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The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
212. Dr. Barbara Sturm: How to Heal the Skin from the Inside Out
01:09:35
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- [00:00]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
If you look at skin and skincare and dermatology, they give you cortisone, they give you antibiotics, they give you a laser treatment. Not very skin friendly if you think about it's more like attacking skin and taking skin layers off.
- [00:13]
Gary
It's really fascinating too is we think that we damage our skin very often from the outside in, but it gets damaged more often from the inside out.
- [00:20]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
You know why everybody says you should use sunscreen and it comes a lot from dermatologists, right? Use sunscreen 24, 7. But that's because whatever they're doing destroys your skin barrier. Of course they need to tell you use sunscreen 24, 7. But someone who has really healthy skin shouldn't just use 24,7 sunscreen. Especially when we live in London.
- [00:38]
Gary
In the US, 23 brands of sunscreen have been pulled from the market since 2018 for correlated risk to skin cancer.
- [00:45]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
But the law for the filter for sunscreen haven't changed in the US for more than 20 years.
- [00:50]
Gary
Lots of questions about maintaining your skincare routine while you travel, especially for people that are spending a lot of time on airplanes.
- [00:56]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
This is easiest four products. But I wanted to give you like a very, very basic, simple and very effective skincare routine.
- [01:11]
Gary
Ultimate Human. Welcome back to the Ultimate Human podcast. In this episode, I sat down live at the Health Experience in London with one of the most influential voices in the entire skincare space, Dr. Barbara Sturm. You know her as a global skincare icon. But today we're talking about something far deeper than anti inflammation, not artificial intelligence, anti inflammation. We go down the rabbit hole of how chronic inflammation drives aging, fatigue and disease, and more importantly, how to reverse it through lifestyle, nutrition and recovery. Barbara is a powerhouse in every sense of the word. And this conversation is packed with science, power, passion and practical steps you could take. Right now, let's dive into the power of anti Inflammation with Dr. Barbara Sturm. You know, I've actually known Barbara for years. Should I talk about our journey? Can I like.
- [02:07]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Yeah. It's so sweet.
- [02:08]
Gary
Throw it out there.
- [02:09]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Yeah, it's so sweet. Should I say it because it was my journey finding you.
- [02:14]
Gary
Yeah.
- [02:15]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
So I have been obsessed with exosomes since 25 years. And when I created the vampire facial. 20, 25 years old, she created the.
- [02:22]
Gary
Vampire facial, by the way. You know, the blood facial.
- [02:25]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
I was talking because I was taking the anti inflammatory proteins from your blood. And my professors would say, one of my professors, that's amazing what you do. But the Future are exosomes 25 years ago. So I Was like, looking for the exosomes. And I knew how to create them out of the blood, but not any other way. And then I created some Exosomatic products. Anyways, I found Gary through friends, and he started sits in Miami. I was in la. I was super, super burned out. And I hardly made it to Miami. My assistant was just dragging me to Miami. I had like a big week in New York, but I made a stop in Miami. I come to Gary's office and we start geeking out on science. And I became a totally different person. He put this IV drip in me with vitamins, whatever, exosomes. But we were talking, like for three hours. I swear. I went. I left your office feeling like a newborn. And I had the craziest week in New York. No problem. I mean, seriously. And I was like, this is. This is my guy. I love him. He's amazing. And you know how amazing he is. But it made such a big difference for me in my life. So I listened to him, you know.
- [03:41]
Gary
And all we did was. I mean, she came and she was exactly exhausted and she was like, I am so completely burned out. As you know, she's built one of the most iconic skincare brands in the world, Dr. Sturm Cosmetics. They're in every major city in the world. And she was just absolutely fried. Had been burning the candle at both ends. And I looked at her methylation and looked at the deficiencies that she's had. And so all we did was put together a vitamin IV drip. If you're familiar with the Myers cocktail, Vitamin C, pyridoxine, riboflavin, thiamin, niacin, panothenic acid, all the B vitamins, a specific kind of B12. And it hit her bloodstream. And the lights came on.
- [04:27]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Nobody.
- [04:29]
Gary
And then we did an exosome iv. And exosomes are very similar to. I know we're taking this off topic and we'll get back on topic, but they're very similar to stem cells, but they're about 1-800th the size of a stem cell. And an exosome doesn't carry any DNA, so it's not capable of sending a signal. But it carries something called high molecular weight hyaluronic acid. And it also carries growth factors. The fascinating thing about exosomes is they can go places in the body that other cells and stem cells, even vitamins and nutrients can't, because it's about the size of a virus. And so it enters. It goes right through the cell wall without asking for permission. And it Shuts off the inflammatory cell cycle.
- [05:08]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Inflammation. Anti inflammation. AI anti inflammation.
- [05:12]
Gary
Which, which brings us to our. So we have a, a list of the most commonly asked questions here. A lot of this is going to relate to skin care, but a lot of it's just going to relate to, to general health. So we took hundreds of questions and the ones that were asked the most frequently, we just put them onto a list here and I'm going to pose them to Barbara and I'll answer them in the best that I can. But what exactly is inflammation and why is it so critical to understanding inflammation in skin health?
- [05:39]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
So inflammation is immune response we need. So when something enters the body, virus or bacteria, we need inflammation to appear to fight those, you know, things that come into our body. So we need it. But if inflammation becomes chronicle and on a high level, then inflammation can be quite dangerous for us because it's degrades our tissue. It starts chronic diseases, autoimmune diseases. So inflammation goes together with all the things we don't want can cause cancer. And regarding our skin, everything we don't like about our skin, redness, impurities like cystic acne, wrinkles, whatever we don't like about our skin goes together with inflammation. So it's very important to bring inflammation under control.
- [06:28]
Gary
Yeah, I like to talk about inflammation as a necessary balance to survival. Not all inflammation is bad. If you were walking down the street one day and you stepped off a curb and you twisted your right ankle, how does the body know to heal the right ligament and leave the left ligament alone? Well, the way that it knows the tissue is injured is if that ligament received a small tear. You broke a cell in that ligament called a fibroblast. And what that cell will do is it will start signaling into the bloodstream to say, hey, I'm hurt, I'm hurt, I'm hurt. That signal is inflammation. These are interleukins and cytokines. And what happens is as that signal enters the bloodstream, a very special cell in your bloodstream called a platelet is listening for that signal. And as it cruises by in the bloodstream, a platelet bursts and it drops off. Growth factors. So think of a platelet as a pinata. And the confetti inside the platelet has growth factors. These are the healing power of the human body. How many of you heard of platelet rich plasma PRP injections? The vast majority of you. So all PRP injections are doing is taking the vast healing power of the human body and concentrating it in a single location. You draw Your blood, you spin it down, you remove the platelets and the plasma, and you re inject that into your knee, your hip, your shoulder, your rotator cuff, and it actually accelerates healing. You can do the same thing with things like peptides. How many of you have heard of BPC157? This is a pretty woke audience. I hate that word woke, but I don't mean woke, but I mean aware of health. So BPC157 is a peptide. And what this peptide does is it amplifies the signal of inflammation. That torn ankle that I was talking about, maybe it was sending an inflammatory signal into the bloodstream at a level two. So it was whispering into the blood that it was injured. If you could make it scream into the blood, then as the platelets are cruising by, more platelets will migrate to that region and they will drop off growth factors and accelerate the wound healing process. One of the reasons why I'm so fascinated by peptides is they capture the. The body's innate ability to perform its own function. You can rewind your pituitary to a more youthful level of growth hormone secretion. You can lengthen your telomeres with telomerase, lengthening peptides like an epitalon. You can actually reduce inflammation by putting peptides like BPC157 into the bloodstream, TB500 into the bloodstream, and actually accelerating wound healing.
- [09:00]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Gary, this is amazing for any acute injury. So want to bring it back to the skin? Because we're doing on purpose a lot of injuries to our skin. For example, retinol. Who's using retinol? So with retinol, we cause a lot of inflammation on a daily or three times a week basis. So what's happening with the inflammatory response here? Because you basically start this inflammatory response on a constant basis. What happens to our healing factors? What happens to all the emergency help? Do they exhaust?
- [09:39]
Gary
Yes, they do get exhausted. I mean, you know, I very often, you know, a lot of skincare routines I'll refer to as borrowing from your future. So you get a present, return today at a cost tomorrow. Thinning the cell layers, actually removing the protective seven layers of dead skin that are on top of your. Your skin for a reason. Not getting to the root cause of skin degradation, which is a lack of healthy blood flow. What we call angiogenesis, a deconstruction of the skin, which is a reduction of collagen, elastin and fibrin, the scaffolding that holds the skin together. And so I'd love for us to Talk about building the skin from the inside out rather than the outside in. So what are some things that people could do, an anti inflammatory diet, for example, that would result in better looking, more youthful appearances.
- [10:31]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
But what's happening if you use retinol on a constant basis?
- [10:34]
Gary
Oh, if you use retinol on a constant basis, you're borrowing from your future. You're using an inflammatory response to call blood flow and to call tissue regeneration to that site. But you're dismantling the long term capacity for the skin to reproduce.
- [10:48]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
So if you do it in an acute phase, face, and you use all these peptides and everything your body has to offer, then it's amazing to use that inflammatory response. But if you do it on a regular basis, you kind of run out of your healing factors. You kind of exhaust your system. You always call inflammation back to the site. And that is a little bit of a dangerous situation. Besides that, you constantly destruct your skin barrier, constantly disbalance your microbiome. Yes, we have a microbiome on our skin. So the, the organ skin is getting harmed every day by skincare ingredients. And this is what we have to think about. Look, we are all sitting here and we're listening to Gary and we love him and we're here to see you actually, but we want to know.
- [11:31]
Gary
They're here to see you, but we.
- [11:33]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Want to know what actually can we learn to stay healthy, to stay young, to stay in good shape? And when we want to hear that, we talk about our organs like heart, liver, kidneys, whatever. Who thinks about the skin? The skin? Oh well, whatever is a playground for marketing. You know, whatever marketing gives us, you know, we just put it on our skin and let's scrub it off and let's make it red and like, or have you heard of this machine? And you know, whatever, you know, makes your skin red and inflamed, it's what we shouldn't be doing.
- [12:09]
Gary
You know, I think if you really look at the genesis of collagen, elastin and fibrin, you know, these are, these are built from amino acids. We talked earlier about not being able to target direct amino acids. We don't eat our nails to grow our nails. We don't eat our hair to grow our hair. But we do believe that we can eat collagen to grow collagen. And all of those things are patently false, right? I mean, if we want, we can't target direct protein in the human body. There's no certain form of protein that you can eat that will show up as muscle tissue. There's no certain form of protein that you can eat that will show up as collagen or elastin or fibrin. What you can do is you can give your body the building blocks of proteins. The building blocks of proteins are amino acids. When you become amino acid deficient, you lose the capacity to build proteins. And we think of proteins as muscles, but proteins are all of these different systems in the body. Our natural killer cells are made from proteins. How many of you have done a fast, like a three day water fast? You know what the biggest benefit to fasting is? Senescence stem cells is a big benefit from fasting. Have you heard of a senescent cell? How many of you have heard of a senescent cell? How many of you are not going to raise your hand no matter what I say? At least there's some honest people in here. One person raised their hand and it's like, I'm not going to answer anything. Senescent cells are, in effect, cells that are in your body that are living, that can no longer perform their function. As we get older, the percentage of senescence grows. The percentage of red blood cells that can no longer carry oxygen grows. Now this cell is alive, but it can no longer perform its function. But the body won't replace it until it's gone. You have platelets in your bloodstream that can't carry growth factors. So they're essentially useless, but they're taking up space. You have natural killer cells, white blood cells that can't mount an immune defense. So these are senescent cells. We often call these zombie cells. The body is so incredibly efficient that if you put yourself into a fasted state, then the first thing the body will do as a fuel source is it will digest, it will metabolize senescent cells. It eats the herd from the weakest animal forward, right? It eats from the back to the forefro front. So one of the fascinating things about fasting is you recycle your cellular biology. It's like if you own a company, and I'll use this example, I won't make you raise your hand. And you have a company full of lazy employees. Wouldn't you like to get those employees get their butt out of that situation?
- [14:48]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Not so easy.
- [14:49]
Gary
Yeah, it's not so easy. Well, you can't eat them like the immune system does. The immune system eats lazy amounts.
- [14:54]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Starve them.
- [14:56]
Gary
So lazy employees are senescent cells. They're taking up space, they're drawing down on the payroll, but they're not producing anything. If you could get them out of the seat, not by eating them, that's the immune system analogy. And replace them with a productive employee, you'd have a much more efficient organization. And this is how the body organizes itself. When you put it into a fasted state, it metabolizes senescent cells. It also dramatically reduces inflammation. You know, the, one of the fascinating things about cellular biology is that we have ways now of following a white blood cell around the bloodstream and finding out, you know, where the inflammation is. And a lot of this ends up in the skin. So I want to keep this on skin care and I want to talk about how inflammation can be seen on the skin and the face. What are some manifestations of skin inflammation?
- [15:50]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
I mean, whatever we, I just said that whatever we don't like about our skin, aging goes together with inflammation, redness, psoriasis, aging, whatever it is, acne, cystic acne, perioral dermatitis. Everything is a sign of inflammation. So inflammation makes sense to turn around, keep it under control. And we can do this not just with our skincare products that shouldn't be inflammatory, but should be ideally anti inflammatory. So my whole, you know, philosophy from 25 years of orthopedic research and lots of things.
- [16:30]
Gary
By the way, she's a doctor too. Yeah, you know, Dr. Barbara shirt.
- [16:33]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
So my background is orthopedics and sometimes people say, oh, she's an orthopedic doctor, not a dermatologist. And then you, you know, lots of things now in the skin care industry come from orthopedics. So exosomes we used 15 years ago in the orthopedics. I was treating patients with rheumatoid arthritis. I injected their exosomes, they were pain free for three months. That was mind blowing. And maybe only injected like two, three knuckles and the whole body was pain free for three months. It was unbelievable. There was nothing else working or just really, really horrible medication. And you know, we want to get away from medication for the pharma industry, if possible. And that was mind blowing. And so many things come from the orthopedic. And my background comes from an anti inflammatory science background. And if you look at skin and skincare and dermatology, if you go to a dermatologist, they give you cortisone, they give you antibiotics, they give you a laser treatment, and acid peel, they give you retinol glycolic. So not very skin friendly if you think about, you know, it was, is more like, you know, attacking skin and, and taking Skin layers off. So coming from, from this orthopedic background was probably quite a good idea at the time. I mean it's like my, my brand started like 15 to 20 years ago. I started with the blood cream, adding my blood to, to the creams and it just changed and transformed my skin, it transformed my patient's skin and really has been working for a long time. And so science became like a part of skin care now. But obviously now science is also being used for marketing. So you know, it's not just that a princess science, science based, science backed or science meets whatever. You know, you always have to do your own research. You have to really dig deeper, ask the right people and follow a little bit your gut feeling, you know, which brand means it and the brand you can trust.
- [18:33]
Gary
We actually did a clinical study together about what, two years ago? Yeah, yeah, we should publish that honestly.
- [18:40]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
And we should actually follow through on.
- [18:42]
Gary
What we did the study and we never published it, but we should publish it. But essentially what we did was we wanted to see if we could suspend an exosomes in a, in a, in a fat based cream. So she had lipid molecules in her creams and we had exosomes which usually don't have a very long shelf life at room temperature. And so we retained a lab and they did punch biopsies on a 27 year old female, 36 year old female, 57 year old female and a 65 year old female. So they did punch biopsies of the skin and we cultured their skin tissue, what's called their fibroblasts, in a lab. So we actually grew layers of skin in a lab and we applied a base cream of hers, a Dr. Sturm base cream that we had embedded exosomes in. And then we did electrophoresis and other studies every 30 days, 60 days and 90 days to see if the tissue was still viable, if the exosomes were still viable. What we found out was really fascinating. We found out not only a dramatic drop over 90 days in all of the inflammatory markers, these are called inflation interleukins, massive drop in inflammatory markers. But we found the proliferation of not only collagen, but elastin and fibrin, the scaffolding of the skin. And what I thought was really fascinating was around 90 days, this process of angiogenesis began in this tissue in a lab, which meant that it started to begin to sprout new blood vessels. So angiogenesis is new blood vessel growth.
- [20:15]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Ultimate rejuvenation.
- [20:17]
Gary
Yeah, we should have launched a product on the back of that. But we did, we did just remembered that. But we are going to publish, we are going to eventually publish that study. But the long and short of it is that these lipid molecules you might have, there's a lot of products here that are liposomal, if you've seen that term, liposomal. It's essentially taking a nutrient and putting it inside of fat molecule, a liposome usually so it can survive first pass metabolism. It can get through the digestive system system, make it into the gut where it can actually be absorbed. Glutathione and NAD are classic compounds that are used in liposomal delivery systems. But we did it for skincare and it turned out to be phenomenal experiment. So another huge question was how do we eat to influence inflammation both in triggering it and helping calm it. What is an anti inflammatory disease diet look like?
- [21:10]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
I mean Harvard did a study which says that anti inflammatory foods is mostly a green, leafy vegetables, salmon, mackerel, walnuts, almonds, berries, oranges, cherries, olives, super anti inflammatory. You know, everybody knows that omega 3 fatty acids are highly anti inflammatory. So any type of fatty fish is really good. You should stay away from fried food, processed meat, sugars. I mean you're so educated, you know all this. But it really makes sense to follow through on an anti inflammatory diet. And you know, when I say it needs to be balanced, you know, it's not like you should never eat dessert or should never do this or. But I would stay away from any fast food, any fried, anything that, that makes you. I, I've been eating healthy since I'm 16 and I only like healthy food. I really don't like anything else anymore. I feel like it's a habit, you know, if you never eat it, you never grave it. I, I raised both my children on still water and healthy food. My kid asked for lunch, for a salad. Yeah, it's, she's 11. She does, she doesn't eat fries. She doesn't, she doesn't eat all this because she doesn't get it from me. And she could. I took her once to McDonald's just so she sees it from the inside. And we bought some fries and a burger. She took one fry and she said, mama, thank you for never giving me toxic food.
- [22:42]
Gary
That's good parenting. Yeah. You know, it's really fascinating too is we think that we damage our skin very often from the outside in, but it gets damaged more often for. From the inside out.
- [22:52]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
From the inside out.
- [22:53]
Gary
One of the most fascinating studies that I've seen on skin cancer. And I've talked about this before in other lectures. If you've seen it, it's on my Instagram where I show you a superimposable chart looking at the parabolic rise in skin cancer from the 1950s through 2022. And it is superimposable with the parabolic use of sunscreen. And that doesn't make sense. Right. Why would we have such a parabolic rise coming concomitant with the parabolic use of sunscreen?
- [23:21]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
You know why everybody says you should use sunscreen and this comes a lot from dermatologists. Right. Every year of your dermatologist use sunscreen 24, 7. But that's because whatever they're doing is highly anti inflammatory and destroys your skin barrier. So they take your protection tool completely apart. Of course they need to tell you use sunscreen 24, 7. But if you have a strong skin, a strong outer layer, and I'm not talking about super fair skin or people who have like skin cancer in the history in the family, whatever, we have to be more careful. But someone who has really healthy skin shouldn't, shouldn't just use 24. 7 sunscreen. Especially when we live in London, it's different when you go on the mountain, close to the sun, or in a desert or to the Mediterranean in summer, you don't go outside without sunscreen. But this 24, 7, I don't understand. And how important is the morning sun? I mean, Gary talks about it all the time. And you know, the sun is so much needed for our vitamin D production, which is important for our bones, our immune system, our respiratory tract, our mental health, name it, our blood flow. The sun also produces something called nitric oxide in the skin which vasodilates, makes the vessels a little more elastic and then the blood flow is much better. You have way less problems with your heart, way less heart attacks, way less. It's so important to, to get some sun. And there's so much controversial discussion also about sunscreen, especially now in America. Yeah.
- [24:49]
Gary
In the U.S. you know, 18 or 23 brands of sunscreen have been pulled from the market since 2018 for correlated risk to skin cancer. I really find that fascinating, you know.
- [25:02]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
But the law for, for, for the filter for sunscreen haven't changed in the US for more than 20 years.
- [25:07]
Gary
Yeah, I mean I use a sunscreen just to tallow with zinc oxide, just a non nano zinc on the skin. Very good. You can almost eat this stuff. But what's interesting about the study, and I'm happy it's up on my Instagram if you want to read it. They found the same pro inflammatory cytokines in all of these skin cancer conditions. And most of these cytokines were coming from the diet. They were highly linked to seed oils, rancid seed oils. And I get a lot of flack for attacking seed oils and saying we shouldn't be eating seed oils, but the truth is I'm not attacking the plant. But when you take a canola plant, which is also called a rapeseed, but sounds much better to say canola than rapeseed, but when you take a canola plant and you put it in a commercial press and it comes out gummy, and you de gum that with with hexane, that's a very powerful neurotoxin. And then you take that de gummed oil that you've de gummed with hexane and you heat it to 405 degrees. That turns it rancid. So now you have a putrefied oil and it smells. And so they deodorize it with sodium hydroxide, which is a very, very powerful carcinogen. So you degum it with a neurotoxin, you deodorize it with a carcinogen, and then generally we will bleach it and then bottle it and then put it on the shelf. Now, if you're in the United States, the American Heart association will come along and put a heart healthy label on there to help suck you into the shelf. You ever walk down the aisle of seed oils, western oil, and canola oils and vegetable oils, and they all have that exact same beautiful, perfect yellow hue. They're all the same color. Just know that's not how it occurs in nature. It's been bleached to look that way. And so I, I'm not attacking the plant. I'm not attacking the sunflower, the safflower, the soybean, or the rapeseed. I'm attacking the distance from the plant to the table. So highly processed seed oils are one of the worst things you can put in your bodies. I really think that we could only have four oils in our kitchen. You could have a grass fed butter, a ghee butter, a coconut oil, and a good olive oil. And you could do just about anything with those four oils, maybe even an avocado oil. But all of these rancid seed oils, those cytokines were actually showing up in the skin biopsies of oncology patients. I thought that was fascinating because we have been taught to fear the sun. And it's Just so necessary for us. She was talking about first light. The first 45 to 50 minutes of the day is a very, very special type of light. There's no UVA or UVB rays in first light. So if you're worried about skin damage but you want to expose your skin to light, first light is very, very beneficial. It's medicine. I mean it actually resets your cortisol receptors, it resets your melatonin receptors. First light will do more to restore your circadian rhythm than just about anything. So for someone that's just starting out with skincare routine or is lost in the maze of skincare routine options, what is a good basic skincare routine? Because there's lots of discussion about exfoliation, there's lots of discussions about what creams work and you have to do a night cream. Some of these are 15 stages, 15 steps to like I know what's on my wife's counter and going from left to right. I mean I could only get through that once my ADHD kicks in at about product six. Right.
- [28:30]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
What's important for, for the skin to balance your skin anti inflammation. We just know this now. But what's really important also is hydration. So if you have dry skin or dehydrated skin, we have to fix that. That is what causes all your problems. Broken skin barrier. Water leaves the skin, turns epidermic, water loss, then you get wrinkles. We don't want that. So hydration is the key to healthy dew, beautiful glowy skin and then something like nutrition for our cells, for our skin cells. But also what I took as the active ingredient in my skincare product is telomerase activation. Gary just talked about telomerase length and this is really the life limiting factor of a cell. When the telomeres shorten the little caps of the chromosomes until our cell mutates or dies. And human have 40 to 60 cell divisions. A turtle for example has 100 telomeres. The turtle gets to live 220 years or 200 whatever years. But 200 or yeah, 200.
- [29:30]
Gary
I don't know. I don't know how.
- [29:31]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Yeah, turtle gets super.
- [29:32]
Gary
I'm a human biologist.
- [29:35]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
No, but absolutely. The cell division and number of cell division is the absolute proven anti aging or aging theory. So that's the proof of aging. And the telomeres is so important to keep keep long. And that's why we added our telomeres activators into the skincare and then all these nutrition and when it comes to skin cells we want I always compare grapes and raisins. So raisins are the dehydrated skin cells. The grapes are the hydrated skin cells. Two things. The raisins don't really look so great on our skin. You want the plum raisins, but also the raisins have these beautiful osmosis channels to take on active ingredients to. To go through all their cell divisions. So this is important that we keep the cells in our skin extremely hydrated. So for a skincare routine, I always would recommend a cleanser that is hydrating. So our foam cleanser, for example, is extremely hydrating. Is aloe vera urea. Beautiful ph. Because that also matters. If you would wash your face with soap, which is very alkaline, you mess up the PH of your skin, which is slightly acidic. So and then the microbiome is messed up, then your skin barrier is messed up. So the PH of the product really matters. And that's why like skincare brands should really point out what their phone has this beautiful ph. Then twice a week you use the enzyme cleanser. It's the most gentle form of exfoliation. It's done with peptide. With enzymes, they get activated. The powder get activated with water. And then you mix it in your hands, you wash your face. I have it in the shower. You can use it also. They call tea arms keratosis Pilars. Super, super good. And you do this twice a week and then have a hyaluronic serum. That's the grape maker. The hyaluronic serum is non negotiative. It's the white T shirt of your skin care routine. Everybody has to have it morning and night. Grape maker. And then if you have a beautiful face cream that locks everything in and gives the right lipids for your skin barrier, because you always have to support and strengthen our skin barrier. If you have like these four products, you are golden. You have glowy, beautiful skin. You have balanced skin. I promise you your skin will change, it will transform. It's very important that you don't mess with like these crazy ingredients that you just give the skin what it needs. If you would go on these four products and you can complain to me if it doesn't work, but I can swear to you and promise that this routine will change your skin. Because it's always easy. You know, it's like you go in a store and you like this brand and this color and then you know this marketing and you create your own little routine in the bathroom and look so cute and. But you know, you should decide for one brand, you trust and Then go with it. Because if you curate it, you don't know how they interact these ingredients and what the one does and the other jeopardizes. So stick to one brand and give it a try or chance. And also Sturm looks so good in the bathroom. You know, you don't want all these other colors.
- [32:47]
Gary
So what's lots of questions about maintaining your skincare routine while you travel, especially for people that are spending a lot of time on air.
- [32:55]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Look, this is easiest. Four products. That is easy. I could give you 10 more products which we don't really want. I would like at the exosomes, definitely. But I wanted to give you like a very, very basic, simple and very effective skincare routine. Cleanser, the cleanser, enzyme cleanser, the hyaluronic serum, face cream. Do those. I use the face cream also over my eyes. Obviously if you are like super into skincare, have your eye serum, your eye cream, you do all this. But I wanted to give you like the simple and you are on the go and you can travel and you have those, you're golden.
- [33:29]
Gary
Okay, for someone just starting to shift their diet, what are a few simple daily food swaps you recommend to help support an anti inflammatory lifestyle? I know you're a believer in an active lifestyle. What movement based activity.
- [33:42]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
I love that you read the questions for me.
- [33:43]
Gary
I'm reading them.
- [33:44]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Yeah, I know, I love, I'm like.
- [33:47]
Gary
I'm interviewing you so.
- [33:48]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
But I wanted to ask you a question actually about the periphery because you said, you know, the microcirculation in the periphery is always a problem. And you know what I do in the morning? I. I drink my lemon water and I drink a lot of water first thing in the morning because I'm really bad in drinking throughout the day. So I get a lot of water in in the morning and. And Gary always recommends to take your Celtic salt or mineral salt or whatever salt it is.
- [34:16]
Gary
Baja gold salt right there.
- [34:17]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Yes. And then you rub it on your tongue. And because of the salt, your water also goes into the periphery, otherwise it stays on the main road. But we want it like in all these little streets, right?
- [34:33]
Gary
Yeah. It's interesting because we've been lied to about sodium mainly. You know, if any of you right now, if your blood pressure was so high that it became life threatening and you called 911, well, you don't call 911 here. What do you call? 999? So you called 999 and the paramedics showed up and your blood pressure was extraordinarily high. Does anyone know what the first thing they would do is?
- [34:57]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Salt. Yeah.
- [34:58]
Gary
They would actually bag you with saline. They would take a bag of sodium water and they would squeeze it into your veins to lower your blood pressure. Very, very interesting study published in the Wiley Journal of Headaches. This is a journal, peer reviewed clinical journal that is dedicated solely to headaches. And they found an inverse correlation between sodium intake and migraine headaches. There are 8,900 people in this study. Now, why would sodium be inversely correlated to migraine headaches? Meaning as sodium went down, the incidence of migraines went up, and when sodium went up, the incidence of migraines went down. Well, it starts with where the pain's coming from. If you've ever suffered from a migraine headache or you've ever had a headache. All of us have had a headache. We think the headache is coming from our brain. That's actually not possible. Your brain does not have any pain receptors. Your brain is not capable of sending a pain signal signal. So the pain that you're feeling in your head, no matter where it is, can't be coming from your brain. So the question is, where is that pain coming from? It's actually coming from the covering of the brain. It's called the dura. It's like Saran Wrap that's sort of wrapped over the top of your brain. And the dura is fraught with pain receptors. And the dura hates two things. The dura hates being stretched and it hates being contracted. And what determines whether or not it's stretching or contracting is the sodium gradient.
- [36:18]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
It.
- [36:18]
Gary
My wife and I cannot even begin to tell you how many thousands of headache and migraine sufferers have come through our clinic system that we have put into permanent remission by putting them on Baja Gold Mineral salt, an actual sodium sea salt. It's fascinating because you are not hydrated when you have water in your blood. You are hydrated when you have water in your tissue. And what causes the water to leave the blood and enter the the tissue is the sodium gradient. It's called the osmotic gradient. The vast majority of us are sodium deficient. We don't actually have the right sodium balance. So we walk around dehydrated all the time, not the least of which is our skin.
- [36:57]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
And so I think this is such a big topic. This is so important for the skin, but so important for every organ. And you know why we get like under eye darkness and those bags, there's an issue with microcirculation in the periphery and the blood Is just static there. And then water gets into the tissue, and you get these bags, and then the blood is not ox oxygenized, and then you get the darkness. So I think this could solve a lot of these issues as well.
- [37:28]
Gary
I. I totally agree with you. You know, there's a reason why this room is set up the way that it is, with nine essential amino acids, all 91 essential minerals, and hydrogen water. Because the combination of those three things, if you do those in the morning, if you take in all nine of the essential amino acids, you can build any protein source in the body. If you take in all 91 trace minerals that the body needs, your methylation has the raw material it needs to do its job. And if you had hydrogen gas, which is one of the only true selective antioxidants that you can put put into the human body, you will not only reduce inflammation, you will restore the microvascular circulation to normal. I've talked about this in two lectures now. You're probably getting tired of me saying it, but our heart doesn't circulate all the blood in the body. 70% of our circulation is not done by our heart. There's no pressure in 70% of your circulatory vessels, including in the vasculature in your skin. There's zero pressure in the those vessels. So how is that blood circulated? It's circulated by an activity called vasomotor, Like a snake swallowing a mouse. So vasomotor and vasomotion are more important to skin health than cardiovascular circulation. And so how can we restore vasomotor minerals, hydrogen gas? Red light therapy is excellent for that. In fact, red light therapy is a phenomenal way to improve fine lines and wrinkles in your skin because it is improving circulation to the skin. How many of you use red light therapy? Oh, wow. It's like the whole room. Yeah, I mean, whole body. Red light therapy, even red light therapy for the face is phenomenal and probably for a different reason than you think not to get. Most of you are science nerds, so can I get sciencey for just one quick second? Inside every cell in your body are these little powerhouses called mitochondria. You have about 110 trillion of these in your body. Aging is a slow, progressive decline in the amount of mitochondria, mitochondrial density. As you lose mitochondria, you age at an accelerated rate. One of the fascinating things about red light is when it passes through the mitochondrial wall, it kicks out a gas called mitochondrial nitric oxide, and it forces oxygen to dock. Now that doesn't sound like a big deal until you realize that if oxygen enters a cycle called the Krebs cycle, your cell has 30 or 16 times the energy you produce. 32 ATP for every revolution versus 2 ATP. And I'll back out of the science now. But essentially what red light therapy does is it forces energy into your cells by actually forcing gases like mitochondrial, chondrial, nitric oxide out of the Krebs cycle. It dissociates it from cytochrome C oxidase and forcing oxygen to dock. So imagine by doing nothing other than exposing your skin to red light, you would have a 16 fold step up in cellular energy.
- [40:26]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
But I want to say this mass, this LED mask, it's better if you have a whole panel. Obviously not everybody has space for the big bite, but if you have a panel you can set, sit in front of, it's better to catch your whole body with the red light and not just like the mass. It's a little gimmick here. I would really recommend investing in something like a panel.
- [40:45]
Gary
I would totally agree with that. And if you've ever laid in a red light therapy bed for any prolonged period of time, the longer you use red light, the more youthful in appearance you'll take on. Also, the lower your baseline level of inflammation, the better your vasomotor circulation. And all red light is doing is harnessing the best of what mother Nature gives us. It's deleting the UVA and the uvb, the damaging rays, and using the beneficial rays from the sun to penetrate the skin and give your skin the benefits of light. We are very photovoltaic beings. In fact, I think our dissociation with Mother Nature, we could go down that road another time. But our dissociation from mother Nature, our lack of connection with Mother Nature is one of the reasons why we have such a sick and aging population. So this was obviously spelled wrong.
- [41:39]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Should we talk about endocrine disruptors? Endocrine disruptors, I think that's also something which is so important.
- [41:45]
Gary
Let's talk about endocrine disruptors in our.
- [41:47]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Skin with skin care as well, you know, because it's there so much parabens, polyfluoro alcohol things in skincare, but also in hair care. You know, scalp is the skin too. And when we wash our hair, there's so many, like silicones and tin sides and fragrances and microplastic whatever is in shampoos. I think shampoo is one of the worst, worst products in the beauty industry besides makeup. But there's a Lot of endocrine disruption. And maybe you want to explain it, but for me it's very important with every product I create to minimize endocrine disruption. So I have shampoos, conditioner, I have a shower gel, a V collection for the female genitals. Because that PH in the female genitals is very acidic and if you wash with a normal shower gel then the PH becomes alkaline and then we suffer UTI's Candida, all these problems because other bacterium than the one we want there are coming in and this term our microbiome. So this is something we have to be also very, very careful with. But endocrine disruption is whatever we do, whatever we buy in a supermarket. Don't buy plastic wrapped chicken or you, you have like a whole list of things that.
- [43:05]
Gary
Well, I mean the mains are what's called phthalates and parabens. And phthalates, parabens which are found in natural fragrances, natural scents. So thiolates and parabens are very aggressive hormone disruptors. In the previous session we were talking about female hormone therapy and we were talking about a very specific test that I think all women should do if you think your hormones are off. And it's called the Dutch test and it's a test that's a 24 hour urine test. And it looks like it looks at the actual full cycle of a woman, looks at the ratio of hormones to one another. Because in women especially the ratio of hormones is much more important than your levels. If you get a blood test, you get a snapshot of the level of hormone in the body that tells you nothing about whether or not you're estrogen dominant, estrogen deficient, or whether or not you have the right level of progesterone, pregnenolone or all of these other factors. A Dutch test is that we'll look at the ratios through a 24 hour cycle cycle. You will find women that use high amounts of parabens and phthalates actually have very disrupted estrogen cycles. They have severe inability to eliminate estrogen, which means that you cannot get. There's two ways to become estrogen dominant. One is for a woman to overproduce estrogen. Another one is to under eliminate estrogen. So if you're not getting rid of it, it's just as bad as producing too much. The result is the same. You get a buildup of something called phytoestrogens, you begin to retain water, you start to look puffy all over and you don't realize that this is actually related to your skincare routine or your cosmetic routine. So phthalates and parabens are especially terrible at hormone disruption because they actually block the elimination of estrogen down a pathway called the E2 pathway. They chemically block that elimination. And so by getting these out of your skincare routine, you can actually improve your hormonal cycle. I don't know if that answered your question or if I just ate everybody's face.
- [45:08]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
No, I think that's great.
- [45:08]
Gary
Okay. Because my wife says I just eat people's face. Like God forbid you sit next to me on a commercial flight because I will eat your face. We just flew from what, Dallas to. Or Miami to Dallas and we sat down. I'll just tell you a quick story. I sat down in the city. My family sat in the row behind me. And I sit down and I'm on the aisle seat and this dude is sitting next to me and the family's behind me and I sit down and I was like, you know, introduce myself. I'm like, what do you do for a living? He goes, oh, I'm a family medicine practitioner. I'm a sleep apnea specialist. I go, oh, are you? And so Sage wedges her face between the seats and she goes, he's gonna eat your face. And I did. I put the tray table down so he couldn't get out. I had a three ring binder. I pulled out and I opened the three ring binder but ate his face. For at the end though, he wanted to work for us, did he not? He did. So what one this says just so you know why I paused on this question. It says what one rectal practical specific tip. And I think it's reliable or relatable tip. Would you share that? We reduce inflammation in our lives and quickly reap some anti inflammatory benefits.
- [46:26]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
So I think everybody knows that sleep is one of the most important things when it comes. We just talked about it, you know, because I got woken up this morning at 6 to catch a rain.
- [46:38]
Gary
She walked in here, boy.
- [46:40]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Yeah. So I only had six hours of sleep. That really does a lot to your, to your brain and you know, your immune system goes down, your inflammation goes up. For me, I cannot live on six hours sleeps. I just, I'm so energetic and I can run a full day no problem. But I need my sleep. So sleep is highly important to minimize inflammation. Obviously your diet, obviously your stress levels. We don't want cortisol rising in our bloodstream because that causes a lot of inflammation. And then absolutely important, whatever we put on our Skin, whatever we wash our hair with, whatever we eat, out of plastic, out of whatever it is that touches our body, our clothes. I mean, this stuff is not good on your skin. Yeah, you should not wear synthetics. You should not wear polyester. I trained my 11 year old pepper because she likes these brands. 11 year old, like. And then she goes into the stores and then she reads what's in. Is it really cotton or what is it? You know, and then she say, oh, we cannot buy that. It's, it's, it's, it's just good to, to look at these things, you know, and just, and obviously our, you know, workout clothes, it's the worst what we could put on our bodies. But nevertheless, we do it sometimes. But then when you're done with your workout, take it off, take a shower, get this stuff off your.
- [48:04]
Gary
I don't think we realize, you know, I think everybody knows it's like sleep is beneficial. Most people don't know why it's so beneficial. You know, we talked in an earlier segment about the difference between deep phases of sleep and REM phases of sleep. Deep sleep is essentially the only time that your brain is eliminating waste. So we have a lymphatic system in our body, but we have a glymphatic system in our brain. And the glymphatic system is the lymph nodes of the brain. And so the brain has a special pathway to eliminate waste called the glymphatic system. System. This system is only active during deep sleep. So during deep phases of sleep, your brain actually loses inflammation. It actually does. It de swells, if you will, and loses inflammation. These channels open up and waste is eliminated from the brain. The reason why you wake up foggy after not getting a good night's sleep is because you have toxicity and inflammation built up in the brain from a lack of deep sleep. So I think sleep is our human story superpower. Whenever I work with an athlete, the very, very first thing I do is I fix their sleep. And then REM phases of sleep is where we're assembling memory. So we take learned memory from the day and we assemble it at night. It becomes actually a learned memory. Our prefrontal cortex and our hippocampus begin to communicate. There's also a really interesting clock in our brain, and this is the master clock. It's called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. And this clock runs our entire biological ecosystem. It runs your entire circadian cycle. And there are different clocks in different areas of your body. Your digestive system Runs on a clock. Your sleep wake cycle runs on a clock. This is why tying yourself to the sleep wake cycle of the sun can be so important. Waking with the sun, getting sunlight into your eyes first thing in the morning has real benefits to cortisol and hormonal cycles and melatonin cycles. And it's also why when you throw off your sleep wake cycle, you also throw off your digestion. One of my travel tips that I tell everybody, if you travel a lot and we'll be in 14 cities in 18 days, this is city nine or 10 for us, is you can't control when you go to bed and when you wake up. Very often when you're traveling, you can control when you eat. And we are much more tied to our digestive cycle than you think. We're even more tied to our cycle of digestion than we are the sleep wake cycle of the sun. So I live on the east coast, in Miami, I usually go to bed at 10 and get up at 6am so this entire time traveling, I will never feed myself between 10pm and 6am East Coast Time. I will at least control the variables that I can control when I travel. So I'll throw off one of my clocks because my sleep and wake cycle with the sun will be different, but, but it won't throw all of the clocks off. So if you go to a new destination, you're only there for a few days, you're getting up at a different time, you're going to bed at a different time, and then you start eating. When your body thinks you should be sleeping, you will wreck your circadian cycle. If you preserve your eating window, you will stay on your circadian cycle. So that's just take that super interesting what you want to do with it. But that's one of my tips for travel.
- [51:09]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
By the way. The skin also has a circadian cycle. The skin, when you fly back from the US to Europe, for example, your skin thinks, you know, it's like, depends where you're coming from. But the day cycle is different to the night cycle. In a day, the skin is about protecting and you know, protecting the skin in the night cycle, it rejuvenates and it gets ready for the day. So when you now, for example, you know, board a plane in New York, come to Europe and you come out in the morning where you still think it's night, but your skin, you know, your skin thinks it's night, but you're already in the day. The sun hits your skin or the daylight and your skin is not ready for it. So you have to be really careful how you treat your skin. Don't run into the sun. Or you have to be really mindful that the skin has the same differences in their circadian.
- [52:04]
Gary
And, you know, can we talk a minute about the impact of the gut microbiome on the skin. Skin and the process of methylation that.
- [52:11]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
You can explain this much better than me.
- [52:15]
Gary
You're the doctor, so.
- [52:16]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Yeah, but you're the. You're the teacher. You're the one who explains it better than anybody.
- [52:22]
Gary
Yeah, I think, you know, it's fascinating how many skin issues are directly related to our gut microbiome. You know, I really got turned on to the gut microbiome by Dr. Perlmutter years ago. We wrote a book called Grain Brain. You. He wrote another one called the Gut Brain Connection. He directly linked different microbiota in the gut to different skin conditions. I get a lot of questions about eczema and psoriasis. It's fascinating, the correlation between two strains of bacteria in the gut and eczema and psoriasis. In nearly all of the patients that suffer from these two waste elimination conditions through the skin, they have the same two class of bacteria missing from their gut, A Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus, that are missing from their gut. And the absence of these bacteria forces the body, mainly the liver, to use the skin as a secondary route of waste elimination. You know, the skin's not just a barrier, it's a gateway. And so we actually eliminate waste through our skin. This is a reason why we have two types of sweating. We have passive sweating and active sweating. Passive sweating, we sweat to drop body temperature. Active sweating, we sweat to eliminate waste. And we've all experienced this because when you get the flu and you're cold and you're in a cold room and you're freezing, you're sweating. Why are you sweating when your body is freezing? Because you're not passively sweating to reduce your body temperature. You are actively sweating to eliminate waste. And so a healthy gut microbiome, things like fermented foods. I can't think of anything that is more beneficial for your gut microbiome than fermented foods. Kimchi, sauerkrauts. I know a lot of you don't like to eat those foods that are pickled. Pickled in vinegars. Because these foods have something called soluble and insoluble fiber. Insoluble fiber forms the bulk that moves through our gut, but the soluble fiber turns into something called free fatty acids. And free fatty Acids are some of the most anti inflammatory compounds in the human body. They actually ravage, they're a scavenger for free radical oxidation. So just by changing our diet, especially incorporating fermented foods, you can actually really repair and heal your gut microbiome. You know the other thing that I'm such a huge fan of and I'm a little biased because I have a genetic test that's available for sale at this event but is fixing your genetic methylation. You know most of us do not know what we are deficient in because we don't know where our gene breaks are. And certain gene breaks lead to certain deficiencies and these deficiencies can be supplemented for. So instead of supplementing for the sake of self fighting, we can supplement for deficiency. So why don't we, why don't we open it for a couple of questions? Is that cool with you? Anybody have any questions? Yes ma'.
- [55:10]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Am.
- [55:11]
Gary
You mentioned a few ingredients that are.
- [55:12]
Audience Member
Bad and cause inflammation in your skin, like retinol. Are there any other ones that we.
- [55:18]
Gary
Should think about avoiding?
- [55:19]
Audience Member
I know acids are very common. Are there good ones, bad ones?
- [55:24]
Gary
And what should we avoid and what should we choose to go for?
- [55:28]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Definitely stay away from anything that has fragrances. Fragrances is also a very important endocrine disruptor and it's totally overused in skincare. Shouldn't be in skincare, just shouldn't be also on your skin. So if you like a fragrance from any whatever by reader, put it on your T shirt or your clothes but not on your skin because it disrupts your skin barrier. But also stay away from mineral oils, for example, high amounts of alcohol, those kind of things. I would stay away. Then glycolic, then acid peels. Definitely not in your skincare routine. If you have a whole list put together with ingredients I think your team has that we can send out to you. Oh yes, if anybody's interested, send an email to Gary's team. We did like a whole.
- [56:19]
Gary
I have a website called theultimatehuman.com and we'll, we'll.
- [56:22]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Yeah.
- [56:23]
Gary
Yes ma'.
- [56:23]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Am.
- [56:24]
Gary
You touched on adhd. Are there any supplements or sort of medications, sort of ingredients that you would say to focus on alongside good sleep, you know, good diet? There's no question, you know, first if you suspect adhd, I would absolutely do a genetic methylation test. I again, I think that everyone should do this test once in their lifetime because the genes you're born with are the genes you die with. You will never guess again on what you need to supplement with because you will supplement for different efficiency, not just the sake of supplementing in ADHD and ADD both, which is an overactive mind. It's too many windows opening at the same time. It is not an inability to pay attention, it's an inability to pay attention to so many things. And so this is a big fallacy with ADD and adhd. And so when we create thought at a faster rate, then we break thought down. We have what's called attention deficit disorder. We have too many thoughts, too many windows open at the same time. It's a fallacy that people with ADD and ADHD cannot focus or concentrate. They actually have a tendency to hyper focus. It has to be on something that they are interested in. And so the main deficiency in attention deficit disorder is methylfolate. And it is highly tied to a gene mutation called mthfr. There's seven fold the increase in ADHD and MTHFR positive variants than in non positive variants. Because the absence of methylfolate does not allow the proper pace of breaking down thought of dismantling neurotransmitters. And so the mind is racing. Modern medicine solution is to put amphetamines into the body to race the central nervous system to match the pace of the mind. This is what Vyvans, Adderall and Ritalin are, they're amphetamines. So in that case you are breaking the system that's not working, the central nervous system to match the system that is broken, which is the poor breakdown of neurotransmitters. So two things I would do if you suspect adhd, one, I would get a genetic methylation test and secondly, I would get all of the folic acid out of that person's test diet for just one week. And you will have a completely different human being in the car. I mean, if it's a full contact sport, to get your kid in the car to go to school in the morning, get the folic acid, which is fortified or enriched foods out of their diet for one week, supplement them with 800 micrograms of methylfolate and you will see a life changing experience. Yeah. Zinc and magnesium are also major. Okay, one more question, one more question. Question for Barbara and then she has to go.
- [59:06]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Okay, I have to go. No, it's fine. I don't have to go anywhere.
- [59:15]
Gary
All right, two more questions. Yes, ma'. Am.
- [59:17]
Audience Member
So we know that when we wear sunglasses, our skin doesn't really understand that we are like exposing to the sun so it's less protective towards the sun. So now my question is since in the bioacting space now we talk about the how the lights affect our skin. For example, wearing like blue blocking glasses will help. And also at sunset time there's another lens that is simulating the sunset. And then at night you should wear like the red light, but that's on the eyes. But the skin also read the light as well. So now wearing those, it will be less effective to the skin to protect like since Barbara say that there's a circadian rhythm of the light. So once it's protecting and then at night is rejuvenating. So now my question is, with these glasses we're doing better or not, depending on the health of the skin and the eyes. And everything is interconnected. I hope you understand in my English.
- [60:13]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Is not my question.
- [60:15]
Gary
Go ahead, you answer.
- [60:16]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
Yeah, but the eyes is one thing and it's very good to protect your eyes and engage with your eye health. But for the skin, and I give you this example, if you're now sitting at night in bed and go shopping on Netaporte on your iPad, that's definitely not good for your skin. Or you wake up and you look at your phone. Definitely not good for your skin, but also for your circadian rhythm. Rhythm because you wake up and you think it's day. Again, regarding the eyes and the connection between the glasses for your eyes and your skin that I.
- [60:50]
Gary
So what's interesting about blue light blockers and red light glasses is we're actually trying. What's fascinating is we're just trying to get back to the basics. You know, we're actually trying to circumvent all of this. You know, we, I, I have a saying that aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort. Because the more aggressively we pursue comfort, the faster we age. We regulate everything now. We regulate our indoor air temperature, we regulate our lighting. And so if you want to make your bedroom the surface of the sun at 1 o' clock in the morning, you can, you can just crank the lights up. Okay, this is, this throws off circadian cycle. We're very photovoltaic beings. We used to actually sleep and wake with the cycle of the sun. We don't do that anymore. And so when we have bright lights, especially fluorescent lights and artificial lights, these lights are not constant. They flicker. It's called Hertz, how many times the light comes on and off in a second. Those hertz are not natural Hertz. So what they are is they're very stimulatory to your brain. So the reason why you would wear red Light glasses. You wouldn't need red light glasses if you slept and woke with the sun or if you used biocentric lighting. But because most of our lighting is artificial, we want to actually protect ourselves from the waking cycle that that light is stimulating us to do. So red light glasses are just a way of us to block the artificial light so that we're not being woken by that light at night. Blue light, especially from our phones, is clinically designed to keep the brain awake. There are also wavelengths in there, believe this or not, that are clinically designed. They're actually augmented to stimulate the dopamine receptors, to actually give you a dopamine reward for staying engaged. So those screens are actually designed to be addictive. They're designed to create a wakened state and to create a heightened state of dopamine. So that's what blue light glasses do. I don't wear readers, but I wear blue light glasses a lot. They're in my pocket right now. I wore them on my previous stage dog. So I wear blue light glasses during the day. Sometimes at night I will wear red light glasses if I'm not going to bed early. But it's only a way for us to protect ourselves from artificial light, not from sunlight.
- [62:55]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
By the way, the HEV light, the blue light penetrates the skin very, very aggressively. It's short wavelength and can cause same problems, like, you know, sun, for example, like pigmentation, premature aging, cancer. So it's same aggressive. And we don't really have like the sunscreen for the HEV light. I created actually a product. I don't know if it's on the market right now because it wasn't so perceived because it was too early. Maybe it's called anti pollution drops. And those drops were, you know, this. They were really great to block out the HEB light as well. Same like it hydrated. So it really, really engaged with our skin barrier and strengthen it. But at the same time we could block out the HIV light. It's a really good product, by the way. Yes, I have a question about lasers because we live in time where you have so much like so many treatments that one can take. Is there any that you would recommend or you would stay away from all of it? And then I have a second question about UV lamps because there are a lot of lamps that have infrared, but you can also have the UV right now. Is that good? Is that bad? Is it worth having?
- [64:04]
Gary
I'll let her answer the question on lasers and I'll handle the question on uv.
- [64:07]
Dr. Barbara Sturm
So I'm not A big fan of lasers because everything that aggressively targets your skin. It's one thing if you have acne, scarring or like a thing you want to get rid of. You know, when you tried everything else and you do it one time, but then your doctor has to give you all the side effects. How, how it can damage your skin, how your skin needs, you know, can be infected, can be all kinds of things, how you protect it after the treatment. But lasers are used for anti aging protocols. And you know, I'm, I personally wouldn't dare to hurt my skin so much because I'm also, I would be scared how it grows back, how, how it comes back. And you know, I've seen ladies, they had done many, many laser treatments and then they walk around with these long sleeves and these hats, you know, and their skin looks totally dead and spotty because, you know, when we constantly damage our skin barrier, the sun causes pigmentation and it just kills your skin. And I personally, I would stay away from everything aggressive except when there's an indication where you, you know, have this one time treatment or something. But I, I'm personally, I like to keep what I got in the best possible possible shape.
- [65:19]
Gary
So. UVA and UVB lights for indoor use are usually designed to replace natural lighting when you don't have access to it. You know, as a population mortality expert, I can tell you that the longest life expectancies on Earth are centered right around the equator. I forget what the exact number was, but for every 20 degree, is it longitude or latitude that you move away from the equator, there's a precipitous drop in life expectancy until you get to the poles where the shortest life expectancy on Earth exists. A true Eskimo has the shortest life expectancy on Earth. And a lot of the reason why they have shortened life expectancies is one, they become cold adaptive. We use cold water therapy to cold shock the body. Those cold plunges back there will cold shock the body. They will not adapt to. Once you become cold adaptive, you actually begin to develop excess adipose tissue in the cell layer in your skin. The second is that when people don't have, they go 24 hours, 48 hours, weeks, sometimes months without any sunlight exposure. This is very detrimental because there are certain wavelengths of light from the sun that actually cause us to make vitamin D3. We make cholecalciferol in our body. The only vitamins that a human being can make on our own. If I drew the blood of anybody in this room, you would have hundreds of vitamins in your bloodstream. Your body is only capable of making one and it's vitamin D3. You don't need to eat, you don't need to drink. You just need to expose your skin to sunlight. We make vitamin D3 from sunlight and cholesterol. When cholesterol and sunlight combine, they go through the kidney and there's a little process. We make something called vitamin D3, cholecalciferol. It's arguably the same single most important nutrient in the human body. It acts like a vitamin, it acts like a hormone, it acts like a calcium transport molecule. It's fascinating what this nutrient does in the human body. Vitamin D3. And about 85% of the world's population is clinically deficient in that nutrient. Awesome. Should we do one more question? Oh, one more question. Yes sir. First of all, thanks for your time and knowledge. This is been one of the best experiences I've had and I'm always working away and there's always like chip shops, McDonald's, like bad food places. What snacks and pre packaged foods could I take with me? What snacks and pre packaged foods? Healthy snacks. Yeah, I mean I personally like like dried meat products. I, I eat a lot of like lineage beef sticks. I'll take Parmesan Crisp. I eat a lot, I take a lot of stuff, stuff on the road with us. Raw goat cheese nuts are excellent snacks for you to keep around that are actually very filling. So nuts, olives, meat sticks, grass fed grass, finished meat sticks. Those are, those are usually my go to's not to plug a brand here but I'm a big fan of whole foods. Body health actually makes a whole food bar that is pressed and it is preserved by putting CO2 into the bag and not by adding preservatives. And if you actually flip that the ingredient list over, you'll recognize everything on there. There are dried fruits, dried vegetables, coconut oil, raw cacao, almonds, coconut oils. These are whole food ingredients. And the secret to longevity is eating a whole food diet. It's the absence of processed foods, not the presence of a dogmatic diet that extends life. Carnivore wasn't what extend life. Keto wasn't what extended life Vegan wasn't what extended life vegetarian. You know, paleo, pescatarian, Atkins. They were not dogmatic diets, they were diets completely absent in processed foods. Not a blue zone in the world has the presence of processed foods and so foods as close to their natural state as possible. You know what's fascinating is very often it's not even the food. It's the distance from the food to the table. Just like I talked about seed oil. It's not that. It's not the sunflower, the safflower, or the soybean that's the issue. It's the distance from those to the table. So those would be some of my favorite go tos. Guys, thank you so much for your thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.