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Exploring Probiotic Skincare's Breakthrough with Trevor Steyn of Esse Skincare · Skin Anarchy

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Skin Care Anarchy.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: This is your host Vecca and I have a wonderful bread I want to share with you today.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very excited to learn about it because I have been diving a little bit more into the microbiome and trying to understand what we can really do in terms of like maintenance care, right?
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: When it comes to our skin's microbiome and really preserving skin integrity and making sure that whatever we're doing is not killing off the wonderful bacteria that helped create actually the skin barrier.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I would love to introduce you guys to the founder of S Skincare, Trevor Stein.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the show, Trevor.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so excited to host you.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Edgar.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: It is exciting to get going.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would love to learn more about you, Trevor, and how you really decided to start the skincare line and what really led to the discovery of creating these products.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I come from a chemistry background.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was involved in drug discovery.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: So we were looking for new pharmaceuticals, partially from plants and partially from biochemicals, uh biotechnology sources.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess I come at skincare from a slightly different angle, organic chemistry.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it was really the human microbiome project that shifted me very strongly in the direction of fully committing to skincare.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: It felt to me in 2010 that you can use single molecules to attempt to shift complex ecosystems.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, humans don't have a fantastic track record of shifting ecosystems with single molecules, is the short story.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: When we try to use, for example, DDT to take out mosquitoes or malaria, for example, yeah, there are unintended consequences, and it can be a while before those consequences are felt.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's very interesting.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: You do have this organic chemistry background.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the most organic chemist I learned was in pre-med.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you're gonna have to refresh me a bit, you know, on the chemistry side, because I've always found it so fascinating how much we can do from the chemistry angle when it comes to skin health.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's unfortunate that we don't talk about this enough, actually in the industry.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's my opinion, because I I completely agree with you.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think that small shifts and just specific chemicals and even, you know, the what you're using in formulations to say, you know, here we discussed the microbiome.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like when I was starting the interview, I was like, I mean, little things can really make a big difference, right?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of metabolism, in terms of like the actual like, you know, physiology and the biochemistry of what's going on.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: So with that, I guess one of my big questions for you is like, what was, I mean, what was the most challenging part of creating something, you know, that you know was going to be really great for the skin's barrier, for the skin's microbiome, and and anything that protects the skin from like daily damage?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, the primary barrier is if you're going to use live bacteria to shift an ecosystem like the skin, then you have to keep those live bacteria alive.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And pretty much every skincare product out there contains a preservative that kills microbes.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, you need you need a technology that protects your live probiotic.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: I do believe that live probiotics are a better route to shifting the skin microbiome in a sustainable fashion.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: We have single molecules like sapienic acid that I can that maybe we can speak about later.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, the one of the clearest routes to shifting a complex ecosystem is to use a keystone species in that ecosystem.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: I guess, you know, much like the the wolves of Yellowstone Park.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think was the keystone here?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: So if you look, um if you look at the if you look at the skin microbiome, the first members of of the first members of that microbiome are lactobacillus.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as the child is birthed into the world through the birth canal, the seeding is almost exclusively lactobacillus.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the vaginal microbiome differs substantially around the world and and between individuals, but in the third trimester of pregnancy, you suddenly have a shift toward a very dominant lactobacillus microbiome.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that's for two reasons for the health of the mother, to protect against infection of any potential wounds during birth.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And secondly, to seed the child with the foundation species that'll be required for that child to flourish.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: For skin health, we did focus on lactobacillus as a primary contributor to skin health and particularly to skin barrier function.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: I would love to ask you, you know, from the chemistry point of view, what is it that you think lactobacilli are creating for the other bacteria to thrive on our skin?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, as we know, there's not just one species, right?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: There's multiple.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: And there, even with beauty bacterium, you know, for acne, there are many, many species present on the skin.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's different strains present on the skin, I should say.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: And some of them cause acne, but the other ones are actually working to preserve the microbiome.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you feel that the lactobacilli, you know, from that chemistry perspective, that we should be, you know, maybe like byproducts or anything that's helping feed the rest of the microbiome?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think there is?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: So well, there's a I mean, they're called lactobacilli because they produce lactic acid.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: So the first contribution is keeping the skin pH within range.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um so obviously that acid mantle requires a pH of somewhere around 4.5.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: One of the other outputs that lactobacilli have, and as a matter of fact, one of the outputs that we use guided evolution to select for is hyaluronic acid output.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Lactobacilli produce hyaluronic acid to prevent their cell membranes from drying out.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: So what we do is we set up restricted available water systems.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so in the broth that we cultivate the microbe in, we will restrict available water and force the bacteria to increase their hyaluronic acid production.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll select for strains that have very high high HA production.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that's one, that's one of the other outputs.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: In other cases, we will select strains that produce very high levels of antimicrobial peptides.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: These are compounds that restrict which species can grow on skin.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the commensal species, things like Cuterbacterium acnes and staph epidermidus and a few others, they're resistant to those antimicrobial peptides, whereas potential pathogens are not.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, because the pathogens haven't co-evolved entirely with our skin microbiome.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: So those are just three, but there are there are certainly other routes that lactobacilli take to inadvertently generate skin health.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's very interesting with the hyaluronic acid.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know that.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I am very curious then about, you know, when we speak of the skin's microbiome, the topic always comes up, I think, and naturally inflammation, right?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: The idea of inflammation, inflammatory aging, and the things that come with maybe disrupting the balance, right?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would love for you to speak on that a bit in terms of, you know, this probiotic aspect and then working with the actual inflammation that uh naturally exists, you know, within our skin and making sure that we're keeping everything in check.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, how does that work, the synergy of that between inflammation and the microbiome?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of this initial work was done in the gut.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: The gut microbiome research is around about 10 years ahead of skin.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And yet now it's abundantly clear that if you want to optimize gut health, you need to optimize the gut microbiome.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: That learning is still shifting across to skin.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, particularly when it comes to inflammation, I guess leaky gut has been heard of enough now.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I think a term that will come up soon is leaky skin.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if your barrier function is not optimized, if you don't have strong tight junctions, if you don't have a healthy stratum corneum, you're always going to be in a compromised position from an inflammatory point of view because you're going to have toxins and pathogens crossing the skin barrier.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Your skin needs to be on high alert.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess that that's one of the key messaging aspects of lactobacillus in skin.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Species like Lactobacillus ramnosus have been shown by Kath O'Neill's group in in the UK, for example, to improve both the quality and quantity of tight junctions in skin.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that is actually the primary barrier function.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's often misunderstood, I believe.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: People believe that the barrier function happens in the stratum corneum, and for sure that's a very strong contributor.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: But if you look at the knockout gene therapy that's been done with tight junctions, they are actually the primary driver of barrier function in skin.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And lactobacillus has been repeatedly shown to improve both quality and quantity of those tight junctions.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's very fascinating.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I guess the same can be said about gut health, then, right?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they have a lot of research, I think, with tight junctions in the gut as well.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of, I guess, feeding the same narrative of this gut-to-skin connection that we have.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, even in the natural, you know, physiology of how these different organs function.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, tight junctions is a very fascinating topic for me because I've looked very closely at, for example, aquaporens.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: And when I was looking at arquaporins, the conversation around tight junctions also came up because we often misunderstand the role of water movement in the skin.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it I guess it goes hand in hand because people really do believe that the you know, the deeper you get into the skin layers, the better off you are.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not the case because your skin is not designed for that kind of level of, you know, in trauma when you have any traumatic injury, yes, your skin's going to be more penetrable.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: But then normally it's not supposed to be.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: There is supposed to be like this very sealed off level of protection that happens in the skin.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you look at things like, you know, water channels or the actual junctions that allow the movement of certain, you know, particles in and out, I think it's important for consumers to understand that this is the natural physiology and we shouldn't be trying to damage our skin, right?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's interesting to me at least when I see consumers and the way we spend our money and what products we buy, because it's almost as if we're on a mission to destroy that barrier, you know, and get deeper into the layers.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: But that's so, I think it's an oxymoron state, you know, stance to take to do that.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I very much agree there.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the brand philosophy is to do less better.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's a particularly popular marketing message to say, well, guys, we're dealing with a multifactorial network of bacteria, fungi, viruses, archaea, and skin cells.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we're really just trying to get to the bottom of this.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very complex system that can't even be modeled with the top AI.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: You should buy our product anyway, even though we have incomplete understanding.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: People, it's a far more popular marketing message to say, guys, we got this.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is the only way, and this is this is going to fix your skin tomorrow morning.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I think, you know, when we intervene, we do try to remain humble, to remain cognizant of the fact that we're dealing with a co-evolved ecosystem that has complexity that we'll probably never completely model.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: So when we intervene, we try to bear that in mind and intervene only to address mismatches, the mismatches between our current lifestyle and the lifestyle that we should or have been designed or evolved to lead.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we're always evolutionary forces, is what I'm trying to say.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: We'll mimic evolution wherever we can.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I I think that's a very smart way to go about it.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: I I was having a conversation the other day, Trevor, with somebody, and I think you would have found it to be interesting because we were discussing exactly that where this idea of, you know, where we're headed with it from a scientific perspective is this idea that the human body is the best model with which we can work in terms of creating solutions, you know, whether they're in skin health or any other, you know, discipline of science or medicine.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I really believe that, genuinely, because I think when you look at the skin like more closely, you start to realize that, you know, what already exists in all of these other tissues that we know about is something that can truly be mimicked to help our skin.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because you made a very good point, I think, earlier where you mentioned how you know gut science and gut research is is ahead of it, ahead of where we are with skin, right?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the same can be said for many different organs.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: But here's what we you know, there's a lot of things we can take away there because when you look at the embryology of things, we're coming from the same, you know, few different tissue types.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's three main tissue types for all the listeners out there.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm saying this.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: And when you look at that and you start observing other organs and the way their cells work, it tells you a lot about what we actually need as human beings.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not a lot.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this body is very self-regulating, you know, it's it's really easy to, like you said, kind of I guess fix what does kind of go, you know, go astray and whatever gets messed up, you can fix it.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, the amount of intervention, quote unquote, that I see these days, right?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: With like the excessive products and the excessive, you know, routines and people going and getting all these aesthetic procedures, not looking down on any of it, but I just wonder is, you know, how much damage are we doing in the long run there, you know?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's quite fascinating to think of it like from that perspective for me, because I think, you know, the science really does come full circle when you realize that it is about kind of staying up to par with, you know, how the body naturally evolves.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think the better living through chemistry phase uh is starting to draw to a close.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the that's I I was kind of annoyed because I spent eight years at university, you know, studying organic chemistry.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, I I got to practice that for a while, but I got sideswiped by the Human Microbiome Project.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, at that point, you realize that a single molecule is a really blunt tool.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you it's very good for crisis management.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this person's about to die.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Let's intervene with this single molecule.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: But a single chemical is a pretty blunt tool when it comes to optimizing an ecosystem of skin cells and its microbiome.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, yeah, I I think it would be good to see chemistry recede slightly when it comes to optimizing health, and and good it would be good to see the biotechnology behind um probiotics and other interventions that are more clearly thought through that mimic the conditions for which we've evolved.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, that maybe that's a really good point, actually, that you make about the single molecule, because I think that there's a lot of questions I have for from the chemistry side.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't mind me asking, I'd love for you to clarify some terminology for me.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I know that with especially with organic chemistry, it's kind of baffled my mind when people say something is something is just clean, like clean beauty, you know what I mean?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do you feel about clean beauty?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like these terms from the perspective of chemistry.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, yeah, I would love to hear your thoughts on that.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's a loaded question.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm lucky I heard your your podcast with Sandy Scottniki.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was some insights into your view, at least.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: But so I mean, it's a little depressing, I guess.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: The skincare industry from a marketing point of view tends to butcher terms so fast that it's kind of difficult to come up with new ones fast enough.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, clean is an unregulated term.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's completely abused in the industry.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I share your view there.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Look, there are some standards.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: For example, we stick to the European standards for certified organic products, but I don't believe that means that that product's clean.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can have certified organic soap and it's completely butchering your skin's barrier function, pushing its way out of whack.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I, you know, I don't I don't believe that clean really communicates anything to the to the end user at this point.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um unfortunately, things like the word probiotic have uh also been abused.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the skincare industry of, you know, they're using lysates or tendalized microbes and calling those probiotic.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: There is this new term postbiotic to cater for those, but it hasn't stopped the abuse of the term.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas, you know, the true definition of probiotic is a live microbe that has a beneficial effect on the host.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that that that's clearly been ignored in the in the skincare industry.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Look, when we look at what clean means, I guess, you know, there are there's obviously the baseline organic standards that we use, but we minimize the use of fragrance ingredients.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: We certainly minimize the use of any emulsifier that might disrupt barrier function.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so we're looking at things, I think, from a slightly different perspective when we refer to clean.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And as a matter of fact, I don't even think we talk about clean and when it comes to product.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: We tend to get a bit more specific than that.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that makes sense.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I didn't mean to catch you off guard or anything with the question because I I do find it to be interesting from the chemistry side, you know, and I completely agree with you with what you said about, you know, even with probiotics, postbiotics, I think in general marketing has gotten a little out of control at this point.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think when it comes to the hard science of things, I always try my best to ask, you know, experts such as yourself, like about the these terms, because I I think that where we're headed right now is this, you know, this place where we we've kind of strayed away from the science.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about like general consumers.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: We've strayed away from understanding the real science before we buy a product.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: So like if a product is, you know, being manufactured and for everyone listening out there, for you, like my opinion is if somebody is marketing to you that something is clean, I think you do have the right to question and ask, well, what do you mean?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and in what discipline of science can you prove this?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, through which discipline?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because I don't believe for a single second that there's a scientist out there in any single discipline that is going to say, Yes, I know what the word clean means.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I just don't believe it.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: I I think it's just at this point, it's really about looking inwards as a consumer and trying to figure out like what are my values and what am I trying to get with my products.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because at the end of the day, I mean, results don't mean if you're getting results from something doesn't mean that it's not clean, or if you are getting it, it doesn't mean it's clean.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's just that you have to figure out what your skin needs and then go from there.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where I would love to see us, you know, as an industry, as a consumer base, reach a point where we can then we can now talk about result-oriented and result-driven options and skin health rather than okay, well, this, you know, works with my vegan lifestyle.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's cool, but your skin doesn't care if you're vegan, you know?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Your skin cares about what's gonna help with whatever pathology you're dealing with.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's where I get a little frustrated with all these terminologies, right?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: So that's my little spiel on it.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I agree with what you had said.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: I want to ask you though, one more, you know, while we're on the the subject of men just marketing terminology, what about organic, Trevor?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: How do you feel about the word organic when used in cosmetics?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that we're kind of ambivalent about this organic label.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're very much in the medical aesthetics channel.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: So in most of our markets throughout the world, we're um we're selling to either exclusively doctors or doctors and skincare therapists.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: And as soon as you say you're organic, there's there's a perception that this isn't going to deliver results.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we actually tend to shut up about being organic, to be honest.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a lot of clinical trials behind the products.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: We do all of our testing in Bonn in Germany, and we don't talk about results until we have statistical relevance.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I hope that the days of before and after carrying any sort of weight, you know, where you treat 500 people, choose the best results, and show everybody the pictures.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're looking for groups of 50 subjects at a time and statistical relevance that shows meaningful improvements in, I don't know, skin firmness or wrinkle depth, or you know, we want to find a metric and make a claim to it.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I think, yeah, I guess that organic label is something that we feel contradicts a little this sort of evidence-based approach to skincare.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: But it is, it is a large part of why started the company.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, without disclosing my hippie roots, I do believe that business as usual is not the best outcome for humans or the planet.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this profit at any cost marketing engine that spews out the low-cost products that will sell, you know, that's not a great result for anyone.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so if we can do business better and treat people, the end client fairly and and and deliver results that we deliver repeatable results um that are effective in the long term, and we can do so within an organic framework.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then good, you know.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it is unfortunately as soon as you say the brand's organic, they lump you in with every hippie in the garage.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, with everybody.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: I yeah, I can imagine that being extremely frustrating.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but that's why I asked you, because you actually have the background to discuss, you know, this topic.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I I I find it to be a very interesting word, uh, you know, myself because I agree with you.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, hey, there's a place for it.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: There is a place for it in the right way in the right context when it comes to science.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I I think that, you know, it has marketing has taken over and it's created kind of a monster.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: But there is relevance to these words once you actually speak to real scientists, they can explain to you, you know what I mean, what they mean and why they're there and why they matter, you know, in the overall formulation or whatever you're looking at.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a really important message for consumers to kind of take away, you know, and that's really why I wanted you to speak on this because we should be to, you know, asking these questions rather than just blacklisting, you know.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I know it can get frustrating from the marketing side where you're seeing every product on the shelf, you know, at the store is labeled as organic or clean or whatever, but it really does matter to ask those questions and to reach out to brands that are actually, you know, their reasoning is very grounded in science, you know, and I think definitely, you know, falls into that category.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: I want to ask you about some of your products, if you don't mind, Trevor.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: I would love to learn about the actual line itself because I've been really enjoying, you know, I I find it to be really, really nice.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that there's a lot of options here for people who might be looking for something that's not only gonna not further damage their skin barrier, because I know a lot of you out there chime in about, hey, you know, my skin is really irritated.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I largely believe that's because you're using so many products.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really important to find options that are not gonna aggravate your skin, but also become maintenance options.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd love to discuss the line.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you could kind of give us like an overview of like, you know, your thought behind how you crafted the different products and you know, whether they're only for sensitive skin or you know, how how did you go about this?
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think we came at it from a fairly philosophical standpoint.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's this better living through chemistry.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: I keep coming back to it.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's supreme arrogance to believe that you can strip human sebum off skin and replace it with something that, you know, the industry seems to thrive off, you know, harsh cleansers that strip uh the sebum and microbiome off your skin.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then this again, you know, we're gonna replace it with a moisturizer or with something that you probably wouldn't have needed if you didn't strip your skin so roughly in the first place.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: We're outsiders in the industry almost coming from it, you know, at a from a distance.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: And when we see the industry doing something silly, then I guess that provides a market opportunity for us, you know.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if you look at rural skin versus urban skin, our internal testing, because we sequence a lot.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I uh we have more than a thousand skin microbiome samples that we've fully sequenced now.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: What we have is the ability to go, oh, somebody lives this far from a city, this is their skin microbiome, and this is the microbial diversity that we see on their skin.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then we see this person lives in Manhattan, what does their skin microbial diversity look like?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, on average, the difference between a rural living hunter-gatherer, uh, you know, subsistence farmer would be that the urban person has lost somewhere around 73% of their skin microbiome.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's quite a lot.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and that's and our results are in line with Rob Knight and Richard Gallo and Steve Chris Kellerworth from Belgium, but they've all done studies showing similar losses.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of difficult not to pair that with the fact that modern skin isn't particularly healthy when looked at from the point of view of 85% of teens getting acne, 30% of the population getting atopic dermatitis at some point, and around 70% of women who claim to have sensitive skin, when those figures are effectively zero in hunter-gatherers.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, you've got this loss of microbial diversity, of this loss of actual microbial partners in skin.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's paired with the rise of inflammatory skin disease.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the way we look at product formulation is our how can we mimic the conditions for which we've evolved?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Look, we need to deal with the modern lifestyle, the diet is not the same, the indoor living is not great.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, our skin is used to constant contact with the microbiomes of plants, the microbiome of the soil, the microbiome of various animals.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's, you know, there should be this constant flow of what of what they call transient microbes on skin.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and these microbes are neutral, you know, they're passing through.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: They don't pose a threat, but they nevertheless leave their chemical signature for your immune system to sample.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: So your immune system is going, oh, another good guy, he's another good guy, here's another good guy.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: But then we move indoors.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, I'm looking around the room I'm sitting in now, and there's no nutrient source for microbes other than humans.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's and so all of a sudden the microbes that our immune system sees, they're potential threats.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: They come from other humans that are their potential pathogens.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's, you know, there's a there's a lot going on.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, your baseline immune response starts escalating, resulting in a chronic inflammatory baseline for skin's immune system.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I I guess our approach is hey, how can we bring back those microbes that should be there?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure that most of the microbes that your immune system is sampling are beneficial.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why we want to bring the probiotics back to mimic nature's microbes as best we can with beneficial microbes.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: That makes sense.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: That makes a lot of sense, actually.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it actually made me think of how autoimmune diseases are on the rise and how much they're impacting people's skin health.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: What you said.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was kind of a light bulb moment for me, you saying that, because, you know, I look around and I agree with you.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think we're seeing, you know, less and less exposure because we're not out there playing in the dirt or, you know, out there in agriculture land.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I know my grandparents were, you know, lived in rural India and my parents grew up there, and you know, I hear stories, it's like they've spent all their time outside.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was literally just every day was, you know, you're interacting with the environment, you're interacting with nature in a way that's like it becomes a part of your everyday lifestyle.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so now when I do look at our lives, you know, like even my own, like you go from building to building.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: You're not outside, you're not, you know, even if it's something like taking a walk on a trailer, how often do we really do that?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's really interesting to watch how far we've come from that kind of lifestyle to now how we live in urban centers.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's truly fascinating for the skin.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one of the big topics that this actually made me think of was relative to one of your serums that you have, the Pro Sun D serum.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: I would love for you to speak about that because I think vitamin D is a really big conversation that kind of falls in under this umbrella of, you know, because we've shifted so much in the way we live, how do you think that's impacted our overall ability to not only have adequate levels, but then also absorption of vitamin D.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think it's a big conversation.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: So if you could tell us a little bit about your philosophy and your thought process behind creating the Pro Sun D serum, that would be fascinating.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: You're living up to the podcast name, Skincare Anochina.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's a very contentious product.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: Very interesting.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that that for us was a launch that we knew would trigger, you know, minor backlashes.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: We have an opinion on Sun, and we have an opinion on vitamin D, particularly vitamin D in skin, not systemic vitamin D.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: Look, I mean, as you know, there's very high levels of systemic vitamin D deficiency throughout the world.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but I think what's missing in that little narrative is that the vitamin D levels in skin should be very high.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the caracnocytes are the only cell type in the entire body that can complete the whole vitamin D cycle.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: The rest of your body is dependent on processing, first through the liver and then through the kidney.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: But the caracnocyte can complete that cycle.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I think if you look at skin health, shortage of vitamin D is probably one of the key drivers of marginally failing skin health in the Western industrialized world.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess this is an attempt by us to restore skin's vitamin D levels with minimal exposure to the sun.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: But we fully understand that dermatologists and many practitioners in the skincare space have been reciting the mantra that zero sun is the option that we should be aiming for.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think there's a case to be made for healthy sun exposure.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: What we're advocating is certainly not burning or irresponsible sun exposure, but we do believe that some sun exposure, particularly with the starting material for vitamin D on your skin, makes sense.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we advocate a five-minute sunspar.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: And what we're doing with this serum is loading skin with pro-vitamin D, which is the starting material that would normally be present in your sebum, well, which is present in your sebum.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: And when that gets hit by UVB light, it converts quite seamlessly all the way through to vitamin D itself.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I guess that's the story behind the product.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're working on a lot to do with vitamin D.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's crucial for barrier function.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: It regulates your skin's production of antimicrobial peptides, so it's very tightly connected with the skin microbiome.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: We've been doing a lot of work on it, and it is one of the great mismatches, right?
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: We have clearly evolved to be exposed to sunlight for around eight hours a day at our various latitudes, but now we hide indoors for pretty much all the time.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then obviously, when we do expose ourselves to sun, we burn, and that's a massively negative outcome.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my God.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I really listen.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm gonna be honest with you.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: I am a firm believer that I do not think we need to be under lock and key at all times.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: There's just that is not natural for us to do that from a medical perspective.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I asked you about the serum because I'm very happy to see that you have something like this.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because I honestly I'm all about sunscreen, and this is for all my listeners.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like I I believe obviously in sunscreen, right?
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: But when you are constantly stopping the first step in the synthesis of absorbable vitamin D by limiting your sun exposure to the degree that we have, which is literally all the time.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: We're constantly indoors, we're constantly under a hat or some clothing.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you're fighting things like, you know, I guess potential skin cancers down the road.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'd never refute that point.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: I would never do that.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: But there is a significant impact that low levels of vitamin D have on your entire body.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that from the perspective of all of the patients I've seen across the board.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: It is a massive problem, especially in the West.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's rising every year.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: The amount of people that come to the doctor's office and report, I mean, you can see, you know, the studies, you can see that the data supports this.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's going up and up every year.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's rising every year.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: How many people are deficient, not just a little bit, but severely depleted of vitamin D levels.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's a huge topic.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: And for some reason, we keep ignoring the fact of exactly what you explained, which is the skin is your first step towards creating, you know, functional levels of vitamin D.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's where the first conversion happens.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: So when I look at skincare products, I'm not criticizing the fact that we have a plethora of sunscreen.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's great, but we do need to step out into the sun, guys.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, we gotta go out there sometimes, you know.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm a huge believer in it.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's absolutely a need to have the conversation around vitamin D because it's not just for skin health, it's for the rest of your body.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Your skin just happens to be the first organ that, you know, it creates the first precursor to the rest of what's gonna become vitamin D3 or kidneys.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: So if you don't even allow that the organ to be exposed to enough sunlight to do its job, which is required for the rest of your body, then does it really matter that you're protecting one organ while you're compromising all of the other ones because you're not letting a normal vitamin in your body be there in adequate amounts?
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think it I think that conversation needs to be had at some level.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm a I'm a believer in it, you know.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm not one of the terms that that's against, you know, all that.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it's very interesting.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think the kicker is that most people think they can just pop a pull.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it doesn't work.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know how many people are put on 50,000 international units of vitamin D, take it weekly, oh, it's not working weekly?
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, take it daily.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's not working daily?
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, because your entire body has already been compromised.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: Your absorption system has been compromised because you don't have adequate levels of vitamin D as is.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like a vicious cycle that never ends.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's really the the true physiology of it.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, our marketing machine that we call the healthcare industry and the you know OTC industry keeps propelling this narrative of protect your skin and and that's great, guys, but where are we gonna get the vitamin D?
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, everyone's getting injections now because they're nothing else is working.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's very it's a huge conversation, I think.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think from an evolutionary point of view that you know we aren't designed to get vitamin D already.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, in a half hour of sun exposure out outside with shorts and a t-shirt on, you can make somewhere between 14 and 18,000 IU.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you're eating that, ooh, you would need to eat 168 eggs or or three kilograms of salmon, you know, to get that, to get that already.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it's only in the last hundred years that human beings have synthesized vitamin D and have now have the ability to pop these pills.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think what you'll see fairly soon is that these very high dose vitamin D might not have immediate toxicity, but vitamin D controls calcium levels in your blood.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it's what your liver is not used to is taking these massive doses and then trying to knock the edges off by slow absorption.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: So now all of a sudden what you're seeing is these spikes of vitamin D in the blood serum, and then you're having deposition of calcium on the insides of arteries, which provides a locus for plaques.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, you can see where this is going.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's a real issue with overuse of oral vitamin D.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that supplementing the natural pathway on skin makes sense from an evolutionary point of view and from a skin health point of view in particular.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you just made such great points there.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: I completely agree with you.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think the entire, you know, we have this whole conversation, Trevor.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you've seen it, you know, on social media, people always talk about endocrine disruption, this and endocrine disruption that, and I understand, and it's a real phenomena, okay?
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the problem.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: We are doing the things that are causing the disruptions.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: We are actively, as consumers, choosing to have habits that are going against the natural way that humans have evolved and we've lived for many, many centuries.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like I, you know, I told you my entire family grew up in rural India.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody, I'm not saying that, you know, it's good to always be outside and, you know, don't wear sun protection or whatever, but it's real, there is something to be said about a lifestyle that allows your body to function as it is made to function.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: And when we keep blocking that, whether it's through what we talked about with vitamin D or, you know, with the endocrine conversation, this all feeds into that as well.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, vitamin D and calcium, you know, homeostasis in your body is a huge proponent when it comes to any kind of endocrine abnormalities, any dysfunction.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: It all feeds in on itself.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: And if there's anything we can learn about the human body, it's that the physiology is like a very well-oiled machine.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you disrupt one thing, you're gonna have downstream effects with every other pathway in some shape or form.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where I feel like I would love to see consumers get on this road of let me opt for options, whether it's for my skin health or overall wellness, that are going to support my body rather than like you were saying in the beginning, that one molecule that fixes it.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: Or like that that makes a huge change.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: I would love to see people get on board with maintenance therapies more than that.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I I just I really believe in in the power of that.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I I really love your line because of that, because when I look at it as a consumer, I'm seeing something that is a well-rounded option.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like you're having these extreme, like, I guess, solutions or what people believe to be solutions to very targeted problems.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very overall holistic view of the health, health of the skin.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm a huge believer in that.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you've really, you know, hit the nail on the head with your approach here with S.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I think what what it is is a longer-term view.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that the average consumer is they're looking for very short-term results.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, that's not really our market.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're after people who value the long-term optimization of skin health.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that's gonna slow aging rate, and that's gonna, you know, that's what's gonna deliver what we're after delivering.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: When people go, I have an immediate desire for you know, shallower wrinkles, for example.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd you know, when would you like that to happen?
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, tomorrow morning.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then we you can use a very deep peel and we can deliver that.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is that sustainable for 10 years?
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, probably not.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh, you've probably done quite a bit of damage to yourself if you're gonna constantly do that.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that it's this short-term versus long-term outcome that you know that that we we'll we'll always value a long-term optimization of skin health over a short-term result that's you know never by Friday.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: No, I I agree.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I agree.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is like it is the only way I think that we can truly approach if you're talking about skin health.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's a very different conversation than immediate results, you know?
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I I agree.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think that there's a lot to be said.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's nothing wrong with going and getting aesthetic procedures.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing wrong with, you know, doing what you think is an immediate result.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: But I think when we talk about skincare, that conversation needs to go out the window because skincare is about maintenance.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's about truly nourishing and feeding your skin with what it needs to flourish and to like, you know, to survive and thrive.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I think the conversation should be completely different in the realm of skincare than it is for, you know, these instant gratification things need to stay, I think, in the realm of aesthetics.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's where I think it needs to be, rather than come and cross over into what you're looking for in an everyday routine.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, for example, you know, you guys have a wonderful trial set on your in your offerings.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this is something everyone should should give a go because I really believe that if you try it, you're gonna understand.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, you know, it's a very it's a balanced system that you're working with.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just one product or one product with 50 ingredients, it's the routine.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: So if you guys stick to a routine, cleanser, serum, moisturizer, oil, you're going to notice my skin feels nourished, you know, and that's how your skin should feel when you're doing a proper skincare routine.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the word you should use is something like nourished.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I I really believe in what you're doing.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think that this is what we need.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: When you look at skincare, that's you need maintenance, not you know, drastic measures.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess the the conundrum for us is that we play in the aesthetic space in most of our markets.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, whether we like it or not, you know, we're improving results after microneedling.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: We're engaged with uh improving collagen deposition after laser.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: We've used live bacterial therapies to improve the outcomes in these aesthetics treatments.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: Look, you know, are they uh, you know, do we fully believe that's the perfect result for long-term skin health?
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it depends, I guess.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, maybe somebody really wants to look good for their child's wedding or, you know, and then you know, then then well, sure, you know, a few months before you can intervene and optimize your outcomes for an event.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess if we can, we will help the industry to reduce risk and improve results in those treatments.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, will we ever launch, you know, a 60% pill?
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, I know we won't.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I guess it's a bit of a contradiction in within the brand.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, when we see the industry doing strange things and we can still help, well, we'll try help.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think that this is but it's it's fine to be.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: I I like what you said though, that you do have this integration with aesthetic space because I I I think all good skincare should have that, right?
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: That merger where you do come in.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think people don't understand the value of good skincare after procedures.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a different conversation, but it's a very important one.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: But again, I think it really does feed into the idea that if you've established something that is for true, true maintenance, then whether you get your aesthetic procedures done or not, you're still going to have something tried, true, and reliable by your side that really does help your skin's overall integrity.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's something to really speak about, you know, and and kind of highlight when it comes to whether you're talking about aesthetics or not.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think a skincare definitely, you know, it goes hand in hand with if you're going to get any kind of a procedure done, anything invasive done, you want something there that's going to help you heal, help you stay, you know, healthy, right?
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like at the end of the day.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we even recommend that in other kinds of surgeries, but people don't, you know, your surgeons don't tell you, hey, you had surgery, now go eat whatever you want.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: No, they tell you to maintain a balanced diet.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's really what they tell you once you're able to eat again or, you know, whatnot.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason for that is because your body always has to recover.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I think about skincare as it relates to aesthetic procedures or any kind of, you know, invasive therapies, I think it really is kind of like they come as a package, you know, you have to figure out what's going to work for you before and after that procedure.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to really kind of make sure you're sticking to it, you know, for your maintenance, for your overall health.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's there's a lot to be said there if a line can do that.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's a lot of people out here with, yeah, 30% glycolic acid, and that's the serum, you know, and that's not very healthy.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: So look, I mean, our approach there is so we have products designed for aesthetic treatments.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: And our approach, you know, I mean, a lot of these treatments do damage to the skin microbiome, and we've shown that in our internal research.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're gonna get back to optimum skin health, you have to reinstate the skin microbiome.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: So your the the faster you can do that, the the lower your risk.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the faster you can do that, the faster you can take advantage of the skin microbiome's role in wound healing, because it's becoming increasingly clear now that your microbiome is involved in wound healing.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, if we can perhaps instead of very high antibiotic, topical antibiotic use, uh, if we can control the space with you know with a live microbe by just sheer dominance, you know, you just apply so many microbes that pathogens, so many beneficial microbes that pathogens don't have a chance.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's just competitive exclusion.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you apply, you apply a beneficial microbe at such high numbers that you know some poor stuff or AS arriving in that environment just gets obliterated, you know, then there's surely a better option than trying to kill everything.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this war against germs is perhaps exceeding its bounds in that particular instance.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it does influence wound healing, and there's plenty of research on that, not absolutely.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: No, absolutely.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think that it's it's just crucial, I think, at this point.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I I agree.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think the wound healing conversation is very interesting.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: I've read some literature on it, and I, you know, I've worked in wound healing before, and I think one of the big things people don't realize is that whether it's a small wound or something larger, the essential things that are needed are all they're all actually essentially byproducts of what bacteria create on your skin surface or in any other part of your body.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: They're byproducts, and they really do help in terms of accelerating wound healing.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: And a part of that is because, you know, we look at the microbiome still as a society as this thing that is separate from us, but really it's one of the most integral parts of being a human being.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think it's more relevant to us than even our own cells because our microbes outnumber our own cells by ridiculous amounts.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I think, you know, this conversation is definitely getting to a place, right?
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like on a more global scale where we're now discussing it, but I think there's a lot of information that people still need to consume and to understand when before they really understand, like, okay, wow, the microbiome is not something that I can just, you know, pretend that I care about one day and then the next day I don't, you know, it it has to be an everyday thought, you know, just as if anything else in your body is so yeah, very, very interesting indeed.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I want to thank you so much for your time, Trevor.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: This has been a really great conversation.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: I've loved learning from you.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm a huge fan of your line.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: For everyone listening, if you haven't tried S Skincare, I will link everything in the show notes.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I really encourage you guys to check it out, you know, and really maybe do a deeper dive into what you think, you know, about your own understanding, you know, about the microbiome, what you think you don't know.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like try to look into that.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: It'll kind of blow your mind, I promise.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: I know it does for me.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: Every time I go on public, I discover something new.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I really encourage all of our listeners, you know, do the same.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: But Trevor, thank you so much.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_01: This was an honor to host you.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Edkad.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was a great conversation.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: Keep up.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: Hey guys, so I hope you love that episode.
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• 49:36
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