Liz talks her protocol for post-COVID hair loss and whether tracking markers like body fat can be useful.
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TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Liz Talks. I’m Liz, and I’m a nutritional therapy practitioner and best selling author, but here I’m 0% professional and 100% mom, spouse, friend, and over analyzer. We are going to talk food, beauty, family, fitness, mental health, friendship, marriage, and everything in between in this season of Liz Talks and I’m so glad you’re along for the ride.
Remember, this is a podcast about thoughts, feelings, and opinions, and I definitely do not give individual, personal or medical. Welcome friends. I’m excited to talk to you today. Just me. It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, but I’ve got some pretty interesting topics to talk about today, and probably we’ll be just sort of doing a little drop in on those topics and hopefully following up on them more.
In season two of Liz talks, which again, as I have spoken about, I’m formulating what that’s gonna look like, if it’s gonna be niche down on more one specific topic or if I’m gonna just kind of cover the full gamut. Um, we’ll see. We’ll see, I’m leaning one direction right now, but you just, you never know with me.
I’m a wild card. Right. Before I get started talking, talking, talking though, I wanna remind you about the Vibrant Body Company. You’re probably saying this right along with me in your car or wherever it is you are right now. But I have my 15% off code for my listeners, Real Food liz.com/vibrant and code Liz 15 in all caps, these are amazing.
No wire certified clean bras. And I’ve said before, Vibrant is my top selling affiliate and it’s for good reason. They’re a great company with great products. And one of the things that sold me on it, cause at first I was like, Clothes. Like really, Of course we want sustainable fashion and you know, non-toxic clothing.
We don’t wanna be adding to the toxic burden of the earth or the people that are creating our clothing. And of course, you know, it’s easy to, to pick out when somebody’s sensitive to a certain type of fabric. For example, my daughter seems to be better now, but as she was really when she was really. , she had a lot of trouble with anything that wasn’t a hundred percent cotton.
So I understand the idea of clean fabrics, but this whole idea of like a certified clean bra, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure about it first, but the more I learned, the more I was like, Yes, this does make sense. And not just because they’re sitting against our most sensitive areas, our first layers, but also because they can have a physical, uh, mechanical effect on our lymphatic system, which is a huge player in overall health and immune function.
And I think a lot. Are really paying attention to our immune health now, so for me it’s worth it. I love that it is a shaping bra that is also super comfortable with no under wire. I just love it to pieces. So you can try that. You can try a shelf tank. You can try one of their pairs of underwear. And you can use my code, Liz 15 all caps for 15% off.
And if you’re not sure, by the way, what bra size you might need, book a virtual fitting with Heidi. She is amazing. And I know I learned so much from mine. And now when I go back and put on my Victoria’s Secret bra that was supposed to be so comfy, my t-shirt bra from Victoria’s Secret. I do not know how I ever wore that thing for any length of.
There are times when you need like a real nice bra and not just one of these super soft, you know, uh, sports bra type bras that I wear A lot of the. All right, and next up a quick shout out to Element Electrolyte Packs. You can grab a free sample pack with any purchase through my link, which by the way, you’ll also find all of my links.
I’m gonna talk about another product that you might be interested in later in this podcast. You can find all of my links in the description for the podcast. So just whenever you’re at a stoplight or at a stopping point, you can open up the description of your podcast in Apple and Spotify, wherever, and you should be able to tap to any of these destinations to vibrant to.
or to the product we’re gonna talk about in a little bit just by tapping in there. And that’s a little bit easier and it’s trackable. So the company knows that I sent you that way. But you can grab a free sample pack with any purchase of Element through my link. So that’s drink L M N t.com/. Real food.
Liz, by the way, I was a late adopter to the electrolyte packs. I was doing my salt in orange juice thing for a long time. But they really are the real deal. They have extra sodium and I really do believe that’s the difference maker here. And of course the flavors are super good too. Watermelon, raspberry salt are so good.
And I actually just. Tried one of the unflavored packets in my morning smoothie, and I really liked that too. So again, if your interest is peaked, go grab a free sample pack with any purchase through my link. Again, clickable in the description in your podcast player, or just remember, drink lmt.com/real food, Liz.
Oh, okay. So we’re gonna talk about this. This episode is gonna be around about 30 minutes. It’s gonna be a shorter one today because I’m right in between nap time and having to go do school pickup. And man, I thought September and October were sort of the end of the busy season, but I feel like the days are just filling up.
It’s crazy. We’ve just had a really nuts, so nuts, so fall and I’m excited actually because this weekend we’re going to get away for a couple of days. Take the kids in the Sprinter van. If you listen to my last episode with Laura Bruner, where we talked about Van Life, we’re actually taking both kids out in the Van Sprinter van conversion over the weekend.
For the first time, we will be going to the property of an incredibly generous friend and golfing. They have a beautiful property in the Flint Hills of Kansas, and we’re gonna go out there, we’re gonna spend one night there en route to visiting a relative that had been ill. So we’re gonna have a beautiful day.
We’re gonna fish in the pond. We’re gonna see the sunset across the flint hills. And the good thing is they also have a cabin, a fully off grid cabin. So if whatever we’re trying to do within the van is not working, we’ve got that option as well. So super excited and really grateful for. Very generous friends.
I’m happy about that. But this episode is going to be a little bit shorter and I’m just gonna kind of dip my toe into talking about a couple of these things that have happened recently that I’ve been really focused on and that have been on my mind. , these might sort of inform, or at least one of these topics, might inform what I plan to talk about in the future.
We’ll see, I’m, I’m excited for Liz talk season two, but I think we need to shake it up and do something a little bit different and I think, I think I might be sort of psyching myself to up to do that and I’ll describe more about that in a little bit. Okay. So the first thing I wanted to talk about hopefully will not get me censored.
You just never know these days. But I wanted to talk about post covid hair loss. Now, I had Covid back in June and one of the episodes of Liz Talks. I talked about how I handled it at the time, what I took, how I had a mobile IV company come out to my house and do, um, an immune. IV vitamin infusion with glutathione.
That I feel like helped a lot. Got fluids as well, which is always good. So I talked about what I did during the process of having Covid and I had a decent case of covid. Funny enough, nobody else in my house really seemed to get ill. I was fortunate because I had enough help around that. I was able to basically isolate in the basement and not feel like I was always running the risk of, of getting somebody ill.
But I had a pretty decent case of it, which included. A decently high fever, which I don’t remember ever having had in my life. I have never had the flu. I’ve had a couple sinus infections here and there. When the air dries out and the temperature changes, I’ll get a lot of irritation in my nasal passages.
but I have not in my life that I remember had a fever and I tolerated it fairly well. It was a little higher than I think I expected it to be, but I dealt with it and I probably had that fever off and on for a couple of days. Covid is just a wacky. Wacky illness and came through it. Okay. Took about 10 days to feel normal again, but kind of felt like I was good.
You know? I was like, Man, I really feel bad for these folks who are dealing with long covid who feel like they never really recovered after this viral infection or this viral infection triggered another latent virus in their bodies. There’s just so many things that can happen if your immune system, with your immune system, and in particular if your immune system is dysregulated.
and you don’t have to be like clinically sick, You don’t have to have autoimmune disease to have a dysregulated immune system. You can just be under a ton of stress. You can be nutrient deficient. There are a lot of different things that are sort of within and out of our control, but particularly in 2020, it’s just such a hard year.
Coming out of 2020 into 2021 and even now into 2022, just really adjusting or adjusting away from all the craziness, I think has a lot of us still in that high alert mode. Um, and there are a lot of reasons that folks might struggle after Covid, and this isn’t the episode for that, but I came away feeling like I’m good.
I’m feeling pretty. Like don’t have any lingering symptoms, everything feels back to normal. And then around two, two and a half months later, my hair started coming out in clumps. So this is something I never knew that actually a lot of people, I was surprised a lot of people know this information, but this was my first exposure to it.
Finding out that a few months after having like a high fever or some. Illness crisis. A lot of people will end up with hair loss, and there are some mechanisms behind that, which I might dig into in a future podcast. When I talk more about my hair regrowth, we’ll talk about kinda the biology of all of it more.
But it’s actually just hair shedding. It’s not like, you know, uh, you’re, you’re losing hair. It’s just your hair is shedding kind of in the same way it does, you know, after you have a baby. But it was so surprising to me because I had been going on feeling pretty good for a while and then realized that my hair was falling out in clumps.
There was one point where I started to count. I mean, it took me quite some time, and I don’t recommend this strategy, but I was. Concerned about the amount of hair that was coming out in the shower. And when I would brush my hair the one day I finally counted it and I counted like 600 hairs. Normal shedding is like 50 to a hundred, I believe, maybe 150, but I have to check my facts on that one.
But this was happening day after day after day, and it was becoming really concerning. And of course I dug into it, found some scientific literature that basically said, This post covid hair loss tends to manifest about two to three months after an illness, and it can last up to six to nine months. And I was just thinking to myself, if this lasts six to nine months, I will have no hair left and really started getting worked up about it.
Didn’t really know how to handle it, but then I sort of came around to acceptance fairly quickly and was like, You know what? I’m gonna control what factors I can, I’m gonna do some reach research. I’m gonna figure out what people are talking about as far as dealing with this, with nutrition, with lifestyle, and with supplements, and I’m gonna do what I can and if it doesn’t work out well, I’ll wear a hat all winter.
It’s all good. . So the, the, I guess the medical name for this type of shedding is TN alu, which I will not use to refer to it. I’m just gonna talk about post covid hair loss. But first I’ll talk to you about what I decided to do nutritionally. Now, this is not controversial. Maybe it was a couple of years ago, but it sounds so goofy now that I talk about.
I started to do smoothies, and maybe this sounds silly, but one of the things I knew I needed to do was ensure I was getting enough protein. I felt like I needed to be really sure I was getting enough glucose, because as we learned, or as we talked about in an earlier episode of Liz Talks with Danny Roddy, having too little sugar in your.
and this will feel like opinion. A lot of people disagree. I’ve seen still people on the internet talking about you should never have sugar if you have too much fruit. It’s a sugar addiction. I wholeheartedly disagree with that. One of the things that Danny Roddy said in our interview together was, , if the body doesn’t have enough glucose, it activates all the emergency switches to make it.
And one of the things I wanna do to do was ensure that I was taking that burden off of my emergency systems and just ensuring that I got enough glucose, I got enough protein, and I was able to get some supplements in without a whole lot of swallowing this and separate shot of that, et cetera. So my morning smoothies have actually been really great, and I’ll tell you what is.
first and foremost, I don’t think these are the number one thing that actually helped me, but this is how I’ve been able to be most consistent about getting in certain types of nutrients, protein, glucose, and healthy fats. So what I will do in the morning is put a, I have, you know, my big old Stanley Cup.
It’s a big, big. So what I will do is I will cover the blender blades. I have a blend text just like a Vitamix. I’ll cover the blender blades just up a little bit beyond the blender blades with raw milk from a local farm. Love them. And then I will add a little bit of ice. A big handful of strawberries, and these are like small strawberries, which surprisingly enough now that I’m becoming a smoothie connoisseur, you really need the smaller chunks of fruit, so you have the proper fiber to water ratio.
Otherwise your smoothie gets really watery. Okay, I like a nice thick smoothie. So kind of smaller strawberries. These are actually from the farm as well. We bought like a bushel or a peck or some huge ridiculous amount of strawberries, little tiny ones and froze them. So about a handful of these tiny strawberries, a handful of something else, some other kind of frozen fruit, mango, blueberry, whatever it may be.
And then on top of that, a scoop of, Well, okay, so I’ll blend that all up and I’ll sometimes add a dash of coconut milk for some healthy fat. And then I’ll blend all of that up really, really well. And then once that’s all blended up, I will add 15 drops of cell food, um, their silica supplement. I will, and I’ll talk about silicon more in a moment.
Um, I will add a scoop of Be Well by Kelly. Unflavored beef protein isolate. I actually was able to interview Kelly. Kelly Leveck is the woman behind this, this company, and she’s amazing, amazing, amazing. And I was able to interview her for a recent project, the How She Grew Project, and we talked more about how she built that wing of her business.
It was amazing. She also has a podcast where she talks about the sourcing of her protein. I’ve tried a couple different beef protein isolates and this is the one that I’m a huge fan of and I will continue to use for ever and ever. So I’ll do a scoop of that to make sure I get a good amount of like easily digestible protein in.
I might also do Greek yogurt, just depends on what’s available at the time and what I’m feeling. And then I will also add a scoop of, This is not cheap, but Agent Natur. A G E N T N A T E U R Agent Natur collagen powder, which is minimally processed and also combined with pearl powder, which also has some really interesting benefits.
So I’ll put that in as well. and a scoop of something a little bit sweet, and it might be sweet and stevia, it might be sweetened with monk fruit. That’s just what’s most available to me out of the products that are actually useful. So I have a product, a product called Young Reds, which is from a guy named Joel Green, whose coaches’ course I’m actually in right now.
It’s fascinating all of the information he’s bringing to the forefront about. Gut bacteria, immune health, overall health, and even like weight loss and body fat composition. So I’m not talking about body composition, I’m talking about the composition of your body. Fat as in brown fat versus white fat. Um, anti-inflammatory versus inflammatory.
It’s fascinating stuff. So I hope to complete that program at some point. But his young reds, I will use that a couple of times a week, which is various. Plants, various berry apple powders, all combined with some, I believe, either stevia or monk fruit, and that’ll add some sweetness. I don’t do that every day, so on the days I’m not doing that, I’ll do a scoop of like dragon fruit powder or strawberry powder, something just to add a little bit of additional sweetness.
Or I will also, I also have the vanilla protein from Be Well by Kelly, so I might use that as well, because I do like a little bit of additional sweetness. And none of these powders actually, or none of these, um, proteins or supplements, the young reds or the protein powders have actual. Glucose in them to make it sweeter.
I’m not against that. It’s just not there. So generally those two things, the the vanilla protein powder or the Young Reds will add a little bit of sweetness from either monk fruit or Stevia, or if I’m not doing any of that, then I’ll do some fruit powder, some strawberry or dragon fruit powder, which is so, so pretty, and I get those from nuts.com.
I do that and I’ll sort of add things here and there, but in general it’s the collagen and pearl powder, the protein powder, the silica supplement from cell food and the, the fruit and the raw milk. So that’s been a really good way. Oh, and also sometimes I will add my element. Now unflavored electrolyte pack.
Now element is sort of a low carb. Product like they’re, they sort of came from and cater to low carbos. I personally am a big fan of glucose, as you all know. So what I do when, when I use the element is I’m just, you know, I’m fully like embracing carbs in my diet. I’m not using it as a, as a supplemental, anything for a low carb diet.
but those electrolytes in there are important. The salt, the potassium, the magnesium. So I really like the idea of adding that to the smoothie as well, or just drinking one of those each day during the course of the day. So I wanted to take a quick detour and talk about silica really quickly. The interesting thing about silica that I’m still not a hundred percent sure about how it fits into this equation is that I do know that silica as a supplement is actually not regarded as effective.
By several really. Really well respected scientists. One of the scientists that I follow who talks about aluminum metabolism and how dissolved silica is a wonderful way to, for lack of a better term, detoxify aluminum from the body. Talks about how you cannot get silica through a supplement. It has to be naturally dissolved, silica, and there are a couple of waters, like bottled waters you can buy that actually have that.
One of them is Fiji water that you can buy in stores, and there’s another type of water that you actually. Order, and I have ordered several cases of it, and the name is escaping me right now, but I’ll try and remember that and put it in the show notes if I can. But I have ordered the silica water, but one of my concerns with that is it comes in a plastic bottle.
So, It does not matter really whether a plastic is BPA free or not. You are still almost inevitably leaching microplastics anytime you’re using something that’s bottled in plastic. So I feel a little bit trepidacious about that. However, cell food was very generous, sent me this supplement to try for free, and so I figured I would give it a go.
They sent me a bunch of their literature around cell food, and so I’m still sort of combing my way through that. But until I really understand, you know, what silica is best and in what. I, I’m gonna go with it. And the, the literature they sent me is compelling. It sounds good. And I’ve heard of cell food for 10 or 15 years.
I know it’s been around for a long time, and they’ve got some literature. They’re a very passionate company, so I’m excited to try it, and it can’t hurt now. Silica being a structurally significant compound in the building of hair, skin, and nails. So that’s been really important and that’s what my morning smoothie looks like.
The thing that I believe has had the greatest impact other than trying to work on my sleep, working on my stress, trying to get a good amount of, of all the good stuff through my nutrition. The thing that I believe has had the largest impact is a supplement. And you’re gonna laugh. You’re gonna laugh at what it’s called.
It’s a supplement called Sperm Meine, and I get this supplement from a very specific company that I really, really love. It’s the one that has been well studied. It’s called Pri Adine, and it’s fantastic. I’m gonna put the name of this supplement in the show notes, so if you’re interested in getting it, whether you’re experiencing post covid hair loss or not, or you just want stronger hair, skin, and nails.
you can go, you can check out this company. Another wonderful thing about them is they have a gluten-free version. Sperming is extracted from wheat germ, so if you are gluten sensitive, this is not a supplement that you will want to use. But they do have an alternative that is gluten-free, that is not derived from wheat germ, that has other really interesting properties as well.
It’s a female founded company. Their advisory board is incredible. I really do trust this supplement. And finally, after using it, Several months now, month, a month and a half now. I finally went to check if they had an affiliate program because I was like, I think this is the key in the lock. This has been so huge for me.
Within about two, again, they say Post covid hair loss can last six to nine months, and within two weeks of taking that supplement consistently. Hair loss, which had been actually diagnosed by my doctor as post covid hair loss. It reduced by about half. That’s still a lot of hairs. It’s still about twice as much hair that was coming out before, but it was reduced by at least half.
And now I feel like just about a month and a half after I started losing hair, my hair loss is almost back to normal. I really do actually credit this supplement for that. I, I can’t think of any other thing, any other thing that would’ve had that much an, an effect that does not also have other people out there corroborating what I have to say about it.
So I know the collagen and the pearl powder is gonna be great for the regrowth. I know that the silica is going to be great for the regrow. But not only is this particular supplement, I feel like actually having an impact now, but I also have been getting the most random compliments from people on my skin, on my hair, on like my appearance, which.
I mean thanks. But I’ve been like, this is very interesting cuz I haven’t changed anything else. So I really believe in this supplement, and I’ll put it again in the show notes. And if you use the code, Liz 10, Liz, all caps 10, you can get 10% off. So if you’re interested in it, go to the show notes, tap on that, and use my code, Liz, 10 for 10% off.
So I’m hoping to actually have the. Owner, the CEO of that company of Oxford Health Span, which produces the PRI Adine supplement, which is concentrated sperm meine. Hopefully you can follow that. I’m hoping to have her on my show at some point in the near future to talk more about sperm Meine as a compound about how she structured her company and really brought that product to all of us.
So for more information on that product, hopefully I’ve got more, more of that. So that as of right now, is how I have been tackling post covid hair loss, the supplements I’m taking, other than that, just for general immune health are from right now. You know, I vacillate between taking a lot of supplements and not taking a lot of supplements.
I’m kind of breezy about it, but when I really feel like there’s a need, I’ll go whole hog. And the other supplements I’m taking right now are from Pure Synergy. I don’t have a, an affiliate relationship with them, but they’re a wonderful, wonderful company and I take their, their green supplement. I take their pure Synergy, vitamin C, which has always been a go-to for me.
You can also put that in a smoothie if you want your kids to take it. And I’m also taking their, I believe, their mushroom immune supplement and their vision supplement. So I’m just kind of putting ’em all together and seeing, seeing what helps and, but overall, I really think that the prim adine supplement is what has made the most impact.
And it’s not just for post covid hair loss, it’s for skin, it’s for nails, it’s for hair, it’s for all of it. And I’m really grateful because I feel like it’s made an impact really quickly. Okay, so I don’t have a whole ton of time left because I do have to get the baby up and get my kiddo off to, or get all of us off to carpool pickup.
But I wanted to talk about something that I think I’m gonna be talking about more in the future, and that is tracking body fat and skeletal muscle. Today in my session with my trainer, Nick Briney, he actually had me get on one of those. Bio, whatever scales where you hold onto the little handles and it assesses.
How much skeletal muscle mass you have, your body fat percentage. I mean, it can track like extra cellular water. It can give you a bunch of reeds and a very short scan, which is really, really cool. And I don’t know if people are gonna be surprised to hear this, but I was really excited to hop on that scale and find out how much I weigh what my body fat was and what my skeletal muscle was, not because I’m doing some kind of toxic body, shameful.
Spiraling, but because I’m actually really curious, I’m almost 40 years old. I’ve talked about this before. I’m not ready to be almost 40 years old, but I have these two beautiful children and this wonderful husband and wonderful friends and wonderful family that I wanna be here for, for as long as possible.
And I am suddenly seeing the argument for quantification. And it’s not because I care that I weigh 167. , I don’t care. What I care about is that things are trending and tracking in a way that is revealing of an overall trajectory toward long-term health. So what we found out today is that I have 76 pounds of skeletal muscle mass, which is.
Really good. It’s, I’m above average. I’m about like 15 pounds above average of skeletal muscle, which I’m very happy about. I’m 167 pounds, which to me means nothing except for in the context of skeletal muscle mass and body fat percentage. I’m at 20% body fat, which in general is considered perfectly healthy from a biomarker perspective.
This has nothing to do with what 20% body fat looks like. It has to do with what we know scientifically around risk factors and body fat. I’m also gonna get blood work here in a couple of weeks and see how things are tracking there and not because I’m judging or even because I have a goal, I’m con gonna continue to do the same things.
Right now we are in a strength building phase, so I’m doing some pretty dedicated strength work two times a week doing some Pilates type stuff on a third day. So those are my workout days, three days a week. And I’m really paying attention to building and maintaining muscle because that only gets harder as we age.
And it’s really important to me that I’m able to continue lifting up my kids, coaching their teams, doing all the things that I wanna do without injury and with the strength I need to do it and feel pretty good. So, I’m gonna be doing all the same things, but I’m looking forward to, in a couple of months, seeing what those things do to those numbers.
Maybe I’ll end up with 80 pounds of skeletal muscle and we’ll know that what we’re doing is having an. If I end up with less skeletal muscle, then I’m gonna wanna think about, am I getting enough protein? What other things do I need to add to my routine? There’s some really interesting things that Joel Green and the Immunity Code Coaches course that I’m taking right now talks about as far as maximizing the response to exercise and some little hacks that you can do around that.
If my body fat. Okay, I’ll be interested. Maybe that’s a winter thing and maybe we’ll look at that through the summer and just kind of see what the trend lines are. Not so that I can judge myself, but so that I can know myself. And I think it’s a really, really interesting concept. And I’ve said before, very delicately, That I love the Bos body positivity movement for many reasons.
I think it’s great. I also think body neutrality is something really cool and and I, and I buy into it at the same time. I think it’s the mindset that’s the most important thing. If you can come at something with curiosity and not judgment, then you’re golden. I literally had no reaction to any of these numbers other than to see where I.
Uh, ratio wise for a couple of different things, whether I’m where I am compared to where I was a year or two ago and what I think should maybe be something I’m looking out for going forward. So I found this really, really super interesting and I think, I think that I can address this in a healthy, informative way, potentially in season two of Liz talk.
but we’ll see. We’ll see how this tracks how people feel about this. Or if people, if you’re triggered by this, let me know. No judgment there. If it’s triggering to you to hear me talk about. Evaluating body fat, percentage, muscle weight, all of that stuff. In the same vein as I’m looking at performance and goals for, you know, whatever you wanna say, healthy, aging, longevity, anti-aging, whatever you wanna call it, not falling into the trap of deteriorating as I get older, that’s really the goal, but not even just that, but being better as I get older.
So if you’re interested in more about. And also this idea of, for example, looking at the composition of body fat. Now I don’t know that this, this machine can’t do that, but the white versus brown fat, and maybe talking about whether the fat that I have is actually healthy fat, and if I can do some work to swing things in the direction of anti-inflammation.
If that’s triggering, let me know. If not, I’d love to hear it too, because it’s something that’s really been on my mind lately and I would love to talk about it more, but only if it’s gonna serve you guys. Okay, friends, I gotta go. That’s it for this episode of Liz Talks. You can find me at Real Food Liz on Instagram.
Send me a dm. But if you have a question that you would like to have answered on the podcast, a specific question, the best way to ask is to go to Real food liz.com/ask Liz. That way they won’t get lost in my inbox. I appreciate you. Please send me your thoughts for what you wanna see in season two, and I will see you next week.
