Hair Longevity & Precision Scalp Care with Dr. Jessica Weiser and KeraFactor™

0:02Hey guys, welcome back to Skin Anarchy. Today we're diving into the topic that I think a lot of us are always wondering about and it never gets enough attention which is the scalp. We always talk about skin health, aging, wrinkles when it comes to facial skin, but when it comes to where your hair actually grows out of, the hair that we take care of on the routine, the scalp, we never get to discuss that. So joining us today is someone who is truly bridging the gap between dermatologic science and true real-world innovations, Dr. Jessica Weiser. She's a board-certified dermatologist and founder of Weiser Skin MD.

0:35Welcome, Dr. Weiser. I'm so excited to host you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here and finally get to address the scalp and all the attention that it really deserves. I think that we really don't think of it enough as its own sort of skin component. Yeah, no, we really don't. And I'm excited to actually dive in and unpack the science behind CuraFactor and the CuraFlex Duo system because it's a wonderful set of products and I can't wait for our audience to discover them, but I want to actually start with you telling us a little bit about yourself. Walk us down memory lane, if you don't mind, and give us a background on what got you into dermatology and all the good stuff.

1:11So I am originally Canadian born and has a background in biochemistry and economics. I did my undergraduate training at the University of Pennsylvania. I did medical school at the Montefiore Einstein Medical Center up in the Bronx in New York. And then I trained in dermatology at Columbia University, and I'm on faculty there as well. And I really became interested in dermatology because because I felt that the skin was really this very interesting portal to what was happening inside the body. So much of what happens internally has external manifestations, and I think that's often overlooked. And really understanding the skin and how it works as its own organ system I think is really crucial to the understanding of both the physiologic function of the skin when it's normal and when it's healthy, and then also to the pathologic function of the skin.

2:02And so I love that interplay of inside and outside. Since practicing dermatology, I've been 15 years out of my residency training program. What I have really decided as my focus and my specialty is how to optimize skin and both hair and nails as components of the skin organ system. And so my practice is very largely energy-based devices and lasers and really working on restoration as opposed to enhancement or changing. Interesting. Yeah, that's very interesting to me, this area of scalp health. I really want to get us started with the basics. And people often forget that scalp is actually skin.

2:42We never really discuss it in that context. Why is the scalp so important when we talk about overall hair health? So the scalp is really its own actual skin ecosystem. It has all of the different components that we have on the skin as well, but then we have this really dense hair follicle network. And so the scalp is really thicker skin, more vascular skin, and more glandular skin. Within that ecosystem, we have the scalp microbiome, which is really a community of microorganisms containing different bacteria and yeast predominantly. And the function of those healthy bacteria and yeast is really to protect the scalp against pathogens or disease-causing bacteria and yeast.

3:23This microbiome also helps us regulate our sebum or sort of our oil production. And it also helps to support a healthy barrier function so that we're not getting irritation and cracking and dryness. The really rich vascular network of the scalp is also quite interesting because it brings oxygen and glucose or sugar molecules and nutrients. And these nutrients really help to support hair growth by maintaining a really excellent follicle sort of metabolic environment. Circulation also helps us regulate temperature. And the circulation is what brings our immune cells to and from really every part of the body.

4:02But that surveillance, that immune surveillance of the scalp is another really important component of that sort of microbiome. And then sebum balance. So sebum is the oil that we have on the skin. And because we have such dense hair follicle network on the scalp, we have a lot of sebum there as well. And this is really helpful for lubrication and to help us create a more water-resistant barrier. But these lipids help us nourish our healthy bacteria. and they help maintain an antioxidant, anti-inflammatory environment. If we have too much sebum, we can run into problems. And if we have too little sebum, we can run into problems.

4:37So all of these components really help us maintain a healthy environment in which the hair really deserves and needs to grow properly and healthfully. It's really fascinating. And I love how you framed it as an ecosystem. That is something that I think is such an accurate way to describe biology and just how physiology functions. I just want to ask, what are some of the earliest or most common signs that you see when your scalp isn't functioning optimally before patients even realize that there's an issue going on? So I think that probably the first thing that happens is we start to develop too much inflammation.

5:13And so inflammation, or we typically say we want to have a little bit of inflammation to act as a healthy immune system. But when we get too much inflammation, we can start to experience a little bit of itching or a little bit of scalp tenderness. And those would be signs and symptoms if you had dry skin on your body that you would feel similar symptoms. And that early sort of flaking, dryness, sensitivity are the first things that we notice. As that inflammation worsens, sometimes we can notice either a slowing in hair growth or actually increased shed or hair loss as well. And so our goal is really to try and maintain a much more balanced microbial diversity and to sort of balance the sebum production with the scalp needs as well to try and prevent that sort of tipping over the edge into more clinical inflammation as opposed to that very healthy microinflammation that we like to see in the scalp.

6:04Now, do you find that patients pay more attention to skin care than actual scalp care? Why do you think that disconnect exists if you do think that way? I do think that we all think that way, right? I think even as dermatologists, people come in and all they want to do is talk about a skincare regimen. And only if somebody mentions a problem with their scalp, do we really go, oh, we should really identify scalp issues here as well. And I think hair loss has become such a big concern that we're identifying a lot more scalp issues, we're treating a lot more scalp issues, but I don't think that was the intuitive way that we were all trained.

6:37And so I really do believe that patients do pay so much more attention. I also think that there is a massive number of products available for skin health. We talk about sensitive skin, we talk about oily skin, we talk about dry skin, we talk about anti-aging of the skin. We don't really talk about these issues with the scalp, and they exist in exactly the same way. And so I do think that the idea of proper actives, proper routine and regimen, how to cleanse, how often to cleanse, what kind of cleanser for the scalp is so important, just like it is with the face. We just don't talk about it quite as much.

7:14And I think it's really important to delve deeper into that. I could not agree more. Like, honestly, I don't understand why there isn't as much conversation because also even when it comes to something like UV, we never talk about UV's impact on the scalp, even though it's like very susceptible. So I couldn't agree with you more. I'm really curious, like, how do you see these ingredients, like the rise of things like growth factors, peptides, how do you see those when it comes to hair and helping bridge that awareness gap? So I think that there's a lot of opportunity with hair and with scalp. I think that if we start to think about the scalp as a biologically active tissue or another sort of almost an extrapolation of what we're doing with the skin, we start to realize that there's a lot of role for things like growth factors and peptides.

8:01The idea is that because these products are such small molecules, they can actually often penetrate down the hair follicles and act directly on that sort of growth area of the hair follicle and the dermal papilla. And so we think that we do have so many opportunities here to optimize the environment in which the hair grows in order to maintain hair growth, to minimize hair loss. And so using these little biologically active molecules like peptides, we're really going to find that you can really change the environment in which the hair grows. And so we think that we are right at this sort of tipping point where people are starting to think about these things.

8:39And I think that again, we need to start to come up with a more preventative approach, as opposed to, I have a problem that I want to fix. Because that's where we are with skin. We're so preventative with our skin. Scalp, we're still only reactive or responsive to problems. Absolutely. And I think this is the perfect segue to really dive into KiroFactor. I, by the way, I've been using it and I've been loving my results personally. And I really want to ask you, what made you want to go into it and start with KiroFactor? Like what was the initial spark? So I'll give you a quick sort of history of what I was doing beforehand so you can understand why I was looking for something more optimal.

9:19So I started injecting PRP into the scalp, I would probably say now 12 plus years ago. And we were literally taking an old school serum separator tube, which was just something we used to draw blood and separating out the serum. We weren't concentrating. It was, we weren't doing any of that at the very beginning. And then even as the tubes became more and more sophisticated, what I found in PRP practice was that about one-third of patients got a good result. One-third got maybe a moderate or mild result, and one-third got absolutely no results at all. And so we were taking a procedure where we had about a 33 % odd of getting a great outcome, and we were injecting tons and tons of needles into the scalp.

9:59And I don't think there's anything wrong with PRP if that's your only option, But I felt that because we had no control over what growth factors and peptides and cytokines were circulating in our serum, that we really didn't have a way to quantify or explain to patients when we could predict if there would be a good result or a bad result. So it was always very hit or miss. And so when CaraFactor came into my life, which is probably, I was going to say, probably spring of 2020. So I was a very early adopter. So it's been about five years. And I have essentially transitioned my entire hair loss practice and hair restoration practice over to CareFactor, both in office and at home.

10:38And the reason is that they have essentially created seven perfect biomimetic growth factors. So they are replicating growth factors that we normally have in our circulation. And every single one of us has them in different concentrations. And so if, let's say I have very high levels of a certain growth factor and you have very low levels of a certain growth factor, where our response to our own plasma is going to be very different. But CARA factor has managed to optimize and put really high concentrations of all of the necessary growth factors to really stimulate and restore hair follicle function to an optimal point.

11:14And so what that's doing is it's allowing us to target follicle stimulation. It's allowing us to target angiogenesis or development of new blood vessels in order to increase that circulation back to the scalp. And it's also independently stimulating the stem cells and the bulge of the hair follicle. And so we're getting a healthier environment, better hair growth, and we're getting just a better nutrient-rich system in which to help nourish and maintain that hair. And so CareFactor really provided so many things that I was missing prior to incorporating it into my practice, as I said, both in office procedures and for at-home scalp care.

11:52You know, that's so interesting because the approach, it's basically mimicking natural growth signals, which is literally like biohacking for your hair. That's amazing. For listeners who aren't maybe familiar with the molecular side of things, can you really break down what's happening at the follicle level when these peptides are applied? Okay. So first, I always like to start by saying what's happening that's causing us to lose hair. So I'm just going to give you a quick example of a couple of things that happened that caused the hair loss. So you can understand why these peptides really help regrow or restore some of that healthier hair growth.

12:24So, for example, the most common kind of hair loss that we treat with care factor is something called androgenetic alopecia. And this can happen. This is hormonal hair loss in men and women. And what we find here is that we're getting a hormone called DHT or dihydrotestosterone that binds a receptor and essentially reduces the growth phase and increases the shedding phase by changing up a whole bunch of what's supposed to be happening. And so we're getting a fibrosis response in the hair follicle, we're getting less blood flow, and we're getting some what we would consider negative cytokines or negative signaling.

12:57And so peptides are essentially doing exactly the opposite. They're reactivating the dormant hair follicles. They're helping to stimulate re-entry into the antigen or growth phase of the hair cycle. And what that's allowing is it's allowing a whole regenerative process. We're essentially taking a dormant follicle, we're reawakening it, and we're making it produce a healthier hair. That's really interesting because it's very targeted. It's become so hyper-targeted at this point that I think that's the most fascinating part to me. It's not just about people used to just say, apply this serum. It's not about that.

13:31It's more about really orchestrating real cellular behavior and having it behave a certain way to get the results you want. So I find that to be very unique. So when you combine the scalp stimulating solution with the in-office procedures like microneedling or laser therapy, how does that synergy work? So the idea behind the treatment where we're doing an in-office care factor treatment, what we're doing is we're using typically either a non-ablative laser or a microneedling system to create microchannels in the scalp. And there are actually shown in the studies that just enhancing the circulation and creating these little open microchannels starts the process of also stimulating healthier hair follicles.

14:13And we're taking it two steps further. We're then introducing the Carefactor Serum. And so the Carefactor MD is the serum that we use in office. And in addition to the seven biomimetic peptides, it contains three other sort of remarkable ingredients. One is a product called folistatin. And what it does is it essentially is a binding signaling protein. And what it does is help us control the hair lifecycle. So we're really helping to stimulate those follicles in a much more positive way. It also contains polydeoxyribonucleotide, which is a very hot ticket ingredient, and it contained this product long before it became the trendy thing to talk about.

14:51And PDRN works by increasing cellular activity and cell turnover, and so you're getting an enhanced regenerative, healing, reparative process. And then the third thing is the nanofluorosome, and that's really where the third step of the in-office procedure is. So lasers to enhance absorption. The nanofluoresome is the active ingredient that has both anti-inflammatory, so reducing excess redness, swelling, inflammation, some of those negative cytokines, and antiandrogens. We're actually locally inhibiting or reducing the impact of androgens or male-type hormones on the hair follicle. And so the third step to activate this is that we put a red light in office on, and then we also have the ability to do that at home.

15:32And that's gonna enhance the efficacy by activating this nanofluorosome. So the idea in office is that patients come in and it's a 10-15 minute procedure. It's very quick, but because we have this ability to package these peptides and active ingredients in what's called a nanoliposome, which is a tiny particle, we're increasing the absorption to the hair follicle bulge where the stem cells are and we're getting those peptides right to the local level where we want them to act and where we want them to do their stimulation. So they work so, so much better than if they weren't packaged in this little liposomal particle.

16:06That's so fascinating. We talked about microenvironment earlier. This is basically like building a microenvironment for the regrowth of the hair. Exactly. Very similar to how we do skin rejuvenation. Exactly. Very interesting. So let's talk about the new CuraFlex Duo system, because this really seems like the future of at-home hair wellness at large. I haven't really seen anything else like it. what exactly is it and how does it work? So the CaraFlex Duo is the newest product from CaraFactor and it is their sort of new sort of red light cap and so they had their original one which to me was also already cutting edge it had a really high bulb count but the CaraFlex Duo is taking it a step further so it has 312 medical grade laser diodes and so I think is the highest count on the market and it's a cap that can be used at home.

16:56It has two different wavelengths So it has the 650 nanometer, which is the classic red light that a lot of the different products have. But it also has an 808 nanometer wavelength light that allows for deeper penetration. The CaraFlex Duo sits really close to the scalp. A lot of products have this big separation when you go and put your cap on at home. Yeah. The light is like four inches over your head. They're like, is it even getting there? Is this actually doing anything for me? What we find with the CaraFlex Duo is it gives you really full coverage and it's really close to the scalp. Plus you're getting dual wavelengths.

17:30You're getting more superficial activation and deeper stimulation at the same time from this low level light therapy. It's pretty remarkable. I've actually never seen anything like it. And honestly, I have five or six different red LED caps at home. And not that any of them are bad, per se, but if you're going to do it, you really want to do it in an optimal way. And I think that the CareFlex is really optimizing the delivery of red light, red laser light to the scalp. Yeah, I actually love it. So you wear the little baseball cap and you're walking around with a red halo. I love it. I love it.

18:04I think it's really neat. And I've been really enjoying using it myself. Like I said, I've been loving the products. And I think for anyone out there, like that's the thing is like one of the biggest things with hair. I'm just like adding my two cents here. But like the biggest thing with hair is you want it to be convenient because that's the number one thing. And I feel like that's where this really stands out to me. This device is very convenient. but you can literally pop it on you don't even forget that you're wearing it totally it's comfortable it doesn't really cumbersome like cords or strange suction cuts some of them just feel really uncomfortable and you know you're so more unlikely to use it i think it's also i believe six minutes is a treatment it's so easy to do and so easy to be consistent with it yeah you can do anything like you can like vacuum do your dishes like you're good you know what i mean yeah i have lot of patients who say that it's essentially as much time as it takes them to brush their floss and brush their teeth so it can really become part of your evening routine without even actually adding any time to it yeah i really enjoy it now i love this idea of using energy therapeutics to actually reprogram the scalp environment i'm a huge believer in like the power of light therapy can you walk us through how these benefits like for example like the improved circulation oxygenation, and also like follicle recovery, how do they translate into visible results for patients?

19:22So I think that the most important thing to know is how exactly red light works on the scalp, and just understanding the process of what we call photobiomodulation, which is exactly what everyone says, oh, I love light therapy. And you're like, yeah, totally. This is a really cool scientific concept. But the idea is that this light is simulating your mitochondria. And yes, if you go back to seventh grade science, we all remember the powerhouse of the cell. And the reason that we all called it that is because that's where our energy or ATP molecules are made. And so this idea that we can put light onto the surface of the scalp and we can stimulate the body to make more energy molecules is essentially creating an entirely new cascade.

19:59So we're increasing the turnover, we're reactivating those dormant follicles by putting in sort of a new surge of energy, which is increasing that growth phase and reducing our inflammation. So if we add energy, that circulation is going to improve. We're going to see better nutrient and oxygen transport to the scalp and to the hair follicles. We're going to see reduction in inflammation, and we're going to see an overall improvement of scalp health. And so as we talked about at the very beginning, what we're doing is we're essentially resetting that scalp ecosystem. We want the healthiest, most supported environment in which hair can grow efficiently and healthfully because you can have hair growth and you look at the hair and it goes, oh, it's frizzy and it's dry and it's brittle.

20:45This is actually growing thicker, healthier, silkier hair because we're improving that environment. We often refer to this as like a seeding the grass kind of concept. If you take a lawn and you just put seeds in one little spot, yeah, maybe you get a little bit of growth there. But if you actually seed the entire lawn and you properly water it and nourish it with the way it blends, the entire grass grows greener. And so what we say about the scalp is that by using this light, you're improving the quality of the entire scalp and all of the hair, not just in focal areas where you're bothered, you're having a problem.

21:19You want to actually nourish and improve that entire environment. Yeah, no, I really love this concept. And I think that is the real power, right, behind incorporating photobiomodulation into any kind of health routine, wherever it is that you really are exactly what you said it's not just one dimension anymore now you're acting like an actual system and you're mimicking the system of growth and that's beautiful and that is real physiology at play that's amazing and i love that again it's six minutes that's it six minutes a day yeah it's like you you can't get better than that and i feel like there are so many people out there that think that hair growth is this long cumbersome like at-home routine but this is this huge for any of you out there that are using 20 products this could be a huge replacement for you and save a lot of time so that's amazing yes simplification is key i think that with everything the same way that if you give someone a 17 step skincare routine they're probably doing nothing but if you give them three steps they're going to do it every single time yeah and that's as i'm sure but just for our listeners that's everything because compliance is everything in a field like dermatology you have you have to really be consistent you can have the best treatment plan, but if it's not sustainable, if you're not using it, it's not going to work long term.

22:34So that's absolutely huge. One of the things that I think really excites me in this idea of like multimodal care, combining topicals, light therapy, peptides with nutrition and lifestyle factors, like all of that together. That's the most exciting part, I think. Why is this kind of comprehensive approach so important in treating hair loss specifically? So I think that we often think of hair loss as one problem one one result but hair loss is so multifactorial what we find is that there are obvious factors like if you look at your parents or your aunts and uncles and they all have really thin hair probably not going to have crazy thick hair of your own and so genetics certainly is one of the key components but we also have to look at things like our hormonal environment.

23:22And when people talk about hormones, they think about things like, oh, my androgens are controlled. I'm fine. But think about cortisol. Cortisol is your stress hormone, and that is a hormone like any other, and it has a huge impact on the hair follicles. And so what we say is that sometimes people say, oh, I haven't had any surgeries, and I haven't had any major medical procedures, so I should be fine. But when then we start to think about psychological impact and just day-to-day sort of stressors, and that can be very pro-inflammatory, and that can actually cause hair loss in and of itself. And then we also can think about internal components.

23:55And so with hair, oftentimes I say to patients, when was the last time you had a full panel of blood work done? What does your iron level look like? What is your thyroid function look like? And it's not necessarily that they have to be perfect, but they have to be within a normal range because the hair depends on so many cofactors to grow properly, that if we're not maximizing our internal health, our nutritional health, our antioxidant intake, even just fluid and hydration in the body, all of these things are going to somehow negatively impact the environment in which our skin exists, but even more so in which our hair grows.

24:32And it's easy to see when you're having a problem with your skin, right? Your skin, you get pimples, or you get a rosacea flare, and you get all red and inflamed, or you get very dry and cracked. We ignore our scalp so much longer because it's covered by our hair that oftentimes we're approaching the scalp very late and we're not considering so many different factors that are contributing to its health or its lack thereof. No, I think this is such a huge topic and I love that you brought up all of those components because I think oftentimes I've seen this a lot with skin, right? Because people are starting to finally have this conversation with skin, which I am here for.

25:08I am cheerleading this along because if you don't know your gut health, if you don't know your blood work and your biomarker results, you don't know any of that, then you can't understand what is it that you actually need. And then you have these customers that are patients and consumers buying 50 products. And then they're saying, hey, listen, I'm allergic to this. You're not allergic to it. No, you're just using too much. So I think, yeah, everything you said really resonates with me. I think it's just so important to have that level of understanding when you're approaching this type of health concern at large.

25:38Let's talk about though timelines because I think that's where everyone really gets locked in is this understanding of like how long is something going to take. So for someone who is just starting their hair wellness journey, what is realistic in terms of what they might start to notice when they start to notice the actual changes and the results they're looking for? So what I always tell my patients is that slow and steady truly wins the race here because the most important thing we want to do is we want to turn off the triggers that are causing us to shed. And so the decreased shedding is actually the first miracle.

26:10When you start to feel like you're losing less hair, we're winning. That decreased shed for me typically happens around the four to six week mark. And that idea that you're not seeing hair on every jacket, on every pillowcase, you're not getting a massive handful in the shower. It's normal, we say, to lose about 100 hairs a day. Some people say 150. And so if you only wash your hair twice a week, you're going to have a lot of hair loss in the shower. But the idea that you don't have constant, just profuse shedding is the first key step. Once we get past that decreased shed, that's when we are going to start to see regrowth.