4 Experts Share Secrets to Biohack Skin | 1188 | Dave Asprey

Three dumbest things that guys do to their face.

Okay, one of the dumbest things, let me think. So the first dumbest thing is just using bar soap and water. There are so many people where guys just don't care. And I tell you, I've done husband, wife, faceless Dave and the quality of the skin from the husband and the wife is drastically different. If I do a facelift on a woman who is the same age as her husband, that facelift is going to last literally twice as long result wise as the guy you're listening to the.

Human upgrade with Dave Asprey. So when someone says you're a lookist because you believe how your looks matter, how do you defend yourself against that terrible, terrible comment that people might throw your way?

Interesting. What I've observed since 2011, working with thousands of people is there's actually the subset of people that I've observed and as a researcher I love to observe and there's actually men and women that I've seen aged 60 to 90 that show up as more beautiful than someone in their 20s and 30s even though they have overt signs of visible signs of aging. It's the way that they carry themselves and there's very specific things that they do in their lifestyle that give them energy and it actually that they're living based basically a life with body, mind, spirit, energy, practices, family unit.

I, I'm marveling at the strength of the media training you received to completely dodge the question so effortlessly. Have you thought of politics?

Definitely not.

So back to defending yourself as a lookist. How are you going to do this?

I look at people in a certain way when I'm actually looking at when I'm seeing someone is the brightness in their eyes. I'm actually observing for signs of oxidative stress status. So do they have overt signs of inflammation around their eyes?

You're going to use science and facts to defeat lookism. Okay, well that works because look lookism is actually completely a fantasy of victim minded people. Here's the deal. How you look does matter, even if you wish it didn't. And I've been obese, I've had really bad skin. And even in those situations it doesn't affect how good of a person you are. It doesn't affect whether you're a moral person, whether you have high integrity. But it does affect how people judge you before they have a chance to think. Because your operating system automatically judges all of reality for a third of a second before it shows it to you. That's just facts and that's one of the reasons that you might consider taking care of your skin to the best of your abilities. And I know I've spent a lot of my life not as healthy as I am now, but to pretend it doesn't matter is. Is a very weird, just mental gymnastic, like, yoga pose.

So many people do it right, especially the super crunchy granola type of individuals out there. They take such good care of themselves in various aspects, but they're not looking after their skin. And in fact, when they're using products that they think are clean, they actually don't realize that some of the ingredients are actually full of rancid oils.

So what we're talking about here, just to be really clear, is we're talking about not makeup and stuff like that, but we're talking about having healthy skin as an organ, which affects what you could call beauty or handsomeness or attractiveness or the glow or whatever. So what I'm suggesting, and I think what you're saying here is let's have healthy skin. But most of what people do for their skin is bad for their biology. From what I've seen. And I mean, even in my fertility book, like 10 or 12 years ago, I'm like, if you can't eat it, you probably shouldn't put it on your skin because, you know, there's. There's stuff in a lot of skincare products that honestly, I wouldn't rub on top of my dog.

And those formulations change so often.

Oh, talk about this. Because, like, you had it checked out last quarter and it was really safe. And then what are companies doing now?

Yeah, it's really interesting because I connect with people. I love to see what products they're using and actually looking at the ingredients of every single product they use. So I have my Bachelor's of Science in Nursing, then I have my Gen Chem, Organic Chem, and Biochem. So I love to have my finger on the pulse of some of the trends. Get this. I have seen ingredients, including BPA and even tin as ingredients in skincare that are being marketed. They're adding tin, they're adding tin.

Tin is a toxic metal.

Yeah. As well as I've even seen DNA. And these are in some of the biggest brands that are marketed to younger individuals. But, like, what DNA is that?

I'm not a vegan.

Is it an animal? Oh, definitely not a vegan.

I know that was a joke. But even vegans eat plant DNA. And like, humans, healthy humans eat animal and plant DNA.

So I'm also Seeing more canola oil.

Okay, so canola oil. But when someone says there's DNA in.

There, I was like, well, what is it?

There's DNA floating in the air in this room that's not mine, because you're in here too. And, like, we'll just have to deal with that.

Yeah, yeah. It's interesting to see the sh. So what happens is I noticed that these big skin companies that previously were actually pretty good. However, they were somewhat clean, but actually not providing the results and performance that people are. Are really seeking. And then the formulation shift. And I've seen that quite a bit over the last six months to a year. And I think it's just, you know, companies, they get bought, they're wanting to increase their margins. And actually, every quarter, I go through every single ingredient, every single product that I offer, and most people don't do that.

Oh, when you say products you offer, these are other brands that you just carry on your store.

Yeah, I work with a number of.

You can have a shout out on. On the podcast. What's your URL for your store?

Theschoolofradiance.com.

Cool. All right. And so you go through and you review because the ingredients change.

Because I care.

Well, yeah. And sometimes they're not disclosed. Like, one of the companies that I'm well known for working for, like, I haven't been able to review anything other than what's printed on. On the labels. And I know the labels have changed, but I have no idea what's going on. Yeah, so it gets. It gets like that with food companies too. You know, it's really good this quarter, and then next quarter you start getting highs from it. And like, oh, look, they added more protein in the form of some Latin words. And you look it up and they're putting, like, locusts in there, like actual bugs, because it raised the protein count. But they don't tell you on the front label. So skin care is even worse because it's not regulated, which is good, because if they regulated it, you could only put gasoline on your skin.

It is all about being a more conscious consumer. And I know that's what this community is all about. So it's not just about your skincare. It's about your hair care. It's about your personal care products, what you're washing your clothes with, what you're washing your dishes with, what you're cleaning your home with. So the angle about being a biohacker isn't just about buying all this technology. It really is about making good decisions. As often as you can to reduce that oxidative stress status.

Okay. You convinced me, and I think, our listeners, that if you take care of your biology using core biohacking techniques like cold plunges, EMF block. Yeah.

We'll all ask what my basic recommendations are too.

Okay, well, those are. I think we talked about each of those, didn't we? Already?

We missed a couple.

Okay, tell me the other ones that we didn't talk about that are just, like, foundational to be a healthy human, which give you healthy skin.

It really comes down to purification.

Okay, master list. Give me the bullet points.

Air, water, lighting, electromagnetics to regular detoxing. So with your air, making sure that your air is purified in your main living area to reduce VOCs when you're cooking as well as while you're sleeping. And I. Yes, I pulled the air purifier from the main living area last night into my room because I noticed that the air quality here is a little different than what I'm used to. A little bit more pollen.

Oh, there's a ton of pollen here.

And I noticed it in my eyes as I was washing my skin. So when we're caring for our skin, doing our cleansing, actually touching your skin, doing lymphatic drain actually really helped me last night to mitigate that as well as some other things. But air purification is so key. I even have it in my car too.

Oh, you put an air purifier and.

Travel with an air purifier.

And so I have two spare guest bedrooms. Rachel stayed over, and I didn't know it, but apparently you stole the air filter from, like, the media room, which is great. That was the one bedroom that doesn't have an air filter. Because right now, my studio has one slash, office. My bedroom has a whole house. 1. The kitchen has one. Like, every room has a large air filter, probably enough to filter four times the house that I have. Because you feel so much better.

Absolutely. And your skin looks better too, and you sleep better.

Right.

So purifying your air is super key. The next thing is water. Drinking purified water. So many things that we can do with water. We can structure it, we could remineralize it, we can add different nutrients to it. Bathing and consuming purified water is super key. However, there are various different levels of water purification. So there are some readers that. That we nerded out about last night that I was able to share with you as well. So purified water with what you're consuming, what you're bathing in will make a big difference. Lighting is really key. So one of the things I love about here is you've swapped out all of your LED lights. Well, with the exception of one or two.

I missed two. Yeah.

And this is something I do too as well. So it's about having as much control as you can in your environment so that when you go in the world, you can handle a little bit more oxidative stress. And then when you're home, when you're sleeping, you're spending more time recovering because you're in a more purified environment, changing.

The environment around you and inside of you, so you have more control of your own biology.

Kind of what biohacking is, right?

Yeah, but, but it, it's neat because you're an aesthetic nurse. So you're looking at this through the lens of skin health.

Yep, that's my angle.

Radiance and of course how it looks. But it's, it's not just how it looks, it's actually how healthy it is as an organ in the body and validating the core biohacking technologies, saying, look, no, they actually do work, but you.

Have to stick with the core ones for purification.

Yeah. In other words, if you slather some expensive stuff on your face, but you have rancid oils and bad air and bad water, this stuff isn't going to work.

You're wasting your time and money. Same with even investing in rejuvenation. So in my last paper, the whole intention of it was to obviously support the biohacking community, to understand which biohacks are going to best support the skin, in my opinion, through reducing oxidative stress. Basically purification at its finest. And also disrupting the aesthetics, cosmetic dermatology, plastic surgery industry, a little bit to get them up to where functional practitioners are also running. Because I noticed when I did this, when I first met you, 20, I think it was like we first met in 2012, 2013. I started to employ biohacking. I was in two car crashes, thank goodness. I had been looking after myself to support recovery. So it's always being ready to always be radiant. So the biohacking, when you reduce your oxidative stress status, you're going to be better able to manage stress. And stress is a sign of being alive, right? Absolutely.

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Their face okay, one of the dumbest things, let me think. So the first dumbest thing is just using bar soap and water. I there's so many people where guys just don't care. And I tell you, I've done husband, wife, Faceless Dave. And the quality of the skin from the husband and the wife is drastically different. If I do a facelift on a woman who's the same age as her husband, that facelift is going to last literally twice as long result wise as the guy.

She has estrogen. We don't have estrogen to have soft fluffy skin for men.

So that seems like the quality of the collagen in the skin as well. And it's just the fact that if you take care of your skin, your skin is going to be healthier and it's going to be tighter and that collagen is going to be less denatured and tighter and the quality of that skin is going to definitely give you the longevity of your result.

I have it on good authority that the bar of soap forgets it was by your butt by the time it gets to your face. So it's okay.

I suppose you could be moving bacteria from down there to your face too, but that I've not seen.

Oh no, the soap forgets. So there's, there's no embarrassment or anything like that. I mean, okay, so no bar of soap on your face, by the way. I, I even I, I think I told Trevor, our mutual friend that one time and I thought she was going to come across the table and choke me. Like it evokes this violent thing. And at the time I might have kind of done that sometimes.

But what guy has it?

I use proper cleanser and all that crap. Now mostly because my team yelled at me to make my face look all nice. So I take better care of my skin and it works. It makes a huge difference. And people are saying, Dave, you look so much better. Like I got a haircut and I washed my face. So there you go.

The second thing I would say is guys will be too aggressive with their skin, you know, so they scrub their skin too much. You've got acne. And they over wash their face. They use alcohol based toners and astringents. One thing that we have realized is that our skin contains a microbiome just like our gut. And that microbiome that there's trillions of bacteria living on the surface of your skin as well. And we are just learning just how important they are, you know, are they important as your gut microbiome to your overall health? We don't know. I mean, I'd say probably not, but we don't know. But we do know that that's there. And when we do, when we're overly aggressive with skin care, you know, scrubbing our face too much, you know, I know guys who use pumice soap on their face, for God's sakes, then you can really disrupt that microbiome. And those bacteria, like the bacteria in your gut, are super important for keeping that skin nice and healthy. So that would be the second thing I think that guys do that definitely will ruin their skin.

Okay, I had a problem with that. I had one of those clarisonic brushes a while ago and I have like a patch of rosacea here that I've mostly ipled off just from over. It kind of felt nice to my brain. Like my pores were so smooth and dewy and what? I don't know. But I don't use that much anymore, so. Because over. So there's over exfoliating, washing with your butt soap. And what's the third one?

Third one would be not protecting your skin from skin cancer. Now this is something I know that, you know, this can be. We may be differ on sunscreen, you and I may. And that's okay. I'll just tell you where I'm coming from. You know, I'm a board certified plastic surgeon. I have seen people come into my office, they say, hey, I've got this little dot on my nose. And they go to see a dermatologist, they get most surgery, then they come back to see me afterwards and half their nostril is gone or part of their eyelid is gone, their eyelids pull down afterwards. And so, yes, you know, I've got dermatology friends of mine who they put on sunscreen and then sit in a basement all day and they still put their sunscreen on. I'm not that type. I do believe that there is a lot of benefit to getting sun, especially early in the morning, you know, circadian rhythms, a lot of stuff that, you know, you have been a big fan of. And I think that there's therapeutic benefits of the sun too. You know, I mean, I live in Michigan and gosh darn it, every February I gotta get out of here and go down south into the Caribbean and we get some sun. But at the same time we also, you know, I have seen the horrible complications of skin cancer. And I do believe it's important to protect your skin, whether you do it physically, whether you do it with a mineral based sunblock, whatever you need to do. In general, I think that there's a happy medium there. You know, I know there's some people. I have a friend of mine who, you know, I did his podcast, he's like, hey, I put lard on my skin. That's all I put on my skin. And I'm like, ah, not a big fan of that. And then I got dermatology friends where, like I said, they'll slather on sunscreen if they're gonna be inside all day. I think that there's a happy medium there where we can protect our skin yet still get the benefits of the sun at the same time.

There's definitely some, some serious biohacking benefits to sunshine without sunscreen. And collagen thickness increases with a small amount of sun exposure, but a large amount damages stuff. So there's probably a healthy dose. But it seems like most of the sunscreens you can buy have a warning label that says, warning, this product can cause cancer. So how do you get around that?

I question some of those. I mean, for me, the way I look at it is there's two. So, you know, when you look at sunscreen, you've got chemical and you've got physical sun sunblock. So chemical sunscreens are absorbed into your skin when the sun hits your, the rays hit your skin, there's a chemical reaction that will neutralize basically those effects. And yes, there's a question of whether that may create some free radicals during that. In that process. There are certain chemical sunscreens that I'm not a fan of. Oxybenzone and octinoxate are believed to be hormone disruptors. They're also believed to potentially disrupt the coral reefs. And so I recommend people avoid those. But there are other sunscreens like Megazoral Excel, like Avobenzone, and the physical sun blocks like zinc oxide and titanium dioxide, that I do believe in general, are safe. And once again, I am completely understanding that, that there is, I think, a therapeutic benefit to the sun. It's trying to, once again, reach a happy medium there. Because once again, you know, I am afraid for one of my favorite actors, Hugh Jackman. I think he is the most talented person in Hollywood. And he has had multiple skin cancers taken off his face at some point, hopefully not, but at some point, one of those may be on his eyelid or his nose or somewhere that could permanently disfigure him. My favorite singer of all time, Jimmy Buffett, recently died from skin cancer. So I'm very well aware of the dangers of it, and I really believe that we have a happy medium there somewhere where you can get the benefit of it, yet not necessarily get the potential harmful. Harmfulness of it, too.

Sunburns are bad, no matter what. That we can all agree on.

And. And that's free radicals and inflammation, you know, that will damage your skin from both of those.

One of the things I've noticed over the past 12 years, I don't eat any omega 6 fats other than if they're found in beef or. Or something. So nothing canola, nothing soy, nothing safflower like grape seed. Even avocado oil? Nope. Maybe a tablespoon of olive oil on. On some days. And that means my cell membranes, especially in my skin, are saturated. It's really hard for me to get sunburned. It's like I have natural suntan. And this is something that I knew, I first noticed actually 15 years ago from cutting Omega 6s, and I just found a study. It popped across my desk this morning. Not in preparation for this, just randomly. And it was showing that consumption of omega 6 fats inhibits melanocytes, which are the things that give you a tan in response to sun. So it. It feels to me like there's a nutritional component that also makes you more susceptible to the sun and that people who have healthier cells probably handle sunlight and maybe benefit more than people who, you know, eat corn dogs and live indoors all the time and come out for 20 minutes to get sunburned. So it's very nuanced, which is why I like your book, actually, because you're going through and you're making things as simple as you can. What are the three dumbest things that women do to their skin.

I think number one, if from what I see is the exact opposite of what guys do, they over treat their skin. So I get people who call me or who message me or patients of mine who say, you know, my skin is so inflamed, I'm breaking out and stuff, what should I apply onto my skin to make it better? And the first thing I tell them is what are you putting is and what are you putting on your skin? And they give me a list of all these products and the first thing I tell them is, look, get off of all the products first and go back to the basics. You know, go back to cleansing, go back to using an antioxidant serum every morning and then really limiting to, that's all you do in the morning, at night, apply cleanser. If you want to apply a, an anti aging cream like a Bakuchiol or retinol, then feel free to do that. But get rid of all this other stuff. Get rid of the fragrances and you know, any of these products that are filled with fragrances, you know, look at what are the ingredients of these products. Because most likely the reason why you're inflamed could be that you're using way too many products on your skin.

Yeah.

And so that's one of the things I recommend in my book is, hey, look, let's get to the absolute basics. You don't necessarily need certain things like toners. You know, you don't need to apply a moisturizer to your skin. You know, if you've got oily skin, then why are you applying a moisturizer over it? You don't need to, you've got natural moisturizer. And so it's really getting with those basics a lot of times. And then we do that and then people find that their skin looks better afterwards because they have been actually over treating it and putting on unnecessary products and chemicals and fragrances that would just irritate their skin.

Okay? So number one, too many products with too many weird chemicals and especially fragrances. If you can smell your skincare stuff, it doesn't have actual essential oils in it, then it's probably the wrong stuff.

Even essential oils can be irritating to the skin. And so there's some people who think, oh well, they're just essential oils. And I tell them, look, they can be irritating as well. And when you have other fragrances, you know, the problem is, is you don't know what's in those fragrance. When they say fragrance, that could be basically a company's proprietary information. They don't have to share that with you. And so that's something just to keep in mind. Ideally, when you're looking at skincare, you know, some people think, well, natural essential oils, let's just put essential oils in skincare. But that can also be irritating too. So just go fragrance free. That's usually going to be your best bet. So the number two thing I would say is relying too much on procedures and thinking that too much, you know, thinking that a little is a. Is. Is a good thing. So a lot is an even better thing. And that's what we see all the time. Whether you're dealing with Botox, whether you're dealing with injectable fillers. I mean, you know, all these people with pillow faces out in Hollywood, you know, once again, I wrote one of these seminal papers on 3D aging and the fact that we want to add volume, but the amounts of volume people are adding now, it's just absolutely insane. And it's making people look just not like real people. So that would be the second thing is actually overdoing the procedures that you think are going to make you look younger. And in the end, you know, there are people who are actors and actresses in Hollywood who are in their 20s, and they look like somebody who's 50 trying to look like they're 20 because they've had so much work done.

Wow. Okay. So overdoing work and then overdoing cleansing. And the third dumbest thing, I think.

The third dumbest thing is not paying attention to your diet. You know, one of the big things that people don't realize is that the quality of your diet profoundly affects the quality of your skin. And there are studies that are being done showing that the health of your gut can really impact the health of your skin. And it's the gut skin, skin axis that we are just learning more and more about. So, for example, there are skin conditions like you mentioned, like rosacea, eczema and acne that have definitely an origin a lot of times in the quality and the health of the gut. So doing something very simple like eating fermented foods, taking a daily probiotic, can actually make huge impacts on your skin. You know, there's so many people who go through life thinking that, oh, well, I can eat fast food, I can eat, you know, all this sugar, but if as long as I use my skincare process, I'm going to look young. And that just is not the case. You know, the way I describe it really is that that's, you know, the foundation of youth and anti aging is going to be what you put in your mouth.

Does under eating affect women's skin?

I think it does, you know and like you, I'm a big fan of intermittent fasting and I was definitely influenced by your fastest way book. But at the same time I do think that the problem with, with fasting is are you going to get enough protein so under eating for saying that.

It'S such a big concern.

So, so that's the thing, you know, when you're trying, when especially as women get older and especially as they go through menopause, you know, protein is so, so important and eating sufficient protein so you know, you definitely. The benefits of intermittent fasting, you know, I think are huge. You know, you really with hormesis, with autophagy and the fact that that can really help with your skin. But at the same time collagen is a protein and you need to get enough protein in order to support the collagen. I think that's so, so important. And the problem is can you get enough if you're intermittent fasting every day? So in my book what I start with people, we have a 21 day jump start and for first week we don't have them intermittent fast at all. And the weeks two and three, we have them intermittent fast but just two days out of the week to kind of start them up. And that way they're still eating a lot of protein for the rest of the time and then focusing really when they intermittent fast and they refeed actually on foods that are actually going to help promote autophagy as well.

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