Episode 191: How To Manage Alopecia: The Truth Behind This Condition

TRANSCRIPT

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Alopecia Angel podcast. I am your host, Johanna Dahlman. I am so excited to be here with you today. I just got done with a multi-day conference and it was so energizing and so depleting at the same time, but so great to connect with like-minded people to share my story, to be in the health and wellness atmosphere and environment and also to just connect with people from all over.

Funny enough, I was flying in and on the plane, there was a lady next to me who had alopecia prior to her second child right now is like 10, 11 years old. So around 12 years ago she had alopecia and she and I were talking for over 2 hours about her situation, her health situation, and her husband’s situation. Quite interesting when things start to unravel. And interesting and coincidentally enough on the last day of the conference here. There was a lady behind me we were introducing ourselves, and she too was actually currently going through alopecia. She’s been having these vicious cycles come in and out since she was 13, she lives in the UK She’s now, a mom of 30 or 40 something years of age, and what I truly believe is that these coincidences don’t happen out of thin air, they happen because you are a magnet to what you need at that time.

Whether it is encouragement, whether it is a tip or two, or whether it is a next step. We encounter people by, you know what we’re thinking about, who we are, what we attract, and what’s needed. They always say that when the student is ready, the teacher appears, and I feel that this is so true. I recently had a new client start working with me. She’s been following me for 7 years because I’ve been helping people all over the world for over eight. And lo and behold, I asked her, I was like: Why did you want to start working now 7 years later? And she told me: Now I’m ready. And it wasn’t ready as in like financially ready. It was ready as in like: My mindset is ready. I’m ready to open myself to healing. I’m ready to put in the effort. I’m ready to work on myself. I’m ready to unleash all the possibilities that I can be, do, and have.

It’s so beautiful once you get there or once you are committed to your growth, committed to your healing, committed to your journey, and even if you’re just taking baby steps, that too in it of itself is a commitment. Today’s topic that I wanted to talk about is the myth of managing alopecia. There’s a big myth surrounding this because you’ll see this maybe in a magazine, maybe you’ll see this in a blog post, or maybe you’ll see this in a comment on Instagram or TikTok or something of this nature, and managing alopecia is an absolute myth.

Why is that? It’s just like anything. You don’t manage it, it’s either you have it or you don’t. It’s either you are healthy or you’re not. It’s either you are passing and graduating, or you’re not. It’s either you’ve completed the full circle lesson that you needed to complete or you haven’t, and the universe keeps giving it to you over and over again.

And so what I mean by all this is that there is no such thing as managing the condition. There is no such thing as managing alopecia, managing diabetes, managing cancer. It’s either you’re healing from it and actively working towards that, or you’re not, or you’re just going to let the illness, the diagnosis, take over. And quote unquote, learn to accept it, quote unquote, all these other myths. You don’t learn to accept it. It’s either you’ve settled for your life or you’ve made the conscious decision to take a different route. You’ve made the conscious decision to choose something else for you and for your life. So managing a condition, managing the alopecia, the hair loss is a myth. It’s an absolute myth. It’s hogwash, it’s baloney, it’s an absolute lie. You don’t manage it, you heal it, it you put it into remission, you overcome it, you conquer it, you put it aside. You put it behind you, you move on. You move forward with hair, with health if you choose, and if not, if you choose the other side, the other path, then that too is a choice.

And I say this more deliberately now, more than ever because I see that everything in life is a choice and we need to really be accountable for what we want and how we get there, and what we accomplish and what we don’t accomplish. Where is the integrity for you, for yourself, for your health, for your future, for your hair? Where is the integrity in that? And sometimes I get it, you don’t know the right steps, you don’t know the path, you don’t know what step to take next. This is where you move in closer. You lean in to the people who’ve been there, done that to what you want. I’ve mentioned this on the last podcast, and I’m so excited.

So last week before leaving to the conference. I met up with this lady. Her name is Eva Steinwald and she just summited Mount Everest in May of this year, May 2025, and she’s 63 years old. The thing with Eva is that she was committed, she was determined and she gave it her all, and her story is absolutely incredible. I sat down with her for 3 hours at a coffee shop and we were meeting in person and there’s things about climbing Mount Everest that people don’t tell you about, that people don’t know about. The side effects of that, the before and after, what that looks like, the training, the financial aspect of it. All of these things, which again, I don’t wanna spoil it, I’m gonna leave it for when even I do the formal podcast and then you’ll hear all the juicy details. The thing is that just like conquering Mount Everest, it’s not like you tried, it’s either you do or you don’t, right? It’s either you summited or you didn’t.

I know somebody who summited, not just Eva, but another lady who summited apparently 3 times Mount Everest. At the time Eva, she was the oldest lady in as a North American lady. To have summited at 63 and which is a, an amazing feat in and of itself. But it’s either you do or you don’t. There is no try, there is no halfway, you give it your all. And again, I’ll go into Eva’s story later once we do the formal podcast. She’s just a ray of sunshine and has so much information and so much empowerment for all the obstacles that she’s been through, including of course Mount Everest, but of course

all the other mountains that she summited and climbed and conquered. But that too of grief and pain and life and journeys and obstacles and challenges because life is that.

Life is challenges. Life is a lesson, life is about conquering and mastering and growing and developing. Alopecia did all that for me and more. Alopecia has done all that and more for my students and my clients, and that’s the beauty. It’s either you do or you don’t. There is no manage. There is no: Oh, let’s take a helicopter up. There is no: Let’s take the escalators up. There’s no such thing. It’s either you put in the work and you do it, or you settle and you don’t, and then you see what happens. And for many of you, you want to heal. For many of you, you want to have full hair growth. You want all the benefits and beautiful positive side effects that happens once you heal and it can be yours. It’s all within your hands. It really can be.

And just like Eva, she had the right Sherpa, she had the right guide, she had the right coach, not just a regular fitness coach, she had to change out her coach to a high performance coach. That coach helped her get to that next level. Not everyone can take you up to Mount Everest, not everyone can get you to alopecia healing with full results. Not everyone has all the tools, the skills, and the capabilities, but it also goes back to you like how much we live in integrity. And I say this because I am 9 years alopecia free. But the other side of this is that I do and live by what I teach. I continue to do everything, and it doesn’t have to be perfect, by all means.

There’s no such thing as perfection, by all means. No. And I travel on a pretty fairly regular basis and I’ll probably do a podcast about traveling and keeping up with how I live and how things go and not missing the mark and all these things. It’s actually quite simple when you start reframing how things are and also when you start looking at your options, it’s really quite simple. As someone who’s lived in 5 different countries, who’s lived in 5 different states, who’s traveled all around to over 65 different countries, like navigating food, navigating lifestyle, navigating this and that is just it’s become so seamless and it can be seamless for anybody.

Whether you’re just beginning on your journey or whether you’re not, this is available to anyone around the world. This is available to anyone who wants to heal. The last country that I helped a client was Serbia. So as far as Serbia, Russia, Croatia, South Africa, Australia, you name it. Healing is possible for you, and it’s your birthright, and it’s just like anything else. If you wanna get an education, it’s there for you. If you want to get a promotion, it’s available to you. If you want to meet the love of your life, grow a garden, learn guitar, take up Spanish, it’s there for you, and just requires us to commit to take that action, to take that next step.

So I really wanted to talk about today, the managing of the condition, because that’s an absolute myth, and also show a little bit of this past week of how that’s been for me with the conference, with meeting people on the plane and even at the conference with alopecia, I always meet somebody with alopecia. In all honesty, whether it’s at the supermarket, whether it’s running errands or in everyday life, I meet somebody or someone who knows somebody with alopecia. And it’s isolating, it’s devastating, and it

doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to be filled with uncertainty. It doesn’t have to be a struggle. And I say this again, out of my own experience, I struggled with it. It was uncertain. It felt like a hopeless feat. It felt like my efforts were going to go down the toilet.

It felt like no doctor could give me any results, any resolution, any peace of mind, any guarantees. And then my sheer determination, my sheer will allowed me to move forward, allowed me to continue, and each nugget of wisdom, each step of the way, got me to where I am here and just maintaining a house or washing your car or learning something new, or even let’s say, maintaining the muscle mass or maintaining your weight or anything else. You don’t just maintain your weight by stopping going to the gym. You actively do things and choose things so that you can maintain your weight, so then you can increase muscle mass so that you can live better, not just for now, not just for today, not just for your hair today, but for your future.

I’ve said it over and over again, but truly like these past 9 years, in the beginning, okay. Struggling with hair loss. Yeah. Heal from that, saw the hair growth, okay. And then from there it had a compounding effect. Just like the more you put in your savings account, the more it compounds with interest. The same here, the more I’ve done for my health, for my hair, for my family. For my day to day every day as much as possible, right? There’s some days where I give 50%. There’s other days where I give 95%. There’s other days where I give 110%. Not every day is the same. And trust me today, it took me a minute to wake up. But at the same time, when your heart and your mind are in sync and in the right place, you will never forget your why, and you will never forget the reason why you even started on this path. And then it absolutely becomes an obsession as it has for me.

Again, just like your home, you don’t just buy a home and then all of a sudden you have nothing more to do except decorate. No, you do. You have to maintain it, the plumbing, the electrical, the roof, the floors, all these things you have to maintain, the car has to be maintained with tuneups and car washes and maybe tire changes, maybe for weather and for all these other aspects. The same is with our health.

And that’s what’s been lingering and lacking. And it’s also the same mindset that people don’t have. And again, going back to the compounding effect, the more you do each day, even if it’s just 20, 30, 40%, the more you will see in terms of results. So for example, now in my mid 40s as I mentioned before. I grow an inch of hair. You can see this clearly on YouTube, especially with the grays coming in and the tricolor happening like through the roots and everything. It’s a beautiful thing. I’m grateful for the inch of hair a month, and at the same time I’m like, I need to make another appointment.

But at the same time, I’m also very much grateful for where I am today because I’d rather be here today with an inch of hair growth each month versus where I was over 10 years ago, with absolute hair loss, absolute shedding, uncertainty, crying in the bathroom, on the floor, inconsolable, not knowing what my next step was, grieving for the hair, grieving for my identity, grieving for the unknown, grieving for the doom and

gloom of what could have happened, what could have taken place, what could have been. And with that same compounding effect, to see that life is vibrant, life is energetic, life is absolutely a miracle, a stunning resemblance of what we do each and every day of what we put forth, of what we put in to life, to our world, and how we create that. In many ways, looking back, I created my own alopecia.

There’s always a way to fix that. There’s always a way to undo that, there’s always a way to learn more, do more, and do better. Alopecia just like everything else or just like any other diagnosis or any other obstacle or any other situation, whether it’s in your home, your car, or in your life. It’s all a learning lesson. It’s all about getting to that next phase of your life. It’s all about like the video games, right? You get to that next level and in that next level you become more and more, not just confident and courageous, but also powerful, empowered, unstoppable. You get very clear on your priorities. You get very clear on what’s happening, on where you’re going, on what’s needed. And once we start sinking in to this truth, reality, and circumstance. Then everything becomes much more clear. You cut out the noise, you see the strategy, and all you have to do is follow it.

So with that, I wanted to invite you all to a free training. I have a free training coming up and it’s the last one of the year, so please don’t miss it because it is gonna be a chock full of information, a chock full of information that a) Is not readily available b) That you don’t know what you need to heal. We’re gonna go over the factors of healing, what’s needed, what that equation looks like, how to get there sooner rather than later. And regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender, it doesn’t matter because alopecia is not a race, gender, or ethnicity situation, it’s a biologic situation. And with biology and with science, we can hack it. And with biology and with science we can improve it. And with biology and with science, we can upgrade it. And that’s the beauty to where we are today, to this opportunity that you have right now to join me on this training. I’ll put the link in the show notes and I look forward to seeing you next time.

So just to recap, today we went over why managing the condition alopecia is a myth, and really managing any condition is a myth. It’s either you’re on your road to healing or you’re not. It’s either you’re taking the steps forward or you’re not. It’s whether you’re settling or you’re not. And again, this is all a choice, and it’s all about being in integrity with you, with who you are, with what you’re doing, and getting that correct path for you, that proven path for you, that results driven path for you and just taking action.

And then of course, if you have any questions, comments, feel free to share this with anyone who you know who would love to join the free training and who would love to learn more about alopecia, the autoimmune alopecia and which is areata, totalis universalis, because regardless of how long you’ve had it, whether you’re newly diagnosed, whether you’ve had it for 30 years or more, you can still heal. Just like you can still learn Spanish, you can still travel abroad, you can still choose to do what you wanna do, and you can choose healing as well.

I wish you all the best. Look forward to seeing you at the free training. Sending you all my love, big kiss. Take care, bye-bye.