Menopause, Stress and Female Hair Loss – Dr. Sophia Kogan with Dave Asprey : 793

<p>In this episode of Bulletproof Radio, Dr. Sophia Kogan is back on the show to share brand new research about women’s hair loss and thinning.</p><p>Dr. Kogan is co-founder and Chief Medical Advisor at&nbsp;<a href="https://nutrafol.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Nutrafol</a>.&nbsp;The company creates supplements to decrease shedding and increase hair growth. Several of the products are designed specifically for women’s physiology.</p><p>Her new study is important because women are about four times more susceptible to hair loss than men. Women not only have different hormonal pathways and factors that contribute to what they need for hair growth, but they also have phases in their lives, like menopause or pregnancy, that make them more susceptible to hair loss.&nbsp;</p><p>“This is the first study that came out on women in menopause or who are going through hair thinning,” she says.</p><p>&nbsp;Stress is another major factor that contributes to hair thinning and loss</p><p>Stress effects our hair throughout our entire lifetime, but during this past pandemic year, it’s been worse than ever. When we’re suffering from a bunch of stress (whether physical or emotional), the body pulls its resources to preserve its life internally, not hair growth.</p><p>“During stress, hair follicles are synchronistically shifted, a huge number of them, into that resting phase,” Dr. Kogan explains. “So, the body says, ‘I want to pull the resources internally. I don't really need or care about hair. I want to preserve my life.’ And so it goes to the vital organs. That’s what happens to the hair growth cycle and it shifts and all of a sudden, we have a massive amount of hair shedding about three to six months later.”</p><p>“Women go through a tremendous amount of stress in relationship to their hair, even more so than men because men sort of expect to thin,” Dr. Kogan says. She explains that the experience of hair loss for women often has a specific shame and guilt associated with it, too.</p><p>We all experie