243: Functional Approach to Alopecia Areata w/ Dr. Julie Greenberg

Alopecia has been a hot topic in the media lately, but for others who have been dealing with hair loss for some time, it can be triggering and even devastating.

My guest today, Dr. Julie Greenberg, is a licensed ND who specializes in integrative dermatology and works with hair loss in her practice.

She is the founder of the Center for Integrative Dermatology, a holistic dermatology clinic that approaches skin problems by finding and treating the root cause.

Dr. Greenberg holds degrees from Northwestern University, Stanford University and Bastyr University, and received advanced clinical training at the Dermatology Clinic at the University of Washington Medical School and at the Pediatric Dermatology Center at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

She is also the Program Chair of the Naturopathic & Integrative Dermatology series on LearnSkin.com, a learning platform for integrative health care professionals.

Join us as we discuss what a functional approach to alopecia areata is and learn about the many types of alopecia there are.

I'd love to know if you have tried any of the tips that Dr. Greenberg has shared in this episode -- Let me know in the comments!

In this episode:

Different types of alopecia
Patterns in stool testing that Dr. Greenberg tends to see in hair loss cases
What vitamins are actually important for hair health (hint - it's not biotin!)
Why autoimmunity is more than just gut dysbiosis
Are biologics or topical minoxidil worth trying if you want to deal with alopecia holistically?
Why it's important to catch hair thinning early rather than waiting it out

Quotes

“Biotin always comes up and it's another one of those things where, absolutely, if someone is deficient in biotin, it can cause hair loss and we would supplement, but biotin's got a really great PR person and it's out there in every supplement, and every patient who's losing their hair comes to me just taking tons of biotin. And there's no evidence to prove, unfortunately, that if you're not deficient in biotin, that biotin supplementation is going to help, and it can throw off a lot of labs, so a lot of my patients, I have to take off of biotin." [14:51]

“When we think about an autoimmune disease, we have to stop for a minute and think like, wow, things have really gone awry in the body when the body can't identify self, right, because that's its number one job, is we have to know, what's self and what's an invader? We don't want to be attacking self. That's a self-defeating purpose. And so, for the body to get that far off, it usually takes both the microbiome gut dysfunction, leaky gut picture, and a toxic element where it's just so overwhelmed, it's under so much attack, it's just so confused that it's just firing at everything." [17:10]

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