Dr. Emily Kiberd:
I mean, my hope is that if someone is not feeling well, that they just don’t accept it as this is my norm, I’m aging, this is how it is that they actually really start to hunt and really put their health first and make it a non negotiable that feeling good should be the norm and the standard.
Kevin Rolston:
Welcome to HairPod, the podcast where you get to hear real people talk about their hair journeys. I’m your host, Kevin Rolston, and each week I get to interview people from different walks of life whose lives have been touched by hair loss in some form or fashion. Many of our guests have experienced hair loss themselves and found a way to get their confidence and their hair back. This week we’re welcoming Emily Kiberd back to the show. Last time she was on with us, she uncovered the surprising link that between hair loss and one small but powerful part of the body, the thyroid gland. This butterfly shaped organ is linked with every metabolic process from our digestion to our brain function, to, you guessed it, our hair growth. So if you’ve been dealing with hair loss and trying every possible remedy, but nothing seems to work, a dysfunctional thyroid could be the root cause. So if you’ve been dealing with hair loss and are trying every possible remedy, but nothing seems to work, a dysfunctional thyroid could be the root cause.
Kevin Rolston:
Check out our last episode with Emily by following the link in our show Notes. As we got to talking though, Dr. Kiberd began to shed light on something I hadn’t thought much about before. How our environment, the air we breathe and everything that we come in contact with could be playing a big role in our hair health. What if the root cause of your hair loss isn’t just internal, but also something around you, something you’re unknowingly exposed to? Every day in this episode, we dig into the environmental factors that might be holding you back from getting the results you want and how awareness can be the first step towards real solutions.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
There are environmental factors that can affect inflammation in the body, can affect environmental load in the body, and so it’s kind of inevitable. So what can we do to really minimize and mitigate the exposure that we’re getting? Some of those things I mentioned. Yeah.
Kevin Rolston:
Now my question, you talked about a lot of things that even aside from Hashimoto’s or a thyroid issue, you’re just talking about good general wellness, the things that you’re giving me dietarily and what you need to do with sleep and trying to avoid stress and those kind of factors. So let’s say that I am Experiencing hair loss or some of the symptoms you’re talking about. Is this something I just can correct on my own? And maybe I give this a trial run of listening to your advice and I don’t need to go get a diagnosis for a thyroid or Hashimoto’s and I’ll be okay. Or do I need to get under a doctor’s care to properly deal with the thyroid issue or Hashimoto’s?
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Yeah, I would say that if you want quicker results and you want to feel better quicker, I think working with someone will speed that process. If you want to try and piecemeal it on your own, because there is a lot of information out there, right? There’s blogs and podcasts and Instagram reels. You could piecemeal it. But for example, the, like, your root cause may not be the same as someone else’s. For example, I see a lot of women who have mold exposure because it is way more.
Kevin Rolston:
Mold exposure.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Mold exposure? Yeah. Water damaged homes, mold hiding behind walls that’s causing inflammation which leads to hair loss.
Kevin Rolston:
And so get out of here. No way.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
So someone else might have just a gut infection they need to clean up, and that then helps drive down thyroid antibodies, helps hair regrow. Someone else might be living in a moldy home that they didn’t know about, and so then their root cause is different. So getting to your root cause, a provider will help speed up that process. Typically it’s more of a functional medicine or a holistic provider, but I mean, that’s the work I do. So, you know, I have people who’ve come to me, they’ve lost their hair, their skin is a mess, brain fog, fatigue. They gained 40 pounds out of nowhere. And we’re just, you know, we’re checking blood work, gut health, we check environmental load. One of them could be mold exposure.
Kevin Rolston:
How would you even get to that in a conversation? Because that just seems so out of left field to me that the mold or the moisture in your home could be causing your hair loss. How many different questions do you have to go through with a patient before you finally get to, oh, you know what, you’ve gotten mold and that’s why your hair is falling out.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Yeah, I don’t think it’s the number of questions. It’s asking the right questions.
Kevin Rolston:
So walk me through what that might be like if you’re sitting with somebody and you have the blood results. How much of it is the blood results that you get from the labs and then how much is it? The follow up questions before you can officially and really kind of diagnose what might be going on with somebody’s hair loss.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Yeah, I mean, everything is a piece of data, right? So their symptoms, their timeline, for example, you know where they live. I have someone that lives in Washington. So historically, more wet. Moved into a house in 2020. All of her symptoms started in 2020. Hair loss, like cystic acne. So something’s affecting her hormones. Gained 40 pounds out of nowhere.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Her eating and her workouts didn’t change. Brain fog, histamine reactions, like getting a headache. And I, we are working together. And she’s currently in mold remediation. And you know, she lives in a wet place. So I’m like, do you know the humidity in your home? She’s like, no, I. Okay, well why don’t you get one of those $5 humidity readers on Amazon if your humidity is over 50% consistently, there’s too much humidity and mold can grow. She mentioned that she had water damage in her garage.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
I was like, you know what, you have fatigue, you have brain fog, you have hair loss. Everything started from this move into this house. Let’s just check and see if you have mold. We checked for other things. We like, we looked at gut health, we checked for parasites. Cause she does. She had travel a lot and she has a pet. And her urine test and her blood test came back positive for mycotoxin exposure, which is a byproduct of mold.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
And so then the next step is bringing a mold inspector. Mold inspector was like your whole attic, it’s not ventilating properly. Your whole attic is covered in mold. Oh, like how many people do people go into their, like, you know, how many times you go into your attic? Like once a decade. And so then the next step is remediation, getting her on mold detox supplements. She works from home, so she’s like getting, you know, especially for the last four years, people have been in their home a lot. And so part of it’s asking the right questions, having someone put the pieces together for you. I can give you another example.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
But it was just a different root cause. I had a woman who traveled to South Africa four times over 12 years, was losing hair, had multiple parasites, whipworm, hookworm, roundworm. Address that hair growth happened, Right? So part of only looking at thyroid, but looking at the human body is is there something that is causing inflammation, it’s causing load on the body that is now showing up in the hair, on the skin from the hair follicles showing up as a gut issue.
Kevin Rolston:
Hearing these stories of a woman Unknowingly living with mold in her home. And another. Dealing with multiple parasites might feel extreme at first, but for many people, the real cause of the hair loss isn’t obvious until they dig deeper. Maybe you’re listening right now, and something’s clicking. You’ve been losing hair, feeling off, and you know something is wrong, but you’re not sure what. As Dr. Kyberid shares, these stories aren’t rare. They’re just rarely talked about.
Kevin Rolston:
And this is a great reminder that this tiny gland with a huge job is more sensitive than we might think. Environmental stressors, infections, hidden inflammation, they can all throw it off balance. And when your thyroid is struggling, your hair often pays the price. So if this is the start of your hair journey, if today is the first time that you’re realizing there might be something going on under the surface, Dr. Kyberg’s about to break down the most common things that can impact your thyroid health, because understanding what’s really going on is. Is the first step to taking back control of your health and your hair.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
I would say someone who has a food sensitivity to gluten maybe are reacting to whatever is sprayed on wheat, which is typically glycos fate.
Kevin Rolston:
Yeah.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Right. A chemical. Probably all of us have it in our body just because it’s so pervasive through our food system.
Kevin Rolston:
Yeah.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
So gluten would be one, I think any underlying gut infection.
Kevin Rolston:
Okay.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
A couple ones that come to mind that are very highly transmissible would be Helicobacter pylori, H. Pylori. It’s a bacteria in the stomach. Probably 80% of the world has it, but shows up as symptoms in about 20 to 30% of people.
Kevin Rolston:
Okay.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Can really affect our own production of stomach acid. So think about. You have this bacteria. You’re not producing enough stomach acid to break down your food.
Kevin Rolston:
Okay.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
You also have this autoimmune condition that makes it like food just sits in your stomach a long time. Right. Because you don’t have enough thyroid hormones. So now you have food that isn’t broken down enough that now is sitting in your stomach. Right. You can. You can imagine how this is causing just more inflammation in the body.
Kevin Rolston:
Right, Right, right.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
So hidden gut infections, I would say, is another common one.
Kevin Rolston:
Is this naturally curable by what you eat or what you can do? Or is this. Are you talking about somebody now is on 10 different pills every day to try to correct some of these issues?
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
So 20% of people who catch their Hashimoto’s, their autoimmune thyroid disease early can go into remission. So about 20 to 30% of people can go into remission, which means labs are good, they’re not having symptoms, they feel good. Part of that is catching it early. Part of catching it early is just making sure you’re checking your thyroid labs properly, you know.
Kevin Rolston:
Now is this something that even if you’re not really experiencing crazy symptoms right now, is that something that somebody should be well aware of, understanding where their thyroid is and maybe understanding what their environment or their diet or their habits might be doing to affect it?
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Yeah, in my world, yes. And in my world, I am trying to remove restrictions so that people can thrive. So if someone high performing has a high powered job, they need a lot of brain capacity, mental energy is leading a team. I want them to be optimized. I want them to be able to work a long workday if they need to. I don’t want them to be pounding coffee to get the energy that they need. Right. So does that throw you off?
Kevin Rolston:
If you’re ODing on the caffeine, is that going to throw off a thyroid? Is that going to cause some of these issues?
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
It will definitely affect hormones like cortisol, stress hormones, your adrenal hormones, which are interconnected with thyroid. So I would say indirectly, yes. But if you think about everyone wants to live their best life, whatever that looks like, they want to thrive. For me, I want to be the most present mom and, you know, be really patient when my kids are having a meltdown and teach them how to move through that with grace. Someone else might be, you know, in my past life, I wanted to be the best rehab clinic in New York City and lead a team of 10, you know, treat really high performers. So whatever it is, drinking clean water, eating nutrient dense food, sleeping, working out, moving your body, sweating, making sure you don’t have gut infections. Yeah, that would be the norm.
Kevin Rolston:
That’s how you optimize.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
That’s how you optimize. And I think, you know, no one’s dreaming of, like, sitting on their couch in their 80s. Everyone’s like, down the road. I want to be present with my grandkids and play with them, and I want to be strong and not worry about breaking a hip. I don’t know if people really dream about that, but maybe not in this phase of life, but maybe a little bit later. Like, I know my mother, who’s 75, like, she’s like, okay, I got to like, really take care of myself so that I can play with my kids. Whatever that version looks like for someone is that optimized I think that should just be new standards that we set for ourselves. Non negotiables.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
You know, does it have to be like up here it should really be just everyone setting, not I call them anchors or non negotiables in our days of what we do to take care of ourselves, to be our best selves.
Kevin Rolston:
How many cases do you see if, if you ever run into somebody that is optimized? And maybe there’s some people that are out there feeling like I am doing everything I possibly can, Everything you said, checking off all the boxes. What are my chances of still encountering a thyroid issue? Hajimoto’s or something like that? Because you mentioned you may not be able to control or even understand that you’ve got mold in your attic. And an optimized person, I assume could be sitting in a workspace that has mold all over their head and they are going to come down with thyroid issues despite being optimized. Am I correct in that?
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
They could. I think it goes back to the idea of like all the stressors that are filling us up. Right. So it could be like sleep. Some of them are just more foundational sleep over training. Emotional stressors are those on top of it as well? Right. There’s also genetic SNPs for mold where about 20 to 30% of people have a certain genetic SNP, the HLADR snip that if it gets turned on, they’re like canaries in the coal mine with mold. They.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
They get exposed and it’s. They know immediately I am one of those people.
Kevin Rolston:
Okay. So. Okay, so you’re, you’re naturally predisposed to react more violently to mold.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, you throw my husband in a moldy room. He’s fine. He probably thinks he’s fine. More so. But he probably will get like some sleep apnea and some insomnia or I will literally shut down and can’t function and can’t finish a sentence. So.
Kevin Rolston:
Wow.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Yeah. But I think if we look at like hair loss from a 30,000 foot view. Right. Because sometimes we look at hair loss with blinders.
Kevin Rolston:
Like it’s the hair and that’s all we see.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Yeah. Is just. Is it something else? And I think people get a delayed diagnosis of Hashimoto’s because they’re getting moved through the system. So they’re like, oh, I have some GI upset and I’m bloated. Go see the gastroenterologist. I’m feeling really fatigued. Maybe my hormones off. Go see the endocrinologist.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Oh, I’m getting these like skin reactions. Oh, go see the dermatologist. Well, skin, when our detox pathways are congested or not working because we have load on the system, things will show up on the skin. Psoriasis, eczema, hives, a histamine reaction. Oh, we’ll go see the dermatologist. But in actuality, the hormones, the gut and the skin, like everything is, it’s all part of the same system. It’s all together. So if you get kind of down to root cause, what is throwing all of those off, it’s a much powerful, more powerful thing than, oh, I’m going to take this steroid to calm my eczema.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
I’m going to take this proton pump inhibitor here to suppress my reflux. I’m going to go take these thyroid meds to boost my, you know what I mean? It’s just a different, it’s a very different, It’s a root cause, functional medicine, holistic approach versus a little bit of band aids on our different organ systems.
Kevin Rolston:
It’s one thing to think about your health goals, to want more energy, better sleep, healthier hair, and it’s another to actually move towards them. What Dr. Kyber shows us is that real lasting change doesn’t come from a quick fix. It comes from taking a step back and looking at the whole picture. Your body, your environment, your habits and approaching it all with intention. But let’s be honest, when you’re in the thick of it, struggling with hair loss or health issues that feel overwhelming, it’s hard to know where to begin. That’s why we’re breaking it down into simple, practical steps you can take right now. Because no matter where you’re starting from, there’s something you can do today to move toward better health and better hair.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
I think it’s important for people to feel better as quickly as possible. That might require thyroid medication, right? Because it’s going to give you energy, it’s going to give you all the things you need to get those, all those metabolic systems running. Part of it would be changing how you’re eating. If you’re pounding gluten every day, be probably one of the first things I’d remove.
Kevin Rolston:
Okay.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Trying to eat nutrient dense foods. The next things I would probably work on would be looking at gut health.
Kevin Rolston:
Okay.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Looking at other gut infections I’ve seen people address, for example, H. Pylori. And we retest their labs a month later and their labs are in a better range and their symptoms are better. Brain fog is gone, fatigue is less. I had Someone taking a two hour nap six days a week as a mom.
Kevin Rolston:
Oh, oh.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
We addressed. And she had hair. She has hair loss. We’re getting back. She has H. Pylori. We address H. Pylori.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
She takes a half hour nap every other week. So if you think about she was sleeping 12 hours a week because she was so tired and now she sleeps half an hour every other week.
Kevin Rolston:
So that’s just those corrections.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Yeah. And she was just like, I’m a mom who’s tired. I homeschool my kids. And I’ve just been kind of told like, you’re aging, you’re getting old, when actuality it was she had underlying things that she needed to work on.
Kevin Rolston:
Right. Is this just a simple call to your doctor and you can start there and move forward?
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
I wish it was. I so wish it was. It would probably put functional medicine out of business, but we’d have better trained doctors. So the amount of time it takes to ask the right questions.
Kevin Rolston:
Yeah. Takes a long time because that’s what I’m hearing here. This sounds like this is such a broad field and I’m trying to sort out to say, okay, step one, what do I do? Because I’m hearing a lot of things and I’m trying to put my own plan together.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Yeah. I mean, I think this step one would be test, not guessing. Ask your doctor if you could check your thyroid. If we could check more than just tsh, which is what typically gets checked, we get a full thyroid panel.
Kevin Rolston:
Okay.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
With antibodies. That’d be step one to get the data. There are places where patients can self order labs. That’s out of pocket. It’s not covered by insurance. But think about when you visit your primary care. When I visit my primary care, I get about 10 minutes and it’s like power talk, like boom, boom, boom. And I’m coming in with my list and my questions and.
Kevin Rolston:
Right.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Versus someone asking you like, hey, have you traveled out of the country? You know, oh, you did. Okay. How many times? Where did you go? Did you get sick on any of those flights? Do you have any sort of like water stains? Have you ever had flooding in your home? Do you know the history of your home?
Kevin Rolston:
That’s a different experience you’re talking about.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Yeah. Do you have reflux? Do you burp? Do you fart? What are your bowel movements? Like, how many times? What’s their consistency? That’s not happening in a ten minute appointment.
Kevin Rolston:
Right.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
So just a very different relationship. And I think in the dream world, our experience with the medical system would be like, we would be held and guided. Right. Like, the doctor would ask the right questions or they don’t have enough time, and it’s not their fault. So now people feel like they need to go in asking the right questions. That’s not really how the relationship should be. Right. You don’t know what you don’t know.
Kevin Rolston:
Right, Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. I’m realizing as I listen to you talk, I don’t know anything, and I wouldn’t even know where to start. What do I ask? What do I do?
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Yeah. So I think finding a good functional medicine practitioner, someone who’s been, you know, trained in gut health and hormones, most have an environmental load, would be a good place to start. And, you know, to be honest, most of those people don’t take insurance. So it is out of pocket. And typically, people are entering that world when they’ve hit rock bottom. Like when the back of your head is all.
Kevin Rolston:
Yeah.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
You know, doesn’t have any more hair, and you’ve tried all the things, maybe you’re ready. Or if you’re taking, you know, 12 hours of naps a week, you’re ready to make a change.
Kevin Rolston:
This sounds like almost a progressive list that you go down, where you start at step one, you cross that off where you haven’t gotten the answer. You go to step two, you haven’t gotten the answer, and then you keep going until it gets a little bit more finite and dialed into what the issue might be. Is that kind of correct, Emily?
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Yeah. I think if you ask the right questions, it will really guide you in the right direction. So when you talk about environmental load, there are so many. Right. Mold, parasites, heavy metals, pesticides.
Kevin Rolston:
Almost unlimited.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Unlimited. Right. But if you ask the right questions out of that list, you might be like, I think we need to, like, hunt down this one. Let’s go after this one. Let’s see if. Right.
Kevin Rolston:
Maybe observing something that might be new to your environment, bringing that in and asking if that could be a factor.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Yeah, yeah. And a good doctor will take a good history when I talk with people. Our initial chat intake is 90 minutes.
Kevin Rolston:
Wow. Okay.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
That’s. They’ve already filled out the paperwork, and I’ve already reviewed it, and I’ve already reviewed past lab. So. Yeah, just a different experience. And it’s not that one is right or one is wrong, because not everyone has an autoimmune condition. Right. These are people who are, like, really not feeling good. And so what portion of the population.
Kevin Rolston:
Are we talking about? Who are we Addressing today. How many people out there?
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Yeah, I mean, for Hashimoto’s, in the States alone, it’s around 20 million.
Kevin Rolston:
Whoa. Okay.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Yeah, most of them are women. Some men do have Hashimoto’s, so.
Kevin Rolston:
Okay, and what about just a general thyroid condition? How many people experience some kind of issue with their thyroid in their lifetime?
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Yeah, probably higher. I’d have to look on the stats on that because we’re just talking about Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism.
Kevin Rolston:
Okay.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
The opposite end of that is hyper and overactive thyroid graves disease. Right. So, and then you’re talking about people who just have a thyroid condition. Maybe they have thyroid cancer or nodules on their thyroid or they just have a thyroid condition without the autoimmune piece. But I’d have to look on the data, on the exact numbers. But my guess is, you know, as we get exposed to more things, probably over time, more and more people will be having issues. Because think about all the plastic in our life.
Kevin Rolston:
Oh, my goodness. Yeah, I was thinking about that. I was thinking about even just the mists and the perfumes and everything else that seems to be around us. I assume that’s got effects, too.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Yeah, those are all endocrine disruptors. Those are all hormone disruptors known. There’s research like this chemical done mainly in animals and rats, disrupts their hormones. And so, you know, you spray that perfume right on the front of your neck. Right, right. It’s not like the skin isn’t absorptive. It is.
Kevin Rolston:
Right. Going right in.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
I mean, there’s research around using deet. Yeah, you can take a. Yeah, you can take a spinal tap, and like, literally within five minutes, the DEET is within the spinal fluid.
Kevin Rolston:
Wow, that’s so terrifying.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Yeah. But think about how many, like, you know, like, people are like, oh, I’m. I don’t want to get. You know, I’m going camping, I’m going hunting.
Kevin Rolston:
Right.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Getting attacked by mosquitoes, you know, so.
Kevin Rolston:
Well, they’ve always told us that’s the right thing to do, you know, and here, Emily, we’ve talked a good long time, and I feel like we haven’t even necessarily scratched the surface of everything the thyroid does. This is such an expansive thing. But to just see how many factors it has in the body and how it can contribute to hair loss and what you can do, even on your own to combat it and where you go to get help, I think is going to be very beneficial to so many people out here discovering that they had no idea what could be causing it. So I appreciate you talking to us in depth and I hope that you will come back and talk to us a little bit more because I know we’re going to have some more questions very soon.
Dr. Emily Kiberd:
Yeah, I mean my hope is that if someone is not feeling well that they just don’t accept it as this is my norm, I’m aging, this is how it is that they actually really start to hunt and really put their health first and make it a non negotiable that feeling good should be the norm and the standard.
Kevin Rolston:
At the end of the day, what Dr. Kiberd leaves us with is simple but powerful. Commit to feeling better. Not just getting by, not just masking the symptoms, but truly deeply feeling better in your body, your mind, your energy. And when you start to feel better, something else happens. You begin to look better. Not just in your hair, but in the way that you carry yourself, the way you show up in the world. Because hair loss just isn’t about hair.
Kevin Rolston:
It’s about confidence, identity, and the belief that you deserve to feel like you again. If you’ve been struggling, just know this. You are not alone and you don’t have to settle. Take that first step, whatever it looks like for you, and commit to feeling better. The rest will follow. A big thank you to Dr. Kiberd for sharing her insights and expertise on thyroid health. For more inspirational stories and words of wisdom from experts and professionals, make sure you subscribe to HairPod on your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode.
Kevin Rolston:
Thanks for listening to another episode of HairPod. Check us out at HairClub on Instagram or search HairPod on Facebook to continue. Continue the conversation. If you know someone who could benefit from hearing this episode, we would love it if you would share it with them. If you’re enjoying the show, consider leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. We also have a website. Check it out by going to podcast.hairclub.com we’re here to build people up and share real stories so people experiencing hair loss feel a little bit less alone. And when you share, review and subscribe, it helps us do just that.
Kevin Rolston:
So thank you until next time.
