← ASCP Esty Talk
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- [00:00]
A
If you're an esthetician, you know how frustrating it is when clients don't return consistently. Stop using software built for salons and start using Spa Sphere. Spa Sphere is built specifically for estheticians with simple tools like treatment plans and skin reports that get clients to come back. It helps you turn one time appointments into loyal regulars so your clients get better results and you make more from every session. ASCP members can try it for $1 for 90 days at Spa Sphere. AI ASCP. Hello and welcome to ASCP and the Rogue Pharmacist with Benjamin Nightfuchs. In each episode, we'll explore how internal and external factors can impact the SK. I'm Maggie Stasik, ASCP's program director. And joining me is Ben Fuchs, skincare formulator and pharmacist. Hey Ben.
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B
Hello, Maggie.
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A
We all experience stress at some point and for many people that stress becomes chronic. Can you break down what's actually happening physiologically in the body and how all that ultimately shows up in the skin over time?
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B
Well, first of all, when do you have the least amount of stress?
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A
I guess at home.
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B
No, no, less stress. When do you have the least amount of stress? Yeah, I'm telling you, not at home. Yeah, it's not at home. You may have less stress, but when do you have the least amount of stress?
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A
I don't know what you mean.
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B
Like when you have zero stress. I don't know when you're dead.
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A
Oh my God.
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B
That's because stress is part of life. The stress response is built into life and the stress response is a good thing. We grow under conditions of stress. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. So what happens when you go to the gym? You're stressing your muscles, right?
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A
Yeah, yeah.
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B
What happens the next day? Your muscles get bigger? Yeah, right. If you want to. Don't want to get Alzheimer's disease, Do crossword puzzles, learn a new language, brush your teeth with your left hand instead of your right hand. All of these put a stress on the central nervous system, on the brain, and you get more neural connections, you get neuroplasticity. So everywhere in nature we find this phenomena. If you want your leaves to get nice and bushy, you cut them back, you prune them back. This whole idea of stress stimulating things is called antifragility. So you have a fragile substance, you drop it, it breaks china. Right. Porcelain. You have a non fragile substance, you drop it, it doesn't break steel. Right. Iron. But if you have an antifragile substance and you stress it it grows. Life is antifragile. In fact, that's one of the distinguishing features of life, is that when it's stressed, it grows within parameters. If you can obviously overstress, you can burden the stress system. And that's not a good thing. But within guardrails, a certain amount of stress is a good thing. And we want to start to think about it that way. In fact, there's a term for good stress. It's called eustress. Eu eustress means good stress. When most people think of stress, they think of two things. Number one, they think of distress as opposed to eustress. And that's too much stress. And unfortunately, when we think about stress, we think about psychological stress, not physiologic stress. And physiologic stressors include sugar and low levels of oxygen and calories and toxins in foods. All of these are triggers of physical stress or physiologic stress, as opposed to the kind of stress most people think about, which is your, you know, credit card bills or your, your job or whatever it is. Those are psychological stresses nonetheless. They're all, whether it's physiologic or it's, it's psychological stress. It's all mediated by a stress hormone called cortisol, which everybody's heard of right now. Cortisol is not necessarily a bad thing. And I really want to get that across is that stress is not necessarily a bad thing. It's when stress is out of balance with rest. It's this balance of stress and rest that accounts for maximizing the stress response's ability to leverage or to activate anti fragility. So it's overstress that we're talking about, which is stress that is out of proportion or that is out of balance with rest. This balance of stress and rest is critical to be able to leverage if you want to grow. Like I said, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. That's how our muscles grow, that's how our brain grows. That's how our immune system grows. You know, they have this thing called the hygiene hypothesis. Have you heard of this? When babies, if they're not exposed to dirt or not exposed to toxins, they don't build a strong immune system. So we find this phenomena everywhere in nature where a certain amount of stress is a good thing. What you're talking about is overstress. And that is definitely a problem. And it has some really massive skin implications. So first of all, when the body is under stress, overstress distress. A part of the body is activated. That helps us survive. You have two nervous systems. You got a survival nervous system and you got a thrival nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is your nervous system. That's really important because it gets you out of a jam. It gets you away from lions and tigers and bears from an evolutionary standpoint. Or it wakes you up in the morning, get a surge in cortisol first thing in the morning. This is one of the reasons why sometimes people will wake up at like 4 in the morning and they can't go back to sleep. That's because they're getting a surge of cortisol, which is the body's way of saying, get out of bed and start doing things. And some the cortisol, the stress response that's mediated by cortisol, is actually very functional. It's when it's out of balance that it's a problem on the skin. It shows up as oily skin. And you can always tell if somebody is exhibiting a lot of cortisol by skin oiliness. Cortisol also, because cortisol is an anti inflammatory and that's one of its main claims to fame from a medicinal standpoint. So I had hydrocortisone creams, which is a version of cortisone. Prednisone is kind of a version of cortisone or an analog of cortisone. They suppress the immune system. So sometimes people will use these drugs when they have autoimmune diseases or when they have rashes, et cetera, all of which are manifestations of an activated immune system. However, if your immune system is activated, there's a reason for it. And shutting down the immune system is not necessarily a good thing. Another way where cortisol shows up is in melasma and hyperpigmentation. Estrogen, as it turns out, has a lot of things in common with a stress hormone. And it is kind of like a stress hormone, at least in terms of how the body responds to it. And estrogen is also associated in addition to cortisol with hyperpigmentation. One of the most problematic biochemical impacts of elevated cortisol is suppression of the thyroid. And I don't know if you know this, but hypothyroidism is an epidemic every year. The bestselling drug or among the best selling drugs in America, the top five top 10 bestselling drugs in America is thyroid medication. Because so many people are diagnosed hypothyroid, there's even more people who are hypothyroid that are not diagnosed. Dr. Broda Barnes wrote a book in, I think, the early 1980s or late 1970s called hypothyroidism, the unsuspected illness. And he noticed that when the thyroid is suppressed, when we're hypothyroid, we're more prone towards heart disease, we're more prone towards cancer, we're more prone towards autoimmune problems, we're more prone towards a lot of health challenges that we consider to be part and parcel of just growing older or just being alive. They're really the manifestations of hypothyroidism. And if you don't get treated for your hypothyroidism, you get treated for your heart disease, as opposed to the thyroid. You're not treating the cause, you're treating the effect. So hypothyroidism, which is secondary to or following elevated cortisol, can be a big health problem, and it can be a big problem for the skin. Hypothyroidism is associated with accelerated aging of the skin. Hypothyroidism is associated with dry skin. And you know how many people have dry skin? And also brittle fingernails, and also hair problems, falling hair, falling out. All of these are associated with hypothyroidism, which is, in turn, many times caused by elevated cortisol. So working with the cortisol system through A, psychological strategies, relaxation strategies, is important, and then B, through physiologic strategies like reducing your sugar intake, reducing your caloric intake, getting enough sleep, relax, somehow activating the relaxation response, slow, deep breathing. There's a lot of strategies today that alternative health practitioners, not so much the medical community, but alternative health practitioners, are leveraging under the umbrella of polyvagal theory. Have you heard of this?
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A
No.
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B
Polyvagal theory is the theory that says activation of the vagus nerve, the vagal nervous system, which is associated with the parasympathetic nervous system, is important for all kinds of health challenges. It turns out that, unfortunately, many Americans have been traumatized. Many, not just Americans, many adults have been traumatized at a young age. And it turns out that if you're traumatized at a young age, for whatever reason, you're more prone towards elevated cortisol as a baseline through post traumatic stress syndrome. And so we have a lot of people in this country who are suffering from health challenges that are associated, that are linked to elevated cortisol from traumatic childhood. And in fact, there was something that came out, a study that came out a few years ago called the ACEs study, which ACE a C E stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. And they noticed that people, many people who have chronic diseases, chronic degenerative diseases, also had adverse childhood experiences for following or secondary to elevated cortisol. So you have trauma as a kid, your cortisol goes up and it stays up. We have an epidemic of insomnia in this country. You know, there's, you can't go half an hour watching TV without a pillow commercial or a mattress commercial or a sheet commercial or something to help you sleep. And that's because of this insomnia epidemic that we have. And insomnia is a classic sign of elevated cortisol. So between hyperpigmentation and oily skin and suppression of the immune system and hypothyroidism, elevated cortisol, chronically elevated cortisol is a huge problem. And learning to lower cortisol, whether it's through calorie restriction or meditation, or getting better sleep or relaxation, muscle relaxation, or through using nutritional supplements like vitamin A and vitamin E, both of which have cortisol balancing properties, essential fatty acids, or just using just general psychological strategies to relax, all of these can have beneficial effect on cortisol. Last thing is cortisol accelerates the degradation of tissue. Tissue doesn't repair effectively under conditions of elevated cortisol. And that's one of the most dramatic places where cortisol plays a role in the aging process by accelerating tissue breakdown and, and by slowing down tissue repair. And in fact, people who are on prednisone, which is it's a super powerful cortisol like substance, are notorious for having things like osteoporosis and muscle wasting and connective tissue deterioration or degradation and general accelerated aging. So it's a big problem. You want to address it A, with psychological strategies, B physiological strategies, and C, nutritional supplementation.
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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.