← Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
Dr. Scott Scherr: Stress & Light on Your Skin Are Aging Your Entire Body
01:21:21
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- [00:00]
Scott Sher
Foreign.
- [00:08]
Amitai Eshel
Welcome back to Biohacking Beauty. Today we're diving into a topic that's rarely discussed but plays a huge role in how your skin ages, which is the skin brain axis. Your skin isn't just a passive barrier. We actually speak about that quite a bit. But today we're going to talk about how it's a dynamic organ that's constantly communicating with our brain, whether it is responding to stress, inflammation, any really outside stimuli, even light exposure. This conversation was originally recorded on the Smarter not harder podcast with Dr. Scott Sher, who's a leading ex, obviously was interviews a few times on this podcast. He's a leading expert in health optimization and longevity, one of the OGs of hyperbaric oxygen therapy, actually. Together we break down how neurological stress, circadian rhythms, and even your skin's microbiome influence aging at a cellular level. So if you've ever wondered why your skin reacts to emotional stress or why some people age faster than others, this episode is packed with insights you really don't want to miss. Dr. Scott Sher is, as I said, the host of the Smarter, Not Harder podcast and also a physician specializing in health optimization. I mentioned hyperbaric oxygen therapy and in general, longevity medicine. As the founder of integrative hbot hyperbaric oxygen therapy and a leading expert in performance medicine, he helps individuals leverage cutting edge science to enhance vitality, slow aging, and optimize brain and body function. A side note, if you ever see Biohackers with bluetongue, it is because of a company he co founded called Troscriptions and really he started the methylene blue craze. In any case, I really hope you enjoyed this podcast, so let's dive into it.
- [02:23]
Scott Sher
All right? Good to see you, my friend. How are you?
- [02:26]
Amitai Eshel
Great. Great to see you, Scott.
- [02:28]
Scott Sher
It's been too long. And Amitay. Amitai, Amitay. Tell me how I say your name perfectly as an Israeli, because I'm really bad at. I should know this.
- [02:36]
Amitai Eshel
But why? The question is why? Why? Why do you want to know how to say my name?
- [02:40]
Scott Sher
Well, because people mess up my name all the time too. And I shouldn't say appropriately.
- [02:45]
Amitai Eshel
Oh, your last name maybe.
- [02:46]
Scott Sher
My last name. My last name all the time.
- [02:48]
Amitai Eshel
Okay. Yeah. Amitai. Amitai is. Is in Hebrew. Yes, but it's the same way, you know, Anastasia. In America, my wife is Anastasia. That's not how you say her name in. In Russian it's Anastasia, by the way. I don't. In Hebrew it's called Anastasia and I call her Anastasia, which is Even, you know. But. But, yeah. So my name is Amitai. But any. If to be honest, you respond to most anything, if someone knows my name, I'm already flattered.
- [03:20]
Scott Sher
Yeah, me too. That's how I feel. So, especially my last name, which is. Which is very difficult for people to say, to spell all of those things. But. But, dude, it's been really great to know you for the last several years, and I'm such a big fan of you, your wife, your company. But what I love about you and the work that you do is that you're really great at educating. So I want to bring you on today and talk about a topic that I don't actually know that much about. And it's because, you know, nobody thinks about their skin until they need to think about their skin. Right. Probably around my age, right. When things start changing and you're like, oh, look at these wrinkles on my face. What the hell is that? Right. Or, you know, my frown lines because I was told I shouldn't wear sunglasses because I need all that sunlight into my eyes and. And everything like that. So where I wanted to go and start with, with you today is something that's very aligned with the work that we do at our nonprofit, which is talking about skin aging. But even before that, I wanted to talk about something that's. That's not very well known. It's something called the skin brain axis. So I'd love you to tell us what this is and why it's important, my friend.
- [04:24]
Amitai Eshel
So, first of all, you know, the skin, we say, like, oh, the skin's the largest organ in the body, which I would actually argue against. It is not.
- [04:32]
Scott Sher
Okay, what is that?
- [04:33]
Amitai Eshel
Lymphatic system.
- [04:34]
Scott Sher
Lymphatic system. Okay.
- [04:35]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
- [04:35]
Scott Sher
I've heard it's argued, like, your skeletal system is bigger. I've heard that your gut is bigger. Like, you know, everybody kind of argues about this.
- [04:40]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah. I don't know if you could call the entire biomass, like, of microbiome, of microbiota in your body, like, one system, it would be the biggest. Right. So, yeah, like. But the skin is very interesting because it's not really a one function that we have kind of a. Kind of a unit striving towards. Like, if you think of your liver. Yeah. You could. You could argue that there are some differentiation of cells, cell types. But it is. It is dedicated towards one function, whereas the skin really isn't even within, you know, epithelial cells or whatever. Like, they are not serving the same role if they're in. If they're located in different areas, but in general we have anything from pigment producing cells to collagen or fiber producing cells, Fibroblasts. Right. Two cells that are part of our immune system, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So the, the first thing that we need to realize that this, this is an organ that has a lot of moving parts, no pun intended. And one of the really, really cool things that, you know, we can talk about, like, you know, evolutionary biology, but one of the cool things that this organ, let's call it like that does is that it relays information from the environment directly to our brain. Very similar to other kind of avant garde organs that we have, such as our eyes or our smell receptors. Sure. Or taste receptors, etc. So the skin actually has, whether it is immunological responses that can relay back to the brain, it can relay even light. This is controversial. There is sufficient evidence to assume that it can also relay, you know, activation of what we call opsins, which are like these light receptors and, and how they kind of relate back to the brain.
- [06:39]
Scott Sher
Yeah, that's controversial. Right. Because some people will say like, if you have like a dark mask like that you're wearing at night, that's fine, but you're. There is some controversy that you have skin receptors that can actually tell people to wake up in the morning or to stay awake at night if they have too much bright light exposure.
- [06:54]
Amitai Eshel
Yes. And, and, and I think it's controversial because the studies suck. Like the studies showing that you actually do disrupt your circadian rhythm if you are in a bright room but you are sleeping like with a, with a mask, and it shows that it disrupts your circadian rhythm. They're really poorly conducted. So the contention is not a binary contention, it's more of a contention around how did you get to that conclusion?
- [07:20]
Scott Sher
Right.
- [07:21]
Amitai Eshel
But what we do know are that the skin has its own circadian rhythm. It follows, and that it at least gets input from the brain to its local circadian rhythm. But also that, that the skin is involved in larger processes of modulating our brain's behavior. Some of them are temperature, obviously.
- [07:41]
Scott Sher
Sure. Temperature, yeah.
- [07:42]
Amitai Eshel
Temperature, pressure, but also damage. So inflammation, of course.
- [07:48]
Scott Sher
Yeah.
- [07:48]
Amitai Eshel
And one of the things that we, that we know is that, and by the way, now we know also, you know, certain types of bacterias that are prevalent in like mold and stuff like that they can actually communicate with the brain through, through our skin, et cetera. So our brain really has a high, which called the skin brain axis that, that communicates directly with a Hypothalamic adrenal pituitary axis. The HPA axis.
- [08:14]
Scott Sher
Yep.
- [08:15]
Amitai Eshel
Because at the end of the day it's a stress relaying system where this system can be hijacked. When I say hijacked, the problem I have with that word is that word infers like top down processes. And by the way, in physiology, top down means brain down. But what I mean, top down, I mean predetermined or premeditated action by something which then, which then. So top down in physics or in any type of like man made or man initiated endeavor, you know, architecture would be, we have a, we have a plan and then something follows that plan. Whereas a bottom up would be how a, a mound of ant mound is built. Right, so that's what I mean.
- [09:01]
Scott Sher
So you don't. So you mean top down sort of like the brain sort of directed versus you know, sort of systemically directed otherwise. Right.
- [09:08]
Amitai Eshel
What I mean that I have a problem with hijacked, is that it? I don't mean brain. Brain directed. I actually mean hijacked infers that, that the, that the skin is trying to hijack. Oh, I see, but yeah, but it's actually not that or cells try to hijack. But, but what happens is, is that mainly through aging, so senescent cells for example, would be like a poignant point here. We communicate the incorrect signals back to the brain.
- [09:36]
Scott Sher
I see, okay. This is what you mean by hijacked.
- [09:38]
Amitai Eshel
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. But so, so it's not like someone is trying to do that. It's just, it's a bottom up process. Like senescent cells, for example, release secretory secretory phenotypes of senescence.
- [09:51]
Scott Sher
Right.
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Amitai Eshel
And those actually can travel and get to our HPA axis, therefore on the short term causing more stress through that access. So more catecholamines or stress molecules that are, that are being expressed, but on the long run they actually disrupt its function, cause senescence there.
- [10:11]
Scott Sher
So the senescent cells in the skin are causing a stress response in.
- [10:15]
Amitai Eshel
Yes, they cause a stress response. And this is a really, really, really cool series of studies. But really there is one study that is, I would determine as interesting from Lisbon, from the University of Lisbon in Portugal.
- [10:28]
Scott Sher
Okay.
- [10:28]
Amitai Eshel
Which is really like, it's an interesting read. It's called something to the extent of like the, the scale. Skin is a driver of whole body aging. But yeah, I would, I would really urge people to read it some other things that then kind of when I started I said, oh, you have other cells there. So you, but you also affect senescence. In the cells that relay immunological responses, they're very susceptible for senescence. And apparently the most susceptible are your pigment producing, your melanocytes. Your pigment producing cells. To the extent that they have their own secret phenotype, you can actually, that have a name that you can actually measure.
- [11:10]
Scott Sher
That's really interesting. So the melanocytes themselves are more susceptible to senescence than other types of cells in the skin itself. But yes, at the same time you're saying that senescent cells in the skin of different types, and I'm sure there's different types of cells that can become senescent, can then relay information to this, you know, this brain axis, the HPA axis, and potentially cause maybe a cycle of senescence that occurs even systemically internally that's not even sort of, you know, quote unquote related, although it's separate or directly related to the skin aging. That's happening kind of thing and can, and probably happen the other way too, I would imagine. Right. Is it, is it bidirectional? Right?
- [11:47]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, it's not only bidirectional. Like I would even, like, we can, we can go through first principles and just like, say your skin relies on like veg one as far as like or like the ability to renew blood vessels. Right, right.
- [12:01]
Scott Sher
Blood vessels.
- [12:02]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, yeah. So if you don't have like proper angiogenesis, which by the way, and I don't want to mention the C word, but that is like there are things.
- [12:13]
Scott Sher
Cancer.
- [12:14]
Amitai Eshel
Cancer, yes. Yeah.
- [12:15]
Scott Sher
It's anything here that's fine if you.
- [12:17]
Amitai Eshel
Don'T have good proper angiogenesis or again, hijacked. Angiogenesis.
- [12:22]
Scott Sher
Disrupted. Yeah, disrupted.
- [12:24]
Amitai Eshel
We can definitely talk about how things go wrong, but in the skin specifically, if you don't have proper angiogenesis, the skin is going to not have the building blocks or even, you know, we talk about like NAD or other CO factors which, which catalyze the repair of DNA which then would drive more aging, more senescence. And that's just like one thing. We didn't, we didn't mention the ability to detoxify. Like, there are many things that our skin relies on as far as like how our body ages, which then relies to. The skin, relates to the skin.
- [12:59]
Scott Sher
Yeah. One thing that I was hearing you speak about recently was moisture in the skin because people think of moisture as something that has to come from outside. But talk about, you know, how the skin moisturizes itself, how we keep itself, because it sounds like it's not really an outside process. It's More like an internal job. Right?
- [13:16]
Amitai Eshel
It is an internal job to the extent that there is no such thing actually as hydration that comes from the outside. It is, it actually is a non existent term. And the reason is, is because hydration is actually bound pretty tightly around hydrogen. But it's a hydrogen bound basically molecules, water, you know, fat, fat molecules, whatever. But the bottom line is, is that we are unable to create this process from the outside. It is only driven from the blood supply and intracellular processes. We what we can do from the outside. And that's why by the way, I say if you like hyaluronic acid, you like the idea of that humectant that is a silver bullet for hydration. There's actually a pretty interesting topic on its own how this molecule has become popular because of a process that has nothing to do with the way we apply it on the skin. Nothing. Zero. But if you apply it on your skin, it's not going to give you any moisture whatsoever. What it can do to some extent, but other molecules could do as well. If not even better. It can be an occlusive. It means it could prevent the, the, the sharing of, of moisture between the skin and the air. Something called so. So that it kind of disrupts this gradient. Right. And that is called the trans epidermal water loss. So the best way to think of a gradient is we're going to meet each other in Vegas in, in December.
- [14:44]
Scott Sher
Yeah, yeah.
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Amitai Eshel
And our lips are going to immediately shrivel up. Like immediately be the driest thing.
- [14:51]
Scott Sher
I live in Colorado, man. So it's, it's just as dry, but that's what I was thinking. So something that prevented water loss could be very helpful in a place that it's extremely dry then. Yes, but if we want to.
- [15:01]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, but I'll give you an example of, of where this understanding has like there's a glitch in the matrix in people's understanding and an entire industry is born out of it is the use of oils as moisture, as hydrators. So oils in general are really normally, obviously it's a blanket statement, but they're really poor hydrators. They're really of course poor for occlusion. They are good for suppleness. Right. But not to prevent trans epidermal water loss. And people, you know, there is a whole large industry now around beef tallow applied on the skin. Whether it's okay or not okay, it is not a good occlusive ingredient.
- [15:45]
Scott Sher
Right.
- [15:46]
Amitai Eshel
So, so that's just like a point about hydration. Hydration Actually comes from the inside. It is generated from what we consume, etc. Even by the way our own skin barrier is generated by what we consume. I'm not a big like anti omega 6 guy. Respect to those who are, but obviously like lipid perioxidization. Yeah. Is this is a negative thing as far as like many things, but also creating a sound skin barrier.
- [16:20]
Scott Sher
Right. So you have Omega 6s and you have Omega 3s. Right. But if you have an excess in either of them, it's going to cause this lipid peroxidation. Right?
- [16:28]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
- [16:28]
Scott Sher
So yeah, there's something that's run around a lot like in like sort of the anti aging circles called advanced glycation end products. Can you talk about those? Because oftentimes those are thought about as sort of manifesting in the skin and as a, as a way that we see skin aging in general.
- [16:46]
Amitai Eshel
Well, they are unstable molecules. They, they are called, they're, they have the best name. Whoever did the, the marketing for anti advanced lycation end products is the best person in the world because their, their acronym is literally age. Yep, age. Yeah, it's easy, easy. But really there are unstable molecules that look to adhere to proteins. So it would be a problem in many places, whether it is your gut, your connective tissues of sorts, et cetera. But these are caused by the metabolism of glucose. And basically they are considered the 13th hallmark of aging. And in the skin specifically, they change the same way. It's not the same way, but the same in the same heuristic way that you have iron, but then you have oxidized iron. Right. Like you have iron with an oxygen molecule attached to it. And we, we see a, you know, completely different substance there. Age when ag is attached to proteins such as collagen, but actually mainly elastin. They make this protein rigid in the, in the case of collagen, so it's more brittle. And in the case of elastin, we see really something very, very unique where elastin fibers need to shear on top of each other. They need to basically be slippery, if you would. And a couple of processes happen in aging skin. One of them is the polarization shift of their, they become from a hydrophobic to hydrophilic, their membrane, but also age basically make them sticky and you get a, a, a skin that doesn't move the same, it doesn't move the same as it used to. And we all know the pinch test. The pinch test where you pinch your skin, how fast it bounces back is more about that relationship rather the, the abundance or lack of collagen, but hydration thing too.
- [18:52]
Scott Sher
It's not a hydration thing as well.
- [18:53]
Amitai Eshel
As far as that would be. Some of it would be hydration for sure. So the speed of which the skin bounces back is mainly a face. So if you're, if you're over 50, you're going to have a slower bouncing of the skin back. We can also kind of squint very hard and see how far, how, how long it takes our skin to like delete those little wrinkles recreated. But that is mainly through these two, mainly through elastin and its malfunction.
- [19:24]
Scott Sher
Okay, so when we're talking about the advanced glutation, end products are great. I agree. It's like the age thing. It's like, it's very easy for people to remember. But I guess one of the things I wanted to ask you was, so give, give the, the evolutionary history, why as far as our like reproductive vitality and what changes with our skin as we get older and, and why, and why does it change in the sense of, you know, priorities and other aspects as we do get older?
- [19:49]
Amitai Eshel
So, and that is. So I would love to get into the, into the hormonal shifts that happen, but I think in the beginning it's just important to understand the conceptual idea of what our skin is and what it's supposed to do. Yeah, please. The skin, for most skin and let's say whatever is on it, like fur for animals, what it needs to do for any other animal that really dies very, very quickly after it reached the inability to reproduce. The skin and fur needs to communicate vitality and virality and the ability to have healthy offsprings and obviously take care of them and provide for them. So that is, that is a communication, a not only communication inwards, but it is a communication outwards organ.
- [20:44]
Scott Sher
So for mates, basically we're talking about for, for mating.
- [20:47]
Amitai Eshel
Yes. So you can think of the selfish gene, you can think of whatever you want that would make sense to you. But that is the main outcome of a healthy system. The main outcome for a healthy system. The same way where we like, we feel that abundance is a social status because when we lived in caves most of the time we had to take care of feeding ourselves. Right now and if we had free time to make, you know, bead necklaces or whatever.
- [21:15]
Scott Sher
Rock wall paintings.
- [21:16]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, exactly. It meant that we have more time than we know what to do with.
- [21:20]
Scott Sher
Right.
- [21:20]
Amitai Eshel
The same way a skin that is healthy literally means that everything else for the most part obviously is in check because or else we would not have these extra, extra ability to repair everything in the skin, etc. Which gets damaged all the time. Another thing, by the way, that we can consider is whatever turns over faster in the body requires more maintenance. The skin obviously turns over in a younger person every 14 to 21 days.
- [21:51]
Scott Sher
So that extends and that gets less. It turns over longer as we get older. Yes, interesting.
- [21:56]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, I wanted to get back to it later, but I just, actually now I just wanted to give an idea of how fast.
- [22:01]
Scott Sher
Yeah.
- [22:02]
Amitai Eshel
Cells turn over in the skin. Yeah, sure. When we grow older and this is something very unique to humans, turtles, I don't know, elephants, whatever. When we grow older and we pass the ability to reproduce, our skin needed to kind of reinvent itself because there is still a, an evolutionary need for us or else we wouldn't survive. It is the evolution, it is the evolutionary need of passing on the information outwards or onwards. But, but, but as you know, there is. We don't need to look good to do that.
- [22:36]
Scott Sher
Maybe wrinkly, maybe in the modern world.
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Amitai Eshel
You do, because you need to be impressive. And part of it is looking young, etc, but historically, you know, being old is not, does not diminish your ability to voice your opinion.
- [22:52]
Scott Sher
Right, right, right. We know this very well in our, in our culture. Yes, yeah, yes. In fact, it gives you more reason to have no filters at all on what you're going to. Going to expect anyway. So continue. Yes.
- [23:08]
Amitai Eshel
And it depends on where in the United States and the world this opinion might be considered more valuable or less valuable.
- [23:14]
Scott Sher
Indeed.
- [23:15]
Amitai Eshel
Depends where you are in the eye of the elder. Yeah, exactly. Quite literally. And now we get to the point where. So what happens to our skin? So our skin becomes less and less of a, of a communicative organ and a lot of processes flip and they become preservation processes. So we see anything from DNA repair to, as we said, the cycle of which our cells renew themselves, the amount of mitochondria per cell. So we, we normally think of mitochondrial decline or mitochondrial dysfunction. As I think intuitively I think of it like that you have a car, you have an engine. How well does the engine work? Right, like, but really mitochondria numerous within one cell. It's like many, many, many, many engines.
- [23:59]
Scott Sher
Yes, yes, I talk about this all the time. Yes. I didn't realize in the skin cells, the mitochondria density. So the number goes down over time too.
- [24:06]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, it doesn't happen only in the skin, but it is very common and replicable, predictable, etc. In the skin, for reference, one of the things that red light therapy does that's supposed to be like, good for you and things like that is the hormetic stress of actually increasing the mitochondrial density over time. And obviously that is again, debatable, but it should do that, let's say like that, and we know it in fat cells as well, etc. Now what, again, what the skin needs to do now is to preserve the entire organism. So think of a preservation kind of forward agent. First of all, you don't want to take a lot of resources from, from the environment, right? One of them, obviously we know that it takes energy to make energy and we also know that the more mitochondria we have, we're going to have statistically more elongated mitochondria, we're going to have more electron spillage, etc. So we minimize that. We also create a bigger layer of dead cells or basically a callus you can imagine on top of your skin. So the density between the, the hypodermis, dermis and epidermis changes. You have more epidermis and you have less dermis. We shed skin slower.
- [25:22]
Scott Sher
Okay.
- [25:23]
Amitai Eshel
And that slower shedding of the skin does many things aside from thickening the epidermis on the account of the dermis. It can also, it makes you also less susceptible to things like bruising, etc. Within this paradigm, things go wrong a little bit after that in ages that our skin didn't think we're going to, we're going to get to. But it does prevent a lot of like, reactions, reactions to the environment, damage to different, not only specifically in the skin, but like elbows, knees, areas that, that are in more contact with like sharp objects or whatever. So there is, there is a completely morphing of what this, this product of our body needs to do. We can even see it in the microbiome where I heard Dr. Zach Bush talk about the skin microbiome as an opportunity for diversity. But I understand why he's saying that. It's because he's understanding the gut microbiome. But actually in the skin it is not the case.
- [26:31]
Scott Sher
Right.
- [26:31]
Amitai Eshel
Especially not the case as we grow older where we actually do not want, we want dominance of very, very specific strains of bacteria. So the skin completely, as I said, completely morphs from a communicative organ outwards to a blockage or to a prevented damage preventing organ or to a, to a preservative organ, if I would.
- [26:55]
Scott Sher
Makes sense. Yeah, yeah, I totally understand. So it's basically trying to protect you from injury, protect you from dying in various ways and definitely care about what you look like anymore. So that's why you can look at these sort of native tribes, the elders in these tribes with like huge amounts of, you know, wrinkles or whatever. And that's, that's actually, it's a sign of being wise in some of these older cultures for, you know, for that. For one of those reasons at least. So the dermis gets smaller and the epidermis gets larger and that's because there's less turnover of the epidermis over time. Is that why? And then as a result that it just sort of like as a ratio, the epidermis goes up and then the dermis goes down. That kind of thing.
- [27:30]
Amitai Eshel
Yes, yes. But also different by the way, like, for, for example, like cortisol is increasing the shedding of. Of skin layers, for example.
- [27:38]
Scott Sher
Okay.
- [27:39]
Amitai Eshel
Or expression of mitochondrial heat or CoQ10 as another coenzyme. All of those have a direct correlation with the ability to shed skin.
- [27:52]
Scott Sher
So cortisol going up increases turnover or decreases.
- [27:56]
Amitai Eshel
It actually increases turnover, but it also increases mmps especially MMP allows the shedding of skin or increases the shedding of skin because it actually breaks down the bonds between skin layers or collagen or things like that. So we think of it as a negative thing. We think of it as something that would degrade collagen and stuff like that makes. But I re. But I remind you that that is exactly kind of the double edged sword we're talking about here.
- [28:23]
Scott Sher
Gotcha. And then when it comes to extra excess heat is that because the mitochondria in the skin are just less efficient overall and as a result you sort of spill more heat, that kind of thing.
- [28:33]
Amitai Eshel
Not only that, it's also the, the limited blood circulation to the skin which then just on average lowers a bit the temperature. But so we think of many different small changes that lead to increasing increase of effects over time. But they are all. It's like a symphony. We didn't even talk about like estrogen or, or.
- [28:56]
Scott Sher
Yeah, I wanted to get there. Yeah, your hormones. Right. There's what's going on. The hormones. But before. Just one question before we get there is on. You mentioned the bacterial strains. This is interesting to me because I've worked in hospitals for a long time. Right. And we. The most common things that we see of course are going to be staph and strep. Right. And various types of staph and strep. You mentioned that diversity is not as important and can be more dangerous as you get Older. Talk a little bit about that because I think that's something that's really not well understood by a lot of people. Like, you know, we have bacteria on our skin all the time and this changes as we, as we age. What's the story there?
- [29:26]
Amitai Eshel
So first of all, the faster turnover we have and the more skin shedding, we can accommodate different types of bacteria that might not be positive to us as we grow older. That's number one. Number two, there's something that I coined and now actually a baby that has run away from me completely is leaky skin. Like, someone told it to me on a podcast, like, oh, no, okay. I was like, oh, great, fantastic. But leaky skin, you know, when I started talking about it, I don't know, a decade ago, I did not actually mean the tightness of junctions the same way you're going to have it in your, in your gut. It will be leakage of information.
- [30:06]
Scott Sher
Ah, so different type of leakage here. Leakage is such a terrible word. But anyway, so keep it the worst.
- [30:11]
Amitai Eshel
The worst word you can imagine.
- [30:13]
Scott Sher
Oh man, that's terrible. Babies and adults and elderly. Anyways, I keep going with leakage. Please, let's, let's talk more leakage.
- [30:19]
Amitai Eshel
This, this, this is the slow dripping of something. Anyway, so the leakage of information, whether through something called quorum sensing. So quorum sensing is the. I'll even give like a, like a Nostradamus type, like, oh, nice prediction here. Which is one of the things that is going to be the hottest, like, topic in skincare in the next like 10, 5, 10 years is something called postbiotics. Which postbiotics are really the communication or the end results of, of bacterial metabolism. So you're going to have like the, the same way you have, I call it the bacterial exosomes, like the same way you're going to have exosome used or even like inflammatory cytokines used in order to awaken some repair process in the body. We can trigger specific things in the skin through using those postbiotics. And, and we use them. Many companies use them.
- [31:09]
Scott Sher
What's an example, what's, what's an example.
- [31:11]
Amitai Eshel
Of a postbiotic, like a lactobacillus postbiotic, where we would have basically inoculated bacteria, but we're going to leave the ability of that bacteria to be sensed, for example, or obviously, like you can take like a microbiome labs pill that has like spores. These spores, you might think that they are becoming bacteria in the skin, but most of what they is the sensing the quorum sensing of those spores is going to trigger different processes in the skin, I think.
- [31:40]
Scott Sher
Yeah, maybe just, just defining what quorum scenting is for people that maybe not know what that is, because that's a very interesting concept and we think about this in lots of different systemic areas in our body. But what does it mean when it comes to the skin itself?
- [31:53]
Amitai Eshel
Quorum sensing is the sensing of different bacteria to other. To their environment. But really I would like you to think of it as like the load, the ability to understand load, because obviously there is.
- [32:05]
Scott Sher
You mean load by like quantity. You mean like is quantity. The quantity. Okay, not like, like, not like a physical load, but like, not a physical.
- [32:11]
Amitai Eshel
Load, but the information load. If you would. I need to know how to. Whether I will procreate, whether I'll hunker down and, and try to preserve myself, whether I will express actually like oxygen singlets that would kill me but also kill bacteria around me. That, but. But I will offset the load there, that it would benefit, you know, my neighboring bacterias that I'm in sympathetic action with. So there are things that you can do in affecting the type of bacteria and the, the different type of bacteria in your skin, not necessarily through introducing more bacteria, which is what we're really accustomed to think of whether it is correct or not. That is not in my, my argument to win whatsoever. But we can affect them by giving them hints, right?
- [33:00]
Scott Sher
Yeah, right, right. And that's the using, but lying, but giving them a direction. Right. Giving them a sort of a window into the world where we want to. We want things to go by urging colonies and urging different types of bacteria to kind of shift in certain ways. And we do this all the time in the gut. And as you know, like, we can, you can use postbiotics in the gut as these products of metabolism from the bacteria themselves. And butyrate is a very common one. Of course, everybody's probably heard of that. And so.
- [33:28]
Amitai Eshel
So you're saying obviously mito pure, by the way, that's what it is. Like the urology craze, whether it. Again, whether it is driven by Monsanto or not. Again, not for me to say, because they own it now.
- [33:41]
Scott Sher
Wow.
- [33:43]
Amitai Eshel
Not for. No, they own Nestle and Nestle on them. Not for me to say at all, although I did say it, but it's a very smart approach, I would say within that approach, I think it's important to know, even though, again, like, even though we use postbiotics, et cetera, is that the grand hopes of postbiotics for now they are not realized. So grand hopes of introducing athletics, the best athletes in the world's fecal batter back into the, into the gut through inoculated bacteria. So, you know, basically poop supplements.
- [34:15]
Scott Sher
Yeah, poop supplements.
- [34:16]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, that's seem to work.
- [34:18]
Scott Sher
Yeah, seems. Yeah, they don't work that well at all. Yeah, but so we're not talking about spreading poop on the skin here, everybody. We're talking about the gut just to, to be clear. But when it comes to. I don't think you're doing that. And, and none of the skin companies have. If you start talking about it, maybe it'll actually start catching on even if you don't do it as a company. So just think about that.
- [34:36]
Amitai Eshel
I should start talking about it and not do it. That would be the best thing.
- [34:41]
Scott Sher
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So when it comes to the strains of bacteria and obviously we're talking about quorum sensing being able to shift these like what is like, I really didn't, I didn't actually know that until now that because the turnover is higher when we're younger, we can tolerate more strains. But as we're older because the turnover is less for all the reasons we've mentioned and more you can't tolerate that. So like what are the main ones that are usually there? Yeah.
- [35:04]
Amitai Eshel
Before I tell you this, let me ask you a question.
- [35:06]
Scott Sher
Yeah, yeah.
- [35:07]
Amitai Eshel
When are people more susceptible to drastic shifts in their gut microbiome?
- [35:15]
Scott Sher
Well, usually when they're stressed. Usually when they're stressed.
- [35:18]
Amitai Eshel
Oh yes, for sure, for sure. When they're stressed. But I meant like age wise, when would that be? And there are two ages. A little hint there.
- [35:25]
Scott Sher
But yeah, I mean you would think it during like rapid development. You'd think that there would be a potential there. And then that's when like going through puberty and then you'd think of, you know, at least in women when they had a major hormonal shift. Right. Which would be in like menopause. But it would. And then maybe in men it might be more indolent because our, you know, andropause or our hormonal declines are more gradual.
- [35:47]
Amitai Eshel
Actually we're going to get to it when you talk about different stuff in the skin, but yes, you're correct.
- [35:51]
Scott Sher
Yeah.
- [35:51]
Amitai Eshel
Okay, so one of the things that you've mentioned is like, is basically different scenarios but that cause the same level of stress in the organism that actually causes the organism to try to perform in high RPMs, basically.
- [36:07]
Scott Sher
Right, right.
- [36:08]
Amitai Eshel
And that within the factor of quorum sensing will allow your cells to, to respond a Little bit better to those stressors. What happens when we grow older is that the skin is in a lower RPM and therefore the shift over time is not responded well too. So the skin statistically just needs to lower the amount of risk that it has. Now you asked me about, just as an anecdote, but you asked me about like specific strains that show to improve skin, skin health over time. The Saccharomyces cavisae probably is the most effective one. And the reason I'm not mentioning more is that the other ones are patented and normally are pretty flimsy as far as science got it.
- [36:54]
Scott Sher
Yes. Yeah, yeah. My point really was that, you know, and I think it was just because I know mostly staph and strep. Right. And I didn't know if there's any other, any other bugs that were more prominent on the skin specifically. Now in the sense of what might be helpful to the skin, that's different. Right. And it sounds like.
- [37:09]
Amitai Eshel
No, no. So there are a. Acne and p. Acne bacteria that are more prevalent in, in oily skin. They can, they can survive there more. And that is another thing that lowers with age, obviously, the oiliness of the skin. That's another way for, for the skin to kind of starve them out. But I understand your question. What I think is very interesting here is that as far as like the skin being healthy, we actually know the less the diversity, the better.
- [37:40]
Scott Sher
So. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, very interesting. Yeah. And I think that's really where I was kind of trying to hammer that point because that's very unlikely. Unlike what we think about with the gut, we think that more diversity is good, although that may not always be the case anymore, even with the gut. Because if you live in a western country and you have a massively diverse ecosystem may not be as, as awesome as we think it used to be as well. So that's, that's changing, I think. But when it comes down to like the hormonal shifts. Let's talk about that because I know that was kind of a big part. You were kind of. You mentioned a little bit about estrogen and progesterone. There's a testosterone piece here. What you know, as far as aging goes, how does this reflect on our skin and how do you think about it?
- [38:14]
Amitai Eshel
It actually directly again. And the question is, I think you can always be a five year old and ask but why? To everything that I'm going to say, which is. Which is great. But so I'll start like very broadly. Broadly they are the catalysts of Collagen production in our skin and elastin over fibroblast, basically in our skin. Skin. So whether it is estrogen in women and testosterone in men. And since, as you mentioned, our decline is more mild or more sustained over time, rather than sharp instances of decline for women. For women, it is actually known. And obviously it changes. But the statistics are there is a crazy decline in collagen somewhere around the ages of, like, 3,940 and another crazy decline around age 50.
- [39:03]
Scott Sher
Okay.
- [39:04]
Amitai Eshel
Because that is where the two areas where we're having basically, like perimenopause and menopause. And obviously it changes, but that is a statistic. But what it means is that men, as we grow older, start. They start to have a larger and larger collagen difference between men and women to the extent that at age 50, it's 25% difference. Like, you have 25% more collagen as a man than you would have as a woman.
- [39:31]
Scott Sher
And this is just from. Is this is from estrogen decline in.
- [39:33]
Amitai Eshel
General or this is from estrogen decline? Okay, obviously there is. There. There are other things that are happening there. Men in general express more building blocks for connective tissue. There is a. There is a gene called LUM that encodes lumicans. And lumicans are. I call them like collagen brick layers. And they are very important to kind of prevent scarring or the, you know, adhesion. So we also have a higher expression of those. Just beside the point. But, yeah, the. These. These androgens basically allow men to create more collagen than women as time goes on, and the. The decline of them plays a role in the decline of collagen.
- [40:12]
Scott Sher
Got it.
- [40:12]
Amitai Eshel
And elastin.
- [40:14]
Scott Sher
And elastin as well. So these hormones are shifting. Our collagen production's going down. Life is. Is getting less about procreation and more about being wise and being outspoken. If you're part of our culture, of course. So one question I want to ask you, like, how I know that they're really interested in skin aging and actually measuring this and looking at this from. From a more of a holistic perspective. Where are we with, like, looking at skin aging and understanding how we can reverse this over time by using various interventions?
- [40:46]
Amitai Eshel
That's a great question. There are two things that are. Have very little to do with each other, but people think that they're the same thing. And one is the appearance of aging, and the other is literal skin aging. And I hope I make myself clear.
- [40:59]
Scott Sher
Yes.
- [41:00]
Amitai Eshel
And by the way, the appearance of aging does not exist only in the skin. So there's a famous study of like elevating or supplementing with growth hormone and reversing the biological age by six months. You did not, you reversed the appearance of aging where you tested the aging. The Horvath clock did not shift or whatever. Right. And that is I think very important to understand. So to answer your first question, obviously we have things like the lowest hanging fruit there is like Botox and stuff like that. They make you look younger. And within those there is actually, actually advancement is happening where the neurotoxins that people use last longer then they are tolerated by the tissue more. There is a. The science of fillers which add volume because volume is lost with time. These are not recommended in general, by the way. This is what I alluded to when I say hyaluronic acid as a skincare product. Got popular because of something that they didn't do. So when you inject fillers or place, if you are older fillers in the skin, they are normally based on hyaluronic acid. But this is, this is cross linked hyaluronic acid. It provides rigidity. The hyaluronic acid that we have in our skin is non cross linked. Even though it's called the same thing, it's completely different. So there is some science there as well. The problem with fillers is that they actually, because it is bioidentical, it actually morphs into the tissue and causes kind of a gelatin type looking tissue to, to. To. To kind of fuse into that collagen filler. And that's what we know now that fillers don't kind of go out of your body after all, get metabolized. A lot of them stay and morph into the tissue and cause a tissue that doesn't have a vascularization, etc. It's not a good thing.
- [42:56]
Scott Sher
Right? Yeah.
- [42:57]
Amitai Eshel
This is like lowest hanging fruit as far as like other appearance of aging. We definitely can create a balance between the ability of the skin to repair itself and the stimulation of repair. That is how you cause a tissue that looks better. The problem with that is that our skin is only the outermost layer within this, the structure that makes us look better. There's also subcutaneous tissue, muscles, etc. And devices that are trying, they're attempting to make us look better. They're either going to try to delete, in other words, marks that are close to the surface, whether it is pigmentation or scarring or things like that, or they're going, they're going to try and thicken the underlying tissue, mainly the collagen tissue, but not necessarily. Not only there. It doesn't exist. Okay. Any type of procedure which is going to use waves to heat up subdermal tissue and therefore increase the volume, it does it by morphing that tissue into scar tissue.
- [44:03]
Scott Sher
Okay.
- [44:04]
Amitai Eshel
The first thing is, and I'm talking to the people who are obviously, like, educated by those companies, but I'm talking to people who are supposed to know what they're doing, and they claim, well, you know, I'm using it at a low. At a low frequency. And I do this and I do that. No, my friend, you are there. It really does not exist. It's either. We create scar tissue, which, by the way, isn't that thick. What is thick in the beginning is the inflamed tissue. That's when we see a lot of difference. When that kind of resolves into scarring. The results are actually pretty mild and disappointing to the patient.
- [44:37]
Scott Sher
Right, I can imagine. Yeah.
- [44:38]
Amitai Eshel
And then they. They go to do more of those. So it is like trying to resolve a headache with pain somewhere else or hitting yourself with emotion, you know, trying to resolve emotional pain with physical pain, whatever you want to call that. There is no. It's really a silly thing that. That has been marketed so well. It's insane.
- [45:00]
Scott Sher
Wow. Yeah. So one question there just to have is that like, hypothetically, in a hypothetical situation, if you could improve somebody's skin age, like, really, like, you know, if you. If you're able to really measure this, like, would it actually show benefits into the actual age that people think you are? Right. Because I understand that they're different. Right. Or is it not really that that's possible? It's a. Two different. This doesn't even correlate as far as you guys can tell.
- [45:24]
Amitai Eshel
So we, we do do that. Like, we can show the increase of the genes that are associated with aging, which some of them I mentioned, like L U M or H A S, which is the hyaluronic acid expression gene or different collagen genes or whatever. Like 14 different genes that we've measured. Yeah, we can show a difference of up to 20 years. But we had very hard time, like, showing a different. Within that study, showing a difference without incorporating something that would stimulate repair. Because at the end of the day, think of a college of. Of a wrinkle or scar or hyperpigmented area or anything, really, it is a remnant of a process that has been resolved.
- [46:05]
Scott Sher
True. Very true. Yes. Yeah.
- [46:07]
Amitai Eshel
So you need to re. Break that Bone, basically, you can imagine, like it literally is the same as asking me, hey, I have this finger. I can't point up. It actually is going to point left or whatever.
- [46:17]
Scott Sher
Right, right. So you have to rebreg it.
- [46:19]
Amitai Eshel
How, how, how, how much wellness do I need to do in order for it to.
- [46:22]
Scott Sher
I get it.
- [46:23]
Amitai Eshel
Repair.
- [46:24]
Scott Sher
So you have to create a stress to be able to create that repair. So what are the, what are like the top three to five ways that you would do that from your perspective from like the repair side of things.
- [46:36]
Amitai Eshel
So probably microneedling is the best and most the easiest way to do that.
- [46:41]
Scott Sher
Okay.
- [46:42]
Amitai Eshel
It's controllable. It doesn't have any like damage that is thermal and. Yeah. So that to me is my, my kind of favorite way. You could also stress the fascia. So you could do different types of like massages and stuff like that. Some people would not like that. I say that it is very limited, but mainly to challenge adhesions and things like that. It actually is extremely important. So like facial massages, stuff like that. Another way to challenge fascia is by doing like kinesiological taping on the face.
- [47:13]
Scott Sher
Taping on the face. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
- [47:16]
Amitai Eshel
It's, it's.
- [47:16]
Scott Sher
This must be fun. Have you done this? I want to see pictures.
- [47:18]
Amitai Eshel
So Anastasia is doing it. We actually, we're actually trying to infuse peptides into the tape and stuff like that.
- [47:27]
Scott Sher
Nice.
- [47:27]
Amitai Eshel
There, there's. To be honest with you, even though it's a cool idea, you should just use skincare and use the tape. Like, there is a limit to how much you can infuse into a tape. So.
- [47:37]
Scott Sher
Yeah.
- [47:38]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, that is another great way. Lasers to a tolerable degree, which is like once every six months to one, to once every five years. I would say, like, if you really ask me, it's once every five years. But obviously people want a quick fix. So lasers are great. And I would say within, within the category of lasers because that's number four. I would also say chemical peels. I would say the same kind of category as far as like what you're targeting. And with that we, we actually can infuse the peptide that matters. Ghk. Cu. Copper peptide.
- [48:12]
Scott Sher
So when you do the peel, it gives you a higher absorption.
- [48:15]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, we actually have a peel that contains GHKCU in it.
- [48:20]
Scott Sher
Got it. Okay.
- [48:21]
Amitai Eshel
And that is about pills.
- [48:23]
Scott Sher
Okay.
- [48:23]
Amitai Eshel
Okay, cool. That is. No, listen, this is pretty crazy because it's, it's a level of acidity that estheticians in the beginning kind of go. Oh my God. You want me to use a product that's that strong? But after that they call us and say, so this guy didn't peel at all. Why? Basically they do. But it is in much smaller quantities as far as like, it's less apparent because it's not in big like blocks that people rip off their face. Anyway, so that is good. And number five, I would say is introducing more inflammatory cytokines. So these can be in exosomes. They can be in a PRF plated rich fibrin. But really these days, more affordable is just like injecting inflammatory cytokines or introducing them. It's kind of a. It called like. It's the same like as a vampire facial where you have micro.
- [49:13]
Scott Sher
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have the. The hyperbaric facial. Now like, you get the PRP and then you go into the hyperbaric chamber and that kind of thing. So I've seen that as well as the same kind of idea overall.
- [49:24]
Amitai Eshel
So I would say something about the hyperbaric facial.
- [49:27]
Scott Sher
Yeah.
- [49:28]
Amitai Eshel
The problem of the skin as it grows older is not the presence of oxygen. It is the cost of utilization of oxygen.
- [49:37]
Scott Sher
The cost. Okay, so it's the oxidative load.
- [49:39]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, it is the oxidative load. Very similar to what you would find in hyperbarics, probably in many tissues of the body with different people, obviously. Of course. But in the skin, it could be the void from it. It. You can have a very healthy person, but as time goes on, there is less ability to handle that oxidative load. What you could do, you could do many things. We had a product which we made in the beginning only for that.
- [50:01]
Scott Sher
Right. The hyperbaric mask.
- [50:03]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah. Which now it's just a product like people use it just in general. But that's one thing you could do. You could actually, I want to tell you another thing that's pretty cool. You can take a quarter of it, just blue trip.
- [50:14]
Scott Sher
Okay.
- [50:15]
Amitai Eshel
Dissolve it in 180 milliliters of reverse osmosis water.
- [50:20]
Scott Sher
Okay.
- [50:21]
Amitai Eshel
And spray a few sprays on the skin before going into the hyperbaric chamber.
- [50:27]
Scott Sher
Ah. So that's. So you're gonna protect. Protect it from the oxidative load itself.
- [50:30]
Amitai Eshel
Mm. Yeah.
- [50:31]
Scott Sher
Gotcha. That's awesome. I haven't. I. I've been using obviously internal for a long time as far as the methylene blue to protect. But I hadn't thought about from the skin perspective specifically which. Which is important and because it sounds like the skin might be even More sort of imbalanced over time with its ability to make energy versus its ability to, to detoxify from energy metabolism is what really what you're talking about. Right? So yeah. Well, dude, this has been fun. I, I mean I feel like I have about 25 more questions for you, but I think, I think, I think we'll probably have to end it here just because a time constraints on both sides. But we can do this again is I want to ask more questions about like more things in the world of skin and leakage, but I didn't know that was a really good point on this leaky skin aspect of the leakage being an information processing thing, which I think is super important for people because I think people hear that term now, which I've heard multiple times I guess since you and more thinking about it sort of like leaky gut being the same kind of thing. So yeah, very interesting. So I mean I asked the same question everybody at the end of our podcast. And this is blanket question. You can answer any way you'd like. So what are the three ways that you think that we can live Smarter, not harder. And this is because that's the name of our podcast, the Smarter not harder podcast. So what are three ways? I'm guessing it's Jiu Jitsu five days a week, 24, seven.
- [51:52]
Amitai Eshel
Excuse me, every day. No, I would say, I think first, first and foremost, obviously. Actually, no, first and foremost is community. Community is the, you know, when you watch like Dan whatever his name is, Blue Zones show and if you read any research about like Loma Linda or anything like that, and you quickly realize these guys have nothing in common. They don't do anything, anything that the other groups are doing. Yep, it's all one big bs but there's one thing that they all have in common which are like extremely strong communal community, community bonds. This is the essence. I, I, we can get into the will to live and where it resides in the brain, blah, blah, blah, you know, whatever. At the end of the day, just have a, you know, foster a community which you want to communicate, contribute to and feel that you are getting reciprocated there. That's, that's there. Habits. Building habits, I think is like the easiest, the smartest, not hardest way to live life. As we spoke before the podcast, like, I'm addicted to Jiu Jitsu and I don't need to have any conscious thought as far as like whether I'll go today or not. Obviously the famous Kobe Bryant saying, I don't negotiate with myself, but Really, I don't need to. There is nothing in my brain that says yes, but, but habits are a, a derivative of a decision we made to create a habit. So whether it's a bad habit or a good habit, at some point we said, you know, this is the decision I'm taking. We took this decision over and over and over again. So this is I would definitely describe as smarter, not harder.
- [53:44]
Scott Sher
I love that. Yeah. Habits make it, make it automatic, like you said. Right. Which I think is great. You don't have to think about it. There's no thinking. Thinking always gets us in trouble. Cool. All right, now what's number three?
- [53:53]
Amitai Eshel
The third thing I would say is, is, is avoid the taste of sweet. That's what, that's what I do. I now do not like the taste of sweet. And I think it's actually a pretty easy decision to make again long term.
- [54:07]
Scott Sher
Okay. Just because sugar is like cocaine and you don't want to go back to that. Just kidding.
- [54:14]
Amitai Eshel
Exactly.
- [54:15]
Scott Sher
Which is like sugar. Sugar is cocaine basically for us. I'm not saying that, that you were ever a cocaine addict. I don't, don't want to, don't say that. But you weren't. But sugar is like cocaine. For many people, it's as addicting.
- [54:24]
Amitai Eshel
So yes, I agree. And I think cocaine is, is a, is, is funny because it's the same color and stuff like that, but shows you how much I know about cocaine. But it's the same color and stuff like that. But I would say also that it's just. It is the wiring, wiring of our brain that is a problem there. It is. It is the thing that, that our brain actually is designed to consume in, in excess. And even the taste of it itself can spike blood sugar, blood glucose levels.
- [54:55]
Scott Sher
Like without the actual actually being sugar as well. Yeah, totally. I understand.
- [55:05]
Amitai Eshel
Hey there.
- [55:06]
C
This is Amitai, co founder and CEO of Young Goose and host of the Biohacking Beauty podcast. I wanted to take a brief moment to share something really special with you, our dedicated listeners at Young Goose. We've always been about more than just skincare. We are about cellular care. We believe in not just addressing the signs, but truly diving into the very source of skin aging. The reality is, as time goes on, our skin undergoes damage and this damage accumulates gradually, leading to those signs of aging we all see and know very well. But what if we could hit the rewind button? What if we could delve deep, not into the layers of the skin, but into the life sustaining mechanisms of our skin cells? That's exactly what we're doing at young OOCs. We're pioneering a renaissance in skincare by employing principles from regenerative medicine. By rejuvenating and restoring the cellular functions, our products aim to rewind time, gifting your skin a youthful, vibrant glow. And for our biohacking beauty listeners, we have a special treat. Head over to Yongoos.com right now and use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off your first purchase. Discover the magic of truly transformative skincare. And hey, because we value our returning customers just as much, use podcast five on your subsequent purchases to get 5% off. And the best part, that this discount can be combined with subscriptions and our already discounted systems. So why wait? Dive deep into the realm of regenerative substance skincare with Young Goose and let your skin. Thank you. Remember, it's not just skin care, it's cellular care. And now back to our conversation.
- [57:14]
Scott Sher
Alrighty, sir. So I have a question to you about sunscreen. Tell me why we need sunscreen or why we don't need sunscreen or why I should be putting sunscreen on my ears and not my cheeks or my nose instead of my forehead or. What's the dealer? I don't know. I'm. Because I'm. I have kids, you know, we put sunscreen on them and we care about what the ingredients are. So I want to know, like, should we use sunscreen? And then if we're going to use some kind of sunscreen, what do you recommend for kids, adults, anybody in between?
- [57:45]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah. So the short answer is yes, we should use sunscreen if our end goal is obviously to. To have skin longevity or the youthful skin appearance. And the reason is, is everything comes back to the skin's ability to repair damage or repair mistakes. And that is how we can obviously summarize aging. Right. Aging is a zero sum between damage and repair. Sorry, that's. That's youth. Right? Zero sum between aging and repair.
- [58:15]
Scott Sher
Right.
- [58:16]
Amitai Eshel
And every. Everything that's not zero sum, obviously, is aging. So aside from the fact that the sun ages us, which I think is where everyone's kind of having the discussion, that's a floor. Does the sun do more damage than good? The problem is, is that UV gets translated in the skin to free radicals. That's what happens.
- [58:36]
Scott Sher
Right?
- [58:37]
Amitai Eshel
Free radicals increase oxidative burden, oxidative load, which then obviously drives, you know, drives damage, mistakes, etc. But what people don't consider is the fact that the sun or UV physically fuses parts of our DNA together. H letters that are that are adjacent. And what happens is, is that we're getting basically DNA mutation or the inability to express DNA properly, which is called epigenetics, which then leads to not only damage, which is immediate but really long term damage or the inability to act upon future damage. That's what we want to use sunscreen. We obviously we can if we wanted to use our intelligence and understand when we are more susceptible to that. So for I'll give you an example, our son is apparently going to be an early riser and he makes sure I am out of the house giving him our morning walk by like 6:30am Sure. I don't put any sunscreen on. And that's a complicated discussion because one would argue that the prevalence of red and near infrared that my skin is exposed to can actually improve mitochondrial function which then improves how I respond to sun later on during the day. Whereas if I'm just exiting my house at 12 noon right to the zenith of the sun, I'm going to be ill prepared and even probably have been exposed to blue light, that dam that impedes mitochondrial function and then go out to the sun. I'm going to have less of a positive result there. Okay. As far as sunscreen, specifically the classical dermatologists don't like when you say, or I say, hey, physical sunscreen which is called like zinc oxide or titanium dioxide is less toxic or less dangerous. But the truth of the matter is is that the FDA has called to re examine evidence or re research what are called organic sunscreens, which is chemical sunscreens because of their ability to absorb through the skin to our bloodstream and then even cross the blood brain barrier. Some people will also hear that this happens with titanium dioxide. That's only if it's inhaled. So you know, that's a, that's a whole. Don't worms.
- [61:04]
Scott Sher
Okay.
- [61:05]
Amitai Eshel
You know what, if you're doing lines of anything, don't let it be your sunscreen.
- [61:10]
Scott Sher
Got it. Other, other options are better, maybe more effective. Got it. Okay.
- [61:13]
Amitai Eshel
More effective and definitely. Yeah. Anyway, so that's as far as that. You did mention different areas which is like super smart because we do want some vitamin D synthesis. Right, right.
- [61:25]
Scott Sher
That's the question.
- [61:26]
Amitai Eshel
We could definitely do better than our face and our arms which are normally the areas that are exposed. And that is because these are areas that are inundated with more mitochondria disrupting agents. Whether it is by the way, things like pollution or whether it is heavy metals or whether it is glyphosates or blue light artificial Blue light like I am. You can literally see where my face is being exposed to more of that light right now.
- [61:56]
Scott Sher
Sure.
- [61:57]
Amitai Eshel
Or EMF even. I know this shirt doesn't really block emf, but some clothing have, you know, silver or things like that. So a lot of sports clothes have like silver in them or different materials that can mitigate some of it. Especially people who care their underwear called lamps, obviously. So.
- [62:15]
Scott Sher
Yep.
- [62:15]
Amitai Eshel
EMF also increases oxidative stress in our skin.
- [62:19]
Scott Sher
Right.
- [62:19]
Amitai Eshel
So all of those things are really translated to oxidative stress. We go outside, obviously we are going to get more of that oxidative load. Some people might say I'm reaching here, it's a reach. But I would say that research shows that sunscreen that is paired with antioxidants is doubly as effective.
- [62:39]
Scott Sher
Oral antioxidants or. No, topical.
- [62:42]
Amitai Eshel
Topical antioxidants together with. So paired together with topical antioxidants has shown to be double as effective as far as like the. The ability damage goes. Yeah, yeah. So that shows us why we want to decrease that oxidative low. So areas that are also bigger, like your back, your thighs, your abdomen and chest, like your torso, these areas are not exposed to all these things that I talked about because normally people are dressed and are not getting that much sun. And by the way, you're lighter normally there, which means you are better at converting UV to vitamin D. Right.
- [63:16]
Scott Sher
So when it comes to like a sunscreen, like number, I. I totally understand what you mean. Like you want to protect the areas potentially they're getting most of the sun. Right. Your face, your arms, et cetera. Right. And that's where you know you have sunscreen potentially for to decrease skin damage. What do you typically recommend as far as like, do you need to have a 50 billion sunscreen? Do you need to have like a 5? What is the sense here that you get, you know, knowing the literature and knowing what you guys are doing in products, like what do you see? What do you see here?
- [63:45]
Amitai Eshel
So the funny thing, you don't even need any, any sense. I mean, I can tell you my. So the short answer is, I believe for the face you need around 40. But aside from that, again, you want to look for a very high performing antioxidant or other like more unique ingredients like ectoin that we use. And you can find it with other brands that are less expensive, like elastin has it. That's a brand sold by dermatologists, like a very affordable sunscreen. Okay. We just use like more of it. Okay. But these so antioxidant and something that will mitigate oxidative stress.
- [64:22]
Scott Sher
Right.
- [64:22]
Amitai Eshel
And the reason we want that is, is because it tends to work better than just the number we're looking at.
- [64:28]
Scott Sher
Right, so in combination. Got it.
- [64:30]
Amitai Eshel
Yes, but. But the number, by the way, denotes the amount of time you can be in the sun until you get burned.
- [64:35]
Scott Sher
Okay.
- [64:35]
Amitai Eshel
Obviously that's super, super. Depends on your.
- [64:38]
Scott Sher
Yeah, totally depends on your skin.
- [64:40]
Amitai Eshel
Patrick scale, stuff like that. But that is what 30, 40, 50 means. Okay.
- [64:44]
Scott Sher
You know, I didn't even know that. That's funny.
- [64:46]
Amitai Eshel
No one knows that.
- [64:49]
Scott Sher
30 minutes. Is it 30 minutes? Yeah, that's what it is.
- [64:51]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, 30 minutes.
- [64:52]
Scott Sher
Interesting.
- [64:53]
Amitai Eshel
So normally we want 40 because the unit of time normally people will live within is 20 minutes. Okay, that's a whole different discussion. But I would like two units of that time. I don't like fractionated units of time. So.
- [65:09]
Scott Sher
No, I want to. So you're telling me that people live in 20 minute increments, is that what you're saying?
- [65:13]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, people live in 20 minute increments.
- [65:15]
Scott Sher
This is. This is your. This is your theory, or is this. This proven on. Interesting.
- [65:18]
Amitai Eshel
No, this is. There is a book called for 10,000 weeks, which is like an incredible book.
- [65:25]
Scott Sher
Yes.
- [65:25]
Amitai Eshel
And he's the one that talks about it there. I think I've talked about it before with you. You. So he talks about it there. And that is where I adopted that.
- [65:35]
Scott Sher
Basically time management from your mortals. I love it.
- [65:37]
Amitai Eshel
Yes.
- [65:37]
Scott Sher
Good stuff. Yeah, he's fantastic. Okay, so you're talking about antioxidants, and I just learned what the SPF actually means, so thank you for that. It only took me 44 years, but who's counting? So let's talk about antioxidants. So I know you, you talk a lot about vitamin C and the various forms that. I think it's important because people don't realize there's some forms you want to put on your skin, some forms you want to put in your mouth, some forms you probably want to snort. I don't know. I don't know if you know those. I don't know. I don't have a particular knowledge of snorting vitamin C. But let's talk about the skin. Like what do you want to put on your seat on your. On your skin? And what do you. What don't you want to put on your skin?
- [66:13]
Amitai Eshel
So normally when people think about vitamin C, what literature will tell you is the name for vitamin C is ascorbic acid. But ascorbic acid is actually the outer layer of the vitamin C complex as it exists in nature. So in nature it is bound to minerals and there are some other factors there as well. But the mineral part is like super important because it keeps it stable. Okay, okay. That is where vitamin C becomes problematic. Whether in, in forms that are related to topical or oral. Just oral. We have so much play there because it's really bad, you know, surviving your digestive system.
- [66:49]
Scott Sher
Right.
- [66:50]
Amitai Eshel
But in your skin you don't actually. So ascorbic acid is only the outer shell of that complex. It is extremely unstable and does not have the ability to be remain stable. Even if we got it to a stable state, remain stable when it interacts with other ingredients and your acid mantle. So the minute there is a ph ph change, it's not going to stay at its active form. It's actually going to become pro oxidative. So it's actually going to drive oxidative stress in your cells and it's going to drive a type of cellular death called ferroptosis, which is exciting of iron atoms.
- [67:30]
Scott Sher
Yeah, I mean I've heard this from an IV perspective. Like you know, I have oral vitamin C versus IV vitamin C. You have IV vitamin C over about 10 or maybe more like about 20 or 25 grams. It becomes more of the oxidative. So you're saying there's a similar kind of pattern here when we're talking about what you're describing.
- [67:47]
Amitai Eshel
So it's in topical, it's over 7% ascorbic acid. But we really want to look at like under, you know, 5% of ascorbic acid. And no one wants those numbers. Like no company is competitive as far as their messaging because the messaging right now in the skincare world is, is a more masculine messaging than there than it used to be. Everything is more like more percentage more of something. So that's as far as like ascorbic acid. Another thing about ascorbic acid is it is water soluble. Okay?
- [68:24]
Scott Sher
Yes.
- [68:24]
Amitai Eshel
So it's. So it's lipophobic. It doesn't penetrate through your, your skin barrier. There is use for those types of vitamin Cs but the problem is is that it's touted to improve. So the main thing we want vitamin C for most of the time is the fact that it's a co factor for collagen. So it basically allows us to. So anyone who's heard about, you know, scurvy would know it's because of lack of vitamin C. So it's a connection connective issue, this tissue disorder. So we need vitamin C For that, especially in our skin. So we definitely want to consider like a fat soluble vitamin C. The best one around is thd, thd, ascorbate. There are other forms like sodium or calcium ascorbate, they are just less effective. Okay, that's. Those are forms that are actually very good orally, but they're less effective topically. The other thing that we like about vitamin C is that neutralization of oxidative load in uppermost layers of the skin.
- [69:27]
Scott Sher
Okay.
- [69:28]
Amitai Eshel
If you are looking for that, and we definitely are looking for that, when we formulate, we look at a. The best one is one that's called magnesium ascorbyl phosphate, but it can be sodium ascorbyl phosphate as well. Again not as effective Magnesium ascorbyl phosphate or MAP Vitamin C. But this don't expect it to improve like collagen production or help with inhibiting the tyrosinase which is like the thing that, that distributes or simulates your pigment. That is not the vitamin C we'll choose for that. We choose it mainly for its kind of sun protective benefits. And it by the way, it can give you like a three to four grade spf. Like if you ask me. Okay, equate it to spf. It's around three to four on that grade.
- [70:13]
Scott Sher
Just with the vitamin C. Yeah, that product itself within the sunscreen or whatever. Okay, cool. Or by itself. Understood.
- [70:20]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah.
- [70:20]
Scott Sher
Okay. Really interesting. So basically we're talking about two different things. We're talking about sun protection versus collagen production. And so do you think of like different ways would you have a product that has both in there or it just be two different types of vitamin C or is it usually one of the other kind of thing?
- [70:36]
Amitai Eshel
So skin care doesn't do emulsions very well. Okay, so essences are basically skincare's emulsions. Okay. And that a very popular product. So normally skincare chooses either a lipid based or lipid heavy or a kind of water heavy product.
- [70:53]
Scott Sher
Right.
- [70:53]
Amitai Eshel
Water based products or aqueous products are going to be the ones that are going to have the water lipophobic vitamin Cs and the fat soluble vitamin Cs are going to go with things like creams or lipid based serums that will be able to contain it.
- [71:11]
Scott Sher
Speaking of creams, I have a question about sperm on your face. Tell me, tell me a little bit.
- [71:19]
Amitai Eshel
About for the listeners. I do not have sperm on my face currently.
- [71:27]
Scott Sher
Are you sure you haven't put it on this morning yet?
- [71:31]
Amitai Eshel
I know why you're asking that. That's because of a product we use that's called spermidine.
- [71:36]
Scott Sher
Yes. Yeah.
- [71:36]
Amitai Eshel
And spermidine was discovered by Anthony Van Leeuwenhoek, the guy who discovered also the microscope because he was a boy. And the minute that you have a microscope, you know what you're going to be looking at. So, yeah, Spermidine is basically a fasting mimetic, is how most people like to educate on it. Right, right. It's, by the way, it's now derived from wheat germ. It's not derived from sperm. It exists in every cell in our body and it is basically triggering a process called autophagy, or autophagy, depends what side of the road you drive on. And basically it allows us to recycle malfunctioning cellular parts to. To new functioning ones, basically. But what I equate it to is like a chimney in. In renewal. Okay. Especially when topical is concerned, you are not only allowing waste to get out, basically, but you're also stalking the fire of renewal. And again, it's a long discussion, but it improves not only our ability to basically recycled dead parts and stuff like that, but it also basically targets nine out of the 12 hallmarks of aging. Therefore, we are also really ramping up renewal in general. Well, research that is not yet out, but what research is going to show, spoiler alert, is that it is also needed on a DNA expression level. As far as autophagy is concerned, it means that it doesn't only play a part in triggering autophagy. Adequate levels of it are a prerequisite in order for autophagy to happen. So if someone, you know, once in a While in like YouTube comments, someone's going to say something like fast for 72 hours once every three months and eat pomegranates, thank me later, something like that, you know, instead of, you know, whatever. But if spermidine at appropriate levels does not exist in that tissue, autophagy will not happen properly.
- [73:38]
Scott Sher
And I'm guessing that the skin gets depleted in such things faster because if it's oxidative load, then that's why you're putting sperm on people's faces.
- [73:46]
Amitai Eshel
Correct. Actually, actually, not only that, any, any tissue, the higher cellular turnover a specific tissue has, the more you're going to need that. Yeah, but by the way, you're. You're saying sperm. You're saying sperm, which is fine. You don't know how. You don't know how correct you are. Because of, I think, the Kardashians or something like that. The most talked about Procedure Right now, in. In a conference I attended, which is a facial plastic surgery conference, is injecting salmon sperm into people's faces. No, no, not sperm.
- [74:26]
Scott Sher
No sperm. No, no sperm. Wow. So they're injecting the eggs themselves or like the actual. No, actually, the sperm itself, actually. Okay.
- [74:33]
Amitai Eshel
Wow. Yeah.
- [74:35]
Scott Sher
And what's the reason for this? What are they?
- [74:36]
Amitai Eshel
What is ribosomes and like different, like, you know, RNA mRNA. But really what they are trying to do is to. To replenish those critical compounds that are needed, such as spermidine and other metabolites. The thing is, is that we know that most of them are easily replenishable.
- [74:56]
Scott Sher
Okay. And.
- [74:57]
Amitai Eshel
And through, by the way, tests like you guys are doing with Home Hope, like metabolomic test, you could really address those on a much more fundamental level and really concentrate on things that the skin needs especially. And not like, you know, and not pay thousands of dollars per facial sperm.
- [75:16]
Scott Sher
Facial sperm, Facial salmon sperm. Interesting. Well, I mean, I know when you told me when you guys were doing some of the R and D that it was a difficult process to find a way to make it not smell like sperm. Is that, Is that true?
- [75:30]
Amitai Eshel
That is 100% true. Yeah. I think that's one of the main reasons that other companies, which I know, as a matter of fact, it's over a year now for sure that there are a few, like super large players. One of them is worth $173 billion is. Yeah, it's a chocolate company that is dabbling into supplements.
- [75:54]
Scott Sher
Okay.
- [75:55]
Amitai Eshel
But yeah. Anyway, one of the reasons I believe it's more difficult for them is that they're trying to use a synthetic version which is called pyrimidine, or like other patented version of spermidine, which is isolated, which is synthetic. The pro in general, like in other molecules like nad, like cbd, we can go on and on and on. The body doesn't like things in isolation. And normally what we give the body is not what we get out of it at the end of the process. So trying to short circuit that process and give the body. I mean, the. The best example is the example of TRO mu, where you're giving it. I'm blanking on the name of the cordycepin. Cordycepin. But what you are getting out of is adenosine. Right. Like you're not giving it adenosine because you want to get adenosine. So very similarly, what we see is that the major players I'm talking about 80% of the repletion of the results is Driven by the pre and post cursors of spermidine, which is spermin. Mainly spermin, to be honest. But the pre and post courses.
- [76:59]
Scott Sher
So the precursors would be if you're giving spermidine as either a supplement or you're taking it on the skin, are those precursors also within. It's within the spermidine as well. So it's not like it has to be converted in the body. The post like the pre drugs and post drugs. Right. You still have pre drugs like you typically have those before you go in the body and they get turned into a prodrug. But just so I understand, the difference.
- [77:20]
Amitai Eshel
Is that uterine is, is a, is a byproduct of spermidine or it is the waste material of spermidine. Kind of. It's a polyamine, but is the polyamine that then the body needs to kind of recycle back into spermidine.
- [77:30]
Scott Sher
I see.
- [77:32]
Amitai Eshel
Having said that, they are really interchangeable as far as like how your body views that. So you. There is another one that's actually derived from citrus from Bergmont that is more kind of hush hush as far as like I would say like those pre post cursors, but for the most part these are the three major players like spermidine, putresine and sperm.
- [77:55]
Scott Sher
Nice, man. Well, that's super interesting. I'm. This has been fantastic, man. Thank you so much for spending time with me on the Smarter and a Harder podcast. I have one more question for you. It is a question we ask everybody at the end of our podcast and it is this. What are three ways that anyone can live Smarter, not harder. It is the name of our podcast. I know that you typically live this way except when you get injured in jiu jitsu. Maybe that's smarter, not harder some way. But you can, you can describe that if you want. But what are the three ways you think that anybody can live Smarter, not harder.
- [78:28]
Amitai Eshel
Wow, that's a great question. So I'll give one that is more general is I think refine your relationship with dopamine. Live with a conscious idea around. Your relationship with dopamine thing is like super important.
- [78:40]
Scott Sher
Yeah.
- [78:41]
Amitai Eshel
Invest in welcoming the future. It's coming whether you like it or not. But technological future is coming. And you know, part of living smarter not harder is living. So if you're going to live into that future, you need to make sure you're prepared for it and not left behind. And the third one, let's say we are talking about skin care. I would, I would go back to Sunscreen, like, okay, you want to be like, a super minimalist. Prevention is the best cure.
- [79:08]
Scott Sher
Love it. Yeah, I think I'm gonna have to get myself some sunscreen. I've been. I was batted away from it for so many years because I want to get enough, you know, vitamin D and. And even, you know, with, you know, squinting and sunglasses and all those kinds of things and getting enough. But I appreciate your perspective here, man, and it's always great seeing you when we see you in person. It's always great listening to what you have to say. I learned a lot because I know nothing about the skin, that's for sure. So, Amita, where can people learn about you, about your company? You have a fantastic company that. That we all like, know and love here at Transcription. So tell us more about it. Tell us more about where we can find everything.
- [79:41]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, so the best is obviously we have a podcast called that you are a frequent guest on, which is called the Biohacking Beauty Podcast. This is where we really nerd out about things that would end up improving skin health. But really, you know, if they can, you know, listeners can understand from the fact that we bring you on, it's not necessarily about skin care. It is about longevity and how it reflects on skincare. So it's Biohacking Beauty Podcast. We have a pretty lively Instagram page that is called Young Underscore Goose Underscore Skincare. And if someone wants to see me do jujitsu and maybe read my long rants around longevity, my name is Amitai Eshel. That's how you can find me on Instagram. Yeah. And obviously our website. Yeah. Anastasia, my wife, it's all like, you can do it all through the Angus Instagram. And our website is young.com easy.
- [80:39]
Scott Sher
Amazing. I hope I see you in person soon, but wishing you the best rest of your year. At least 2024 and 2025. All good things. Maybe you'll get an extra hour of sleep in the morning, but if Lev gets you up in the morning and you get a little bit of infrared, all the better, right?
- [80:54]
Amitai Eshel
Yeah, exactly.
- [80:55]
Scott Sher
Yeah. Take care, man. Good to see you. Thank you for your time.
- [80:57]
Amitai Eshel
Thank you. Thank you so much.