Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - #448: SUMMER BEST-OF: The Secret To Anti-Aging WITHOUT Surgery with Dr. Anthony Youn America’s Holistic Plastic Surgeon

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

After such an amazing response to Heather’s “Elite Mastermind” program, she’s created a special program to connect with you ASAP! For people like you who took that step in taking action for your goals, she’s offering a 50% discount for her new “Mini-Mastermind” in August. Given all the access points and interaction, Heather must cap the group count – it will close fast!   Click through to see all the benefits and specifics, and book as soon as you can to secure your seat! Do it today and you will receive a 1:1 pre-call with Heather to map out your August strategy, goals and plan!  Let’s go - pay over time options at link below:  https://heather-monahan.myshopify.com/products/seminar-registration  In This Episode You Will Learn About:  What treatments are best for your beauty & health goals How to prevent aging at the source The best way to tell the difference between health recommendations & sales pitches The simple & non-invasive changes you can make to revitalize your skin  Resources: Website: www.dryoun.com  Read Younger For Life Listen to The Holistic Plastic Surgery Show Twitter & Instagram: @tonyyounmd Facebook: @Dr. Anthony Youn YouTube & TikTok: @doctoryoun Kajabi is offering a free 30-day trial to start your business if you go to Kajabi.com/confidence  Get 15% off by using code CONFIDENCE at LolaVie.com. Go to ro.co/confidence, and pay just $99 for your first month, then $145 a month after that. Visit heathermonahan.com Overcome Your Villains is Available NOW! Order here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com  Show Notes:  You don’t need expensive and invasive surgery to stop aging in its tracks! Whatever your concerns may be, there is a simple solution for you and it doesn’t involve going under the knife. Amazingly, this revelation comes to us from a world-renowned plastic surgeon, Dr. Anthony Youn. I am so excited to go on a deep dive with Dr. Youn on what really works and the easy changes that make all the difference. Whether you’re looking to nourish your skin from within or just seeking a more confident you, this is a conversation you can’t miss! If You Liked This Episode You Might Also Like These Episodes: #411: From Setbacks to BREAKTHROUGHS: Create Confidence In Any Situation With Heather! #421: GO For It: Shattering Limits in Life & Business with Heather! #402: Conflict into Connection: The Art of Effective Communication with Charles Duhigg Pulitzer Prize-winning Reporter & Bestselling Author

When I started podcasting, an online store was the furthest thing from my mind. Now I'm selling my group coaching on the regular and it is just so easy, all because I use Shopify. The human body is so amazing that it wants to be healthy. It wants to be active. It wants to be youthful. You know, we just need to give it those tools in the environment to do so. And unfortunately, in today's day and age, there's so many other things that we're doing instead. You know, we're fueling it with foods that are not good for it.

You know, we're being sedentary, we're not moving around, we're not doing these things that even like our parents did when they were growing up, that they didn't know sometimes were so healthy, but it's so much better than what we are doing, a lot of us in today's day and age. I'm on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close-up. Hi and welcome back. I'm so excited for you to be back here with us again. This week, we've got an incredible guest, Dr. Anthony Yoon.

He's one of the most trusted and well-known plastic surgeons in the world. Recognized as a leader in the field and followed by literally millions, he's highly valued for his honest approach and ability to speak to all areas of health and well-being, not just plastic surgery. He's the most followed plastic surgeon on TikTok

and YouTube, hosts a popular podcast, and has appeared on countless national television shows, radio programs, print, online publications, and he's author of Younger for Life. Tony, thank you so much for being here with us today. Oh, thank you so much Heather. I appreciate it. Oh my gosh. Okay. First of all, I got gotta tell you guys that this man might be a doctor, might be intimidating because he's got millions of followers and is so successful, but is so regular and so cool. And I love when people know- Oh, thank you. Like the backstory of people as we were just chatting about the insanity of some plastic

surgery. So let's dive into that because I know where I live in Miami, it's incredibly superficial. It affects how you feel about yourself. It affects how you mirror and look around. How did you get into the business of plastic surgery and how do you keep it so real and not so distorted? Basically the day I was born, my parents decided I was going to be a doctor, but they didn't want me to just be any doctor. They wanted me to be this kind of high powered surgeon, like cardiac surgeon, transplant surgeon, a brain surgeon. And I realized very quickly that that just wasn't my personality. And then I found the field of plastic surgery and I've been an

artist all my life. And I thought, wow, this is a perfect combination. And so that's why I chose it. And long ago too, between high school and college, I actually had my jaw broken and reset. My jaw used to stick out like really far. And so between high school and college, it was reset and it really changed my appearance. It changed my self-esteem, my self-confidence and it really was kind of the beginning of my path towards becoming a plastic surgeon.

I love how everyone always has a backstory that somehow ties you to what you end up finding purpose and passion in life. So good for you. Okay, I want to get into if you are, in my opinion, unconventional in this world of plastic surgery, because so much about what you write about in Younger for Life isn't about getting plastic surgery. So it seems so counterproductive versus what you do for a living.

So how do you end up writing about what you eat and how you sleep and meditation when you're the doctor people are supposed to come to to tighten the skin up with a knife and move on? Yeah, so I did all my traditional training. I have an MD from Michigan State University. I went to a general surgery residency for three years. I did plastic surgery for two years. I did a fellowship out in Beverly Hills for a year, and for many years I kind of subscribed to the belief in surgery to cut is to cure. The only way to heal is with cold steel. And so I was always taught throughout my training that the goal of being a surgeon was to bring

your patients to surgery. And so for many years, Heather, that's what I did is I brought patients to surgery and I got to a point in my career where I thought that I had reached the pinnacle. I had people flying in from across the country to have surgery done by me. In plastic surgery, in surgery, you look at there's certain operations depending on what field you're in that you consider to be like the ultimate. If you can do those well, then you are at the top of skill level of surgeons. If you're a general surgeon, that operation would be the Whipple, which is like a 10-hour massive cancer operation. In plastic surgery,

it's probably the facelift because some patients may pick almost anybody to do their lipo, but you know if they're gonna choose you to do your facelift that you've got to be really good. So for many years Heather, I basically engaged the success of my practice based off how many facelifts I was performing. And I thought that I'd reached the pinnacle. I was doing all these facelifts I was performing. And I thought that I'd reached the pinnacle. I was doing all these facelifts and everything. And then I had a patient who had a facelift who had a terrible complication afterwards.

And it wasn't her fault, it wasn't my fault, but sometimes bad things happen. And it really sent me into a tailspin and started getting to me to rethink, am I doing the right thing? Is the goal of plastic surgery really to bring patients to the operating room? And after many months of self-reflection and hitting a very dark, deep place, I finally realized that that really wasn't how it should be.

My goal as a plastic surgeon should be the opposite. It should be, how do I keep people out of the operating room, yet still help them to feel and look their best, and hopefully, if I can prevent them from needing to go under the knife, you know, and so that became this whole concept of autojuvenation, the basis of my new book and really changed the trajectory of my career. Well, for everyone listening, obviously, everyone's concerned about themselves. So how do people even begin to gauge to know, well, wait a minute, I thought my only option at this point, I'm 49, for example, all my friends are talking about lately, their neck, their eyes, well, wait a minute, I thought my only option at this point, I'm 49, for example, all my friends are talking about lately,

their neck, their eyes, like, is it time? When's the window now? Do we just go in to go for the knife? Or should we try some of these other ideas that you're bringing forward? How can people gauge to know where they fit in? So there's two things I would consider. The first thing is I look at anti-aging treatments

as kind of like you're building a house. And a facelift is like the spire at the top of the house. You know you don't want to focus on that first. You want to focus on the foundation of the house and the foundation of the house is going to be basically what you eat. And that's the first thing I talked about in my book is basically how what you eat can make a massive change to how your skin is. That being said I'm also realistic. There are certain conditions that doesn't matter what you eat, what you put on your skin, what you inject in your skin, it's not going to change that.

And the main thing is going to be excess skin. So if you've got excess hanging skin, then yes, there's nothing that we can do non surgically to really get rid of it. So that skin is just hanging from your neck, or if it's hanging from your eyelids or hanging from your tummy if you've had multiple children, then unfortunately, surgery is usually the only real option. But short of that, there are so many things we can do now, non-surgically, to get you the way you wanna be

or the way you'd like to be, that that's what I usually encourage people to start with. So when you talk about, it's so interesting to me, because just this idea, it's crazy. I'm obsessed with skin and all these things, but obviously I don't have the knowledge that I've accessed in my life. Nothing like what you studied in research.

It's shocking to me that food can have that big of an impact. What are some of the foods that we should be eating or should not be eating that you walk us through in the book? Yeah, so the first thing is you wanna consider what impact does food have on the skin. So there's two main things I would really focus on. The first thing is chronic inflammation. So certain foods that you eat can create chronic inflammation of your skin and of your whole body. And the number one cause of chronic inflammation is going to be sugar. Now, when you think about it, 20% of the

calories in the standard American diet come from sugar sweetened drinks. Soda pop, energy drinks, fruit juices, 20% of those calories are pretty much unnecessary and sugar can actually cause your skin to age prematurely by two main factors. The first one is that it can actually bond to the collagen of your skin. Literally sugar can bond to the collagen of your skin and cause

that collagen to become more aged or kinked. 70 to 80% of our skin is made up of collagen, and collagen is a part of our skin that causes our skin to feel tight and strong and thick, and as we get older we lose about 1% of the thickness of collagen every year. Sugar comes around and takes that collagen that's starting to fall apart as you get older, and it kinks it and makes it even more aged. And then the second way that sugar ages our skin is a process where it causes chronic sugar spikes, can cause chronic insulin spikes, that can lead to insulin resistance, and that can lead to also chronic inflammation.

And there is a direct connection between the health really of our gut and the health of our skin. So all this type of inflammation that you're seeing both in the gut can also show up on the skin. So food is just, it's a huge part of our skin and we're just learning literally the last five to 10 years those connections. So for me when I hear inflammation I think about my knees or my Achilles and working out and what you're saying it has just as strong as impact on our skin and superficially how we look? So that's a great question because now you have to differentiate between acute inflammation

and chronic inflammation. Acute inflammation can be a good thing, okay? You get a cut, you get an injury, your body creates acute inflammation on that injury to heal it. You get a laser treatment, you get a chemical peel, you get micro-needling. These are all acute inflammatory

processes that result in damage to the collagen. Okay, so the collagen is kind of like the logs of a log cabin. And as you get older, those logs start to fray and fall apart. And what happens when you create a controlled inflammation controlled injury, like with lasers or microneedling, you damage that collagen just enough that when it heals, it heals into a tighter fashion. It's this kind of idea of hormesis. You know, it's why people are doing cold plunges. They're putting their body under a period of acute stress. And by doing that, your body can react

by actually becoming stronger and even more youthful. And so you've got to separate acute inflammation versus chronic. Chronic is that inflammation that just continues on, nagging inflammation that doesn't go away. And so eating these types of foods can do that. Stress is a great cause of chronic inflammation. You know, so there's good stress and bad stress for your body and for your skin. Good stress is like the cold plunge. It's like exercising. You know, you put your body under that stress and it reacts by breaking down tissues a little bit. And then when it brings them back up,

it brings them up in a better way, in a stronger way. It's that chronic inflammation that just really tears at your body, and that's what's unhealthy. When I started podcasting, an online store was the furthest thing from my mind. Now I'm selling my group coaching on the regular, and it is just so easy, all because I use Shopify.

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Average weight loss is 15 to 20% in one year with healthy lifestyle changes. BMI and other eligibility criteria apply. Go to ro.co.com. That's ro.co.com. Sign up today and you'll pay just $99 for your first month and $145 a month after that. Medication costs are separate. That's ro.co.confidence. One of the things that I liked about the book is that you use yourself as an example, specifically like when you're talking about stress. Yeah.

And so really when you look at stress, it's kind of that long-term stress, like little bits of stress are okay. And it's kind of like when you look back a long, long time ago, when the stress that we would undertake is if we would have somebody try to attack us, and then our body would react in a certain way,

that in some ways can be healthy, and once again, kind of this idea of hormesis, but it's that long-term crime stress that's no good. And you only need to look at the US presidents when they enter office, and then four to eight years later when they exit, they've got the best medical care in the world, and you could tell that they've aged, and that's due to the stress.

And that's something that I've seen myself as a surgeon, is taking steps to reduce your stress. That can really slow down the aging of your skin as well. And some of the things I talk about in the book, meditation, yoga, gratitude, a lot of the things I talked about in the book, meditation, yoga, gratitude, a lot of the things that you also have covered too and that you encourage people to do, because a lot of people don't realize

that what can be healthy for your mind, can be healthy for your body, can actually really show in the skin. I didn't realize that it could show in the skin either until I'm looking into your work and reading your book, but you bring up gratitude. Meditation, I am not the best with. I'm looking into your work and reading your book. But you bring up gratitude. Meditation, I am not the best with. I definitely have my moments better than other times where I'm not so good. So that's an opportunity for me to get better for 2024.

But gratitude is something that I make such a committed daily practice. And it makes you truly a happier person. And I believe, and I'm sure you're going to agree with this, that the happier you are, the more beautiful you are, it truly comes true. Oh, totally. Yeah. And one of the big things I have in the book is just the importance of gratitude. And it's hard because, you know, getting older,

you know, you're a few years younger than me, but I passed 50 and, you know, it's no fun to look in the mirror and see changes that you never thought you would see or that you haven't seen before. But then you got to think about it like, you know, I'm 51 now and I have friends of mine who have died. And it's like, man, even though it's hard to turn 50 and get older, like, what's the

alternative? The alternative we don't want to consider, that's no good. And so the way I try to encourage people to look at overall aging and the kind of how you look at it is, yes, it's no fun to get older, but it truly is a blessing to get older. And it's an exciting time to get older right now, Heather, because we have so many options to turn back the clock that you don't even have to do surgery, you know, whether it's red light therapy, whether it's micro needling, whether it's getting on the right skincare products, cleaning up your diet, trying intermittent fasting, all these types of things are so much that you can do that you might as well have fun

kind of fighting the aging process while you're at it. Okay. So you've mentioned a lot of things and you dive into all of these topics in the book. After food and food choices, what's the next most important thing for your skin? So the next thing that I would consider would be intermittent fasting. A lot of people use intermittent fasting. They try to use it a way to lose weight as a way to, let's say, improve their metabolic health. But in reality, one big thing with intermittent

fasting is going to be the longevity benefits of it. So if you talk to anti-aging researchers and scientists, these are not physicians, these are actual scientists, they will tell you that the way to live longer is to either calorie restrict or take time where you don't eat, where essentially you fast. Now you don't have to fast for three days to get the benefits, but the main benefit that you in general get from fasting is that by basically allowing your body time

where you're not eating, it can stimulate a process called autophagy. Autophagy means self-eating, and essentially it's this intracellular rejuvenating process or recycling process that can make our cells function more youthfully. So just the fact that you're alive, our cells will fill up with intracellular waste, okay, whether they're proteins or organelles or mitochondria.

Basically it's waste products that can build up in our cells, and as we get older, it causes our cells not to function as efficiently. You basically, they function as if they're older cells. Now, the process of autophagy basically takes that intracellular waste that's slowing those processes down and it recycles that for energy. And so it causes them to cells to clean themselves out on the inside and then to function more efficiently

afterwards, essentially your cells are acting more youthfully. But for that process to happen, you have to stop eating. You have to literally kind of run out of fuel so that your body then recycles this intracellular waste for fuel instead. And the studies are showing that you want to take a break from eating for a good 12 hours minimum for that process to happen. Some people, and one thing I try to encourage is if you can try to get to 16 hours, maybe once or twice a week, that may be enough to kind of clean your body out from the inside, help your body to actually turn back the clock on the inside.

You can even see it in your skin as well. So just taking time, you know, a couple of days a week where maybe you do 12 hours where you just don't eat for those 12 hours, you drink non calorie drinks, it's fine. If you can extend that to 16 hours, that's even better. Okay, so I'm thinking to myself, there's plenty of days where I'm just busy and don't think to eat in the morning. But tell us to do this correctly, because this is where I know

that I will definitely mess it up. If you put cream in your coffee, that's gonna cancel it. That breaks a fast. Yeah, so any type of caloric food will break a fast. And so that's what you want. Now you can have coffee, just don't put cream in it. You know, black coffee, technically would be fine. Tea is fine. Water is fine. But yes, I would not put cream in it because then it breaks the fast. Even if we just do this twice a week, this is going to help us to look younger. Yeah. So what we have in the book is we did this 21 day

jumpstart where we took people and we cleaned up their diet for 21 days. We had them do intermittent fasting for weeks two and three, just two days a week. Okay, so two days a week on week two, two days on week three, we kind of spaced it out. And then we put them on certain basic supplements and a very simple but effective skincare routine. And then after 21 days, we saw how their skin looked.

And we had people that had these amazing changes where they would, let's say, go out to dinner with their friends. Their friends would comment like, wow, your skin looks great. What are you doing? Not knowing they're doing this jumpstart. That's all it really was, is cleaning up their diet, eating more fruits and vegetables, getting rid of ultra-processed foods, getting rid of dairy, gluten, and getting rid of excess

sugar. Then we had them intermittent fast, just weeks two and three, just for two days each of those weeks. Then we had them on the skincare regimen and very basic supplements including a collagen supplement and really saw these great changes in their skin, their energy level soared, their skin looked great. And even some of them lost unwanted pounds that they didn't want to have. So tell us about supplements because that's such a confusing, I've taken vitamins my whole life, but it

seems like every month there's something new that you're supposed to be taking and no one has the time to research. What are the supplements that you take and that you recommend? You know, I have friends of mine who are biohackers and they're taking 200 pills a day and that's gets ridiculous. For the normal person, what I recommend very simple, five supplements. And if you go four, that's probably fine, but five. First one, daily multivitamin. Second one, omega-3 supplements. So if you are plant-based and they're allergy-based omega-3s, otherwise fish oil. And that's going to be anti-inflammatory, great to fight that chronic inflammation.

Third thing is a daily probiotic, at least three billion colony-forming units a day. That's going to help support the microbiome, the microbiome, those trillions of bacteria inside the gut. Once again, the health of the gut definitely helps the health of the skin. Fourth one is antioxidants. So if you have some type of an antioxidant mixture, that's great. It fights oxidation and free radicals. That's one reason why we encourage people to eat the rainbow of fruits and vegetables because you're going to get a wide array of antioxidants. And so adding an antioxidant supplement is great.

Then the final one, I'm a big fan of collagen supplements. I mentioned earlier that 70 to 80% of our skin is composed of collagen. We lose about 1% of the thickness of our collagen every year. Women after menopause, they lose 2% a year. That's why you see some women who are maybe in their 70s or 80s and their skin is tissue paper thin and you just scratch them and it tears. And so fighting that collagen kind of degradation process is huge. Taking a collagen supplement, many studies have shown that that can definitely help the collagen of your skin. Only five. That's the beauty of what you just explained. That's

something that's very manageable. Yeah, because there are so many other supplements that biohackers and people will take and like, oh, well, this can make you live longer. And so most of these are not proven and they're kind of theoretical and hey, you know, if you want to take those, then go ahead. But these are the basics that I think work well. And once again, that 21 day jumpstart, those are the supplements we put people on. That's it. And after 21 days, virtually everybody saw a really nice change in their skin and their

energy level and even their weight. One of the things that I like about the book is that you use real people, real examples, real case studies, and you give yourself and use yourself as an example too. One of the things that's happened to me over the last year and it's happened to so many of my girlfriends is people are experiencing their hair thinning out of nowhere. The best hair my whole life, never had an issue with my hair. And suddenly I noticed that my hair was falling out

at a rapid rate, nothing crazy. I mean, my hair is still okay, but you know yourself, it's not the way it's meant to be. And you walked us through the very specific examples of when your wife noticed that you were losing some hair and the stuff that you took. Can you share with everybody listening, just some of the the stuff that you took. Can you share with everybody listening just some of the different things that you did and where you saw some results?

Yeah, so the funny thing Heather is years ago when my wife and I filled out these surveys of what do you find most attractive in your spouse and you know what my wife wrote? My hair! My freaking hair! And so a couple years ago we were out vacationing and we're doing like cliff jumping and she looks at me and I was on the cliff below her she's like you're losing your hair on top of your head I'm like no and I almost fell off the cliff you know there's so many things you can do and I didn't want to start myself on a prescription drug so I said okay the first thing you need to consider is one big cause of hair loss is stress now on the surgeon I'm gonna have stress I stress about my

patients every day I always worry about them and I can't get rid of that because it's my job. But there are things you can do. We mentioned yoga and meditation and those types of things, getting enough sleep. But what else can you do? So the first thing I recommend is taking a good nutritional supplement. Now you can go to a functional medicine physician. You can get a ton of labs drawn and see where you may have a deficiency. There are vitamin deficiencies that can cause hair loss, iron deficiency, zinc deficiency, vitamin C. There's a lot of different deficiencies that can cause hair loss, you know, iron deficiency, zinc

deficiency, vitamin C. There's a lot of different deficiencies that can cause that. And so you could do that or you could buy an all-in-one supplement. So the one that I started is probably the most famous one. It's called Nutri-Full and they make them for men. They make a separate one for premenopausal women, postmenopausal women, and plant-based, women who eat plant-based. So there's a lot of options for that. So I started taking a NutriFull supplement.

And the second thing I started using is a low light laser treatment for my head. And so they make these helmets, they're pretty expensive. The one I use is called iRestore, but basically they've got hundreds of lasers on the inside and they infuse your scalp with this light energy. And the idea, it's kind of like watering plants, is that you are giving energy to your follicles and the idea is that you hope this will cause those follicles to go

into a growth phase. And there are a lot of studies in the scientific literature that support low light laser therapy for thinning hair. And then the next thing I used is some type of a serum. And I've used different ones before. If you want to go and use a drug, then that's what minoxidil does. But there actually was a study that compared minoxidil with topical rosemary oil and They compared the two and found very similar effects on thickening of the hair except Rosemary oil had less skin irritation or scalp irritation So that's a very popular option and then the final thing is sometimes I'll do dermal stamping kind of like derma rolling

But it's a stamper that you can do to kind of create a little bit of, once again, acute trauma to the skin, causing the scalp to become technically more vascularized and hopefully helping to get that hair growing as well. And you saw a significant increase in your hair regrowth, didn't you? Yeah, I saw a nice improvement. It's still something that I work on. You know, this is something that it does take a good four to six months to really start seeing results. So you do want to be patient. But if you just start with taking that nutritional supplement, doing the low light laser therapy, and then ideally using

some type of a topical, whether minoxil or topical rosemary oil, those are the big three things that I encourage people to try. And most of the time people will see a really nice change if you combine those modalities. Well, you also talked in the book about PRP, which I started doing a few months ago. And I definitely have specifically seen because the doctor injected so far forward in my hairline. And I know there was nothing else I was doing right there that, you know, it was a pretty rapid increase

in hairy growth for me anyways from the PRP. That's great. You know, one of the things that the book is based on is this concept of autojuvenation. And it's this idea that your body contains amazing regenerative abilities to rejuvenate itself. And what we need to do essentially to get our body doing that is we need to give it the right tools and the right environment to do so. So essentially what this doctor has done is they've drawn your blood, they've separated out the platelets which are chock full of growth factors and then injected that concentrated substance into areas of your scalp where you had thinning hair and that the regenerative

abilities of your own tissues, like this was coursing through your own veins, caused your hair to get thicker. And that's this whole concept. I think that for me, I still do surgery a couple days a week. And when you think about it, it's kind of astounding what the human body can do. I could do a tummy tuck on somebody where I literally cut them from hip to hip. I lift the skin up off the muscle. I pull it down.

I cut the skin off. I suture it together. And three weeks later, they're out exercising. They look great. They feel great. I mean, when you think about it, the human body is so amazing that it wants to be healthy. It wants to be active. It wants to be youthful.

We just need to give it those tools in the environment to do so. And unfortunately, in today's day and age, there's so many other things that we're doing instead. We're fueling it with foods that are not good for it. We're being sedentary. We're not moving around. We're not doing these things that even like our parents did when they were growing up,

that they didn't know sometimes we're so healthy, but it's so much better than what we are doing, a lot of us in today's day and age. Well, let's talk about that. In the book, you actually lay out a system and specific foods, meals by week that people can implement to create these different phases. Can you tell us a little bit about how that works?

The way I look at it is the skin ages by five main mechanisms. The first one is nutrient depletion. Now there are holistic doctors will tell you that our soil is not like it used to be, that our fruits and vegetables are not as nutritious as they used to be. And there actually was a study that looked at our fruits and vegetables from 1950 to 1999 and found a significant reduction in at least six key nutrients throughout those 49 years. And those included iron, vitamin C, and protein. So it is true that our fruits and vegetables actually do not have the same nutritional content than they used to. And that's one reason why I am a fan of supplementation. Although technically you can't supplement yourself out of a bad diet, but if you're on the right diet and you add those supplements that is going to get you hopefully where you

want to be. Second cause of Asian skin I mentioned is collagen degradation and that's once again, it's taking a collagen supplement and it's really pushing healthy sources of protein. So if you're a meat eater then using grass-fed beef, pastured pork and chicken, wild-caught fish ideally, or good-sourced farm fish. Then the third cause of aging of the skin is inflammation, chronic inflammation. We talked about getting rid of the excess sugar and then adding in healthy fats, healthy fats like omega-3 fatty acids, which are present in cold water fish, and then nuts and seeds and avocados and olives. These just healthy fats are going to fight that inflammation.

And then the next cause of aging is the oxidation or free radicals. That's why you should eat the rainbow fruits and vegetables because those contain antioxidants to fight that oxidation. And then the fifth cause of aging is buildup of cellular waste. Once again, taking some time to intermittent fast if you can, maybe twice a week or so, just to give your body a rest and get your body internal rejuvenative processes going. Most of them revolve around food, you know, and that's why it is so important and truly the food you eat being the foundation of a true anti-aging lifestyle.

One of the things that you get into in the book is the importance of sleep and some of the tips for sleep. Can you share a little bit? Yeah, so sleep is huge and I do recommend trying to get six to eight hours of sleep. You know, I'm a fan of Martha Stewart, but man, she gets four hours of sleep a night is supposedly and she looks great right now. But she's also I think has had a lot of work done. So there's one reason why she looks great. But yeah, definitely getting six to eight hours sleep, super important. A lot of tips I try to give, you know, first thing is try to set your room temperature to about 68 degrees.

That supposedly, according to studies, is the ideal temperature for sleeping, especially if you've got a good comforter or a blanket on you. Some people find that they sleep better if they wear a pair of socks. Just a very simple, easy thing. Studies show that wearing socks to bed,

I don't wear socks to bed, I sleep fine. If you do have problem sleeping, try that. And then there's also other things that you can do. You wanna avoid using devices when you're getting close to going to bed. Otherwise use either blue light blocking glasses or very simple, there's a night shift mode on the iPhones where they can reduce the amount of blue light that you get.

And that way it's not gonna mess with the circadian rhythms or your natural sleep-wake cycle. And then other simple things like setting a very specific bedtime every night that you kind of go to bed at the same time every night, having your room be very, very dark, having it be nice and quiet, and then really not using your bedroom to do certain activities other than sleeping and basically getting it on. That's important too. Don't bring your work into your bed because that would be

a big, big no-no for a good sleep hygiene. And we all know that we want some good sleep hygiene happening. Okay. So what I like about the book is not only are you giving these very natural remedies as a plastic surgeon, you're recommending people to fix themselves from the inside out. But you also get into lasers, other different topical things that we can do that aren't as much rooted in the foods that we're eating. Can you give us a little insight into that? Dr. Ben Hilden Yeah. So if I were to pick one treatment that anybody can do at home,

that I think is good bang for your buck. And if you don't live in a metropolitan area, if maybe you don't have the budget to go to a med spa or a dermatologist, then the first thing I would look at is red light therapy. Red light therapy comes in many forms. You can get a handheld device for $50. You can get these creepy looking masks like Hannibal Lecter masks that you wear around and scare your spouse with. You can get tabletop red light devices that you can do your whole face at one time and even red light beds.

But red light therapy is believed to work by essentially having that energy of the red light being infused into your cells and causing the mitochondria, which are the powerhouses of your cells, to produce more energy. And essentially what you're doing is you are supercharging your cells. And the idea then is your cells are going to function more youthfully. Now there have been actually split face studies where they take a person's face, they split in half, not physically, but they split in half and they treat half of the face with a sham treatment and the other half with a red light therapy and have found an improvement in collagen, elastin,

hydration, and elasticity of the skin. So it definitely works. There are studies to show that it does. And so if somebody was gonna try something to start with and they're on a budget, that's definitely the thing to do. If you're going to a doctor's office or a med spa, two things I would recommend as far as budget-minded treatments that work. First one, microneedling,

where you're basically making tiny little pokes into the skin. If you wanna take that to the next level, you put PRP over the surface of the skin and you allow that PRP to literally go into those tiny little holes that are made by the micro-needling to basically treat your skin from the inside out. The reason why micro-needling is so great is not that it's going to get necessarily better results than a laser, but that the cost is going to be so much less because, you know, for me to buy a laser, it may cost me 200 grand, but for me to buy a micro-needling handpiece, that's about $5,000.

And so the cost of the treatment is passed off on to you, the patient, micro-needling being low cost for the doctor, low cost for the patient. And then the other thing I would consider would be IPL. I think intense pulse light, IPL therapy, great bang for your buck. IPL devices, much less expensive to buy than true lasers, but they are great for getting rid of dark spots, sun spots, age spots, perfect treatment for that, completely non-invasive.

IPL is something that I've never really looked into. Is there any type of a longer tail effect or is it just getting rid of dark spots for people with their skin? So it's really just getting rid of the dark spots. Now you can get some other minor improvements with the collagen of your skin, but mainly it's for dark spots. What it will do is it will actually target the pigment in those spots, the melanin, and

will cause those dark spots to get darker and then to slough off. We do typically recommend a series of treatments, anywhere from three to five treatments to kind of get rid of all the spots you want. And if you do have kind of a spot issue, which a lot of people, once they get into their 40s, they start seeing them come out. And I do think that that's a consequence of sun damage from when we were much younger. But then you also want to combine that with a good brightening cream, ideally one that contains kojic acid, licorice root extract, or niacinamide.

And so the idea then is that the IPL will treat the skin, the dark spots from the outside in, and then the cream will kind of treat it from the inside out. Gosh, there's so many options. Who did you write this book for other than me, because it's helping me to understand where I need to focus. I really wrote this for anybody who's really starting

their 30s and 40s and they're starting to see these changes. They don't want to have surgery, but they're looking in the mirror and they're saying, wow, I'm not liking what I'm seeing, but dang, I'm afraid if I go see somebody, they're going to say, oh, you need a facelift or you need your eyelids done or you need Botox or you need filler. And what I want to do is really give people this opportunity to look at their aging from a true holistic perspective. The funny thing is, Heather, is I've got friends of mine who are alternative medicine physicians, and you ask them,

hey, what do you do to get beautiful, healthy skin? And they'll say, oh, heal your gut. And then you ask your dermatologist, what do you do to get beautiful, healthy skin? They'll say, wear sunscreen and use a retinol. And you ask a plastic surgeon, and they'll say, get Botox or a facelift. So what I wanna do is create a true integrative approach

to turning back the clock. One that uses both alternative medicine, which we know there's so much truth in that food is medicine. There's so much truth in that with real traditional scientific proven treatments. I do talk about Botox and filler in the book. I give you my recommendations if you do want to go that route, but I do think the vast majority of people don't feel that they should need to do that and you can still have great looking skin, still feel younger for your age. And then even look upwards of five to ten years younger

in the matter of a couple of months if you do these types of recommendations. I love what you said there, because I think for so many people, having a book like this is going to empower you to make changes on your own, which is going to make you feel more confident in yourself before you even go in to see a doctor. Oftentimes people are intimidated by a doctor telling them, oh, because I remember a very famous doctor said to me three years ago, Heather, you need a facelift, you need next surgery and hit me with a lot of things that I luckily felt very confident walking in there. I thought I see that that's what you see. I don't have a problem looking in the mirror,

feeling like that's where I'm at. But for anyone listening, if you're a little concerned to go on a consultation like that, this book is gonna help empower you to make the changes you need to make today for tomorrow so you can be your most competent self when you walk into those situations.

Have you ever seen people walk away from making these kinds of life changes feeling more confident? Oh yeah, yeah and I've even had patients in my own who they've come in, they've signed up for a facelift and while they're waiting for their surgery day, we have them make these changes, we have them get on these supplements, they make some simple change to their diet, they get on the right skincare products and then they freaking cancel their surgery with me because they're happy with how they look, which is fine. I joke.

It's a great thing. You know, for me, if I can help people to look and feel amazing and to have self-confidence that they maybe were missing as they saw the years kind of tick on by and not to have to go under the knife to do that, then I have done my job. Because yes, you are totally right. I get so many patients that come in to see me and they are maybe a surgical candidate, but they'll say, Hey, you know, my only issue is I've got this loose skin hanging from my neck, but I saw this plastic surgeon and he said, I need to have a brow lift. My eye is done fat grafting. I need to have my nose

done and all this stuff. And I'm just like, dang, like there are people, unfortunately in my industry that are just basically money driven and their consultation is not, Hey, let's figure out what's best for you. Their consultation is, what can I convince you to have done so that you can pay me money so I can pay my rent and pay for my portion, whatever. Unfortunately, not everybody's like that. There are a lot of great plastic surgeons out there, but there are so many, unfortunately, out there that will literally do anything you ask them to do, whether that's in your best interests or not. I mean, it is definitely the Wild West of medicine right now. And the other thing that I see that I pay attention to

and notice is oftentimes these certain doctors, not all, they sell a certain look. So all their patients end up morphing into the same person. Do you know what I'm saying? You know when you see that person on the street, what doctor they go to, because they have the same look. To me, God made us the way that we're made. That's the most beautiful way. I don't want to look like a version of Kim Kardashian or her sisters, right? Like that's not going to be the best looking

version of me. I want to look like the best looking version of me. And don't you think people look better when they're working with what they have than trying to rework it to look like someone else? It's funny because I have actually called it the Kardashian ization of this generation. I think, you know, on a personal level, there are surgeries that are made to make you look like what is considered the quote unquote standard of beauty. My parents are from South Korea. One of the things that I did during my training is I learned how to do one quote Asian eyelid surgery where you take an eyelid like mine where we have what's called a monolid,

where I have a smooth eyelid, but no crease there. We create a crease in the Asian eye. This was actually an operation that was really popularized by a plastic surgeon back during the Korean War. A Caucasian plastic surgeon went to Korea, was part of the military there, and was performing these operations on Korean women, brides of the GIs, because he basically explained, he said, because the Asian eyelid looks like it's an alien, that we need to do surgery on them to make them more acceptable for when they go back

to the United States. So that kind of started this operation. And now it's a super popular operation out in Asia. And honestly, how they're initially my practice, I started doing them because I thought I was supposed to, you know, I was still that cut first surgeon. And then I realized pretty quickly that I didn't know that I agreed with it. And then when my daughter was born 15 years ago, and she was born without this crease in her eyelid, it really made me think like,

this is the most beautiful girl I've ever seen in my life. The thought that she may think that she's not beautiful unless she goes under the knife was horrifying to me. And so at that point, I've been somebody who really is out there trying to say, hey, look, don't feel you need to do this operation. If you do, then, you know, or if you're a surgeon performing it, I'm not judging you by any means. Like that's your body. That's, you know, whatever you decide for yourself is fine.

But I just don't want women, especially to feel like they need to go under the knife to feel beautiful, you know, like my daughter and she's never she hasn't had the surgery. She never asked for it. I've never seen anything about it. And I'm hoping that she never does because these are the eyes that God gave her. I think they're beautiful and you know, she decides she wants to do it. That's fine. But I don't want her to feel pushed by society to do that. Oh, that's so good. I'm so glad that you're empowering people to be the best version of themselves from the inside out and not trying to look like a copy of somebody else.

I think that's so incredible. How does everybody find Younger for Life and how does everybody find you? Oh, thank you. So the book is available wherever books are sold. One thing we try to encourage people to do, a lot of people don't know, there's a website called bookshop.org. And this is a website that's similar to like Amazon and Costco but

you can support your local bookstore if you buy a book. So you can actually choose, there's a little button on the top right corner if you go to the website bookshop.org, you can choose your local independent bookstore and then if you buy the book there, the book is Younger for Life, then the profit of that sale will go to your independent bookstore. And this is great for those bookstores that are small, they don't have the ability to create this big website and stuff. You'll get the book from bookshop.org, but they send the profit to your own local bookstore

so you can support them. Otherwise it's on Target, it's at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, all the big bookstores as well. And then if you do get it, go to my website, autojuvenation.com. We have a ton of free gifts for you, including extra recipes. We have a $30 gift certificate to my online store, You and Beauty, if you want to try my supplements and skincare products and a ton more free gifts just for getting the book. So I appreciate it.

Well, Tony, thank you so much for the work you're doing to empower others and make 2024 everybody's best year yet where they've looked their youngest. We appreciate you. Thank you so much, Heather. I appreciate you. Thanks for having me on. All right, guys, until next week, keep creating your confidence. You know I will be. I'm gonna make it my own again.

I decided to change that dynamic. I'm gonna make it my own. I couldn't be more excited for what you're gonna hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably something will happen. No one succeeds alone. You don't stop and look around once in a while. What's up everyone? I'm Hala Taha, host of YAP Young and Profiting podcast, a top 10 entrepreneurship podcast on Apple.

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