Top 5 HairPod Moments of 2024

Steve Barth [00:00:02]:
Losing hair has a very powerful emotional effect on our personality because we can’t control it, right? But yet we’re left with this real discontent or this real feeling of not looking our best, which means that we’re not always feeling our best. And it’s so important in today’s world that’s so competitive to have that level of confidence.

Kevin Rolston [00:00:37]:
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 are saying goodbye to 2024 by looking back at my five favorite hairpod moments from the past year. I came into hosting the Hairpod as somebody who themselves have been searching for hair solutions for the last 25 years. But what I’ve learned in the last year completely eclipsed all the last 25 years combined. I’m hoping you’ve learned something as well, and I look forward to a whole new year with a lot of other great discussions. Now, these clips aren’t in any particular order.

Kevin Rolston [00:01:30]:
The first clip, and I think maybe the most important, the first clip is from my interview with Steve Barth. He’s one of the founding fathers of HairClub. Steve invented HairClub’s patented hair and scalp analysis technology called TrichoView. And I got to ask him all about it on episode 23, “The Creation of TrichoView”. It was definitely one of my favorite episodes. Not only did I learn about the evolution of HairClub, but I learned a lot about hair loss itself.

Steve Barth [00:02:01]:
You know, HairClub, really, to me, one of the big distinctions is we try to take a very individualized, personalized, and customized approach. So, you know, it’s very possible that a non surgical solution would be terrific for you or for me, but it may not be right for the next guy. And the purpose of tricovue was for us to be able to, again, you know, measure certain properties and characteristics of the hair and scalp and make a determination whether we were at a phase of hair loss that could benefit from hair and scalp therapy. And before you go ahead and take that step or you decide to take the option of a non surgical solution. So we became overnight a multiple solution provider and the only multiple solution provider at that time in the country. And I think that it just changed us completely. And I don’t think a lot of people that Think of Hair Club in the early days with Ze Sperling. They don’t really know what HairClub is about today and where it’s going and what the vision of the future is.

Kevin Rolston [00:03:09]:
Right. How many years are you in on Hair Club before Trico View comes into fruition?

Steve Barth [00:03:14]:
Me personally?

Kevin Rolston [00:03:15]:
Yeah. How long did it take for you guys to get to that level of business?

Steve Barth [00:03:19]:
I’d say about 25 years.

Kevin Rolston [00:03:20]:
Okay.

Steve Barth [00:03:21]:
Yeah. And maybe even a little longer. I had conceived of this from another experience I had in business where we were designing a personalized, individualized fitness program. It was way ahead of its time. It was ahead of AI. I was actually, you know, I became an investor in this software development, which was meant to take in information about your fitness health, about your habits, about your fitness goals and objectives. And then it was able to sort of generate from that a completely personalized, individualized and customized fitness and nutritional program and wellness program.

Kevin Rolston [00:04:04]:
Right. It was maybe seeing the physical and how that’s affected by your diet, your exercise, your sleep. Are you starting to see correlations and patterns where it’s affecting hair loss and the levels of that as well?

Steve Barth [00:04:15]:
Well, I think what that sort of brought to light for me is that HairClub, again, could distinguish itself by not only looking at the physiology of hair loss and the physical effects of hair loss, but also paying equal attention to the psychodynamic and the psychology of hair loss. So that’s really. I got a lot of that thinking from an investment I made years ago into this what we call fitness expert program, which was designed, actually, believe it or not, by my now cfo. I met him originally. He’s an MIT computer engineer, and he designed this. He was very entrepreneurial, and he designed this program, but it was way ahead of its time. This is before E-commerce. This is before a lot of things.

Steve Barth [00:05:06]:
And I became an investor. And I was also really intrigued by that because I was obviously very heavily involved with Hair Club at the time. And I said to myself, wouldn’t this be cool if we could take this concept and use it as a way of gaining deeper insight into the needs of a Hair Club buyer and being able to also pay as much attention to the psychology and philosophy of a buyer as is the physiology of the buyer? And that’s what Trico View attempted to do. That’s what it was conceived to do.

Kevin Rolston [00:05:42]:
It’s putting it all together.

Steve Barth [00:05:43]:
Putting it all together so that we’d be able to generate a really highly personalized, individualized and customized treatment plan.

Kevin Rolston [00:05:48]:
So when a person goes into HairClub, they’re going to have a different experience than anybody because they’re going to have their own unique set of circumstances on every different category that you have.

Steve Barth [00:05:58]:
Yeah, I’d certainly like to think so. And TrichoView is that sort of gateway into that because TrichoView gives that consultant the ability to gain a lot of information that he or she wouldn’t have if they didn’t have the use of that Tricle View diagnostic system. And it’s, it’s. So we set up a record. Once that’s done in consultation, I mean there’s no charge for that. It’s all part of the interview intake so that we could be, you know, better understand your needs. We then continue to keep these Trichoview records. So we continue to expose people particularly that are gravitating towards the whole hair and scalp therapy program to, we continue to load up those records with progress reports and profile photographs and things like that.

Steve Barth [00:06:48]:
Record keeping that is able to show tangibly the progress that somebody can make. But this also had its application, TrichoView, to even our non-surgical solution. Because by being able to gain deeper insight into the hair, we gain a deeper ability to be able to go out and get the hair that we need so that we’re able to make the non-surgical option so successful. So it has multiple ramifications.

Kevin Rolston [00:07:21]:
It’s not only one of my favorite clips, it’s one of my favorite guests. And if you haven’t, I recommend you listen to the entire conversation we had. This second clip I would say is probably the most mind blowing thing that I learned this entire year hosting the HairPod.

Kevin Rolston [00:07:41]:
Now, I was on a pill called finasteride.

Dr. Angela Phipps [00:07:43]:
That’s the pill for me.

Kevin Rolston [00:07:44]:
Okay.

Kevin Rolston [00:07:45]:
That’s what I was curious.

Kevin Rolston [00:07:46]:
Now what is the success rate on that? Because I was on it for probably 10 years and it significantly slowed my hair loss. But I just felt even after a decade that I still was losing hair.

Kevin Rolston [00:07:58]:
So for me, I don’t feel like.

Kevin Rolston [00:07:59]:
It was 100% effective. What seems to be the success rate on using something like finasteride?

Dr. Angela Phipps [00:08:04]:
So in my patient population I see 90% success rate with finasteride.

Kevin Rolston [00:08:09]:
Cool.

Kevin Rolston [00:08:10]:
So I’m the 10% that it does.

Dr. Angela Phipps [00:08:11]:
You are the 10%?

Kevin Rolston [00:08:12]:
Yes.

Dr. Angela Phipps [00:08:13]:
What can sometimes happen because of that is, is that there’s two different enzymes that convert testosterone to dht. And so the finasteride only blocks one of those enzymes. But for the majority of people, having that one enzyme is it blocked is enough to stop their hair loss. For some individuals we have to Go in and give you another medication called dutasteride, which can block both of the enzymes, and that can sometimes then take care of that extra 10% that you might be, you know, hair loss that you might be having.

Kevin Rolston [00:08:44]:
I’ve never heard of that. So if you are taking both of those, would that without a doubt shut down 100% or.

Dr. Angela Phipps [00:08:50]:
Well, you don’t need to take both because the finasteride blocks one, but the dutasteride blocks both at the same time. So you just need to be on the dutasteride. But the half life of that medication is a little bit longer and potentially side effects could be a little bit more severe if you got any with that medication. So I always start all my male patients out on the finasteride, how effective that is, and then if they still feel like they’re having continued loss or weakening effect of the medication over years, I’ll switch them to the dutasteride and see how that works.

Kevin Rolston [00:09:20]:
Okay, so talking to somebody like me, the damage is done and there’s no turning back the clock, Is that correct?

Dr. Angela Phipps [00:09:26]:
Correct. But we can help to prevent it from continuing to get, you know, worse. So did you stop your finasteride?

Kevin Rolston [00:09:33]:
I did.

Dr. Angela Phipps [00:09:34]:
Wrong answer. Because now even though you thought you were having some loss, you were still blocking. In my opinion, 70% of you know of it. So you’re still having maybe 30% loss, but 30% is a whole lot better than a hundred percent. So I would recommend at least going back on the finasteride or switching and going on the dutasteride because you will continue to have more hair loss if you’re not on a DHT blocker.

Kevin Rolston [00:10:00]:
Where were you 10 years ago, doctor?

Dr. Angela Phipps [00:10:03]:
That’s what all my patients say is, I wish I would have known this sooner.

Kevin Rolston [00:10:11]:
Now, I was no stranger to finasteride because I’d done it for about 15 to 20 years, and it did work. It really slowed down my hair loss. And I was hoping it was going to be my permanent solution. But I started to notice 10 plus years in, I was still losing hair at a that I eventually was going to have to do something else. But what I didn’t know that I learned right here on the hairpod, was that I really needed something called dutasteride. And this is where it all happened. A conversation I had with Dr. Phipps on episode 34, male and female pattern hair loss.

Kevin Rolston [00:10:45]:
Let me tell you, that clip is a complete game changer because like I said, finasteride really did slow down my hair loss. But I’M in that portion where I needed something else. Dutasteride. If I knew then what I know now, my whole hair loss experience would be radically different. So, look, if you’re like me and you are where I was 15 to 20 years ago, this could be a complete game changer for you. Another big revelation I had this last year hosting the Hairpod was just how much you can control your own hair loss by your diet. I never knew that it could play such a big role in how much hair you’re losing and how fast. And I had this revelation back in episode 24 with UK based trichologist Eva Proudman.

Kevin Rolston [00:11:30]:
It’s called Ask A Trichologist what is Causing My Hair Loss.

Eva Proudman [00:11:40]:
The first thing the hair looks for is protein and every day it says to the body, can I have a quarter of whatever you having? Now, the problem is, if you don’t have enough protein, it manages every single essential cell. And our very clever bodies will take all of that for the essential cells and your hair can end up with nothing from its nutrition. And not all proteins are equal. So let me give you some examples. So if you were having an egg for breakfast, you’d get about 8 grams of protein out of that egg. And it’s what we call a complete protein. It’s got everything in it that you could possibly want. If you decided that you would have just toast.

Eva Proudman [00:12:23]:
You won’t really get any protein because there isn’t any in there. And it won’t give you the things that build protein, the amino acids. And it’s those amino acids we need. So the sort of best foods to eat are your awful red meat, eggs, chicken, fish, turkey. All of those things are fantastic. Most of them are complete. And when I say complete, it’s about the amino acids. So our bodies use 23 every day and we can make all of them except for eight.

Eva Proudman [00:12:54]:
They’re called the eight essential. And you can only get them from complete proteins and diet. Again, the hair needs all eight. It would do. It’s complicated. So those sort of foods, I’ve just said, great, get those in your diet every day. Try to have protein at each meal. Try to have it in the morning, at lunchtime, in the evening.

Eva Proudman [00:13:15]:
The hair likes that consistency. Keep it well fed. Dairy is good to include. And then you come down to more sort of plant based. Your nuts, your beans, your leaves, they do have proteins in there, but it’s volume. So 100 grams of chicken, about 25 grams of protein, 100 grams of chickpeas, 8 grams of protein. So you can see when you’re advising somebody, you need to give them some ideas and some guidance on what to choose. Seeds shouldn’t be overlooked.

Eva Proudman [00:13:47]:
Things like sesame seeds, chia seeds, sunflower seeds. On average, a teaspoon of those added to a salad or into a yogurt or onto a cereal. 5 grams of protein. So you can sort of really work to choose the foods you like, but to make sure you get enough of them in the right proportions, that’s the best thing I can suggest for your hair. And then you plate, so make protein your biggest portion. Then you brightly colored fruit, vegetables, little bit of carbs, little bit of good fats. That generally is a balanced diet. And the hair will be happy with that.

Eva Proudman [00:14:24]:
So will your body.

Kevin Rolston [00:14:26]:
Would a trichologist sit down and give.

Kevin Rolston [00:14:28]:
You a diet that is good for hair health?

Eva Proudman [00:14:31]:
We do, we advise on, on what to try and include, what the best foods are, what they’ve got in them. We do study nutrition as part of our qualification. So we’re not nutritionist, as in, you come to us because your gut doesn’t work at all. But we know what foods are good for you, what they’ve got in them, how the gut works with it, how you absorb what they give. And so, yes, in my clinic, I have a reference sheet for proteins. There’s lots of things on there and they’ve all counted to make it easy for my patients to be able to go and say, I’m going to have an egg. I know an average egg’s about 8 grams of protein, so I know I’ve got another 42 to get in that day.

Kevin Rolston [00:15:14]:
What are we consuming that would be.

Kevin Rolston [00:15:16]:
Bad for our hair health?

Kevin Rolston [00:15:17]:
Whether it be foods or other substances.

Kevin Rolston [00:15:20]:
We choose to put in our body.

Eva Proudman [00:15:21]:
Yeah. So bad things are sort of processed foods. So when foods are processed and fast foods, we tend to use oils in there that are not potentially friendly. They can affect cholesterol and those sorts of things. We tend to put a lot more salt and sugar in. And if you have too much salt, it can build up around the follicle, it can cause the hair to shed. You can get a sodium build up. Too much sugar can imbalance what the body’s trying to do.

Eva Proudman [00:15:50]:
So you want to try and be as much as you can a cook from scratch, use fresh ingredients, type of person, the odd takeaway, the odd hamburger, the odd kebab, no big deal. But if that’s what your diet consists of, a, your body’s not going to be great, but your hair certainly isn’t, because Those foods just don’t give you what you need to get all of those processes working most effectively.

Kevin Rolston [00:16:22]:
So I think what you’re starting to see, just as we get our first three clips down, is that you are learning some revolutionary things that if you listen to no other HairPod this entire year, this might be able to solve so many people’s problems. This might be all you need. Now in clip number four, I love getting to talk with Joey Logano, not only because he is a legend behind the wheel in NASCAR, but also because he has what I have, a hair system. And look, when I got my hair system, one of my biggest worries was, will this thing stay on? So I did a whole series where I rode around at a convertible. I even stepped into a hurricane simulation machine and stepped into a Category 2 hurricane. My hair system, it stayed on. But I gotta tell you, I’ve never driven in a hot stock car. And that’s why I want to talk to Joey Logano about his own concerns and just how solid his hair system is at staying on.

Kevin Rolston [00:17:13]:
And this is all the way back in episode one. Alopecia doesn’t slow me down.

Joey Logano [00:17:22]:
Only in the beginning, I was nervous. Now I’m not. I’m not now because I feel very confident in everything now. But at first, when things are new, you’re like, I don’t know. Like, I don’t know about this Jet Ski. You know what I mean? I don’t know where I’m at with stuff. But you honestly kind of figure out your way your things go and everything, and you get confident and comfortable in what you got and it’s fine. But I’m telling you, and I asked a lot of questions before to a lot of people, I’m like, so that’s fine.

Joey Logano [00:17:53]:
So that you can. And they look at you like you’re an idiot. Like, yeah, you can live your normal life. What are you talking about? And I’m like, okay, well, I just wanted to ask, like, I don’t know. And it took. I mean, I’m being honest, it took a month or so before you, like, you get used to, for one, seeing yourself with hair, right? You look in the mirror and you’re like, oh, who’s that guy? Right? Like, it takes a second to get used to it, for one. And then also how to live with it. Just the way you live your life, right? Like all that stuff, like you’re concerned it’s going to change and do also, but it really just.

Joey Logano [00:18:24]:
It’s not a big deal.

Kevin Rolston [00:18:25]:
What is the temperature like for You. And how does the hair feel?

Kevin Rolston [00:18:28]:
Because you got a helmet on, you’re in a car. I mean, I know I’m in south Florida. So when you come to a Miami homestead, the temperatures in that car have got to be absolutely insane. So how breathable is your hair and what does it feel like when you’re in those extreme temperatures?

Joey Logano [00:18:44]:
I wouldn’t even know. Yeah, wouldn’t even know.

Kevin Rolston [00:18:46]:
Okay.

Joey Logano [00:18:47]:
Just wouldn’t like, honestly, like from you think, the conditions that, that I am in inside a race car, it’s 30 degrees warmer than the outside air temp. So when you have a 90 degree day, it’s 120 degrees in the car and we just. Shoot. We just raced in Texas. It was a hundred degrees outside, it was over 130 in the car.

Kevin Rolston [00:19:05]:
Wow. Nothing.

Joey Logano [00:19:06]:
I get right out and walk away. I don’t think twice about. I got other things to worry about when I’m in the race car. If hair is one of them, I don’t want that distraction. I wouldn’t want the distraction. It’s not worth it to me as a competitor. This is like, I wouldn’t even know. You know, I get out, I walk out.

Joey Logano [00:19:23]:
Right. Like, all I do now is I fix my hair a little bit before I get out of the car because I actually have.

Kevin Rolston [00:19:27]:
Yeah.

Joey Logano [00:19:27]:
You know what I mean? Like, that’s the only. That’s different.

Kevin Rolston [00:19:36]:
So if you can put on a helmet and sit in a car that is well over 100 degrees, sweating like they sweat, take that helmet off on national TV and I have any concerns, then I would say a hair system is going to be rock solid and stay on for about anybody out there. It really is just a part of you. And I chose clip number five here because I think this is going to benefit the largest amount of people out there listening to the hairpod right now. Now, I tried laser therapy. It was effective, but it wasn’t the only solution that was going to work for me. But for a lot of people, this is it. This is all you need. And its effectiveness is wide ranging.

Kevin Rolston [00:20:15]:
That’s what I learned when I talked to Dr. Phipps in episode 42. Laser hair therapy benefits. What exactly is laser therapy and how does it work at a scientific level?

Dr. Angela Phipps [00:20:32]:
So it’s actually what I like to call low level light therapy. So light wavelengths can penetrate different depths of tissues. And so they use blue light for certain skin conditions. There’s green light, there’s purple lights, and the red light that we use in the either LED or in what they call laser therapy. Is a particular wavelength that will penetrate the skin to reach the level of where the hair follicle root or cells are located. And what it does is that photo biochemically stimulates those hair follicle cells to function at a higher energy capacity. And if your hair follicle cells are functioning at a higher energy capacity, number one, they live longer. Which we want to fight the effects of aging.

Dr. Angela Phipps [00:21:21]:
So I highly recommend it for anybody over the age of 40, really, just to help prevent the hair follicle width or diameter from shrinking at the current aging rate that it is. And then number two, it helps to allow the cells to produce a hair shaft that can be as thick as possible. And a thicker hair shaft covers more scalp surface area than a skinny hair shaft. Now, this light therapy is not magic. It’s not going to regrow a new hair follicle that you don’t have. So a lot of times on these social media websites or on the Internet or on tv, they make people think or consumers think that they’re going to buy this magic helmet hat comb device and it’s going to grow back all their hair. And that’s misleading because what it does is it can only stimulate the hair follicle cells that are currently in your head. Now, where they can get away with saying it can stimulate or generate regrowth is sometimes you have hair follicle cells that are in follicles that are alive.

Dr. Angela Phipps [00:22:21]:
They’re just so weak that they can’t make a hair that is actually strong enough to exit the skin of the scalp. So with this photobiomodulation with the light therapy, it can maybe strengthen those cells so that the hair that it is still capable of producing can actually exit the scalp so that you can now see it.

Dr. Angela Phipps [00:22:36]:
So you do see regrowth of hair.

Dr. Angela Phipps [00:22:38]:
Shafts, but it’s not growing a brand new hair follicle. And if that hair follicle is dead and gone and the cells are dead, you can’t read alive it with light therapy or with any therapy actually.

Kevin Rolston [00:22:50]:
So when it’s gone, it’s gone.

Dr. Angela Phipps [00:22:51]:
When it’s gone, it’s gone. And a lot of people think light therapy is hocus pocus because when you apply these devices to your scalp, it’s not hot, it’s not cold, it doesn’t jiggle, it doesn’t wiggle, it’s not doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t feel good. And you just think, I’m just sitting here with this light on my head and it’s not doing anything. But that’s not true. It is doing something if it’s at the right wavelength that is penetrating the skin and stimulating the cells. And I explain it to my patients like this. If you go out into the sun, the wavelength of the UV rays of the sun will penetrate your skin and stimulate melanocytes or pigment producing cells in the skin and you’ll get a tan or it produce color. Did you feel it? No.

Dr. Angela Phipps [00:23:28]:
Did it happen? Yes. And then if you want to keep that stimulation to continue to produce the pigment, you go back out into the sun every day to restimulate those pigment producing cells with the UV rays of the sun and you keep your tan. If you stop going back out into the sun, the pigment producing cells stop producing the pigment and the tan goes away. So the same thing with a low level light therapy. This needs to be used on a daily basis to keep the hair follicle cells stimulated, to keep them at the energy capacity that allows them to have their longest life and produce the thickest hairs possible. So it is a daily therapy and it does do what it’s supposed to do, but it’s not going to be something that’s going to grow a full head of hair, but it is going to be part of a maintenance therapy that will, in the long run, help your hair follicle cells immensely.

Kevin Rolston [00:24:18]:
Look, you just got clips of five of my favorite moments from the last year on the Hairpod. But each one of these episodes is worth listening to the whole thing all by itself. And that’s why we provided links to all the above episodes in our show notes. Just click on the link and listen to each and every single one up. I hope you’ve enjoyed being on this hair journey as much as I have over the year 2024. And I hope you’re going to stay with us. And I can’t wait to find out what we learned in 2025. We have so many great guests lined up and so many important conversations that we need to have.

Kevin Rolston [00:24:49]:
But we don’t have these conversations if you’re not here. So if you took any time at all in the last year or whenever to listen to the Hairpod, thank you so much. We’re nothing without you guys. Have a happy new year and we’ll see you back here in 2025. Thanks again for listening to another episode of Hairpod. Check us out at Hair Club on Instagram or search HairPod on Facebook to 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.

Kevin Rolston [00:25:22]:
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. So thank you until next time.