Digital Social Hour - Skin Benefits of Lard and Tallow, Treating Sunburn & Anti Aging | Charles Mayfield DSH #381

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

Charlse Mayfield comes to the show to talk about skin health. APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] SPONSORS: Opus Pro: https://www.opus.pro/?via=DSH Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Digital Social Hour works with participants in sponsored media and stays compliant with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations regarding sponsored media. #ad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Seriously what we ingest through our mouths, but we don't understand that our skin eats things. And so if you look at the regulations and everything around skincare, it dates back to 1938. And the only ingredients, here you go, the only ingredients in skincare that require pre-market safety testing are color additives. That's it? That's it. Wow. Wherever you guys are watching this show,

I would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe. It helps a lot with the algorithm. It helps us get bigger and better guests, and it helps us grow the team. Truly means a lot. Thank you guys for supporting, and here's the episode. Ladies and gentlemen, today we are going to learn about a lot of fun health topics, including the skin and how important it is to take care of your skin. We got Charles Mayfield here today. How's it going, man? Going great, Sean. How are you? I'm good, man. I got to hear how you got into this whole journey around the skin. Oh, goodness. It's a couple of different journeys that came together, but sort of a healthy lifestyle, eating, cooking background, got into the fitness scene pretty well.

And those two coalesced into getting into farming. And farming put me in a situation where I got a really nasty sunburn. And lo and behold, used animal fat post-sunburn, and it worked. Wow. So, yeah. So that was, gosh, that was three and a half years ago and, and, uh, launched the company about a year and a half ago, but yeah, we've, we've, we've seen tremendous results with, with, uh, with just using real ingredients and no junk. So you said animal fat, what does that look like? So we use three different animal fats from

two different animals. We use lard from pigs, a leaf lard, which is also from pigs, and then tallow. The animal fat-based skincare market is minuscule compared to what I would call the industrial skincare market. But most of them are using tallow predominantly. We're the first to use lard, which is fat from pigs. Got it. And how toxic are these lotions and these sunscreens that everyone uses on a daily basis? They can be quite toxic. There's a lot of data. You know, there's a similar adverse event reporting system for skin care as there is for vaccines and other different medical situations. But, yeah, we've seen there's a lot of data now about various cancers. A lot of the preservatives in skin care, phthalates, parabens, these are known endocrine disruptors. So think like our hormone system. A lot of them are endocrine disrupting compounds.

And then before we hit record, we were talking about the microbiome. So the human body is inhabited by a lot of different bugs called our microbiome. So the human body is inhabited by a lot of different bugs that are called our microbiome that happens in our gut and also externally on our skin. And a lot of these compounds in water-based creams disrupt that and kill our natural microbiome as well. Right. So there's bugs on our skin that are actually good for us, and these lotions and sunscreens are killing them? Yes. So interestingly enough, I think this is sort of one of the next frontiers. We've had a human microbiome project going on now for a couple years. But we know less about the relationship

between our microbiome and human health than we know about space. There's a lot to be discovered there. I like to take a little bit more of an intuitive approach to it. We coexist with these creatures and have for hundreds of thousands of years. Best we not just go blanketly napalming them with toxic preservatives and skincare. So do they help us? We are, yes, they do help in that they coexist with us. I've been trying to get on Brett Weinstein's podcast, The Dark Horse. He's an evolutionary biologist. I've been, Brett, if you're listening.

But, you know, to talk about skincare through the lens of evolution. And just, again, we've coexisted and co-evolved with these bugs for many, many years. And whether it's hormone signaling, you know, we know that bugs, the microbiome of the gut helps with the signaling of satiety, hormones, you're full, you're hungry, all sorts of stuff. So, yes, I'm going to intuitively say that they're very important to our health. And so we need to be a little bit more respectful for them. When did these mass market lotions and skincare products hit the market? Was it recently? Early 1900s.

So skincare as an industry was really reserved for, I would call it the elite of the elite of the elite. All the way back, I mean, we've been fascinated with skincare all of human history. You can look into the Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts. I mean, vibrant, glowing skin. I've used those Egyptian Aztec clays. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And so our, our, our infatuation with skin health is, has always been here, but many until the turn of the century, the ingredients predominantly used in skin care were hard to find and expensive. And so with the advent of, I would say, petroleum derivatives and also seed oils, so we see at the turn of the century, you see Crisco. So Crisco is a hydrogenated, well, it depends.

Sometimes it's canola oil. Sometimes it's rapeseed oil. It's a seed oil. It's not a very, very healthy product. And it was originally used to make candles. This is the origin story of Crisco. It was really an indriquing lubricant. And then it was to make candles.

And at the turn of the century, you get the light bulb, electricity. What are we going to do with all this cottonseed oil? And so they hydrogenated it, turned it into Crisco, bleached it white, harness more petroleum derivatives and make cheap seed oil derivatives out of industrial agriculture, then it's, skincare is fat-based. We talked about water, but it's really an emulsification of fat and water. That's the chemistry of industrial skincare. And so the cheaper and more available the fat side of the equation, the more you can manufacture and put products on the shelf that have a two, three, four, five-year shelf life. Because again, all of this toxic goop that keeps them from going bad. And so

we're able to make them very cheap. They're able to sit on a warehouse shelf for years before ultimately getting in the consumer's hand. And so that, I think, is what truly led. We've always been fascinated with skin health. But in terms of, you know, look at all the other marketing things we've learned in the last hundred years. And we're seeing that, you know, manifest now digitally, you know, what, what, what happened with marketing, the turn of the century and understanding human psychology and all of these various things have, have all come together. Oh yeah. They're good without marketing, man. They got me on sunscreen for a while. They got us all.

Man, I used to think using not was, was a good thing. Well, it's, you know, uh, for your listeners out there, if you're a skin health expert, whether that's an esthetician or a dermatologist, if they're not talking to you about sleep and what you eat and hydration and all of these lifestyle things that either promote or demote skin health, then I would argue they're not doing you a very good job. For sure. And, you know, the sunscreen thing, I'm a little older than you, Sean, but I can close my eyes and remember, I can smell it. The Panama Jack tanning oil, tanning oil, we didn't have sunscreens, they were tanning

oil, so it was like this, you know, squeeze it that my dad, when we'd go fishing when we were kids, and there was number 6, number 8, number 10, and number 12. That was the SPF of these. Oh, that's it? Yeah, that was it. And you were hard-pressed to find an SPF value on a suntan lotion 30 years ago. Wow. That was higher than 15. Now they're like a hundred. Oh yeah. And so if you look, I mean, truth be told, look, look at the data. Incidents of skin cancer have gone up precipitously. Use of sunscreen has gone up precipitously and the SPF

value have gone up precipitously. So all, you know, if something was working, then we would see those incidents of skin cancer go down. So it's correlated. It, I think there's a correlation and there's a whole new mindset around looking at seed oils and, and the impact they have on us, uh, as, as, and of course, a lot of these sunscreens and industrial skincare products are seed oil-based. Wow. I didn't know that.

I thought just on the diet side to cut out seed oils. I didn't know they were in lotions too. It's in everything. Wow. That's scary. And with skincare, here you go. So I can find, if I'm a skincare company, I can find the most obscure, hard-to- uh, tropical seed, right? And I can do a couple of marketing studies on it and I can extract the oil from that seed and I can put it in my product. Are you interested in

coming on the digital social hour podcast as a guest? We'll click the application link below in the description of this video. We are always looking for cool stories, cool entrepreneurs to talk to you about business and life. Click the application link below, and here's the episode, guys. And I can talk about the benefits of this new wage, can't find it anywhere else ingredient. I mean, look at the ingredients in a water-based skincare. Can't even read them. You can't read them. If you're lucky in skincare, you've got, I would call it plant-based fats, olive oil, shea butter, coconut oil, if you're lucky. Right.

Seed oils are different than plant oils, right? Olive oil comes from the fruit. Avocado oil comes from the fruit of the avocado, not the seed. Not the seed, right. Right, right. And so, yeah, it's dominated by seed oils. And so I take the stance of, seed, right. Right. And so, yeah, it's dominated by seed oils. And so we, you know, I take the stance of, listen, shea butter, coconut oil, all of that's great. You're

not a shea, you're not a coconut, you're a mammal. And so we should consider using animal fat as the predominant food for your skin. Nice. A lot of people want to get tan, but is that actually damaging their skin when they're exposing their skin to that much sunlight? Well, you don't need a lot of sunlight to get tan. We have an infatuation with being tan, despite, you know, it boils back to your genetics. Like if you're low or high melanin content in your skin,

then you need to take a little more or less care in how much sun exposure you get. But more importantly, we've lost a lot of respect for the sun, I think, because we've been encouraged to just cover ourselves in sunscreen. But if you rewind the clock 100 years, if it was noon, there were no swimming pools. Most people weren't hanging out by the pool at noon. And if you were outdoors back then, you were fully covered. Big hats, working outside. Now, we got plenty of sun exposure. To answer your question, I don't think it's unhealthy to want darker or more sun-exposed skin. I think more of the problem is created when we spend too much time in the sun, direct sun, during the hottest times of the day. We could get a lot more accomplished if we limited our direct sun exposure, ate a healthy diet, got plenty of sleep. You'll have that golden

brown you're after. Yeah, I agree. What's the science behind tylo and lard being good on the skin compared to other skincare products? Again, I go back to intuition. We're an animal. So the science is, so people, this is one of the problems with the skincare industry is we, if you compare it to the food industry, okay, we take very seriously what we ingest through our mouth, but we don't understand that our skin eats things. And so if you look at the regulations and everything around skincare, it dates back to 1938. And the only ingredients, here you go, the only ingredients in skincare that require pre-market safety testing are color additives. That's it? That's it. Wow. That's scary. It's quite scary, especially when you consider that in 1938,

which is when this Food and Cosmetics Act was originally written, think about how many chemicals we'd figured out how to harness. Probably none by then, right? Industrial age is just getting kicked off. So fast forward now, almost 100 years later, it's the same regulations. Why haven't they updated it? Well, they've updated the Act a number of times. They've excluded cosmetics every single time.

So the food aspect of the FDA and the food and cosmetics has been updated over time. Most of the regulation in skin care now today is really more about labeling, not about consumer safety. Sounds like someone's getting paid off. There's a lot of money in skincare. So, so, so why, why tallow and, and, and animal fat? It just start there. We're an animal. Okay. And our skin eats things. Uh, so you start getting into what does your skin want? Well, it wants naturally occurring vitamins. It wants naturally occurring lipids and fats. And if you look at how animal fat is put together, especially when that animal is sourced from a regenerative, holistic land management, high animal welfare

environment, then their fat and candidly human fat look a lot alike, right, in terms of the vitamin A's, E's, D's, and all that. And so if our skin walked up to a buffet line of fats, it would preferentially choose pig fat, beef fat, lamb, mammalian fat, I would say animal-based fat. It would preferentially choose those things. Yeah. So knowing that your skin eats everything that you put on it, what are you using in the shower? Are you using body wash, shampoo and conditioner? God, that's a great question.

No. Wow. No. This is the thing you always tell people at the end of the night, not the beginning. But I make my own soaps. We're going to probably have a soap line in the coming year. But I make our own soaps out of very, very basic soap ingredients, some lard, some water, and some lye.

But I only soap two or three times a month. What? Now, I shower every day. I took a shower this morning. I wash cloth. I emulsify. I don't soap off too much. It's probably one of the things that sparked the launch of this company was the over-sanitation that really stemmed from the pandemic. It was like hand sanitizing everything. And I noticed

my skin was getting really wonky. And so I think we over sanitize. I think we did. There's no question about it. And so, and then you throw on top of that, there's a lot of junk in soaps, whether it's the perfumes or the various fragrances they use. And so our skin produces oil naturally. Our microbiome oil naturally. Our microbiome exists naturally. And so I think the fewer times we can disrupt that with these harsh cleansers, I think the better. Yeah, some people shower every day. Some people shower twice a day.

Do you think that is too often? Well, define shower. Again, if you're rinsing off with water, go for it, man. Well, people use shampoo and conditioner every day. I think that's too much. And body wash. I think that's too much. I personally, now, again, everybody's got to get to their own level of comfort here. But Sean, people will ask, well, do you no you don't now if you go work out or go run a marathon or you know go go get sweaty you might you might smell right but um again that's why you tell them at the end of the night not the beginning of the night because you you know i'm in social

settings i don't say a thing no i'm glad you have this take because i get a lot of heat for this but i only shower twice a week, three times a week, and, I mean, my girl kind of hates it. But other than that, I don't feel like you need to do it daily. It seems like a chore at that point. It's relaxing. Now, most of my showers are cold. Yeah, I do both.

Yeah, I like that aspect of it. I do like the cleansing idea of a shower, you know, washing off the day. I just don't, don't use soap, just use some water. Uh, I, I, I think we're over, I think we're over sanitized for sure. I think so too. Um, let's talk about, have you looked into urology at all? Uh, a little. What are your thoughts on like applying urine to the skin? You know, I've listened to that episode with, so I was a little worried, you know, I'm the LARD guy and I'm like, I'm going on Sean's show. I'm going to talk about LARD. Well, hell, he's had a guy on there that talked about urine. That's a little out there for me. Uh, but I'm not saying I wouldn't

try it. Um, I there's, there's, there's so many things that, um, one can try. Yeah. And I'm also a big believer in sort of the placebo effect. So if you think it's working, that's – and, you know, nothing's more natural than urine. I mean, you know. You could be doing worse things. It's making me think of the Kingpin movie. There's a scene in there. But, I mean, nothing's more sterile than urine, and it's your own body.

You know, my contention with that particular topic, Sean, is my body didn't want it the first time. Why should I give it back? Yeah. That's my own contention. Now, if we're talking about it from the angle of it's a cleanser or a nourisher for externally on the skin. Okay. We're not drinking it or necessarily. Some people drink it too.

I understand. I'm definitely not doing that. But no, I mean, it's a fascinating topic. It's a little out there for me. I feel that respect. Yeah, I draw a line somewhere around there too. So we're on the same page. I want to take it back to your farming days.

Is it true there is a soil problem right now in the country? Tremendous soil problem, yes. And this is documented. I forget if it's the World Health Organization. We're going to run out of topsoil in about, I think we've got 30 to 50 years left. Wow. And we're done. So we can't farm anymore?

We run out of topsoil, we're done. Wow. Okay. You get this climate change stuff that's going on. Regenerative farming is a way to build soil. Our animal fats come from farms that grow healthy, happy animals and build soil. There's great examples of this with white oak pastures down in Georgia. You've got your polyface farms in Virginia, primal pastures out on the West Coast. There's examples of this everywhere.

You can farm in a way that builds soil, is not reliant on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. That's another big problem. And it reduces all the different tillages. When we till up the earth, it's dust bowl all over again. We've already had a dust bowl. When was that? 1930s. Oh, wow.

It was the big dust bowl pretty recent oh yeah no we've we've we've got shining example historically after shining example of our inability to manage soil and and yes there are examples of this being turning the corner i think we can feed the world this way even though i don't like saying that because it's not our responsibility to feed the world. It's our responsibility to feed our nation or our community. But, yes, it is a huge problem, Sean. The good news is there are lots of really awesome solutions, and they involve animal agriculture.

So we'll have to start now. We're already starting now. I mean, if your listeners want to look into, like, the Savory Institute is a great resource in terms of showing documented improvements. White Oak Pastures down think a year down there. And to turn this, this will blow your mind. Like every pound of ground beef that that farm produced was a net carbon sink. Wow. That's impressive. It's 180 degrees opposite what they tell you is possible with animal agriculture.

You know, it's like it's polluting, you know, the cow farts are ruining the planet. Cow burps, cow farts are ruining the planet. And that's wrong. It's flippantly wrong. And they've now proven it. So, yes, we need to be building more soil. We grow a lot of grain in this country. Most of it is for ethanol and to feed animals.

It's not actually what we're eating. And then what we do eat is in highly processed foods now too. So you've got a whole bunch of people vested in the current model. Consumers are going to be the ones that lead us to the next spot, whether that be through the lens of skincare or through the lens of what we eat daily. Seems like glyphosate is another issue these farmers are facing right now. On one hand, they need to grow these crops and they have to use something like that to keep them healthy, right? On the other hand, it's causing a lot of health concerns. So what do you think the fix is there? Well, the fix for starters is stop using glyphosate as a desiccant. So I'll give you

a little history on glyphosate. Two things. One is all the studies, all the safety tests were performed on glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in Roundup, but it's only 51% of the recipe. So all the safety testing was done on one ingredient, not the finished product. That's not good. Secondarily, it's not human-safe for the same reason that these skin care products

aren't necessarily human-safe. Glyphosate does not disrupt any of the metabolic pathways that humans use to generate energy. It does disrupt the photosynthetic system and processes of plants, which is why it's a great herbicide. The problem is we're covered with all these bugs. So all this microbiotic, our microbiome is impacted by this chemical. Throw on top of that, starting about 15, 20 years ago, they started using, so when you've got wheat in the field or soybeans or whatever crop, it's time to harvest. Well, you can't harvest until it's reached senescence or died, okay? And then it dries out

and you bring the harvesters through and you harvest it. Well, if you're waiting for that to happen and it rains, now all of a sudden I'm delayed and I can't harvest anymore and I ruin crops. So about 15, 20 years ago, they figured out that they could start using Roundup as a desiccant. So when it was time to harvest, it just go through the fields and kill everything with Roundup. Well, that's different than spraying it on everything when you put the plant in the ground. So it was originally all these genetically modified crops. You plant them, you spray the field, it kills everything else but the crop,

and then the crop grows. Yeah, yeah. Well, you've got a whole growing season for that glyphosate to dissipate. Now, we're spraying it directly on our food. So you spray it, kill it, and two, three, four days later, you harvest it. So glyphosate is a real problem.

I don't think we need it. The environment certainly doesn't need it. I mean, we've got a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico the size of, I think, Rhode Island. What caused that dead zone? All of the runoff of chemicals. Think about all the rivers. Mighty Mississippi spills out of the Gulf of Mexico.

That's crazy. Oh yeah. There's a dead zone the size of Rhode Island in the Gulf of Mexico. Holy crap. That's huge. And I'll never be able to grow again. I never say never, but it's not gonna grow until we stop uh use overusing and synthetic fertilizers are just as bad synthetic fertilizers will oxidize the ground

which is why you got to keep using them every single year i mean if they really worked it's like our skincare products you need less of our stuff over time because it's really good at what it does well yeah that you would think that would be the case with artificial fertilizers, but it's not. And so all of this chemical soup gets in the water. It's not great for obviously the sea life, but it's created a dead zone. Yeah. Did you see the new thing Bill Gates started with the vegetables. Is this the peel? Yeah, the peel. I've seen it. Not real excited about it. I'm at Costco looking for it now. It's got me paranoid. Have you seen it yet? No, but they're at Costco apparently. A lot of vegetables at Costco have it. Have it now? Yeah. See, I'm worried. I'm actually really worried that they're going to reach a point where they don't have to put it on the label.

They probably will. They don't even tell you what's in it. I've been a pragmatic carnivore now for about 11, 12 months. Okay. Absolutely. I mean, I still eat an apple occasionally. But, yeah, mostly meat, eggs, dairy, and salt. Yeah. These days with all the weird stuff they're putting in fruits and vegetables,

I don't blame you. You're constantly dodging landmines at the grocery store. It's tough. I mean, you know, I always say, you know, buy local if you can. You know, it's kind of hard to do in Las Vegas. But there are options. There's still, and even mail order options, there's some options there. But yeah, right now I'm sort of sticking to meat and dairy. And you feel a lot better? I feel great. Wow. Everyone I talk to that's a carnivore says that. I feel, yeah. Well, I think that's how we got introduced. Yeah. Dr. Ovadia yeah shout out phil um and he's seen a lot of stuff so he's very educated about about diets quite and you know and and phil's another great one of just i think i like his approach with with health i mean he sort of talks about it from through the lens of if you

want to eat this way this way or this way just focus on on real, you know, whole foods. And I'm the same way with skincare. Like let's get some of the preservatives and toxicity out. I mean, if you want to go tallow based, great. If you want to play around over here in our lard camp, that's awesome too. Yeah. So talk to me about the future of the company, any products coming out, where you see it going. Yeah. So we're still very young. And right now we're looking at soap, I mentioned. I'm looking at deodorant. I need that. Yeah?

Yeah. I've tried so many natural deodorants and I don't know. All right. I've got to ship you one of those. Yeah? I've got some I'm playing around with. Okay. Yeah, I've tried like seven different brands.

Really? Yeah. I want to get into, you know, the funny thing, Sean, is our product, skin care wants you to have an individual product for an individual need. You know, AM cream, PM cream, face cream, skin cream. There's eye creams. Oh, yeah. The list goes on and on.

I can understand treating this differently than this. Yeah. But I think we should have a soap. I know we should have a soap. I know we should have a deodorant. I'd like to have a shave product, like a pre-shave. I hate how artificial those shaving creams are. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I hate using those. And shaving cream. So with shaving, no men think they have a skincare routine, but every man I know has a skincare. They just don't know it. So you got the cream on the front end and then you got the aftershave on the back end. And so typically those are two different alcohol-based, chemical-based compounds. Yeah. You're putting it all over your face. It's getting in your body. Yep. And so, yeah, so that's the plan right now is to continue with our sort of stable of products.

We just launched the Epic Dermis this year, which is our portable packable. Nice. I think I've sent you some of that. And, yeah, we're just going to keep – right now we're just trying to build brand awareness. Yeah. We're sort of the new kid on the block and, again, grateful for being able to come on a show like this. Yeah. We'll put a link in the, uh, in the video, man. I've been using it and I was surprised it didn't have a smell. People think, uh, people think lard smells like bacon grease. It does not. Um, I think

actually we use tallow as well. I think tallow is a more odorous animal fat yeah but for your listeners out there it's not i sent you the unscented too yeah no it feels great man i like it i that's the funniest joke for me is early on when we launched the company so i you know you can imagine i ordered labels right for jars and i ordered like 10x these scented labels versus the unscented. Because I'm sitting there in myself, I'm going, no one's going to want to smell large and tallow. It could not be more opposite. People are just running towards the unscented. And I actually enjoy our unscented more.

It's more grounding to me. There's just nothing there. Yeah, that's funny, man. But where can people find you and find the company, man? Sure, farrow.life. That's F-A-R-R-O-W.life is our website. And that's it. We're direct-to-consumer out of East Tennessee and hoping to continue to grow and just grateful.

Yeah, thanks so much for coming on, Charles. Absolutely, bro. Yeah, thanks for watching, guys, as always. And I'll see you tomorrow.