Dr. Anthony Youn, a plastic surgeon, explains three skincare mistakes men make: using bar soap on the face strips natural oils and worsens collagen quality, over-aggressive cleansing disrupts the skin's microbiome, and skipping sun protection leads to skin cancer risk. He recommends gentler routines that balance UV protection with sunlight's benefits.
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'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.
We don't have estrogen to have soft, fluffy skin for men. So that seems like it's 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 forget. So there's, there's no embarrassment or anything like that. I mean, okay, so no bar of soap on your face. 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. Mickey, 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, 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.
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. And 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 and say, hey, I've got this little dot on my nose and. And they go to see a dermatologist, they get Mohs 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 got to 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 going to 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.
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