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ASCP Esty Talk
Ep 319 – The Rogue Pharmacist: The Importance of Hydration
00:20:14
Hydration is crucial for healthy skin, but its impact on our complexion can be complex. In this episode of The Rogue Pharmacist, Ben Fuchs explains the role hydration plays in skin health, the differences between dry, dehydrated, and oily skin, and...
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- [00:00]
A
Calling all forward thinking estheticians, it's time to redefine the art of skincare and embrace a revolutionary approach that begins with your clients. Skin Cell Health. I'm pharmacist Benjamin Knife Fuchs WELcoming you to Truth Treatment Systems where beauty begins. At the cell, we believe you're not just a beauty professional, you are a healthcare professional. You want to make a positive difference and you want to make a good living and we will help you do both. We're here to support your out of the box thinking and empower you to question traditional products, outdated formulations and old school ingredients. Imagine a world where solutions to the skin's enigmatic conditions lie just beyond the horizon. At Truth, we're not just a skincare brand. We're a movement that encourages you to explore better solutions and find that aha moment that changes the game. You are an artist and a healer of the skin and we're here to provide the canvas and the tools for you to create tailored protocols leaving generic ones in the past. Sign up now at truthtreatmentspro.com and receive two complimentary mineral rich electrolyte sheet masks. That's truthtreatmentspro.com where healthy skin is beautiful skin.
- [01:12]
B
Hello and welcome to ASCP and the Rogue Pharmacist with Benjamin Knight Fuchs. In each episode, we'll explore how internal and external factors can impact the skin. I'm Maggie Stasik, ASCP's program director and joining me is Ben Fuchs, skincare formulator and pharmacist says. Hi Ben.
- [01:28]
A
Hello, Maggie.
- [01:29]
B
Ben, hydration is key to healthy skin, but how does it truly impact our complexion? And how do things like age and skin type come into play?
- [01:38]
A
You know, when I do my talks and I ask people, how many of you, how many people have dry skin? Everybody raises their hand. In fact, I mean, it's like super rare for somebody not to have dry skin. But do babies have dry skin? Typically not. Children have dry skin? Typically not unless they have some kind of health condition, which is really important because dry skin is a health condition. The reason people have dry skin is because of health issues. And we really have to get this through our head that things that show up on the skin are indicators of things that are happening in the body for the most part, occasionally, what's called contact reactions, like allergic reactions, poison ivy or latex or nickel. But for the most part, things on the skin begin on the inside. And the skin is talking to us through its symptoms. The skin is telling us there's something wrong internally. So Rosacea and eczema and psoriasis. And these things that we consider to be skin problems are really manifestations of something that's going wrong inside the body, which is important for two reasons. Number one, because it's something you want to listen to, because you can make corrections if you know what's happening inside the body. And number two, because you can't do really a lot on the outside of the body, because these are the end results of things that are happening inside the body. Nothing exemplifies this more than dry skin. In fact, I would venture to say you're an esthetician, you may have a different opinion. I would say it's the number one problem that people have with their skin. Hyperpigmentation is close, but dry skin is probably the number one problem. But we sell $10 billion a year in moisturizing creams in this country. There are people who have moisturizers in their purse and in their locker and in their office and two in their bathroom and. And one in the car. And. And they. There are people who can't go 15 minutes without putting a moisturizer on their skin. You know, I worked for Blistex. That's how I learned my skincare. I got my skincare skills. The lips are like super skin. They're sticking out, so they're subject to extreme forces. They're more extremely affected, I should say, by the environment because they're sticking out. So nature has equipped the lips with lots of ways to stay moist. But, you know, there's people who can't go 10 minutes without putting chapstick on. I have a lot of friends like that. You probably know people like that. Why is it that we have this epidemic of dryness, even though we're selling billions of dollars of moisturizing creams? People have moisturizers everywhere. People are using chapstick all the time, or Blistex or lips or Carmex or whatever, lip medicine. What the heck is going on here? Right? This is an interesting problem. Well, the problem. There's so many issues here. First of all, people don't know they have dry skin. You don't know you have dry skin. You know you have rough skin, you know you have hard skin. You don't know you have dry skin. You can't perceive skin dryness. What's more, so called moisturizers. I'm doing air quotes here, right? Moisturizers are nothing of the kind. What is moisture? It's water. If you take a sponge and you dip it in water, you say it's moist, right? When you put a moisturizer on your skin, does it feel like a wet sponge? No, it doesn't feel anything like a wet sponge. It doesn't feel anything like hydration. It feels like slick, it feels like oil, it feels like silicon. You haven't done anything to moisturize the skin. But because what we think is dry skin is really hard skin, the so called moisturizer, which is oil and wax, softens. It does not moisturize. It softens. There ain't no moisturizing happening. They shouldn't be called moisturizers. In fact, I have to call them moisturizers when I'm talking, but I hate using that term because they're not moisturizers, they're softeners. You say, why is that important? Because moisturization is important for health. If you don't change the moisture level or the moisture quality of the skin, you have a skin health problem that will lead you to accelerated aging, that could lead to skin diseases, that could ultimately even lead to skin cancer if you don't change the hydration. Because the water level of the skin is critical for chemistry to occur. The chemistry of the skin occurs appropriately when the hydration level is appropriate. And when you put a moisturizer on your skin, you think you've done something. All you've done is soften. You haven't changed the hydration of the skin. But it's even worse than that because when you put a so called moisturizer on your skin, you occlude. And this occlusion suppresses chemistry. Ironically, the most important chemistry that it suppresses is the chemistry of hydration. So the more moisturizer you use, the more moisturizer you're going to need. The more moisturizer you use, the drier your skin will be. And this is most exemplified by the lips, which as I say, is a extreme versions of skin. And people know when they stop using their chapstick, their lips are really, really dry. And other people know when they stop using their moisturizing lotion, their skin is really, really dry because the moisturizers have suppressed skin chemistry. So moisturizers first of all do nothing of the kind. They soften. And if you really want softening, which is, you know, not a bad thing, go get some mayonnaise. You know, there are people who say, oh, I just use coconut oil, or oh, I just use olive oil. It's great. That softens the skin. You don't need a fancy cream, get olive oil. Because all you're doing is softening. You're creating a tactile sensation. And this tactile sensation gets collapsed in our minds as something's happening. No, nothing's happening. In fact, something's anti happening because you're suppressing. So what the heck do you do, is the question, right? Well, first of all, we gotta understand skin structure, right? The skin is layered, got three main layers. If you ask most people that tell you two layers, I say three because the third layer is distinct from the second layer. The three layers of the skin, or the two layers people will say are the dermis and the epidermis. But that layer on the top is distinct from anything else in the skin or in the body. So I consider it to be a third layer, and that's the stratum corneum. When people say they have dry skin, what they really mean is their stratum corneum is rough. And this is what allows us to buy fancy schmancy moisturizers or for people use olive oil or coconut and think we're doing something to the skin because we're softening the stratum cornea. We're not hydrating the skin. We're affecting only the stratum cornea. So the real question is, how does skin stay hydrated? In order to understand why the skin becomes dry, we got to understand why the skin stays hydrated, how it stays hydrated. Because when we understand it, we'll understand why everybody has dry skin even though they have moisturizers. The blood, it's the blood that moisturizes skin. So here's how it happens. The blood is traveling throughout your body, comes to the skin. And at the bottom of the skin, right, the dermis. This is the only part of the skin that is vascular, that has blood. You have tiny capillaries, right? And at the levels of the tiny capillaries, fluid water leaks out into the dermis. And from that point it diffuses upwards through. Through what's called, and I don't know if you heard this term, the interstitium. The interstitium is the space between cells. So you have cells and there's spaces between the cells. And the fluids leak out from the capillaries and they rise up into the interstitium, the area between the cells. And this is in the epidermis as well as in the dermis, although there's not as many cells in the dermis. And then they enter from the interstitium, the space between the cells. They enter into the cells through little openings in the cells called aquaporins. Aquaporins are openings in the cells that allow water to go in, because cells have to have water in them. And this whole movement upwards from the blood, from the blood capillaries, the fluid leaks, goes into the interstitium and the aquaporins, these all rise upwards. And this is what's supposed to happen. And then this is how the dermis and ultimately the epidermis and the stratum corneum are supposed to stay moist through the movement of fluids upwards via capillaries and interstitium and the aquaporins. But here's the problem. As we age, and this is why this is a problem. People, as they age, our blood becomes sticky, it becomes clotted, it doesn't move as effectively as the impact of digestive toxicity and the impact of sugar toxicity. Blood sugar elevations in a process called glycation, which is disturbances and breakdown in protein secondary to sugar kick in. The blood doesn't move as effectively, and it especially doesn't move as effectively at the extremities, the outside the frontiers. And the skin is the frontier. So as we age, our blood flow starts to slow down at the levels of the skin, and so water doesn't come out as effectively, and ultimately the skin doesn't stay hydrated. This accounts for the dryness of the skin throughout the tissue, which causes all. Which causes skin problems like accelerated aging and inflammation and disturbances in cell growth, et cetera. And it causes the dryness at the stratum corneum. You throw in the moisturizers that people are using, which suppress the ability of the natural moisture factor to absorb moisture from the air, and you have your cause of dry skin, it's metabolic. It's because of what's happening on the inside of the body. And as estheticians, skincare professionals, dermatologists, formulators, we have to get it through our heads that the skin, what shows up on the skin is the end result of what happens in the body. So if you say, oh, you're dry skin, you got digestive problems, you got blood sugar issues, you got metabolic syndrome and elevated blood sugar, et cetera. So it's disconnect. Nobody's going to say that. Nobody's going to understand that mechanism because nobody talks about that. So if you really want to address your dry skin, here's what you have to do. You got to work on the inside of your body. Number one, you got to make sure that you're absorbing and digesting your nutrients. That's critical because the nutrients are important for running the body, particularly fats. And as we age, the fatty part of the body. Our ability to absorb fats becomes suppressed, particularly with women, because there's a very important relationship between estrogen and fat absorption. And this is why, as women get older, they're more prone towards gallbladder disease and gallstones and, and cholecystectomies. Gallbladder removal is much more common in postmenopausal women. So understanding fats and fat absorption is critical. And that means supplementing with essential fatty acids and your fatty vitamins, particularly vitamin A, critical for moisturization. And anybody who's taken Accutane knows that poisoning the vitamin A system, which is what Accutane does, causes massive dryness. So vitamin A is a secretory vitamin. It stimulates secretions critical for dry skin and also essential fatty acids as well as your other fatty nutrients. But those stand out in importance then, supporting fat absorption, because it's not just what you take, it's also what you, what you absorb. So if you have leaky gut issues, if you have any kind of inflammatory conditions at the level of the intestinal ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease, or even if it's just mild and hasn't been diagnosed, that's going to be, that's going to impact lipid fat absorption and moisturization. And you may not know you have, you may not have full blown ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease. It could just be subtle. So working on digestive health is always going to be important. Using digestive enzymes that help you absorb fats, Lecithin granules are very important for helping the body absorb fats. The amino acid taurine and glycine can help. If you had a gallbladder removed, you're extra, it's extra problematic because the gallbladder is important for fat absorption. You can get something called bile salts, I don't know if you've ever heard of that. B I L E bile salts, those will help you absorb fats as well. If you have issues with the liver, metabolic syndrome, insulin problems, you got to work on all that. So basically you got to take care of your health is what I'm saying here. Whether it's digestive health and blood sugar health, supporting the movement of blood is important. Moving your body is important. Exercise is important. Drinking water is important. You know, drinking water isn't going to immediately hydrate your skin. There's this kind of idea, I drink water, it goes right to my skin, but it will fluidize the blood. In fact, drinking water is an amazing, is a really important strategy for all health issues because it helps the blood move more effectively. And that's for delivering nutrients and detoxification and oxygenation. From a topical perspective, stimulating blood flow is really important. Lymphatic massage can be very important using vasodilating nutrients like for example, vitamin C or topical niacin or even retinol. And exfoliation is also important. In fact, I consider exfoliation to be anti moisturization or anti moisturizer in the sense that moisturizers suppress chemistry, exfoliation stimulates chemistry. So moisturizers will suppress the ability of the skin to stay hydrated. Exfoliation turns it on, which is counterproductive or counterintuitive a little bit because, you know, when you say, oh, exfoliation is going to make your skin moist, you know, we don't think that. We think it's going to make your skin dry, but in the long run, it will turn things on and it will stimulate blood supply. And then we come to the issue of the stratum corneum, because that's really where the discomfort comes from. Yeah. Hydration of the epidermis and dermis are important for anti aging and for skin health. But the discomfort comes from the, the surface, the stratum corneum. So supporting natural moisture factor production is critical. Moisturizers suppress it, exfoliation turns it on. The natural moisture factors produce as the keratinocyte is rising up to the top to become the cornea site, and so stimulating the production or the movement, enhancing the movement, the transit. Speeding up the transit time of the keratinocyte from the bottom to the corneocyte not only improves the strength of the barrier and the natural moisture factor, but it also improves the production of lipids. Now, I should tell you this. As the keratinocyte is rising to the top to become a corneocyte, you know what I'm talking about, Become the barrier. It's shape shifting. And as it's shape shifting, this keratinocyte goes from round and plump and juicy to flat and dead at the top, just like people. Round and plump and juicy, flat and dead. It's kind of morphing. And as it's morphing inside, the molecules internally are becoming the natural moisture factor. That's how the natural moisture factor is formed. And to me, this is the coolest thing in all skincare and maybe even biology. As it's shape shifting, it's throwing its contents overboard. And those contents that get thrown overboard become the skin lipids. So as the Skin cell is rising from the bottom to top, it's morphing. The internal structure is becoming the natural moisture factor and the contents are being dumped overboard, becoming lipids. And that's how the barriers stay strong. That's how the natural moisture factor stays abundant. And that's how the lipids are produced to seal, kind of seal the skin surface. So encouraging the movement of cells from the bottom to the top is how you keep the stratum corneum healthy. And by using exfoliating aids, by use even something like a loofah pad. But I love alpha hydroxy acids. I'll tell you why, they're even better in a second. But anything you do to exfoliate will turn things on and will stimulate blood supply and that will help fluidize the blood, hydrate the epidermis and the dermis. I like alpha hydroxy acids as exfoliators. I'll tell you why. Because alpha hydroxy acids, they will exfoliate and in turn signal to the keratinocyte and the fibroblast to get going. In other words, control wounding. But they do something else very interesting. Alpha hydroxy acids are acids. And acids tell cells to move. They kick cells in the butt, if you will. And that's why if you're going to the gym and lift weights, you'll get strong. But if you lift weights until you feel the burn, you get super strong. Acids are, without getting into too much chemistry, protons, which are really how we measure acid, they're the marker of acids, go into cells and say, hey, let's get going. Because there's some stresses here. Acids are a sign that they're stresses. And when the body sees stresses, it interprets them as a need to grow. That's why we work out. And so alpha hydroxy acids will give you two mechanisms of hydration. Number one, they'll exfoliate, turning everything on. They give you two mechanisms of everything, the anti aging and everything else. They'll exfoliate and they'll turn everything on. And secondly, via the release of their protons, their acids, if you will. They're chunks of acid. That's kind of, that's not exact, but you know, for our purposes that'll do. They kick the cell in the butt and they tell the cell to get going and to get moving. So bottom line, dry skin is a metabolic issue and a digestive issue. It's an inside out condition. And that's why you're not going to treat it with a moisturizer. In fact, a moisturizer suppresses so called moisturizer suppresses chemistry. You want to treat your dry skin just like you want to treat your hyperpigmentation, your, your psoriasis, your rosacea, whatever it is, your eczema. As a health condition, we have marginalized the importance of the skin to being just a superficial covering that's like there to make us pretty, which is great, but it's an organ. It deserves the fully fledged attention that your heart and your liver and your spleen get when it comes to treating it as a health system. And so we want to begin to see our dry skin as a health issue. Work on sugar, work on, work on the digestive system. I didn't mention hormones, but those are also involved. Things like estrogen is very important and also progesterone and even testosterone, those also play a role. And then from a topical perspective, instead of a moisturizer, use an exfoliator to stimulate. And then after you exfoliate, use vitamins, topical vitamin C especially, which calms the skin down, which protects skin fats and also supports the health of the skin. You don't need a moisturizer, you need topical nutrition, Alpha hydroxy acids and take care of the internal side of your body. And when you do that correctly, believe it or not, as weird as it sounds, you will never have dry skin again.
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B
That concludes our show for today and we thank you for listening. But if you just can't get enough of Ben Fuchs, the ASCP's rogue pharmacist, you can find him@truthtreatments.com for more information on this episode or for ways to connect with Ben Fuchs or to learn more about ascp, check out the show notes.