← Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
This is Why Bioretinol Is the Future of Vitamin A
00:22:08
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- [00:09]
Host
Ever feel like navigating the skincare world is like trying to decode an endless stream of trends, buzzwords and promises.
- [00:18]
Jamie McGuire
You're not alone.
- [00:19]
Host
In this episode of Biohacking Beauty, I sit down with the one and only Jamie McGuire, a skincare consultant with over 15 years of experience and a pro at cutting through the noise to create personalized routines that actually deliver. We get into the nitty gritty of bioretinol by Yungus, why it's changing the game, especially for sensitive skin, and how to approach skincare with a balanced perspective on clean ingredients versus results. Jamie also shares her honest take on the ingredient myths that flood the Internet and how to spot what's truly beneficial for your skin. Whether you're someone who swears by the bare minimum or you love experimenting with the latest skincare drops, this conversation is packed with insights to help you build. Build a routine that works for you. No hype, just results. Let's dive in.
- [01:31]
Expert
I wish there was miracle products out there. That's just not a thing. It's, it's like a workout. It takes time. In order to see these results. You really have to put in the time, effort and, you know, really commit to something for a long period of time if you want to get that long term skin health. And obviously there's so many other components too with lifestyle and diet as well. But with skincare specifically, I just find that so many people are, you know, obviously confused because of how much is out there and what's going to be right for them. And the question that I'm constantly getting asked is, you know, what do I prefer Young Goose or Osmosis or what's best for them. And it's just so individualized for each person. And I did write, you know, a comparison for people to refer to so that they can figure out what will align with them better. Both obviously align with my skincare philosophies, which is why I started to carry Ungoose, because it is, it's the biohacking side which Osmosis is not. So there are going to be differences in both and both are positive and both are meant for longevity and long term skin health, which I love. And obviously like I, it's been 15 years since I've even, you know, introduced another product line. So it speaks volumes. And you know, why I'm not this, you know, skincare brand who just offers, you know, the latest trend or whatever the, you know, new skincare product is. It's always going to be something that I can personally vet, stand behind, have Personal experience with, have done tons of research. Me and you have had tons of conversations. I mean, when did we start having conversations? Way before I even young.
- [03:02]
Jamie McGuire
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [03:04]
Expert
So it takes a long time. And that's the same thing of the time frame also that it should take for other people that are starting on a skincare routine, too. And to know that, like, there's always tools in the toolbox, there's always more you can add in. There's always things that you can adjust later on. But to kind of segue into a few of the products that I just wanted to cover because I know this can go over a little bit longer. You know, I am somebody who's been very vocal about not liking retinol with an O in the past. And this was the one time that I decided, okay, I'm going to hear you out. Listen to the difference of what bioretinol is specifically. And I'm going to have to test this out on myself and see. See what benefits this has or what I've always been known about, you know, retinols is that they're super irritating and harsh and cause a lot of inflammation for the skin, which is what I want to always avoid. And after testing yours, I mean, I was personally pleasantly surprised because I obviously started very slow, just in case, had zero reaction ever. And that was, I think, every other night that I started. Then I started every night, and then I started doing day and night, zero issues ever. No redness, no flakiness, no, you know, itching, no burning, nothing. And in the best way, I say that nothing, because obviously my skin is going to be a little bit harder to show, you know, easy transformations, because I'm already at a point where my skin's, you know, good and healthy. So it's important for me to test things out, mainly because I want to see what the negative effects would be, if any, which I had zero with my entire, you know, young goose trial and the bioretinol specifically, which I was very surprised about. So I have had nothing. And I don't know if this is the same for everybody across the board, so you might, you know, let me know. I do know that it's a gentle retinol, which is the only reason why I considered offering this specific bioretinol. So please dive in.
- [04:56]
Jamie McGuire
That's. To be honest, that's a great product to speak about. Our philosophy first. Obviously, people are watching. I'm used to listening to me on audio, but I'll show you how it looks like. And I think it Will make a lot of sense about why I'm saying it. So normally retinols come in a cream or a serum basically or a water based aqueous serum. And this comes, it actually is a fat. So I'm going to put it here so people can see. But it's fat basically. And what it mimics, the reason it's called bioretinol. So again, another word that we, that we use very, we should have, we should have trademarked it because now it is signifying basically not retinol. Basically. When you hear other brands saying bio retinol, they kind of missed the point that we tried to convey which is biomimetic retinol. Retinol that mimics the way that your liver supply is vitamin A to your skin. And the way that it supplies vitamin A to your skin is with a fat or lipid layer around it. So this is non chromogenic. It's not going to clog pores or anything like that. It mimics the delivery system. So it's like ozone and mimics the delivery system of vitamin A and S by the way to your skin. Now you say it's gentle, but it is gentle on the, on the skin barrier acid mantle and epidermis. But it is actually a, I would say a mild to medium strength retinol because it's actually 0.5% mm. And many if, if people you know are interested in skincare, I'm sure they've said that they got targeted by ads from brands like Musli or other brands that basically sell tretinoin or retinoic acid or other very strong retinols. And the paradigm right now is to sell you, the person targeted a product that, and, and to say this is the strongest, but our body doesn't work that way. By the way, the benefits of retinol don't work that way because retinol's half life. So basically it's lifespan in the skin. The time that it is effective in the skin is around 20 hours. It's about 12 hour half life. That the time that it is actually working and giving you Benefits is about 20 hours. Which means that after 20 hours if you use something that you can only use like once or twice a week, you are, you are getting zero benefits. So I used it, you know, once a week and then for six days and four hours I am getting zero benefits. So that is a paradigm that we know is going to shift and we starting, we're starting to see it shift. And that is obviously why we have created A vitamin A skin supplement product that is designed to top off the vitamin A reservoirs your skin has and that it then would use, would use in order to turn over cells to renew the skin. So we're basically signaling the skin. Hey, you're topped off with vitamin A. Go ahead and basically do your, do your thing, do your magic and start renewing the skin at a higher rate. One of the reasons as we grow older that our cellular turnover, the way that our skin renews itself lowers, is because of the depletions of those reservoirs.
- [08:25]
Expert
Okay, so that makes a lot of, I mean, I hope it makes sense to other people. Obviously. Yeah, like we stuff a little bit more in depth. Okay, well, I'm going to get into a controversial question just because it's something that I'm asked and you're going to be the best to answer this. And I don't think people have a full picture of understanding what clean ingredients are or certain things like allergens, a potential endocrine disruptor. So I did have a question about will you eventually do away with some of the allergens and potential endocrine disruptors in some of the products?
- [08:54]
Jamie McGuire
Great question.
- [08:56]
Expert
Yeah.
- [08:57]
Jamie McGuire
So first I would, I would start with a technical answer. And the answer is we are a homeostatic skincare. It means we do third party testing to make sure that there is no endocrine disruption. Actually, allergen allergens are very, you know, controversial because they, they are individual. But as far as hormone disruption and basically the adrenal system, taxation or burden, we actually have zero. So how do you do that? So there are a lot of ingredients that are suspected or we are worried that they might tax the body as far as the, the, the ability to generate and produce hormones and get the, and, and, and receive signals for hormone creation properly. And so the easiest thing to do is to test each product. Having said that, I still want to give you an answer that is more, I would say, nuanced. So the answer is yes. At the end of the day, we know chemistry very well. We hire the best formulators in the world. We work with some of the best universities in the world, like the Weizmann Institute in Israel, which the most amount of Nobel laureates under one roof. Anything autophagy related. We, you work with the person who won the Nobel Prize for it. And that's all to say that the misconceptions around that field are valid or they have their place. But we deal with ingredients that actually we test everything and we make sure everything is within a level that your body can metabolize extremely safely and your body is used to. So for example, phenoxy ethanol is one of the things that we are asked to remove and are working on it. But truth to the matter, the amount that we use, which is 0.0, 0.015% is less than you would get from, you know, consuming tomatoes from a can a canned tomatoes or I mean, we can give other examples since our goal at the end of the day is to serve as many people as possible and not, you know, not stay on a high horse per se and kind of basically say, oh, we know better than you. Just, you know, whatever. We actually went into the lab and a year and a half of research and development. We've developed a patented clean preservative system. And this preservative system is already available in our youth Reset and youth Daily. And we are going to integrate it in every product going forward and slowly integrate it into products, you know, that have those. Basically the products that we offer currently, quite frankly, Yungoos as a company is growing pretty rapidly and for many products our estimates of production are normally wrong. We grow faster than our wildest estimates and it's very complicated to just stop production telling you, hey, hey, forget about this product for like six months. And we're going to, we're going to give you a product that is clean basically in six months. It's very difficult to do that. And I'm giving a truthful answer here. These are in, in the pipelines and as an example, Youth Youth Youth Firming Neck and Chest that Jamie, we actually sent you an email that you can start offering. It is going to be a version without be preserv basically clean and going to offer the spermidine NAD precursors, all the good stuff that, that we offer, plus the what was in the older formula.
- [12:28]
Expert
Great. And I appreciate, you know, the transparency. And here's the thing. It's, it's. Everybody's going to be individual about what's going to work for them. I think a lot of times people are reliant way too much on like the, you know, EWG and all the, you know, these, these sites and these different stories, studies and things. And they don't really know the science as much behind it. So exactly what you said. It's like what's in one product could also equate to what could be in a can of tomato. So some.
- [12:55]
Jamie McGuire
But people don't know. People don't know. It's a business. People don't know EWG or any Other ones, Yuka, whatever is a business. Okay. They need to be able to say this is a no and this is a yes. Okay. So a lot of the time I think let's talk about a really kind of villainized ingredient which we do not use, but like titanium dioxide. Okay. Titanium dioxide gets a horrible rating on any of those apps. But what they rely on and it should by the way, if you inhale it.
- [13:36]
Expert
Yes. Those are the specifications. Right. That people sometimes don't take it into consideration.
- [13:42]
Jamie McGuire
Yes. So what they're doing doing is they're saying there is a potential harm. We can link to studies showing potential harm, but we are going to give it a vague rating of one is good. Okay. So one until four. And they're not going to. And but they're going to rank it. The color is going to be, the language is going to be oh, this is a 4, which is that they are not going to explain to you that this is in case of inhalation, which obviously is never going to happen with a cream. And this is a very small example. Most ingredients are, are as such. And really if we look at real science, or I'm sorry, real science sounds very like appealing to authority and like condescending. But if we look at what we care about, which is skin, longevity, youthful function, don't kill your cells, make them function more useful things that they consider clean because they are not really, they're not up to date with legit longevity science. They don't even rate poorly. So the, the best example, obviously example that anyone who listens to me know, I feel very strongly about, strongly about is Ascor L ascorbic acid, the synthetic version of vitamin C. So L ascorbic acid is not real vitamin C in nature it does not exist, okay? In nature it is the capsule which vitamins, other mineral factors that comprise vitamin C in nature are encapsulated in and alone. It is ridiculously unstable. Anyone who ever bought like SkinCeuticals know that the photo shows it as clear. And then when you get the product, it's brown. Okay. Sorry to throw them under the bus. Actually I have to go under the.
- [15:28]
Expert
Bus all the time.
- [15:28]
Jamie McGuire
What are the product ingredients?
- [15:30]
Expert
SkinCeuticals is clinical. I will throw that in the bus.
- [15:35]
Jamie McGuire
So now that we've, now that we are looking at them under the wheels of the bus, I will say L Ascorbic acid. Even if it got to you in a pristine state, it does not survive your skin's defense mechanisms, which is the acid mantle and the microbiome. So it actually changes its structure. And even if it did not the over really they, they say over 7% but really over 3% it is too high for your cells. Basically it becomes pro inflammatory, it becomes pro oxidative and it actually leads to a type of cellular death that has been published only three years ago, which is called ferroptosis. So I'll give an example like if anyone knows the ingredient fatty 15 or C15, it's now becoming popular. It's a supplement. All it does is it prevents ferroptosis or it kind of, you know, defends against ferroptosis. Ferroptosis is basically cellular death through excited iron atoms. And L ascorbic acid literally triggers this process. It is the most toxic ingredient someone can apply on their skin. Not every vitamin C, every time I talk about it other then people are asking you know, hey, I use this. I know. As a matter of fact osmosis uses a, a type of vitamin C that I love, which is called thda, which is a T T HD ascorbate, we use that one as well. And we also use map, which is magnesium ascorbyl phosphate. There are other forms like sodium ascorbate, sodium ascorbyl phosphate, but these are the real two vitamin Cs that you want to look for, MAP and THDA.
- [17:22]
Expert
And I just want to wrap this portion up by saying, you know, at the end of the day everybody is going to have to pick their poison, right. If they want basically, you know, effective skincare that's really going to move the needle, so to speak. You have to consider that all of these are going to have to have some component in them that are going to be able to do their job. And it's not always going to be something some olive oil. And if you really do care about the ingredients the most, and that's your top, top, top priority and I completely respect it, then tallow is your product. That is it. You can't, you can't assume that any other product line with all of the benefits that you want and to have all of those goals achieved is only going to come from something like a tallow product that it's going to be that clean. There's always going to be some sort of component in there that could be considered controversial. I mean even essential oils for some people be considered controversial. But guess what? The amounts that are in them are very little. There's also need for them for, you know, you need antifungal, antibacterial. It also avoids synthetic fragrances by using an Essential oil. You just have to find what works for your skin, what your skin likes and what you want to achieve. At the end of the day, if you want, you know, long term canals, you want to reverse aging, you want to get rid of your acne, I mean, you have all these like, you know, pretty big goals. Then if you're not seeing those results with tallow, we have to maybe consider, you know, letting some of these, I guess you want to say controversial ingredients.
- [18:54]
Jamie McGuire
But not all, by the way, which you won't, which you won't see results with tallow. I would say that the best is really, if you, if you really want clean, I would go with nothing.
- [19:03]
Expert
You know, really just, just know, just do less. And it's, and it's all good. And you can definitely, you know, doing some face massage and I mean, but it's also pick your poison. Would you rather do Botox or would you rather have a, you know, face type that, yes, has some toxic ingredients in the adhesive? This is face taping right now. And I get, you know, torn apart for it all the time. But you know, I never claim to be the clean skin guru. I claim to be, you know, animal based. I want to do a low tox living life. So no more Botox, no more injectables, none of those types of things. But I'm also going to pick my poison and there are certain things that are not going to be across the board, completely clean. You know, by definition, but definitely for me in my world and what I'm trying to achieve, they are the best out of these versions. You know, there's good, better, best. This is the best I'm doing for myself right now and what I'm offering to other people. So they just have to figure out what works better for them and what their priorities are and what, you know, they want to achieve and figure out how that will all align and maybe it's not going to work, you know, work for you.
- [20:04]
Jamie McGuire
Yeah. But I think it's important to say we hear you. I mean that's, that's so we own that we own 100% of the company. What, what makes Anastasia, my wife and I. And I think it's important to say because we don't owe any venture capital firm anything. I think in our size, we are the only skincare that I am aware of that didn't get any money from somewhere else. I'm for sure, I'm, I for sure am just not aware of other ones. But as far as our size is concerned, as far as I'm aware of, we're, we're the only one. And what that allows us to do is to say, you know, is basically to turn on a dime, is to say, you know, call the Kay, which is our head chemist and formulator, and tell her, hey Kay, I know you're in Korea right now at our Exosome research facility. I know you, we are a million and a half dollar over budget, but you need to put it on hold. We need to, to, to, to, to figure out this preservative system. True story. So at the end of the day, our end consumer, we made the decision for you, the end consumer, by saying you're going to have to wait with the Exosomes or you're going to have to wait with a Clotho activator with it, which is a, like, almost, almost like gene therapy. It's basically like a longevity gene that we can activate. We're going to have to wait with it and we're going to have to work on a preservative system. And that took us a year and a half. So that's to say obviously these things, there is, there's, it's a zero sum game as far as what we can create. But we can be the company that says, I got you. We understand and we are going to make it better.
- [21:43]
Expert
Yeah, that's, that's amazing. It.