Juan Ricardo Pérez-Escamilla tells Professor Thomas Seager he is the first person to regrow hair from a bald scalp without the benefit of medication, but Seager offers an explanation that might apply to many people. He speculates that Pérez-Escamilla may have suffered from a thyroid disorder that was causing hair loss. If that's the case, then a program of deliberate cold exposure would recruit brown fat to the body, convert inactive thyroid hormone to the active form, and correct irregular thyroid function.Pérez-Escamilla offers some evidence to support this thesis, describing the way the Adam's Apple in his neck became more visible after he adopted a practice of taking cold showers, suggesting that an inflamed thyroid was obscuring his Adam's Apple until the inflammation was resolved by cold.Although dermatologists will sometimes suggest that male baldness is related to elevated levels of the sex hormone DHT in the bloodstream, Seager offers an alternative explanation. He describes the necessity of exposing the scalp to a healthy light environment that includes ultraviolet to stimulate melanin production in the skin, and shady forest light (green and red/near infrared) to energize that melanin.

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

Transcript

Related