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- [00:04]
A
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, AOCP's program director. And joining me is Ben Fuchs, skincare formulator and pharmacist. Hey, Ben.
- [00:20]
B
Hey, Maggie. Good to see you.
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A
Can you break down what ionic minerals are and why they're so important for skin function?
- [00:28]
B
Wow, that's a very big question. So ionic refers to electrical charge. So when something is said to be ionic, it has a charge, positive or negative charge. A cation is positive charge. An anion is negative charge, negatively charged. And ionic minerals have really interesting topical properties because of their electrical nature, for one thing. And I use a lot, I use them a lot in my formulations. For one thing, they facilitate transdermal penetration. And as you know, stratum corning is a booby prize. You gotta get down to the basal layer or into the dermis. And one of the cool things about ionic minerals is they facilitate, in specific forms, they facilitate transdermal penetration. By the way we take em orally, they facilitate the penetration of nutrients, other nutrients that they're attached to through the intestine. So they help facilitate movement by virtue of their electrical nature, not only through the stratum corneum into the lower levels of the skin or through the intestine, but into the cells themselves, which is super cool. Not only are you getting transdermal penetration, you're actually getting penetration into the keratinocyte and into the fibroblast. That is really, really cool. And it's not just penetration of the ionic minerals, but they carry things. So when you mix them with vitamin C, for example, you'll get better penetration of vitamin C transdermally and intracellularly, retinol, likewise, or any, anything else that you want to get into this into the cell. They also have a structuring effect on water. Now, you probably know this. The water in the body is not ordinary water. It's. They call it structured water, some people say coherent water. I call it magic water because it really has a sort of magical electrical quality. And as we age, that structuring starts to break down. And that's one of the reasons why we sag. We blobify. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about? As we get older, we tend to get. We lose our angles and we blobify and that, that freaks people out. And one of the reasons that happens is because we lose our, our Our water loses its structure. Now, water is structured in the body by virtue of its interactions with proteins, specifically collagen, by virtue of its interactions with glycosaminoglycans and proteoglycans, high aleuronic acid kind of substances, and also ionic minerals. So ionic minerals support the structuring of water, making it a more coherent water, which means it's a more electrical water. And while we focus a lot, understandably, on chemistry, really, the body is an electrical system, and chemistry only works as far as we're healthy from an electrical standpoint. Chemistry is, at the end of the day, electrical. And chemical phenomena is really electrical phenomena when you drill down. And ionic minerals, by virtue of their ability to structure water, help the electrical nature of the chemistry in the body work better, particularly in cells. Cells grow and cells divide based on electric that they're receiving from outside the cells. And topically applied ionic minerals support that electrical conductivity and electrical signaling, if you will. Topical ionic minerals also are nature's, among nature's most powerful antioxidants. In fact, the very definition of an antioxidant is a molecule that will replace an electron. Oxidation is when the electron's ripped off. Ionic minerals can deliver electrons, thereby neutralizing or quenching free radicals, which is really ideal post treatment. One of the reasons why people get irritated after peels or lasers or ablative therapies in general is by virtue of oxidation. Using ionic minerals post treatment can help quiet down or quench free radicals and oxidative byproducts, calming the skin down, making it less inflamed or less red or less irritated. Ionic minerals also structure water on the stratum corneum. So when you spray ionic minerals on the skin, you'll actually get a better quality water. I should also tell you, structured water is, believe it or not, wetter water. It has a better hydrating property. So when you structure water, you not only improve its electrical conductivity, but you improve its hydrating properties. And so by spraying ionic minerals or applying ionic minerals to the surface of the skin, the water on the stratum corneum will be a better quality. A wetter type of water, ionic minerals are usually entangled with other material from the soil. That's where we get ours anyway. And they come in complexes that are called fulvic fulvic minerals or fulvic acid. They don't really exist by themselves in, in the soil. And when they're entangled with these fulvics, they're among nature's best chelating agents and detoxifying agents. So you get chelating properties and detoxifying properties. They're also antimicrobial in addition to being anti inflammatory. So that makes them ideal for acne or for dermatitis. And then also there's these little tiny structures inside of cells. Now you know what they are. And they burn out as we age, largely because of our excess ingestion of high energy foods, particularly sugar. And mitochondrial burnout not only is going to impair cellular energy, but ultimately it can cause cell death. Turns out ionic minerals actually have a protective effect for mitochondria. So you get mitochondrial benefits, you get anti inflammatory benefits, you get transdermal benefits, you get water structuring benefits. And then as if that weren't enough, you also get the mineral benefits. You get the magnesium and the chloride and the potassium and all the different, all the different electro, they're actually called electrolytes, these ionic minerals when they're dissolved in water anyway. And you get the nutritional value of, of these electrolytes. So it's very difficult to come up with a more multifunctional active ingredient. Now this is for topical. You can get ionic minerals there internally as well. And one of the things the stomach does is it will ionize minerals that are found in vegetables and vegetables, as it turns out are. Fruits and vegetables are among the best sources of minerals. Meats to a certain extent too, but fruits and vegetables especially. And in the digestive process, ionization is created. The minerals are actually ionized. They're charged in the digestive process and that's important for absorption there. There's a superior absorption into the intestine of charged minerals with positive and negative charges. So you get a better internal absorption, as I say, in addition to, in addition to intracellular absorption. And then the water structuring capacity of, of the ionic minerals is not just important for the extracellular water, it's also important for the intracellular water. So the water inside the a cell is more electrically functional, more coherent, as they say. Also, one of the cool things about ionic minerals is their size is such and their electrical charge is such that they enter into hair follicles and sweat glands very effectively. So they can pen. That's, that's one of the reasons why they penetrate so effectively. And post treatment, you don't have to worry about that because they'll go right to work post treatment. And you can actually feel them when they're in the right form. When these ionic minerals are in the right form, particularly in the poly electrolyte form, which means a whole string of ionic minerals, they will actually pull in oxygen and pull in water into the tissue. And you can actually experience this if you use an ionic mineral spray. And these ionic minerals have to be in a poly electrolyte form, a long, complex form. You can spray your hair when you come out of the shower and you can actually feel the softness in your hair as they're pulling water into the hair shaft. And so for all of these reasons, to me, ionic mineral polyelectrolytes, and I like the polyelectrolyte form, which is the long form rather than the small ionic minerals, I think they're one of the most underappreciated, underleveraged and underutilized and misunderstood of all the active ingredients that you could put on your skin, not to mention the fact that you can use them internally. They're a nutritional supplement in essence as well. And by the way, a lot of these minerals should be in veggies because they're in the soil. But because our soil is depleted of many minerals, veggies don't have them. And consequently, there's a lot of people who are deficient in a lot of these minerals. And mineral deficiencies are pretty common. In fact, mineral deficiencies have been a common nutritional issue for since the 1930s, almost a hundred years. There was a famous 19, I think it was 19, 1920s or 1930s. There was a famous Senate paper that talked about mineral deficiencies and the problems with soil depletion. So there's been an ongoing issue. And supplementing with ionic minerals internally and using them on the skin can be can help bypass some of those issues of deficiencies.
- [08:58]
A
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.