Dhru Purohit Show - Top Ways to Naturally Tighten the Skin from America’s Top Holistic Plastic Surgeon, Dr. Anthony Youn

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

This episode is brought to you by Birch Living, Momentous, and ARMRA. We all know there are key lifestyle habits that help us feel and look our best. But with the endless skincare products and trends, it’s tough to know what’s truly beneficial, worth the investment, and safe for a youthful glow. Today’s guest, America’s Holistic Plastic Surgeon, returns to the podcast for round two and helps us cut through the noise to find what’s worth adding to our busy routines. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Dr. Anthony Youn, America’s holistic board-certified plastic surgeon. Dr. Youn shares insights on how to prevent and address loose skin, along with top lifestyle factors, supplements, and practices to maintain skin elasticity. He also debunks popular social media myths about skincare. Dr. Youn discusses the research behind his skincare line and answers rapid-fire questions from the podcast community. If you’re looking for research-based answers to all your skin questions, this episode is for you. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Youn dive into: How to prevent loose skin or turkey neck (1:02) Tech neck from constantly looking at your phone (5:54) Options to address saggy skin (13:00) Radiofrequency micro-needling as the gold standard (16:50) Exercise and skin elasticity (26:30) Sauna's effect on the skin appearance and dry brushing (29:00) Why is collagen so essential and supplementation (40:50) Dietary trends that don’t make the cut (53:20) Dr. Youn's 2-minute skincare routine (01:01:50) Frownies and face tapes (1:07:35) How to avoid acne scarring (1:10:42) Why makeup wipes aren’t ideal (1:14:50) How do I know if my collagen levels are low (1:16:35) Relationship between caffeine and hydration (1:19:20) What should we be adding and removing from our diets (1:22:13) Also mentioned in this episode: Dr. Youn’s Collagen Dr. Youn’s Skincare Products For more on Dr. Youn, follow him on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Apple Podcasts, and his website. This episode is brought to you by Birch Living, Momentous, and ARMRA. To get 25% off your Birch Living mattress plus two free eco-rest pillows, head over to birchliving.com/dhru today. Until November 24th, you can use code DHRU at checkout on livemomentous.com for 25% off all of our favorite supplements and receive a free gift of 5 nights of their best-selling Sleep packs for orders over $75. Get 15% off your first order of Armra Colostrum at tryarmra.com/DHRU or enter DHRU to get 15% off your first order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Anthony Yoon, you are America's number one holistic plastic surgeon, and you're dedicated to helping people look and feel amazing from the inside out. That's what's unique about you. Today, we have you back on the podcast to discuss and address some of the top questions we've had since your first appearance that went viral that have come in from our audience. So number one, thank you for being here. And number two, if you're okay with it, we're just going to jump right in. Let's do it. You've got questions. I've got answers. All right, let's go to the first one. This is probably one of the biggest topics for people in our audience that are around the 45 and 50 plus age range.

And it's around the idea of are there any natural solutions, best practices, lifestyle habits that can be incorporated to reduce the risk or the pervairance of turkey neck, the sagging area around the neck that starts to. develop especially as we age. So there are definitely things you can do to help prevent it. Now I'll tell you, Drew, unless you are really in the 0.1% of people who they hit the age of 60 and they still have a nice tight neckline, it is just genetics, it's gravity, it's the fact that you're alive and what happens to the collagen of your skin, that pretty much everybody, once you hit the age of 60, has got some type of looseness of their neck skin. Now, in some people, that happens much earlier, often due to lifestyle and genetics, and other people, yeah, I have seen some of my patients where at the age of 60, they still have fairly tight neck skin. But for the vast

majority of people, when you hit your mid-50s or so, you start really noticing that skin starting to loosen. And so the way I look at it is there are kind of three levels of treatment for it. The first one is going to be prevention. The second one is how do you treat it when it's fairly mild? And then the third one is when you have a true turkey neck, which is what you described for me, that is, you know, there's different things to treat that for. And what we don't ever want to do, especially for me as a plastic surgeon, is to give people false hope that, oh, you know, if you are 75 and if you got loose skin hanging from your neck, oh, just eat this food and that skin's going to magically tighten up, you know, physically that's just not possible. But there

are definitely things to do. And so what I would start with is the younger age group. You know, let's say you're in your 30s, you're in your 40s. Overall, the neck skin is still nice and tight. You don't have that turkey neck. What can you do to help prevent that from happening? Well, it's going to be looking at the reason why our skin ages. And five things is what I typically focus on is nutrient depletion, collagen degradation, oxidation or free radicals, chronic inflammation, and a buildup of cellular

waste. And so one of the things you can do, and we talked about this on the last podcast, is eating a diet that is going to basically counteract those signs of aging. And so when you're talking about loss of collagen, it's going to be eating collagen or protein-rich foods, maybe taking a collagen supplement. When you're talking about oxidation or free radicals, and it's going to be eating the rainbow of fruits and vegetables. And when you're talking about chronic inflammation, it's going to be reducing the amount of sugar that you eat, increase in the amount of healthy fats, probiotic rich foods, prebiotic rich foods. All of those are going to help when you're in those

and 30s and 40s to help prevent that skin from getting loose as you get older. Follow up question for you on that. Two follow-up questions. There's obviously something that other cultures are doing around the world because if you travel to Asia, I'm headed to Japan this Friday, you walk around, you look at people. A lot of the people that are aging in society over there, their prevalence of sagging skin all around the body, but especially around the neck, is much less than what we see in the U.S. What do you think is going on that these other countries have figured out that in the U.S.

we often struggle with? I do think it's multifactorial. I think that one big part of it is the standard American diet that so many Americans are eating. And so it's a diet that is pro-inflammatory. It's a diet that is sterile. It doesn't contain any types of probiotics. It has very little fibers. So you have very little prebiotics in the diet. Not a whole lot of fresh fruits and vegetables. So you're not getting those antioxidants. And so those are the reasons. why I think diet-wise that could contribute to it. I do think genetics is a part of it. Studies have shown that genetics, however, is only about 20% of the aging process. And so you can add the 20% whether you're African-American, you know, whether you've got darker skin, whether

you're Asian, whether you're Latino. When you've got the darker skin, you've got more melanin in your skin, that's going to help to reduce the amount of aging of your skin as well. And then it's going to be due to lifestyle. I think that part of it, when you look at the aging process, it's so multifactorial. We talked about food. There's obviously skincare, which we can definitely get into in this conversation. But lifestyle plays a huge factor. The amount of stress that you have, you know, are you in a community where you have a lot of close relationships? Are you stressed out all the time? You know, are you eating a lot of ultra-processed foods? And so I really think that it is a multifactorial process, but essentially it's a lot of cultures just live healthier than we do,

unfortunately. Now, one of the other challenges that I see, even with people that are young, is that because we all have tech neck, which for those that are not familiar, it's looking down on your phone, it starts first thing in the morning when people are looking at their phone in bed with their neck scrunched up, you're seeing a lot more people, even young people with these really strong wrinkles right in the middle of the neck. Are you noticing that as a plastic surgeon? And do you have any recommendations for people? So tech neck is real.

You know, that whole idea that our parents told us when we were growing up that if you make that face all the time, it's going to stay that way. There is truth to that. Now, Techneck is something that's going to be more recent with kind of the recent, you know, the advent with the smartphones and it's always looking down at the phones all day. That's part of it. But, you know, I think an even more. common cause of wrinkles that are due to activity are going to be sleep lines. And so if you sleep,

let's say, on your face in the middle of the night, if you sleep on your side and you're really scrunching your face with your pillow, and you wake up and you've got these vertical creases on your face, those are very similar. Those are the sleep wrinkle version of the tech neck horizontal neck lines. So we do see that. I do think that the more you create those lines, even if you are inadvertently doing that, even if it's not an active movement like sleeping, those wrinkles eventually will stay there. So what can you do? Well, obviously with Tech Neck, you can be very aware that looking at our phones as much as we do can affect not only just the wrinkles, the horizontal wrinkles of the neck, but it can affect your overall posture.

What can you do for those wrinkles? We can definitely get into it, certain skincare products like retinoles can help with it. Some people even inject very dilute filler into those lines. It's not my thing, but that's an option. You can do microneedling to those lines, but obviously prevention is going to be the best thing. And everybody gets horizontal wrinkles to an extent as you get older. It's just the fact of being alive, you know, if you're working a desk, desk type

of job, you're going to be doing kind of the same thing. You know, for me, I operate two full days a week. So I'm always looking down. So that's not necessarily technic. That's going to be more surgeons. neck. And then as far as like with the sleep lines, then there actually is some truth to the fact that a satin or silk pillowcase may be more anti-aging than, let's say, a cotton or polyester because you're going to scrunch your face less. And there are people who do believe that sleeping

on your back is going to be better beauty sleep because you're not going to scrunch your face at all. And I'll tell you, Drew, there are actually companies that have created special pillows that they call beauty sleep pillows where they cradle your face so you can. can sleep on your side, even on your face, and it doesn't create lines. But I tell you these pillows, Drew, they've sent them to me because they've asked me to create branded posts and sponsor them and all this stuff. They honestly look like the styrofoam packing when you buy a new computer or you buy your TV. You know, it's kind of their square and they got these weird ridges on the inside, but it literally is like that, but a much softer version. So not a good option, probably.

I mean, if you want to try them, I think that they can definitely work. It's just I have tried those pillows just because they say, hey, we'll send it to you try it out. If you believe in it, let's work together. I just don't find that they're comfortable because it's like you're sleeping in a soft version of a styrofoam packing, I guess, crate or something like that. I want to go back to this idea. We started off the podcast by you saying, I never want to give people false hope. And that's one of the best things about your content and why people listen to you.

You have your foot in both worlds. You know about the holistic, preventative things that not only improve our skin, but improve our health span, hopefully, potentially our lifespan as well. But then you also know the limitations of that. And sometimes when damage has been done, people might need more aggressive options. And those aggressive options are on a spectrum. So let's stick with this idea of sagging skin on the neck, which again was one of the top concerns that people wrote in and were asking about.

Now that we know about the preventative things that we obviously would love to start doing earlier in life in our 20s, 30s, et cetera, to just be healthy overall in addition to protecting our skin, give us the spectrum of options of devices, supplements, anything else all the way up to when do you need to potentially, if somebody's considering it, use a more invasive solution for addressing sagging skin. Could you walk us through that? Totally. Okay, so you're in your 30s and 40s. We've talked about diets. We'll take that out of it. What do you do for your actual skin? You want to get on a good skincare regimen, and as far as the active ingredients, which are really important to help slow the process of that drooping skin of the neck,

the number one thing I would recommend would be a retinol. Retinol is a derivative of vitamin A, and it comes in, that's a non-prescription strength, or you can get prescription strength retinae or trotenoin. Tretanoin prescription strength is very strong, and actually the neck skin, believe it or not, is much more sensitive than the skin of our face. So if, let's say, you see a dermatologist and they prescribe you trinanone for acne or for anti-aging, and you're tolerating that on your face, don't expect that you're going to tolerate it on your neck. With the neck, you're going to want to start less aggressive because it's not used to having all these creams on it like your faces.

And so getting a retinal type of a moisturizer, using it on your face if you do, and then gradually putting it down to your neck and then your chest, even when you're in your 30s, when you're 40s, that's going to help to thicken the collagen because our collagen starts to degrade starting in our mid-20s. So adding retinol is going to help prevent that collagen degradation. It's going to help to thicken the dermis or the deeper layer of skin. It's going to increase exfoliation of that skin. So that's a great option. If you want to be even more aggressive, then add a peptide-based cream to that as well.

Peptides are found in so many skincare products. If you go to your local drugstore, if you're on a real, strict budget, then a lot of the budget-minded skincare brands, their anti-aging creams have peptides in them because peptides can be relatively inexpensive to produce. Peptides are basically small chains of proteins that signal yourselves to create collagen. If, let's say, you're trying retinol and it's too aggressive on your skin, some people find that that can be kind of hard on the skin can cause dryness and flaking, then go with a peptide. if you want to double up and use a peptide and a retinol, that's even better.

And then the other thing that I would recommend as far as prevention would be red light therapy. There are red light masks. I've got, I think, two of them at home. There are also handheld or stand-up red light devices that you can put. Those are nice if you want to treat the neck and the chest because those are going to basically the red light. You want to usually do it. It's about a 15 to 20-minute treatment.

Depending on the manufacturer, you want to consider doing it anywhere from four to six times a week. And what that does is that the energy of that red light gets taken up by your skin cells and it causes the mitochondria to become energized. It produce more ATP. Studies have shown that red light therapy can help increase the collagen and the elastin in the skin. And so when you're in your 30s, 40s, it's going to be skincare, retinol, peptides, red light therapy. If you have access to a dermatologist or a plastic surgeon or a med spa, then you may want to consider

some light chemical peels, or there are radio frequency kind of deep heating skin treatments that have no downtime to them. That also would be really good for somebody who's in their 30s and 40s. They want to prevent the droopiness of that skin. So those would be the things I would start with. Preventative, they definitely help. Even if you do them, someday you're going to get some loose skin there, but that's definitely going to help slow that progression. And the radio frequency treatments, you're talking about like a microneadling with a radio frequency. No, so that would be the next step. Okay, so now when you're in your 40s, maybe early 50s, you're starting to notice the skin's getting a little bit loose.

It's more than just prevention, but you know, you know or you start seeing it in your friends. That's when you do want to be a bit more aggressive. And right now, for non-invasive skin tightening, the gold standard is radio frequency microneedling. In my office, we use Morpheus 8. It's a very popular radio frequent hourfmiconealing, radio frequency microneleaning device. And the way it basically works, you know, microneedling is something that's great for your skin. If, let's say, your 30s, your 40s, you want to microtele your neck and you go to a practitioner do that, that's great.

That will help create collagen. Radio frequency microneedling is micrneedling, but those needles that go into the skin don't just create the trauma that helps the collagen to rebuild, but it also creates deep heating of that skin. And when you heat the skin to a certain temperature, essentially it's 42 degrees Celsius on the surface that will create contraction of that. collagen and it creates a tightening of the skin, the way I describe it's like a shrinking of the skin essentially. And right now, that's the gold standard. There are other ways that you can create

tightening. There's a device called altherapy that uses ultrasound energy, but it's quite painful. Right now that gold standard would be RF micronealing. So now you're in your 40s, you're doing your 50s, you're doing your retinol, you're doing your peptides, you're doing your red light therapy, you're noticing the skin's a little bit loose. You want to do something more aggressive. You're okay, spending a little bit of money, you know, you're going to spend at least $500, maybe up to $1,000 for an RF microneedling treatment and you're okay with a day or two of downtime, then that's when the RF micronealing can definitely come into play.

Great. Take us further from there. Again, this is spectrum. This is not that anybody has to do these things. We're just talking about what options are out there. So if the RF micrneedling isn't quite getting where you want to be. And now you're saying, let's say you're in your 50s, maybe early 60s and the skin is starting to sag a bit.

so you're starting to actually notice that the skin is loose, it's not basically snapping back into place. Now you want to be more aggressive. There are some minimally invasive surgical procedures that you can consider. There are two devices, one's called Renuvion, and one is called Face Tight, where essentially, you know, I talked to you about how RF micronealing heats the deeper skin by putting those little needles in the skin and those little needles at the tip of that needle emits radio frequency energy. And so you're essentially heating the skin from the outside in. Well, you can also heat the skin from the inside out. And so there are these minimally invasive surgical procedures. They look kind of like very small liposuction canulas where you numb up the area

with local anesthetic, make a small incision, and you basically put this cannula underneath the surface of the skin and it basically heats the skin from the inside out. That is surgery. It's minimally invasive. There's minimal scars with that. Oftentimes it's done under a local anesthetic and the idea is that you get even more heating of that skin to cause that skin to essentially shrink. Once again, the two brands, I don't do these are Renovion and FaceTite. I don't do them because there's still a question of just how much you get out of it. My understanding is that some people can get quite a bit of tightening of the skin and other people, it can be a bit disappointing. But that's the next step. And I'll tell you, Drew, there's a very interesting

device right now that makes a lot of sense. But I don't think it's. quite ready, not ready to the point where I would 100% recommend it. And this is called a non-cutting facelift. Okay, so we talked about minimally invasive surgery, where you heat the skin from the inside out. When we do facelift surgeries, what I, and I do face-lil surgeries basically one a week, what we're literally doing is cutting out excess skin. So I may cut out, I've got a facelift on Thursday, and I may cut out from her two

centimeters of excess skin from each side of her face, okay? that's two centimeter skin that normally would be hanging from the neck that is removed from each side that is cut out. And that's essentially why a facelift lifts the face and you get rid of that turkey neck. There is a device called Ellicor. It's like a micronealing pen where they have all these needles that go in the skin. But those needles are hollow and they're attached to a suction device. So every time this hollow needle goes into your skin, it pulls out a tiny microcore of skin. So the whole inside the needle has suction it.

It pulls out skin when the needle goes into the skin, a hundred times that many little microcores of skin is actually removed. And so it's a way to technically remove skin from the face without creating any scarring. Because those needles are so small that they may remove a microcore skin, but they don't leave a visible scar behind. So it's a really interesting device where now you're using technology. You're literally removing skin from the face without visible scars. that will create a true lift of the face,

but it's minimally invasive. You don't scar from it. The issue that I would say right now, Drew, is I've looked at the before and after photos, and they're not all that impressive just yet. And if you watch the procedure being done, it's a pretty bloody procedure. You know, it's not like Morpheus 8.

It's not like radio frequency micronealing where you get it done, use a little bit of numbing cream, you get it done, and you go to dinner with your friends afterwards. This is definitely a bit more. I don't think from what I've seen, The results haven't super impressed me yet, but the idea is one that's very fascinating. And my hope is that in the future, they can get even better results with it.

And maybe at that point, it may be a definite, an alternative to true facelift. So there are some things that you can do that can kind of mimic a facelift. So there is something, it's popularly called the Nefertiti lift. And so once again, if you've got some loose skin of the neckline, especially if you have neck bands, these are called platysmal bands. they're the vertical bands that people get in the neck. You may see it if you've got a friend of yours who's in maybe their 50s, 60s, or 70s, and they've got very thin neck and they're talking to you and the neck bands are moving.

What that is is that's actually loose platisma muscle. The platisma is a sheet-like muscle that basically extends from the neck up over the jawline and into our lower face. And as we get older, that muscle can basically droop like our skin. And so when you have a friend and you're having coffee with them, them and you're talking with them and you see those muscles moving in their neck, that's loose neck muscle. And what you can do is you can inject Botox into those neck bands. That will actually smooth those bands out to an extent. And some doctors are even injecting Botox along the jaw line

that's called the nephotidilift. Botox basically weakens or paralyzes muscles for about three to four months. It prevents the transmission of nerve impulses to those muscles. And so those muscles no longer will function for those three to four months. And the neck muscles basically function to create those bands and to pull things downward to an extent. And so some doctors are injecting Botos along the jaw line that will counteract the muscles that pull the face down and they're getting a visible lift to the lower face. Now, it also will change some of your expressions. And so therein is the drawback. And there's some dermatologists who've actually Botoxed half of their face in that nephratiti lift and then have shown videos of okay this side has been botoxed this side has

not been botoxed and you can see how the one side looks a little bit lifted well if you go to the comment section of these videos there are so many people who say they actually like the non-botoxed side better so it's it's a consideration if you've got some looseness and you don't want to have surgery you know those are some things to consider the elicor treatment which is the microcoring device that's you know minimally invasive but it's still invasive Botox, once again, in that nefertiti lift is an interesting way to create some very mild what may appear to be kind of a lift of that lower face. So I have a question, big picture about skin.

You know, I've seen a few studies that have floated around, you know, Twitter and social media talking about how a regular workout routine and regular exercise is something that maintains skin elasticity. What do you know about working out in skin elasticity and skin health? health. Yeah, there's definitely something to that, you know, and that is something that I did put in my book Younger for Life, the fact that, yes, there are many, many studies that show that exercise can help to improve the overall skin and slow down the whole aging process. You know, I think it's multifactorial. I don't think that there is a direct link to exercising in, let's say, the collagen

of your skin, but we do know that there's other types of factors that can be involved. I mean, reduction of stress is part of it. Cortisol could be part of it. Really, I think that the question isn't so much does exercise help you look younger? The question is, are there certain types of exercises that help more than others? And what I mean by that is there are some people who believe that if you do certain types of exercises, like let's say your long distance ultramarathoner, is that actually going to be anti-aging for your face and for your skin? And the answer is maybe not as much as if you are doing weights and yoga, you're doing

Pilates, playing tennis, and doing things like that, you know, and there's a lot of beliefs out there of exactly why people may think about it, but I don't know of any studies that have actually specifically given a actual mechanism of why that works. I think exercise, like I said, there's so many factors that are involved. I think if you exercise regularly, that can help with inflammation reduction. It can help with reducing your overall toxic load. It can help with so many different things and that all is going to help with the aging process. NAD exercising is a is a great natural way to increase your NAD levels. You know, we do know the NAD is super popular hot topic in anti-aging, but I think there's a lot to it and I don't think there's a direct mechanism at least that I know

about that directly links exercising and skin. If you are, however, exposed to the elements and you're doing these long distance ultramarathon type running, that I think could be detrimental to an extent because part of it is you've got to train outside typically for hours on end. You're going to be exposed to the elements there. That can be very harmful if you're not wearing some protection and all that type of stuff. Eventually that could create issues. And then I think too, you know, I think just looking at the surface and we see this with people who are on Ozempic and they've lost tons of weight, you know, if you are so, so lean,

you don't have the muscle, but you're super lean. You can see that you lose fat in your face and that in and of itself is going to make you look older as well. Let's move on to another area that has so many proven benefits, but I'm actually curious if you've heard about anything with skin, and that's sauna. Sona is one of the best things that you could do for detoxification, for your heart health. It's the closest thing to exercise without exercising with the releasing of these heat shock proteins. Is there any evidence or have you come across anything anecdotally about if sauna could be beneficial to the skin? So sauna specifically, I haven't seen anything for the skin.

I think if you're looking, however, at infrared sonnas, then that may be a bit different. I think that there are, so just sauna itself, I think overall, yes, you mentioned that heat shock proteins. I think when we look at sauna and we look at the all-course, all-cause mortality, it's beneficial impact on that. I think when you're looking at longevity and anti-aging in general, we all will agree that that's a great thing. Will it make you look younger, though, if you sauna? And that I have not seen any studies on. When we look, however, at other things like infrared sauna and then red light therapy,

you know, there are some people who do get a little bit confused. I did an interview not that long ago where they're asking, okay, what's the difference between LED, red light therapy, infrared sonnas, and then just even regular sonnas. And we do know that the difference with red light therapy and in infrared light is that red light therapy is going to be much more superficial. It doesn't go as deep. Okay. And so if you're looking for a true cosmetic impact, and that's why you look at red light therapy, if you're looking at true detoxification, then you're going to look at

infrared. Because those infrared beams essentially will go deeper into your body than red light. And that's the way I would look at it differently. And so infrared sauna, some people think, oh, I'm doing an infrared sauna. I'm going to make my skin look younger. I don't know. I haven't seen any science to show that. All the studies I've seen have all focused on red light therapy once again, which is going to be much more superficial.

It's going to be more impacting the skin. But now there are also some saunas, I think, that are incorporating both. They're doing red light and infrared. That's going to be the ideal because now you're going to target that aging, both from a detoxification internal process and as well as the external. And that's what I would do, you know, is for me, the best thing is if you're in an infrared sauna and you're wearing your red light device while you're in that, then, hey, there you go. Now you're hitting it from both ways. Habit stacking.

You got it. Well, it's like one of the things I do when I wear my red light device, you know, I've got a red light mask and I'll wear it and is that I will meditate during that time. And so there's a, you know, I'm a surgeon, so I'm always trying to find ways to optimize my time. So, you know, meditation while you're doing your red light therapy, now you're killing two birds with one stone. One of the things that you're great at is on your social media, which I love, TikTok, Instagram. You'll take a lot of these things that are trending online and you'll talk about them and say like, hey, is there any evidence? What do we know about it? And that doesn't mean if there's not evidence, it doesn't work.

It's just you're getting a chance to add your own commentary. So one of the things that comes up every so often, I feel like it came up a lot when I was like 20 years ago just getting into the space and I'm seeing it more recently. is this idea of people using dry brushing for skin help. Can you comment on that? Explain to our listeners, what is dry brushing? And then what are your thoughts on whether or not it can improve the skin as a natural treatment? I think dry brushing is great. So dry brushing basically is when you take a brush.

Usually it has, ideally you want organic bristles, and it's got a long wooden handle. And you take it and essentially you brush your arms and your legs. You can do your back. You can do your chest. And the idea is, you know, normally you think, oh, I should brush from the out in, but you want to go from the inside out. And the idea is twofold. By dry brushing, number one, you are going to exfoliate your skin.

One of the reasons why our skin gets drier and flakier is that as we get older and rougher in texture is because we get a buildup of dead skin cells. When we're younger, when we're in our teens, in our 20s, our skin cells turn over once every six to eight weeks. So once it gets formed in the deeper layer of skin, it takes six to eight weeks to come to the surface and eventually slough off. As we get older, that process takes longer. It takes eight weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks. And we get this buildup of aged old cells that aren't exfoliating, that aren't basically getting removed. So the act of exfoliation will actually send a cellular signal to the deeper skin layers to start turning over more quickly. And so whenever you exfoliate your skin, whether you use, let's say, a gentle scrub on your face, whether you do a mild chemical peel, or whether you're going to dry brush your arms, legs, and your back, you're going to be removing that upper layer of dead skin. Not only is it going to feel smoother, but it's also going to stimulate your skin to turn over more quickly, which is, in and of itself, going to make your skin act and feel and feel more youthful. On top of that, once again, you're going to feel the difference in your skin and feel as if your skin has been cleaned. Actually, the Koreans are the best with this.

They don't just dry brush. We've got these wash claws. I don't know if you've ever been to a Korean spa, but we have these wash claws that literally feel like sandpaper. You go to these spas. They will literally exfoliate your skin from the top all the way down, obviously staying away from your genitals, and you will feel like you are a bloody mess afterwards.

And you're not bloody or anything like that, but your skin feels absolutely like as soft as a baby's bottom. And so it's the same idea. So the first thing is that, you know, with dry brushing, you are going to get that exfoliates. of the skin, that's great for your skin overall and for anti-aging. But the second benefit and the reason why you want to go from out in. And so you're basically going in the direction of lymphatics and you're getting rid of excess

fluid. That helps your body then to clear it out naturally through your peeing and your pooping mechanisms. It's outside in. You want to basically dry brush towards the center of your body. That's towards the lymphatics. You're pushing that fluid out. You're going to feel less swollen afterwards.

and it is a bit of a detoxifying thing. So multiple benefits with dry brushing. And then the final thing that you get from dry brushing by exfoliating your skin, if you're going to apply, let's say, an active ingredient, like let's say body retinol, there's retinol that some companies make that are for the body.

Now you're going to get better penetration of those creams and you're going to get a better result from it as well. Taking the conversation that we had around the neck, which was how to sort of minimize, avoid, address turkey neck, there's a general concern that people have, which is just excess skin, around the body, flabby skin. Now, we note that overall improving your body composition,

becoming more muscular, which is something that a lot of people are now focusing on, especially even the female audience from hearing from great individuals talking about the importance of lean mass as a protective thing for your longevity, but also your overall health, those things are all important. But could something like dry brushing

or any of the other tips that you've mentioned, could those be things that naturally help address flabby skin within range. Obviously, if there's a lot of flabby skin that's come from a dramatic drop in weight loss, there's more invasive solutions that are probably going to be needed. But if there's a moderate amount of flabby skin, could anything you've mentioned so far be a tool in the toolbox to address it? Realistically, they can help on a minor level, but usually when you're talking about large parts of the body, you're not going to see much of a change. So for example, even when we're looking at more aggressive treatments like radio frequency

microneedling, when you're doing it on a small part of the body, like let's say underneath the neck, and I get RF micronealing under my neck in my neck area every four to six months. If you try to do that on the body, typically the results are very disappointing. And I think the reason why is you may be able to notice a relatively small change in the neck and that's noticeable to you. But when you're dealing with larger parts of the body, getting rid of a small, small amount of or improving, getting a little shrinkage of that skin, unfortunately, it's not ever, it's almost never to the extent where you can truly notice it. You know, you need to have more of a change to truly notice it on larger body parts. And I think therein lies the rub. And that's, that's the challenging thing, you know, is when people, I get patients come in to see me all the time. And let's say they've had two kids, they've got a little bit of loose skin of their tummy of their abdomen. They're not happy with it. They bend over. They feel like it's more and they've ever had before, but they're not so excessive as to warrant a tummy tuck actual surgery. There's not a lot

of great options for them. It's that kind of in between that we just don't have much. So number one, yes, you can do things like take a collagen supplement that's great for the collagen of your skin, but I would never tell you that, oh, you've got a little loose skin, take a college of supplement, that skin's going to tighten up. It's not true. It's not going to do that. You know, you could apply a retinal cream. Retinoles are great for the skin, but is that going to cause the skin to tighten up? to such an extent that, that, I mean, technically, yes, but to such a small extent that it probably won't be noticeable to you. Maybe noticeable in a smaller part of your body, like let's say your face, but not necessarily, you know, in larger parts of body like your thighs or your abdomen.

And so I think that's really important. There have been, you know, I've been in private practice now, Drew, for 20 years. And there has, there have been so many laser companies that have created body tightening devices. Every single one. has been garbage. It hasn't done hardly anything. And when you look at the reviews online of these devices, they always get bad reviews. Because unfortunately, it's twofold. Number one, there are doctors who buy the device. They spend $100,000, $200,000 on this device. And now they have a financial incentive to try to get people to do it. And so they may, you know, kind of stretch the truth of what it can do. That's the first part of it. And the second part of it is that they just aren't going to

create the, you know, the enough change. Unless what you're looking for is so, so minor, they're not going to actually, you know, create enough of a change that most people will be satisfied with it. Yeah. It may not be the answer that people want to hear, but it's the truth. And that's what we want to cover inside of this podcast. And if you don't know the limitations of different solutions, whether they be medical-based solutions, whether they be natural solutions, you're going to end up leaving yourself in a place of disappointment for having spent a bunch of money on something that's out there.

And unfortunately, a lot of that is marketed towards largely women and trying to prey on sort of vulnerabilities. I think this is a good opportunity to just pause for one second and just address this larger idea, which is we are answering people's questions. I've not done besides microneedling and being mindful about the sun, using some sunscreen here and there, but also not being afraid of the sun. eating super healthy, doing all the components of reducing my sugar intake, et cetera.

I do all the natural things that are there. I've not had to nor do I have a strong interest right now at the current age that I have to go a lot further. But I'm not here to poo poo on anything anybody else wants to explore and at least covering the options that are there. And of course, beauty always starts from the inside out. We can have both. We can have a world where people can be healthy from the inside out primarily.

That's the message that you're dedicated to. and at the same time, if people want to explore different options because they want to look better from the outside, who's to say that, you know, they shouldn't explore those options? Do you want to add anything to that? Yeah, I mean, I think it's also important to realize that this is a discussion between two men who have more melanin their skin than a lot of other people here in the United States. And so, you know, we have genetics in that 20 percent that definitely help us to age more slowly. And also, you know, we're two men who haven't gone through what women always go through, you know, when they get in their 40s, especially in their 50s, which is menopause.

You know, I have a good friend of mine, Dr. Mary Claire Haver, who has really brought a lot of discussion about the whole, about menopause, and the changes that it undergoes that it creates in the female body. You know, there's a lot of science coming out now about how menopause affects the skin as well. And a lot of people don't realize this, but in the first five years after menopause, women lose 30% of the collagen of their skin in literally just five years. And then they lose about two. percent every year thereafter. And so, yes, it's easy. You know, I see influencers online who are

poo-pooing cosmetic treatments and saying, oh, you know, I'm going to age gracefully. I don't need any of this stuff. And sometimes these are men who are in their 20s or big muscle bound guys. And it's like, you do not know what it's like to be, number one, a woman living in our society where, you know, once you're past your 20s, you know, a lot of women, they tell me they feel all of a sudden like once they're out of their 20s, they feel somewhat invisible, you know? it's something that we don't as men really even understand, but this is endemic in our society. Women, their 30s, their 40s, or 50s,

don't feel like they're being seen anymore because they're not that 20-year-old, like that, you know, it's like you see with actresses in Hollywood. You know, once they get past a certain age, you just don't see them anymore. However, you will see men in their 50s and 60s still doing action movies and all this type of stuff. And so all of that is combined with, you know, society

and how they treat women as they get older is combined with the challenges that women go through when they go through paramedopause and menopause, you know, where you're dealing with such huge changes in the body, and you're also dealing with a medical system and even like a cosmetic system when we're looking at cosmetic medicine that hasn't fully addressed this. And the fact that we haven't even educated our patients that you're going to go through this. It is, you know, it's a normal process, but there are so many ways that you can fight it off if you truly want to. So it's a fascinating discussion that I'm glad is finally coming to the forefront because I do think, yeah, you know,

you and I being males, we are just because we're men, we're in a place of privilege when we talk about the aging process because, you know, it doesn't affect us in the same way, both societally, as well as physically as it does to women. Well said. One more question. I actually saw a stat. I don't know if it's true or not. You can chime in. But men on average, their skin is about 25% thicker. Is that correct? Is there any truth to that? I haven't seen. the statistic, but that does sound true, you know, and the reason why is that, you know, we will lose about 1% of the thickness of collagen every year just as we get older, but women will lose, once again, 30% and the first five years after menopause, then 2% every year thereafter. And that's

why, you know, you can see women, a husband, wife couple, and they're in, let's say, their 70s or their 80s, and the woman, oftentimes the skin is so thin. It's like tissue paper thin that they even get a scratch and the skin can tear. Yes, men's skin you can see you get thinner as well, but usually you don't see it to that extent that you see in women. And I do think that part of this is the loss of estrogen. And now there are even companies that are creating prescription estrogen creams for the face. And there are studies showing that estrogen creams on the face can help to improve the skin thickness. And there are even studies that have looked at hormone replacement therapy and that also improving

the thickness of skin in women as they get older as well. Well, this feels like a great place just because we've talked about it so much. And please, if you want to deep dive on this, go back to our first interview with Dr. Eun. We go deep, deep, deep into collagen as one of the main things. But just give us a little bit of a refresher. Why is collagen so important? And do collagen supplements work? There's an asterisk there, which is do the right type of collagen supplements work?

And what do you recommend? So, yeah, so basically collagen makes up about 70 to 80% of the thickness of our skin. And it's a part of our skin that cause our skin to feel tight, to feel firm, and to essentially feel youthful. And like I mentioned earlier, we lose collagen in our skin, starting in our mid-20s. Once again, women, when they hit menopause, man, that collagen really takes a dive. And so how do you then replenish collagen? Collagen degradation, one of the main cause of aging of our skin, the first thing you want

to do is you want to make sure you're getting sufficient amounts of protein in your diet. So then the question is, is how much protein does it matter? what type of protein. Well, in general, you want to look at getting approximately 100 grams a day of protein. Now, obviously, that's going to be different if you're a larger male than if you're a smaller female. And in general, you want to look at a gram per ideal body weight pound of protein a day in general. Now, once again, depending on your lifestyle and how you eat, that you can vary that. Some people look at 30 grams per meal. Some people find that to be easier. But in general, you do need to have sufficient amounts of protein because collagen is a protein. It's a large

protein and you do need to have those protein building blocks to help with collagen support and preventing that degradation. Now when you're looking at collagen supplements, those have been shown in many, many studies to help improve the thickness of collagen of the skin. People used to believe that the issue with collagen supplements and they would say, oh, they don't work because collagen is such a large protein, it gets broken down in your gut. and how do you even know it's going to get to your skin? So the key really is if you're going to take a collagen supplement, make sure it's made of hydrolyzed collagen peptides.

And what that means is that you take that large collagen protein and you break it down into small groups of amino acids called peptides. And those peptides are made to actually be bioabsorbable, that your gut can actually absorb them. Now, when there have been studies, studies have looked at patients who have taken collagen supplements typically for about two months, hydrolyzed collagen peptide supplements,

and they've actually drawn blood in patients and found an increased amount of collagen in the actual blood with these collagen supplements. And they've actually biopsyed the skin and found an increase in collagen precursors in the skin as well. And there are many studies that have shown an improvement in the hydration of the skin, in the turgur of the skin,

and the overall thickness of the skin as well. So for me, you know, my feeling at this point is that the science is all there. There's still going to be anti-supplement doctors who are going to poo-poo any supplement that is on the market. Collagen supplements do work. Aneudely, I'll tell you, you know, full disclosure, I have my own Eune Beauty skincare and supplement line that we have talked about before. Our top selling product actually, believe it or not, is not a skincare product. It's our supplemental collagen. It's type 1 collagen. That's a collagen found in skin, hair, and nails, and bones.

And I think that's important that you want to make sure you get type 1 collagen if you're going to take a collagen supplement. So the stories that I've heard from our purchasers, my followers, my patients who've taken collagen, it's amazing. I mean, my mom, I was visiting her a couple months ago, and she said, you know, I've been taking this collagen supplement and I've been noticing my hair's getting thicker. Do you think it's this collagen you keep sending me every month?

So I have my mom and my sister and actually my brother and sister. and law, they get collagen basically auto-ship to them every other month, two tubs, so that they can use that because I definitely believe in it. And the stories, the anecdotal stories are endless of people who've found improvement in their hair, their skin, their nails, they found their arthritis gets better. Chronic pain improves. You know, so many different stories that we hear anecdotally, you just need to read a half of them and know that, man, this stuff definitely works. Now the science shows it as well. But I also, before we finish the collagen thing, we got to talk about vegan collagen as well, because that's also a question that I get.

You know, does vegan collagen work? Is vegan collagen real collagen? Well, the answer is no, collagen supplements have to be animal-based. Now, they can be marine, so they can be fish-based, or they typically can be cow-based. Those are kind of the two main kinds. But there is, quote-unquote, vegan collagen on the market. And what that essentially is, is they are protein powders that also have other kind of collagen precursors.

So, you know, more than just protein for the production of collagen, you need other things as well. You need vitamin C. Vitamin C is super important for the production of collagen. This goes back to, you know, our high school, middle school biology classes when we learn about scurvy and when the sailors would go off sailing and they'd run out of fresh fruits and vegetables, vitamin C levels would drop because you've got to get vitamin C every day. Then they would get sores in their mouth and in their skin due to lack of vitamin C and the breakdown of collagen. So vegan collagen supplements typically contain collagen precursors, basically vegan protein, but also vitamin C.

And then other factors that are involved with collagen production like zinc and hytheronic acid and copper. So these are things too, you know, once again, if you want to take a supplement, I think vegan collagen supplements are great. I've never seen a study on them, but they make sense, you know, that they can help. But it's not the same as a true hydrolyzed collagen animal-based supplement. That's great. we'll make sure to we link to all your products. We're going to talk about some other ones that you have as well, too, on the skincare side, but the collagen will link to in the show notes if anybody wants to check it out.

On that same topic, are there your top list of things that work supplement-wise for the skin and don't work? We know collagen is number one. Is there anything else that you've seen that genuinely helps skin, youthfulness, and also, obviously, might also benefit other aspects of your health. Anything else you put as your second or third? I think when you're looking at a direct impact on your skin, collagen no question is going to be number one. Number two, you know, and that's going to be really so far above any of the other supplements.

Now, I do take supplements every day. I think some of them can be very helpful. Right now, the supplement, one of the supplements I'm taking is neutrophol. This is actually a hair supplement. And that, I do believe, has a direct impact on hair growth. and there are other ones. There's Viviscal is another brand, but Nutrifol is the one that's most popular. And that contains a multitude of things in it from vitamin C, vitamin D, it contains zinc,

it contains biotin, and many, many other things are in that. So that's something, you know, if you've got a hair issue, I think you get a direct benefit from taking a hair loss supplement like a NutriFol where you'll see that direct connection, correlation. other than that, the connection between taking a supplement and skin improvement and quality is going to be more indirect. So, for example, if I had to put a number two after collagen, it would probably be taking a daily probiotic. We do know that the microbiome is directly connected to the skin. There is a gut skin axis.

And there are now some studies showing that if your microbiome is unhealthy, that that has been correlated or connected to, inflammatory disorders of the skin. So eczema, rosacea, even acne, there are studies showing that these types of inflammatory skin disorders can have a direct connection to the health of your microbiome. And so, you know, I do believe that taking a daily probiotic can definitely be helpful as well as eating

probiotic-rich foods. So that would probably be my number two. Number three might be taking an omega-3 supplement and that's going to be to reduce overall inflammation. I think that's great for reducing chronic inflammation. Are you going to see a specific improvement in your skin by taking omega-3 supplement? You know, I don't know that that's necessarily the case. I haven't heard from my patients those types of direct connections that we have seen with,

let's say, a neutrophol hair supplement or specific collagen supplements. But those would probably be the ones that I would put up there. I mean, I'm also a fan of taking a daily multivitamin, of taking anti-oxant supplements. But once again, these are going to be things that could definitely be great for the skin. but I wouldn't necessarily say, hey, I'm going to take this for a month and I'm going to see my skin improve in its appearance. I mean, it might, but it's not a promise that I would make you, that's for sure. Are there any trends that you see out there?

Foods that people talk about, supplements, interventions that are just top of mind, where it's like the bang for the buck is not there. Let's start off with, is there anything on the dietary side that you see trending these days on TikTok or social media? where maybe the evidence is shaky and maybe even in some instances this thing could not be beneficial. So it could be diet, supplements, any treatments that come to mind for you? Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of treatments out there that have been promoted. You know, I think one of them that's kind of funny is the idea of perineal sunning.

And it's this idea that if you get sun on your genitals, that that's going to help improve your vitamin D levels. It's going to help with improving your overall health and wellness. Interestingly enough, you know, getting sun on your body. Okay, so you mentioned earlier sunscreen, and I am a fan of sunscreen. When I'm out, I will wear sunscreen. I am not a dermatologist. I know dermatologist of mine who will be sitting in a basement all day and they're going to put sunscreen on before they go in their basement all day.

I'm not one of those types. Studies show you need, if you're Caucasian, you need 15 minutes of sun, to get, to prevent a vitamin D deficiency. If you're Caucasian, okay, with light skin. If you are darker skin, then the amount of time you need in the sun is greater than that. And how much greater, it really depends on how dark your skin is. That being said, we also know that UV radiation is the number one cause of skin cancer. And I've seen enough patients in my office who have skin cancer and huge, you know,

they lose parts of their face and stuff that you do not want to get that. So there is a belief that if you tan your genitals, you sun your genitals, that's going to be even more powerful than just getting sun on your face or your arms or your legs. And there actually is a little bit of truth to that. And I'll explain why. There is proof to show that if you get sun on parts of your body that normally does not get sun, that your body will technically create more vitamin D from that type of sun exposure than from exposure. to areas that are normally getting it. Okay, so if let's say you never wear it, you go out with your shirt off, and now you go off with your shirt and you're getting some sun that way, then you are going to create more vitamin D that way than if you're just exposing your arms, your legs and your thighs, even if you're looking at the same amount of exposed skin, essentially.

But there is a belief that if you tan your genitals, that that is like exponentially more vitamin D. And that I've not seen any proof of. And so that's one thing that I think just doesn't work. I'm definitely a fan of, I think, getting sun in moderation because I think it's great for your health. I mean, I live in Michigan, so God forbid February, when the sun comes out, we're all out there getting sun. I like it. It's therapeutic.

You get vitamin D from it. But also, I think there is overdoing it as well. And I think overall with sun protection, there is in some circles, you know, this belief that you only get skin cancer if you have a poor lifestyle or you're eating a bunch of seed oils. And that, I think, has been fully debunked by medical science. is that I think that when you look at, let's say, skin cancer and sun damage, it really is multifactorial. So I do believe that, yes, if you are eating a diet rich in seed oils that's inflammatory, are you going to have a potentially higher risk of getting skin cancer? By all means, yeah, you know, I mean, it's bad for you.

But if you eat a diet like that and you get absolutely no sun exposure at all, you know, you probably are unlikely to get skin cancer. If you combine getting a lot of sun with a horrible diet like that, then you're going to have the highest risk. And so really, I think you've got to look at everything as multifactorial. I think that traditional medicine has been guilty of focusing just on sun and not other factors that can cause skin and even premature aging of the skin. And then I think that some of our holistic health colleagues have been overly focused on just the diet being the main cause of it. And I think really what we have to look at, it is a true holistic approach to this. It's everything.

All of this kind of contributes to it. And so we make our own decisions of the type of lifestyle we find that's going to benefit us the best. So hopefully that answers that question. Yeah, absolutely. We need to be sun smart, son aware. And I believe there was a past guest, Dr. Alexis Cohen, who came on the podcast, who also shared some data about how if we don't get enough sun, how we also expose herself for other

cancers that are not skin-based cancers that are there. People can go back to that episode. I'm not an expert on that. She's a PhD researcher who's looked into that a bunch. So we want to be smart. We want to have a clean diet. We want to make sure we exercise, do all the basics, hydrate, which is obviously super important when it comes to skin health.

And we want to be sun aware of its potential damages. And then just to answer, you know, one other thing that I wanted to bring up. And I mentioned it briefly before. A super hot topic is NAD. And so when people are looking at anti-aging NAD supplement being a huge thing right now, there are people getting IV NAD. So basically NAD being an essential part of the body that will help to basically get energy from ourselves. And so now a lot of people, you know, very famously, Haley Bieber and Kendall Jenner on, I think the Kardashian show, we're getting IVNAD.

And so is that something that could be potentially the fountain of youth? I find that that's very interesting. There still is, we have limited human studies with it. I myself have taken an NR supplement. So NED basically being only, your body can only get that through an IV, but now there's NR and NMN that you can take as oral supplements. And some people have found that if they do take these types of supplements, that they seem to have more energy afterwards.

I haven't seen any studies to show that it may help impact the actual skin and the appearance. but that's a super interesting possibility right now in overall anti-aging medicine, which I'm sure you covered NED on your podcast before. Yeah, definitely a few people have touched on it. Yeah, very fascinating. My main concern with NAD and I think a lot of these IV therapy is,

I've spent five years working in the hospitals, whether I was doing plastic surgery or general surgery, I've worked in the ICU's and trauma base, is that the worst thing that happens, one of the bad things that happen is people get older is that they go to the hospital and they can't find IV access because their veins are just shot. They've had so many IVs in the past.

Some of them could have been previous drug users. Other than their veins just are not good to get IVs in. And in those situations, we have to put central lines in them, which essentially is a large IV that you put into either your subclavian vein or into your groin area. And these are huge veins that go into huge blood vessels. and sometimes it's the only way we can get IV access. And my concern now, when a lot of people doing these IV therapies,

that are doing it for, let's say, NAD, they're doing it for IV rehydration after going out, you know, on a, you know, binging alcohol overnight and stuff, is that are you, every time you stick an IV in your vein, you're creating some scar tissue in that vein. And scar tissue builds up with time. And is there any chance that we have, you know, this kind of wellness movement of people who are doing all these IV therapies,

thinking that they're doing the right thing for themselves, but then 20 years, 30 years, 40 years down the line, they end up in the hospital and they need to get an IV because they're sick and all their veins have been scarred up because of all these preventative IV therapies and now they've got to get a central line in their neck. You know, that's what I fear. And so my recommendation for your audience is if you're thinking about IV therapy, just put some, you know, think about it.

Don't just willy-nilly get an IV therapy for any reason. Make sure that there's a real reason behind it because these are medical treatments, every time that IV, every time that needle goes in the vein, you create scar tissue, and are you going to potentially pay the price later on for something that maybe you didn't even really need or benefit from when you're younger? That's great advice. I haven't really heard anybody talk about that or bring that up, so that's something absolutely to be aware of.

Anthony, we have a bunch of rapid fire questions that were getting into the last sort of phase of this interview. But before we did that, I actually wanted to get a chance to chat about some of the other products that you have. I always appreciate people who have a deep knowledge in their space that are entering into the foray of entrepreneurship to create better solutions available for people. So you mentioned what you guys are up to with the collagen. And last time you're on the podcast, you talked about your very basic, you know, skincare routine that anybody can follow. I think it's called like a five minute skincare routine. Two minutes, five years younger skincare routine. Yep, it takes two

minutes a day, and if you've got quote unquote average skin, we found that people after about two months looked upwards of five years younger, just four products. Do you want to just recap that one really quickly? And then you can just mention some of the products that are part of that. Yeah, so basically the two minutes, five years younger skincare routine, we tested it on people. It's the basic skincare routine that anybody can do. And if you do this, you're going to be way ahead, basically, of the average person. So every morning, you cleanse your skin with a cleanser appropriate for your skin type. Ideally, if you've got dry skin, then you want to go with the more milky or hydrating cleanser. If you've got oily skin, then a more foaming cleanser. After that,

you want to apply an antioxidant serum like a vitamin C serum. Ideally, if you add vitamin E to it, so you add vitamin C and vitamin E together, they are synergistic together. And that's going to help protect your skin throughout the day and help provide that co-factor for production of collagen. And then if you're going to be out, I do recommend a sunscreen at least SPF30. Once again, if you're going to be sitting in a basement all day, then you want to put sunscreen up. then obviously that's up to you. That's all you have to do in the morning. Cleanse, vitamin C serum, you're going to be out, throw that sunscreen on. At night, super important, you got to cleanse your skin. You have to get rid the days worth of dirt and grime and pollution and especially the makeup.

If you wear makeup, then oftentimes a double cleanse can be appropriate. And what that means essentially is that you use an oil-based cleanser or a myceler water. That's going to help clean the makeup and the oil off your face first and then do a regular cleanser after that. And then you want to apply an anti-aging cream. We mentioned retinol earlier. That's the easiest one to find. Most people tolerate that. It's usually pretty inexpensive and it has the most science backing it and it's production of collagen, its improvement to fine lines and wrinkles, it reduces age spots, even can maybe reduce early pre-skin cancers as well. And so really that's it. At night, you cleanse your skin and apply a retinol or another anti-aging cream. And then one to three

times a week. You want to exfoliate your skin. We talked about exfoliation. We were talking about the body brushing, but you want to do that with your facial skin as well, either with a gentle scrub or with a alpha hydroxy acid type of appeal. A lot of companies have those. And that's really it. You do that. And you're going to be way ahead of everybody else. You know, on my skincare line, we do have a two minutes, five years younger bundle, just four products, cleanser, C.E. Antioxon serum and exfoliating moisturizer and then the retinol. And really that's all you

technically need for a good basic skincare routine. Amazing. We'll link to it below but do you want to just mention the website in case anybody's like working out or driving and they're listening. So it's eune beauty is my is my skincare line, eun beauty, eunbeautcom. And essentially what it is is that I started out my practice

as a traditional plastic surgeon. I carried all these quote unquote medical grade products in my practice. And I sold a lot of them and they work great to change people's skin, you know, get rid of spots, smooth the skin and all that. But the problem was, Drew, is that I carried the secret for many, many years that even though I sold this to hundreds, if not thousands of my patients, they saw great results, I couldn't use them myself.

Because if I were to apply them to my skin, my skin would break out in a rash. I get hives. And so for years, I just use water, gentle cleanser, and a gentle sensitive skin moisturizer, and that was it for years. And so it wasn't until many years ago I started realizing that there was this group of clean beauty products that I started trying out thinking, hey, what are these things? And they're basically made with no fragrance, they get rid of all the additional addism of preserveses. And I started applying those to my skin and finding that my skin felt great with them. But when I would look at the ingredients, I noticed that there's no active anti-aging ingredients in any of them.

They just were nice, comfortable moisturizers. You know, maybe they had some antioxidants because there were some healthy fats. and stuff in there and oils. And so that's why I created you in beauty is basically it's natural and organic ingredients with the latest and medically active components, cogic acid, vitamin C, retinol, pectiol, peptides, and that's the idea behind my skincare line, is how do you get natural and organic, you know, no fragrance products, but actually that work to turn back the clock? And that's kind of the idea behind it.

That's great. So it was the toxins and the fragrances and the fragrances and all. the sort of hidden ingredients in these beauty products that aren't regulated. It was those that were making you break out. Yeah. And there's so many people that are able to essentially use them. I just never could. And I did have patients who would use it. And they say, oh, I can't stand this. You know, it was the fragrances. It was the additives and the preservatives. Those are the things. And when I would use them, almost all of them, even like Nutragina, you know, very popular. Just you can buy it at any store. I put Nutrigenia on my face. I would break out in hives. And then I started to use. And then I

started using these clean beauty products, you know, that are made with all natural ingredients. And they just felt great on my skin. But then once again, I found that, and I started using them for months, I thought, these are great. But then I started looking at the ingredients thinking, like, okay, I can use them, but they're not actually going to slow down my aging process. They're just going to moisturize my skin. Why don't I create something that is the best of both worlds? And hence, we created you in beauty. That's fantastic. We'll link to the show notes again. Everybody check it out if you're looking for solution that the skin care line can help you solve. All right, we're going to jump into a rapid fire round of a bunch of questions that we have

in. These look like people's unique situations or products that they're using or, you know, whatever it might be. The first one is actually from my wife, Yasmin. Shout out to my wife, who's a fan of yours. My wife wanted to ask you, are you familiar at all with these types of tapes people use? I think they're typically called like frownies. They'll put them on at night to prevent.

sort of their face frowning. Do these things work and are they worth it to use at night? Brownies are the original face tapes. Now people are also using silicone patches over the skin as well. So they act in two different ways. One of them really makes sense. The other one, not as much. Some people believe that if you put that on your skin, it will splint the wrinkles and actually smooth them out with time. That I do not believe is true. I believe, and there's no science to show that that is true, that does not make sense. However, what they can do, especially, you know, if you wear them a lot, you know, a good amount of time, is that they can actually train your muscles not to create wrinkles.

So what I mean by that is there are certain wrinkles of our face that are called dynamic wrinkles. These are wrinkles that are caused by muscles contracting. And those typically are the horizontal forehead lines, the vertical brown lines between your brows and the crow's feet wrinkles. Those are three very common dynamic wrinkles. They're also the same wrinkles that we in general. Botox with that tend to smooth them out. If you apply either certain tapes, facial tapes, or silicone patches, what they can do is they can act as a reminder to you not to create those

lines. And so you can technically train your face not to create those lines. And what will happen is those lines will not develop as deep as they otherwise would have. You know, so if you may, you know, I see patients in my office, sometimes they come in with deep crevices all over their faces. and oftentimes there are people who are super expressive, like Jim Carrey expressive, you know, where they're making these, you know, big facial expressions and they're laughing and, you know, eyebrows are lifting up real high and stuff.

That's going to be a way to create those wrinkles and make them deeper and deeper. It's like we said earlier in this program, if you keep making that face, it's going to stay that way. If you keep making those wrinkles, those wrinkles are going to stay that way. And so that's what those tapes do. They are kind of like a non-invasive,

Botox, but, you know, it does take effort, you know, to wear it and to remind yourself not to create those lines, essentially. So they could work over the long term, but really lower your expectations in terms of what you're... So there's nothing that applying the tapes to your skin is going to actually cause those wrinkles to improve just by the application of the tape, you know, and that's where I think some people are misinformed, you know, or they are miss, they are not presenting the information accurately to people who buy them because I think there is a belief that, oh, if I put tape on my wrinkles, they're going to splint the wrinkles and will cause them to become lighter as the years go by. And that is not necessarily true. What is true is that, yes,

you can use that as a splint to remind yourself not to make them deeper and then essentially you don't get the wrinkles as much. That's kind of the natural, nature's Botox, essentially. You know, listeners of my podcast know that I got into health and wellness because I struggled with acne really bad when I was younger. And I found out that my gut help was kind of messed up from years of antibiotics. And there was foods that were sort of making my gut in particular inflammatory, in particular dairy. And dairy was a large source of driving an excess sugar inside of my diet.

When I kind of really removed the dairy and the sugar for my diet, my acne like pretty much in a couple months when I was, you know, 18, 19, completely cleared up. And that got me into this whole world of wellness. Like me, a lot of my friends and people with darker skin complexions who have had any history of acne, they have these pitting scars that they're sort of left over with, even though they're an adult now, not a teenager, not struggling with acne. What are your recommendations for how to get rid of or address pitting scars? They are some of the most difficult things to treat in all of dermatology and plastic surgery.

I tell you, it's tough. And so I first thing I always tell parents, you know, if you're listening and you've got to got kids and they're teenagers and their hormones are starting to go crazy and they're breaking out a lot, especially when you've got a lot of cystic acne, you really want to see a dermatologist and get that taken care of right away because I see so many people that come to see me as adults and they've got just like you said, pitted acne scarring and it really can be very bothersome to people. And so the best treatment number one is to prevent that from happening. So if you've got a kid who's going through that, definitely have them see a dermatologist,

do what you need to do to prevent that from happening to this. them. As far as treatment of it, it's really difficult and the reason why is what you're dealing with is skin that has a very uneven surface to it. You can get what are called ice pick acne scarring that are deep scars that go that are very small and deep. And some doctors actually cut those ice pick acne scars out. But most of the time, it's not so much an ice pick as it is unevenness of the surface contours of the skin when you look at it like let's say under a microscope or under a magnifying glass and so the challenge is is that how do you smooth that out because let's say if you do a laser treatment you can't you know what you have is kind of hills and valleys okay

and treatments ideally want to reduce the valley the hills so that they better match where the valleys are but most treatments reduce the hills and the valleys so if you do let's say a chemical peel the chemical peel will take off the upper layer of skin from both the hill and the valley of those acne scars. And so it can be very difficult. So in the past, there have been treatments ranging from derm abrasion where you literally just sand the skin down with what looks like a sander essentially. And that can definitely help to deeper chemical peals that don't help as much because once again,

you're also peeling the deeper, the valley in addition to that hill to laser treatments that try to level that skin a bit so you take those hills down. Any treatment is only going to create a partial improvement. And the issue that you will have because of your melanin your skin is that you have to stay, you have to be very careful with anything that's fairly aggressive, like laser treatments, like chemical peels, even RF microneedling for you can be potentially hazardous if it's done very aggressively. So it's tough. It really is. Those are the types of, you know, patients who have deep acne scarring that undergo the really aggressive treatments to get partial improvement. I don't have a solution. What I would recommend, retinal creams are great. That can overall help.

And then it's just going to be doing a lot of different things. For you, it's going to be doing light treatments, but doing them over and over and over again. Each time you may see like a 0.5% improvement or something like that, it just builds up with time. But it's a struggle. And that's why I really focus on parents, you know, your kid's struggling with cystic acne and is starting to scar. See a dermatologist, prevent that, you know, them from having to deal with this when they're older because it's so hard. That's great. Great honest advice. You know, one of the thing that I wanted you to talk about that I heard you talk about on social media and was a question that came in was what does Dr. Ewan think about makeup wipes? And makeup wipes were one of the top things that you

recommend that people, I mean, largely women that are, you would be using them, that they're not really going to be a good option. Can you chat about that? Yeah, two things with makeup wipes. Number one, for me, I can't, you know, I do a lot of TV and whenever I do TV, they always will give me a makeup wipe. And whenever I use them, like with my old skincare products, the medical grade stuff, I break out in hives. More than that, because there's, you know, once again, a lot of fragrance, they're probably preservatives in it. There has to be preservatives in it. There has to be preservatives because they're wet and you've got to avoid bacteria growing in them. And so now you've got antibacterial types of preservatives in it to prevent bacterial growth.

into it. And so there's just a lot of bad stuff in it that you don't need. And so number one, a lot of stuff in it, once again, preservatives, fragrances, all that that can be bad for your skin. And then the other thing, two other things. Second thing is a lot of dermatologists and even makeup artists believe that when you use a makeup wipe on your face, you're essentially smearing the makeup all around your face, not necessarily removing it so much. And then the third thing is it's not so good for the environment because you're developing a lot of waste from it. And so if you are on a budget and you want to go really inexpensive, then get a myceler water. Most skincare companies have a very inexpensive myceler waters out there. You can buy like a big jug for probably

less than $5. The other option would be to use a makeup removing oil cleanser. So if you've got more oily skin, then oil cleansers are great for removing makeup. We've got one, my, our, my own beauty line, one of our popular cleansers is a makeup removing oil cleanser. But what you want to do then is either use a mycelor water or the oil cleanser and then do what's called a double cleanse where you use a regular cleanser afterwards. This one goes back to a collagen question, which was, what are the top signs that my collagen levels are low if people are asking? Like, how do I know if my collagen levels are low and I need to address it? To me, it feels like, you know, just sort of noticing your own elasticity in the skin, but anything else that you would

add to that, that is a sign of collagen levels being low? Yeah, I think what you're saying is definitely part of it. I do think that if you look in the mirror and you feel like your skin looks older than your age, then that could be a definite component to it. I mentioned earlier the 80-20 rule and the fact that 20% of our aging is genetics and 80% is what you do with it. And so looking in the mirror and really just, you know, there are tests that you can do. We have a test called the Vizia. It's a high definition photo that we take of the face and we look at aging on eight different parameters. And so that can look at wrinkles, they can look at age spots and red spots and underlying UV damage. So you can technically go to a med spa or a dermatologist office and get something like that done. But if you're

just looking in the mirror, then really the easiest thing to see is if you feel that your skin does not look as young as it should at your age, then you've got to think about, okay, why is that the case? You know, part of it could be a breakdown of collagen. So then you want to look at, you know, are you eating sufficient amounts of protein? Do you want to start taking a collagen supplement to see if that improves it. You know, how is your diet overall? Are you eating enough antioxidants? You know, are you getting enough vitamin C? Are you eating enough health, you know, fresh fruits and vegetables? Those are all very important things. But it's also you have to look at activities, you know, smoking, vaping, smoking, marijuana. Now, we don't have studies on marijuana,

but we do have studies on smoking and vaping. And it does appear to help reduce the collagen in your skin as well. That's also another thing that can be horrible for your skin, as well as getting excess sun exposure, that too will impact collagen as well. So I think it's really multiple factors, but I think the easiest thing to do would be to look in the mirror, look at your skin and say, hey, I'm 40 years old. How does my skin compare to my friends? And there are, once again, Vizia type of these skin analysis that you can do at med spas and dermatologist offices that can give you a more objective assessment of that as well. This was another question that we had came in as we're winding down, what do you tell your patients about the relationship between caffeine,

which has in particular coffee and has a lot of demonstrated health benefits that are there for longevity, heart health, etc, at the appropriate dose. It's a U-shaped curve. But then also we tend to live in this society that tends to be over-caffeinated and under-hydrated. What do you say to your patients about hydration? Hydration is huge. I don't believe celebrities who say when they ask, well, how do you look so amazing on the red carpet? They go, oh, I drink eight glasses of water a day. Like, that's BS. Okay, we know that not only do they drink a glass of water a day, but they've got dietitians, they've got nutritionists, they've got personal trainers, they've got esthetians, they've got plastic surgeons and dermatologists,

and they're doing all of that, okay? It's not just water. It's not just olive oil that the famous celebrity is putting on her skin to make her skin look so nice at the age of 54. And so I think we got to, you know, make sure that people realize that that hydration is super, super important for health, but it's not going to necessarily be the reason why your skin looks the way it does. I think caffeine in and of itself, yes, you do know caffeine is a diuretic. It will cause you to become a bit dehydrated. So definitely you want to focus on hydration if you are drinking a lot of coffee. I don't think caffeine in and of itself other than it being a diuretic causes anything negative to the skin.

In fact, caffeine can be used in skincare products. You know, our retinol eye cream has caffeine in it because it can help create some mild tightening of the skin temporarily. And so a lot of kind of instant tightening creams contain caffeine as one of the main ingredients. And there's some people who will even take coffee grounds. They will take saran wrap, wrap the coffee, put the coffee grounds around their thighs, wrap it with saran wrap, and leave it that way for a half hour to a

hour and find that their cellulite appears to be improved. And so there are at-home ways that you can actually use coffee also to your advantage. So, you know, my feeling is, hey, if you like, I'm, I like coffee, but I stay away from caffeine because I don't want to get jittery and I don't like the idea of just having something that I'm addicted to, even though it may not be that bad for you. So myself, I in general, stay away from it. But I think that there's so much great things in coffee with the antioxidants in it that overall I do think it's a superfood. As long as you're not adding all the crappy creams and, you know, um,

uh, flavorings and all that type of stuff to it. I throw a little bit of cinnamon. I think that's great. Um, but, yeah, just be careful.

Maybe a little coconut milk, you know, mix that up. That's good. That's great. All right. Last question for you. And this is a opportunity to sort of leave us on this message of just how important

our diet or lifestyle is for our overall health and especially our skin. And the question is, what are the healthiest foods, your top favorite things that you want people to be focused on, including, and the top things that you want people to be removing to slow down the aging process of how the skin looks and feels? So what helps it? We've already talked about collagen, protein. So that'll be probably your number one. And then also an opportunity that you've talked about in your book, what are the top things, even as a reminder for our audience, that you personally feel that. hurt the health of the skin. Yeah, I mean, so the first thing you always have to bring up our ultra-process foods. So, you know, get rid of those desserts, those packaged desserts that you buy

at the grocery store. I mean, those are going to be the absolute worst things, period, for your skin. Because not only are you combining all of the chemicals and the processing, the seed oils, the bad fats, but you're also adding the sugar, you're also potentially adding trans fats. Some of those types of dessert type of foods like the cookies and the prepackaged stuff, those also often will contain trans fats as well. So it's just everything and it's just bad for you. We know that that's going to be bad for your skin. You know, there's some people say, oh, you know, fruits and vegetables, all that.

We know that's healthy for you. We know healthy sources of protein, you know, like grass-fed beef and wild-caught fish. All that's great. But I also would really want to make sure we mention to eat fermented foods as well. because our American diet is so sterile, to make sure you add those fermented foods because we do know that there is that direct connection, like I mentioned earlier,

between our microbiome and our skin. If you've got skin that is inflamed, if you've got kind of ruddy skin, if you're dealing with adult acne, if you're dealing with eczema, or you're dealing with rosacea, then really taking the daily probiotic and adding in things like kimchi,

like sauerkraut, even yogurt, you know, if you're not all of that into the sourriot, soury types of fermented foods, then fine. You know, yogurt is fine as well. I'm not a big dairy fan, so I limit that. Kiefer, kombucha, but really focusing on those healthy sources of probiotics. My favorite is kimchi being Korean. My wife doesn't like it. My kids don't like it, but I've got my jar of kimchi in the fridge and I eat it whenever I can. Just remember that it does not give you good breath. So if you're going to, let's say, you know, go sing at church afterwards or you've got

a meeting with patients or something, then yeah, don't have the kimchi beforehand. Koreans know that the garlic breath, not a good thing. Garlic and fish breath, actually, because kimchi also contains fish paste. So garlic and fish on the breath is not the best, but that's one of my favorite, really skin healthy foods overall. Not good for the breath, but good for the gut. Definitely, and the skin. And the skin.

Dr. Eun, this has been fantastic. I want to thank you for coming back on the podcast and taking all these questions that our audience had from your first appearance, which again, when virus, both on audio and on YouTube. I think on YouTube, we almost have 800,000 plus views, probably we had a million at the end of the year. This is a topic that people care a lot about. And it's hard to find trusted information. You've definitely been an individual with how regular you put out content. And of course, you're 20 plus years in this field and constantly researching. You've established yourself as an authority figure who people actually genuinely trust.

So it's our honor to have you back on. And I hope everybody checks out all the great projects in the social media that you're up to. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it, Drew. This is a lot of fun, and I mean, you've got the best podcast on health, and so it's an honor for me to be a two-time visitor to it. Thank you so much. Hi, everyone, Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend. Share it with a friend. Share it.

who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter, and it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday,

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