About

The question I have been asking since I was twelve

My mother died of cancer when I was twelve.

What I could not make sense of, then or for years afterwards, was that she had done everything right.

She had no bad habits. She was careful about cleanliness to the point of ritual; she never went to bed without washing her feet, and she made my cousins do the same when they stayed with us.

If we ate anywhere outside the house, she wanted to see the plates washed before anything was served on them.

And it still took her.

A twelve-year-old cannot hold that contradiction. If living carefully was not enough, then something else was wrong.

Something in the food, the water, the medicine, the way we had all quietly agreed to live. I have been chasing that question ever since.

It is why I read about how food is grown now and what gets sprayed on it. About what is in the things we put on our skin and in our mouths every day without thinking about it once.

The years after she died were not good ones. I came out of them slowly, through books, one friendship, and ten days of silence on a Vipassana course that taught me to look at a problem without drowning in how I feel about it.

That habit of observing before reacting is most of what I have done with my life since.

My wife

Our marriage was arranged. I knew beforehand that she had female pattern hair loss, that it was severe, and that no doctor had been able to tell her why.

It did not put me off. I had spent years researching and questioning things that looked odd to me, and I believed it could be worked on.

So I sat with her and explained what I had come to think: that fluoride in toothpaste, chlorine in tap water, pesticide residue on fruit and vegetables, adulterated milk and chemical-heavy skincare all accumulate quietly, a little at a time, across an ordinary life.

She listened, and then she took on my habits alongside me.

What that looks like day to day

Some of it sounds strange until you have lived with it for a while.

We walk barefoot. We start the day with desi ghee on an empty stomach and finish it with cumin water. We eat in a certain order, which did more to her glucose curve than any single food swap we tried.


We are up early and outside in the morning light. We are slowly learning to grow our own food, badly so far.

None of this is a treatment. It is a way of living that takes away some of what I believe was working against her.

And none of this is pseudoscience. Walking barefoot, ghee on an empty stomach, and early morning sunlight are non-negotiable for us, and there is research behind them worth exploring by yourself.

Where she is now

Her hair is growing back.

I am not going to put a percentage on that until I have her repeat bloodwork, and when I do, the numbers go on this site whether or not they flatter me.

Why I am writing this down

More women are looking for this than used to. Over the last five years, searches for hair loss are up 50 percent, for telogen effluvium 130 percent, and for female pattern hair loss 350 percent.

**Whatever is behind that rise, the women typing those words deserve better than what my wife got.**

So I am documenting her case in the open. Her labs, her photos, what she eats, her glucose data, and the things that did not work alongside the things that did.

I do it because understanding has to come first. My wife could not act on any of this until she understood what was happening to her, and I do not think anyone can. A shampoo asks nothing of you. A cause asks you to learn something, and then it gives you something to actually change.

And a good part of what drives this hair loss is lifestyle and diet. Not all of it; some hair loss is genetic, some autoimmune, some scarring, and no amount of good food touches those.

But where food, sleep, sunlight, stress, and nutritional deficiency are the drivers, changing them changes the hair. I have watched that happen in my own house.

My own view, shaped by Dr. Russell Jaffe's work on treating causes rather than symptoms, is that a lot of this can be turned around without minoxidil, finasteride, spironolactone, or a hair transplant.

So I wanted to try it with my wife, and show the result to this world.

What I am not

I am not medically trained. Nothing here is a diagnosis or a prescription, and none of it replaces a doctor who can examine you.

Her blood tests were ordered by a physician. The food and lifestyle changes on this site are ones we chose ourselves, not a prescription from her doctor.

If your hairline is receding as a band, your eyebrows are thinning, or your scalp looks smooth and shiny where hair used to be, please stop reading and see a dermatologist. That pattern can mean a scarring alopecia, which destroys the follicle permanently.

How this site makes money

Some links might be affiliate links. If you buy through one, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I only link to things my wife actually used.

I also sell an ebook containing the full protocol she follows. There is no medication in it and no hair products, and I do not sell supplements of my own.

Everything else on this site is free and will stay that way. If you can work it out from the articles alone, that is a good outcome, and you owe me nothing.

Write to me

You can reach me at gowtham@hairandhormones.com.

I read everything.