

I wondered about that too...I guess what he wanted to say is he found a bacterial coinfection in people with this virus.

Even if alopecia areata is caused by a viral attack (this hasn't been shown in any studies I've come across), what bearing does this information have for those of us with androgenetic alopecia?

IMO classic MPB is caused by these pathogens....in my case, I'm young and had a receding hairline, no diffuse thinning or bald spots...

TransGirl wrote:When I hear someone talking about bacterial form of a virus(or vice versa) I expect just as well to hear about Area 51.

Well, Area 51 exists doesn't it?
But I get that people have problems with this approach, that's why most of my posts focus on metal chelation, supplements, iodine etc....it's a shame though as I'm certain Rife could end this whole hairloss debacle

Think he's referring to a specific virus inhating a specific bacteria... which is common.

Not to mention the ecosystem and communication that occurs from all this is interesting. Here is one link and a quote of what I mean. "suggests that the viruses, when they're doing infection, they're actually manipulating the behavior of the bacteria when they're in them" "These viral populations seem to be serving as reservoirs of genes that the microbes use," http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,337299,00.html

Unrelated subject but throw in pleomorphism in a low oxygen environment due to possibly CCSVI issues and I can see how the mallazzeia yeast that's found in MPB from a study can change to for example strep pyogenes which was found from a study from alopecia areata.

Not to mention vacinnation being correlated to AA from same study as well which sets one up to higher chance of hypomethylation issues which causes retrovirus issues. Not to mention the lowered immune system.

There is way more to it than this but the origins of hair loss I'm 100% positive that my prior posts are accurate.

Also, Jeff Sutherland is a genius and on the cutting edge.

Should mention regarding viruses, can put lysine mixed in water over an area that you think is infected such as scalp. Problem being is viruses replicate "very" fast but something to experiment with.

ir what do you think about lead in chocolate?

A recent peer-reviewed publication found significant amounts of lead in chocolate.[37] In a USDA study in 2004, mean lead levels in the samples tested ranged from 0.0010 to 0.0965 µg lead per gram of chocolate, but another study by a Swiss research group in 2002 found that some chocolate contained up to 0.769 µg per gram, close to the international (voluntary) standard limit for lead in cocoa powder or beans, which is 1 µg of lead per gram.[38]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_chocolate#Lead

And I came across an old post where you said you drank raw turmeric, how did that turn out?

crincrin wrote:ir what do you think about lead in chocolate?

A recent peer-reviewed publication found significant amounts of lead in chocolate.[37] In a USDA study in 2004, mean lead levels in the samples tested ranged from 0.0010 to 0.0965 µg lead per gram of chocolate, but another study by a Swiss research group in 2002 found that some chocolate contained up to 0.769 µg per gram, close to the international (voluntary) standard limit for lead in cocoa powder or beans, which is 1 µg of lead per gram.[38]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_chocolate#Lead

And I came across an old post where you said you drank raw turmeric, how did that turn out?

interesting. but many factors could lead to that result. Errors in testing, skewing results to get the results desired - which happen a hell of a lot more than you think. The type of bean used, where it came from etc. I mean most of these beans come from Africa and South America and on a cheap non-organic run-of-the-mill farm I can only imagine the nasty stuff they spray around the place and you never know it could be lead from petrol they use in their machines/cars.

For me the iron and oxalates are more of a problem.

crincrin wrote:ir what do you think about lead in chocolate?

A recent peer-reviewed publication found significant amounts of lead in chocolate.[37] In a USDA study in 2004, mean lead levels in the samples tested ranged from 0.0010 to 0.0965 µg lead per gram of chocolate, but another study by a Swiss research group in 2002 found that some chocolate contained up to 0.769 µg per gram, close to the international (voluntary) standard limit for lead in cocoa powder or beans, which is 1 µg of lead per gram.[38]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_chocolate#Lead

And I came across an old post where you said you drank raw turmeric, how did that turn out?

I came across this study which suggests that the lead in chocolate has low bioavailability (around 10%).

Concentrations and bioavailability of cadmium and lead in cocoa powder and related products.
Mounicou S, Szpunar J, Andrey D, Blake C, Lobinski R.
Source

Group of Bioinorganic Analytical Chemistry, CNRS UMR 5034, Hélioparc, 2, av. Pr. Angot, F-64053 Pau, France.
Abstract

Concentrations and bioavailability of cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb) were determined in cocoa powders and related products (beans, liquor, butter) of different geographical origins. Particular attention was paid to the fractionation of these metals, which was investigated by determining the metal fraction soluble in extractant solutions acting selectively with regard to the different classes of ligands. The targeted classes of Cd and Pb species included: water-soluble compounds, polypeptide and polysaccharide complexes, and compounds soluble in simulated gastrointestinal conditions. The bioavailability of Cd and Pb from cocoa powder, liquor and butter was evaluated using a sequential enzymolysis approach. The data obtained as a function of the geographical origin of the samples indicated strong differences not only in terms of the total Cd and Pb concentrations, but also with regard to the bioavailability of these metals. The Cd concentrations in the cocoa powders varied from 94 to 1833 microg kg(-1), of which 10-50% was potentially bioavailable. The bioavailability of Pb was generally below 10% and the concentrations measured in the cocoa powders were in the 11-769 microg kg(-1) range. Virtually all the Cd and most of Pb were found in the cocoa powder after the pressing of the liquor.

The study is not too convincing though because the researchers didn't simulate a gastric environment using cell cultures and stuff.

Anyway, about the turmeric...
I would mix a few tablespoons of turmeric in water and then just down the solution (it tasted awful ). And I would chase it down with a handful of grapes. I tried this only for a few weeks before deciding to just order the supplements, so I can't really tell you if there was any benefit.

Something to note...both curcumin and resveratrol are lipid-soluble, meaning that my water-grape-turmeric concoction probably didn't result in much systemic absorption of curcumin/resveratrol. But at this point we don't know if absorption is even necessary. There's evidence suggesting that the downstream effects of the curcumin/resveratrol combination are mediated by interactions with the immune cells of the gut.

rdkml wrote:Should mention regarding viruses, can put lysine mixed in water over an area that you think is infected such as scalp. Problem being is viruses replicate "very" fast but something to experiment with.

Do you think something like oil pulling with powdered lysine would be beneficial considering all the complications that emanate from the jawline?

The lysine taste is really bad so I doubt one could do that. But if it would work I don't know.

Oil pulling is good when I did it several years ago but you have to get the right oil. With that said, oil pulling can only do so much and just another tool in the arsenal IME.

rdkml wrote:Think he's referring to a specific virus inhating a specific bacteria... which is common.

Are you thinking about S. marcescens/ Strep mitis? Would make sense but his scripts runs the virus frq. before the bacteria.....