by Dave Asprey
However, targeting DHT is only one way to fight off baldness. The hair follicle is a very sensitive mini-organ that requires a tremendous amount of energy from your mitochondria. You can have all the moving parts and raw materials you need, but you’re never going to manufacture hair if you don’t have the power behind that machinery to get the engines running.
In 2018 researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham turned on a mutation that caused mitochondrial dysfunction by adding the antibiotic doxycycline to the food and drinking water of mice. Just eight weeks later, the previously healthy mice developed gray and significantly thinning hair and wrinkled skin. But once the researchers stopped feeding doxycycline to the animals and their mitochondria got back to doing what they do best, the mice regained their healthy, youthful appearance within just four weeks.32
To avoid baldness, you need to look at the factors that may be causing your mitochondria to become sluggish. You already know what these are: stress, toxins accumulating in the liver, hormonal imbalances, inflammation, and of course free radicals. All of those factors downregulate the two major hormones that modulate mitochondrial activity—T3, which is a thyroid hormone, and progesterone.
First and foremost, stress messes with your thyroid hormone levels, which is a disaster for your mitochondria. When you are stressed, you begin overproducing the stress hormone cortisol. This inhibits thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), which in turn inhibits the production of another thyroid hormone called thyroxine, or T4. To use T4, the body must first convert it into the active hormone triiodothyronine, or T3, also known as the “energy hormone.”
If your body cannot effectively convert T4 to T3 or you don’t have enough T4, you convert it instead to an inactive hormone called reverse T3, or RT3. An improper T3/RT3 balance can effectively shut down the body by preventing you from producing enough energy. Many patients with symptoms of hypothyroidism appear to have normal levels of thyroid hormones. But this is just because most conventional doctors test only for TSH and maybe T4. If you have symptoms of low thyroid, including hair loss, insist on a T3/RT3 test as well. This all means the idea that stress can make your hair fall out is not an old wives’ tale. It can happen when stress causes your body to make more RT3 and less T3 and your mitochondria can’t produce enough energy.
Thyroid hormone disruption also causes hair loss, since these hormones play a major role in activating stem cells. There’s a reservoir of stem cells in the hair follicle bulge. When these stem cells get a signal from thyroid hormones, they become activated and grow into new hair follicles. If stress is messing with your thyroid hormones, this signal is never sent, compromising new hair follicle production.
Researchers have begun looking at this signal from thyroid hormones as a possible opportunity for intervention. This signaling pathway is known as Wnt. When researchers injected growth factors into the hair follicles of twenty-six men, the Wnt pathway turned on, allowing the signal from thyroid hormones to stimulate the production of new hair follicles. The men saw an increase in hair shaft thickness and density after just one injection.33 Since you can’t buy this injection (yet), the next best thing is to use a Chinese herb called Danshen that upregulates Wnt34 and helps with cardiovascular issues. So you can get your hair back and reduce your risk of one of the Four Killers.
You read earlier that I’ve been on thyroid medication since my mid-twenties. Two years ago, I attempted to go off of it. I maintained my energy thanks to all my anti-aging work, but developed a bald spot for the first time. I went back on the thyroid medication, used the interventions above, and my hair filled almost entirely back in! There is a reasonable argument that anyone over age fifty without documented high thyroid levels could benefit from trying a very low dose (⅛ to ¼ grain) of glandular thyroid medication containing both T3 and T4. Even slightly lower levels of thyroid hormones can contribute to increased fatigue and irritability and may also make it hard to lose weight. As you age, it is common to experience diminished thyroid hormone production.35 And while having enough thyroid hormones will help your hair, as you read in chapter 9, the bigger story here is that a slight thyroid dysfunction predicts your risk of heart disease and death.36
Further, high levels of RT3 and not enough T3 leads to downregulation of progesterone, which causes estrogen dominance, an aging metabolic state in which estrogen levels far outweigh progesterone levels in the body. Many hair-care products compound this problem because they contain chemicals such as phthalates, parabens, and benzophenones that mimic estrogen in the body and throw off your hormone balance even more.37 Estrogen plays a central role in regulating collagen production. With disrupted estrogen levels, you don’t make collagen efficiently, and your hair, skin, teeth, nails, and joints all suffer.
Hormonal birth control products that contain high levels of estrogen also decrease the effectiveness of progesterone. This leads to a greater conversion of testosterone to DHT and can contribute to hair loss. When pharmaceutical companies discovered this, they began adding synthetic progesterone to birth control pills to counter the side effects, but synthetic progesterone is not the same as bioidentical progesterone. The synthetic version can increase levels of sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG), which you read earlier decreases your available thyroid hormones. This brings us right back to where we started: with too little thyroid hormone and thinning hair.
Besides stress, mitochondrial damage, and imbalanced hormones, the main culprits behind hair loss are environmental toxins, which compromise liver function. This matters because it’s the liver that produces the T3 you so badly need for healthy hair growth. Glutathione, the master antioxidant, can help detoxify the liver, but first you must remove heavy metals from the body.
To maintain healthy hair, it’s obviously essential to fight off hair loss at the root. (See what I did there?) And it’s critical to make sure you aren’t using toxic personal care products that will age you and your hair more quickly. I highly recommend doing a sweep of your medicine cabinet for any products containing phthalates, parabens, and benzophenones. It will also help to clean up your diet so you avoid the hormones in conventionally raised meat and the hormone-disrupting pesticides in conventionally grown produce.
If none of that works, how about a simple massage? Getting more blood flow to your scalp keeps hair follicles alive. There are some nice handheld rechargeable head massagers available today. They cost about $40, feel incredible, and will help to keep your scalp and hair in tip-top shape. Look for the ones with four little heads that move independently. The kind that looks like a wire whisk will not have the same effect.
At the end of the day, since mitochondria drive production of new collagen and lustrous hair, anything you do to improve your mitochondrial function will also help you look younger. This is a win-win that will hopefully keep you looking and feeling like a true Super Human for as long as you desire.
* * *
Bottom Line
Want to heal like a deity? Do these things right now:
For Skin
•Supplement with grass-fed or pastured collagen protein—at least 10 grams per day. It’s available in unflavored protein powder, smoothie mix, ready-to-drink collagen Bulletproof Coffee, and collagen protein bars. You can also make bone broth if you don’t like collagen protein.
•Eat more foods containing polyphenols and antioxidants: vegetables, coffee, tea, and chocolate. You can get skin benefits from vitamin C by eating vitamin C–rich foods, taking a vitamin C supplement, and/or applying a vitamin C serum topically.
•There is good science behind the skin benefits of cryotherapy, microneedling, and products containing retinol, copper peptides, and methylene blue.
•As you read earlier, red and yellow light therapy both have profound skin and hair benefits. See chapter 5 for a refresher. If you have significant skin damage or scarring, look into laser resurfacing.
For Hair
•Stop using chemical-laden personal care products and switch to all-natura
l versions. Throw out anything containing phthalates, parabens, and benzophenones. And if you are a woman, consider alternatives to hormonal birth control.
•To avoid grays, ramp up your catalase production by taking antioxidants like ashwagandha, curcumin, saw palmetto, and vitamin E.
•For baldness, try a DHT-blocking shampoo instead of prescription meds that have unwanted side effects.
•Deal with your stress, already! Seriously. If the threat of the Four Killers wasn’t enough, maybe avoiding baldness will finally motivate you. This is not optional.
•If you are balding prematurely, get your thyroid levels tested by a knowledgeable anti-aging doctor, and make sure to check your levels of T3/RT3.
•To stimulate blood flow to the scalp, get a head massage or purchase an at-home massager.
* * *
14
HACK YOUR LONGEVITY LIKE A RUSSIAN
The use of performance-enhancing drugs is a touchy subject. Many people consider it cheating, and the most famous varieties of these drugs—like steroids—can be seriously dangerous. But there are some classes of these drugs that can do a lot for your longevity as well as for your performance right now. I have done the research and carefully considered exactly which substances I want to put into my body. And I’ll let you know when I’m a hundred and eighty if it was worth it. So far I’m still alive and have been able to enjoy some pretty remarkable benefits without suffering from any major negative side effects.
PEPTIDES
Most, but not all, of these new substances come from peptides, which are compounds consisting of two or more amino acids linked in a chain. It’s easiest to think of amino acids as letters. When grouped together in the right formation, they make words. These words are peptides. And like words, your body uses them to communicate with itself. When you combine several peptides, you have a polypeptide, which is a part of a protein and functions like a sentence. And a whole protein, like collagen, is essentially an entire paragraph. It consists of multiple letters strung together in just the right order to convey a clear message. In 1972, the year I was born, scientists discovered some of the many peptides that communicate messages to the body. For example, some tell the body to build muscle. Others say to enhance glucose metabolism or mitochondrial function.
Earlier you read about Epitalon, a peptide that strengthens telomeres, and GHK, or copper peptides. These are powerful substances. There are also bioregulator peptides that are targeted to keep specific organ systems young, and those with incredible healing powers. Unfortunately, we don’t have the same number of double-blind placebo studies backing these compounds as we do for most drugs. We probably never will, but there is sound science behind all of it, and it’s been in use for more than a decade. You might want to wait for more studies. But if you’re going to negotiate with death, you have to weigh the evidence and risk against the potential rewards. We already know what will happen if you don’t try anything new: You’ll get old and die, most often after spending your last decade or two in painful decline. I’m willing to gamble, with admittedly high stakes, if it means potentially cheating death, even for a little while, and maybe becoming Super Human along the way.
BIOREGULATOR PEPTIDES
A great deal of research into bioregulator peptides has come from the gerontology labs of Vladimir Khavinson, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 1987, he has been discovering which bioregulator peptides in young animals keep different organ systems young. He specifically focuses on how to prevent the loss of protein in critical organ systems. Most of these bioregulator peptides are extracted from animals and are called cytomaxes, but there’s nothing stopping scientists from synthesizing similar peptides from scratch.
Synthesized bioregulators are called cytogens. They usually work quickly and are quite affordable—about $60 for a month’s supply. You take them only every few months. The most interesting bioregulator peptides are the ones that can help to stop the Four Killers. Crystagen is designed to restore immune function, which can help with all Four Killers; Vesugen is meant to improve blood vessel protein synthesis; Pinealon is for better protein synthesis in the brain. There are dozens of others.
Being a professional biohacker, in 2017 I bought every single bioregulator peptide there is and used them at high doses for sixty days. Some effects were readily apparent—the impact of the male hormone formula was very noticeable—but it’s harder to know for sure if your vascular system is synthesizing protein better. Given the strength of the research on these and the relatively low cost, I’ll be doing one course of bioregulators per year. I would inject them if injectables were available, but right now they come as capsules.
HEALING PEPTIDES
I’ve been experimenting with these for the past six years—here are the ones that have given me the best results.
TB500
Also known as thymosin beta-4, this peptide was quite effective for me. It is the peptide made by the thymus gland, which produces T cells and is an important part of your immune response. As you age and gain more senescent T cells, your thymus gland function normally decreases. This is one big reason your immune response usually weakens with age.
I’ve known that my thymus gland was trashed since the nineties. Since then, many of the functional medicine doctors I’ve visited recommended taking thymic protein, which is meant to boost thymus gland function, but I never felt a difference when I took it. TB500 was a different story. Research shows that it promotes wound healing and decrease inflammation,1 helps you regenerate blood vessels,2 and increases stamina. Following what you’ve learned so far, reducing inflammation helps you age better, and regenerating blood vessels is important to avoid cardiovascular disease.
The Russians have known that this stuff prolongs human life since 2003, when they studied the effects on 266 older people in a trial that lasted six to eight years. The researchers came to the conclusion that these peptides are promising anti-aging medicines that effectively treat diabetes, gastritis, and gastric ulcers; prevent cancer; treat infertility in men and women; and normalize immune system function.3 Not bad.
In 2013 I ordered vials of TB500 online, and it arrived in a powdered form. Knowing that it works best via injection, I got a vial of sterile water, pulled some water out, and injected it into the powder, transforming it into a liquid. Then I wet my arm with an alcohol wipe and used an insulin syringe to inject myself with 5 mg. I did this once or twice a week.
This was not the first time I injected myself. Back in the late nineties, when I found out I had an issue with vitamin B12, I couldn’t afford to go to a doctor for the injections. So I bought needles from eBay and a tray of vitamin B12 injectables from a body building site. I had no idea what I was doing. This was before we had YouTube videos or I was married to a doctor. I did as much research as I could, washed my hands, and got to work. I cracked open the glass ampoule and used an inch-long needle to draw up a bright red fluid. Then I pulled my pants down, figuring I would inject it into my thigh muscle.
I knew what I needed to do, but I still sat there for almost an hour just staring at the needle. Every time I went to move the needle, my hand just stopped. It was nearly impossible to override my body’s instinctive desire to not have that needle penetrate my skin! It took a ridiculously long time, but I finally did it. To my amazement, the needle slid in without pain or resistance. And once I had done it the first time, I never had a problem injecting myself again.
In situations like this, the body sends a message to your brain that you’re going to die. It’s very difficult to ignore that message, even though your brain knows better. The very act of overriding that fear response and choosing the brain over the body is incredibly empowering.
Years later, I spoke at a Tony Robbins event where there was a hot coal walk. The very point of this exercise is to override the body’s fear response and walk over the hot coals your body fears but that you know on a cognitive level will not kill you. After injecting myself so many times and usin
g neurofeedback to pare down my fear response even more, I was able to walk right up to the coals and keep going.
By the way, your body is not entirely wrong. Needles can be dangerous, and messing around with injections can actually kill you if you make a mistake. It’s better to find a doctor who will do it for you.
BPC157—HEAL LIKE WOLVERINE
No, in this rare instance, BPC does not stand for Bulletproof Coffee! This is another powerful peptide that reduces inflammation and promotes rapid healing.
Ten years ago, I had a four-day-a-week yoga practice that I since let slide after having kids and doubling down on Bulletproof. I recently went back, and at my first class I kicked back from an arm balance called crow pose into plank pose, which is like the top of a push-up position. This is an advanced trick that I hadn’t done in years, and I was pleased that I could still do it. When my feet landed, though, I jammed my toe hard enough that I chipped a small fragment of bone. This relatively minor injury continued to hurt for months because there was a loose fragment of bone in my toe that kept reinjuring the surrounding tissue.
I ordered the peptide BPC157 and injected it into my toe. Studies show that it promotes tendon and ligament healing4 and even helps rabbits heal segmented bone defects.5 It also heals the gut lining6 and repairs damage stemming from irritable bowel disease.7 The toe recovered quickly after a few injections and some dry needling to break up scarring. Tons of athletes and biohackers are using this stuff to help nagging injuries heal, and it’s far cheaper than stem cell treatments.
Aside from helping you heal injuries like Wolverine, BPC157 can do wonderful things for your gut health. For gastric healing, just mix it into sterile water as if you were going to inject it, but place the same dose under your tongue and swallow it, instead. Reports of Crohn’s disease and IBS quietly going away after doing this are not rare.
