Jasmina Aganovic on Probiotics for the Skin Microbiome

This episode is brought to you by Nourish Me Organics. Proud stockers of Mother Dirt Probiotic skincare. Head to www.nourishmeorganics.com and use the code word podcast at checkout for 10% off your order.

Hey, guys, cribbing govender from the Gut Health Gurus podcast. I'm a food scientist, and my colleague here, James Shadorek, is all things psychology. He's a psychologist, and I'm so exc. Today, guys, we have an amazing guest. We have the founder and president of Mother Dirt, Yasmina Aganovic. Did I get your name right? Yasmina?

So that's technically the way that you're supposed to pronounce it. I go by Jasmina, though here in the States, it's Americanized, if you will. Right.

I just spent a little bit of time in Europe, so I'm kind of getting accustomed to the European pronunciations and whatnot. So, first of all, Jasmina, I'm hugely appreciative for you taking the time to actually come and speak to us, because I know you must be incredibly busy because Mother Dirt is such an incredible brand and it's kicking goals. I'm 100% sure about that. So huge, huge. Thank you.

Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it and certainly appreciate the interest and support in the work that we're doing.

Yeah. So just to set the scene for our audience, I always like to ask the question and get it from the horse's mouth, for want of a better word. Who is Jasmina Agunovich?

Okay, sure. So I am a chemical and biological engineer who always had an ingrained interest in the personal care industry. So I took my background and started pursuing a career mostly in the naturals category, actually, when it was very early and nascent and personal care and skincare brands were still trying to figure out really what natural meant. So that was really where I started off my career, both at kind of the luxury category for skincare as well as in hair care. And one of the passions that I realized I had and the things that I enjoyed to do was really bridging the gap between typically complex but important messages and figuring out how to make that resonate with a broader audience. So fast forward to about four, almost five years ago now. I was connected with a group of scientists also from mit, including one chemical engineer who started talking about bacteria, and this bacteria that potentially used to exist on our skin and has been removed. And this crazy idea of whether or not people like you and I would be Interested in actually putting bacteria back on our skin versus taking it off. And we became very excited about this concept because not only did we believe that a product like this could be truly innovative, but we fundamentally believed that our technology and our approach was important to public health and was an important shift for consumers in general. And I'm sure we'll talk a lot about that. But that's hopefully a little bit of a background and an arc to kind of who I am and what I do in a nutshell.

Just for my own interest, I'm really interested in how that conversation sort of transpired between I get the names right, Jamie Hayward and David Whitlock. So how did you meet these guys? They set the scene for the audience about what that conversation sounded like.

Oh, yeah. Well. So part of the story that I have to tell, which I think is amazing, it all happens in stages over a very long period of time. So the first part of this was David Whitlock, who was on a date with a woman probably close to 17, 18 years ago now. And he happened to be a horseback rider. And David, who is very smart and prides himself, I think, in knowing a lot, she playfully challenged him by saying, okay, if you're so smart, tell me why my horses roll in the dirt every March. And David initially thought it must be because of insects. And she said, nope, the insects are not around in March. That's not it. And he started to think about it a little bit more and realized that there was this pattern of all mammals essentially having an ingrained ritual of rolling in the dirt. So if you have pets, a dog or a cat, you've certainly seen them do this. Chickens roll in the dirt as well. And I could go through example after example, but he thought that this was a really interesting observation because if mammals have evolved that need over thousands of years, it must be very important to their survival. And so he started to look for the links between dirt and mammalian skin. And this is what led him to the bacteria that we do our research on, ammonia oxidizing bacteria, which we'll talk about. And he's the one that started culturing it initially and then trying to get people on board, which is how Jamie Haywood came into the picture. And so the story goes that David had one of his early. We jokingly called it like a brew. One of his early brews of the bug in, like, a water bottle covered with tinfoil, because the idea was that maybe it was photosensitive, which it's not, but he brought this in like a water bottle covered in tinfoil to Jamie. And he's talking to Jamie about how this bacteria is so important and that we've lost it. And most people, I think, would look at this and say, this is absolutely nuts and absolutely crazy. But not Jamie. To his credit, he thought that there was something really interesting here. And Jamie, I would say, has a knack for things that are abrasive and provocative. He's able to sort of see through it in the way that it is. And so this is how Jamie came into the picture. And then the first thing that they did was they put some of David's initial hypotheses within a lab setting just to better understand the bacteria. Is it doing what David thinks it's doing? And so on and so forth. And then I became involved with the team. Jamie had heard about this woman that, like, was a scientist but really enjoyed consumer products, and he didn't know many other people who had ever done that. And he thought that it was very interesting. And he knew that he needed a scientist to sort of be brought into the fold, but to be able to respect trul the science and the innovation, but also understand how something like that could be brought to market. So that's how that initial kind of crew or story of people came into the picture.

That's an amazing origin story, such an entertaining way to put it. And what I think is why the. I guess the skin microbiome really resonates with us is because we're all about gut health pretty much, but often we find that the skin is reflective of what's happening in the gut. Is that something you're experiencing as well?

I would rephrase it, actually. So I think that that statement is absolutely true. I think if we take it up to another level, we're learning that everything is much more interconnected than we originally believed. Right. And what you are mentioning is just one manifestation of the fact that everything is interconnected. And it's a very. It's going to be very interesting to see how that point of view translates into the medical community that is traditionally more siloed? Right. And so what is going to change once we are able to take a pill that helps improve our gut, that potentially improves our skin? Do you go to a gastroenterologist or do you go to a dermatologist? Or what if we apply something topically that impacts our heart? Do you go to a dermatologist or do you go to a cardiologist, or what do you do? So it'll be very interesting to see how the near future is affected by this shift in an understanding of how interconnected things are. And of course, the microbiome, starting with the gut, really drove things in that direction, really started challenging those points of view.

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I think there's so much interconnection between all the different systems in our own body, but then it's the environmental factors, it's the sunlight, the nature. So it's all this interconnected web. We're not just like a single organism. We're part of this ecosystem that we call and the whole Milky Way, per se, because you've got the sun as well.

And remember, this might go down a weird path, but we evolved from nature. It's really important to not forget that we tend to view ourselves as separate from. But, you know, we evolved from nature. You know, that was part. That is our origin story. And so to think that we have no tie or reliance to it is a fallacy. And I don't, in my heart of hearts, believe that people think that there's no connection to nature, but we forget it all too often and we act as if we don't need it all too often. So it's important to remember for sure.

Absolutely. So just to set the, I guess, the definition for the audience, if you could quickly describe what is the skin microbiome?

The skin microbiome is all of the microorganisms that exist on the surface of your skin. So it's what exists on your epidermis, it's what exists in your pores. And for some people, it is viewed as an entirely new layer to how we look at the skin. So to give you a quick visual, everyone has probably seen, whether at the dermatologist or in a textbook at some point in time, those drawings of all of the different layers of the skin. You have your epidermis, you have your dermis, you have where the collagen lives, you have the pores, the hair follicle. And so all of that, of course, is staying the same. The microbiome is existing on top of and within your pores, and probably those first few layers of skin cells. And it's a combination of many different types of bacteria, fungi and viruses actually that exist for a multitude of reasons that we probably don't know yet, but we know that they're pretty important. And there's a lot of research going into understanding how that invisible layer that we didn't know about until very recently potentially talks to the immune system, helps talk to skin cells, and also helps interact with the environment that Your skin comes into contact with.

Absolutely. And the skin is a huge organ in the body and hugely affected by the external environment. Now, how does these, I guess, these manifestations of disease, for want of a better word, something like acne or eczema, how does that develop?

There are a lot of different potential answers to that question with any of those diseases as we understand them now. And I'll also caveat it by saying that acne and eczema are not our area of expertise. But putting the lens of the micro microbiome on an answer to that question, a lot of people are very excited about it because it potentially presents a new pathway to understand that disease. So acne and eczema are both rooted in inflammation, and that's pretty much where their commonality stops. The root causes for both of these diseases are multifactorial, which has made it really difficult for us to quote, unquote, cure those diseases. The most interesting thing for diseases like acne and eczema is their numbers actually how they are increasing. And so this has become of increased interest to a lot of scientists and a lot of people who are in the microbiome space because there is this irony of the fact that we're cleaner than ever and we have more products than ever, we've created more solutions than ever. And yet the rates of these inflammatory skin diseases are increasing and they're occurring earlier and earlier. So pediatric eczema is something that has been on the rise for the last 30 years as an example, and oddly it tracks with asthma. So there's a correlation and a pattern with other diseases as the microbiome relates to these. We don't exactly know. But this idea of a disbalance is something that's start to come about. And there is an analogy that I'll give that came as a result of some research that was going on that is going on at UPenn where they talk about the skin microbiome potentially being like the eyes and ears to the immune system in some way. And so the analogy that I'll give is think of all the different bacteria and viruses as different types of sensors. They exist to see and to hear what's going on in your outside world so that it can protect your body, that is its evolved need. With sterilization over cleansing, exposure to harsh chemistry, as well as lack of interaction with the outdoors, we slowly start to remove certain types of sensors, eyes and ears. You're equivalently like blinding and deafening these sensors. You're inhibiting their ability to function to their true ability. And eventually, over a certain period of time, after a lifetime of doing this, or even just a decade, you know you're born and you immediately are taken over to the bin and you are washed. So it starts right away on day zero. So even after six, 10 years, you've already been exposed to a lot. You've probably blinded and deafened this eye ear sensor system quite significantly. And what that potentially does to your body, if it can't see and it can't hear and all it wants to do is protect you, it goes into fight mode. But it doesn't know what it's fighting and it doesn't know if there's a reason to be fighting. But that fighting is essentially inflammation. Your body is having an inflammatory response in an effort to try and protect you as much as possible because it doesn't know what's happening in the outside world. So that all goes back again to just a disbalance and an impairment of this ecosystem that potentially exists for a very important purpose. But there's a whole other element of questions of what do we do to restore it? What do we do to make sure that it's functioning properly and will that actually impact or cure or change some of what we're seeing with these diseases?

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I mean, it's such a complex, complex system and yeah, we're only really beginning to scratch the surface, aren't we? It's staggering and it's exciting to see where the science is going to head. I just wanted to go a little bit sideways and talk about. I read some and correct me if I'm wrong, I read somewhere in an article that you did have a particular struggle with, with skin. And I think, yeah, you run a company all about skin health, so it's funny, transpired that way. But if you're comfortable in sharing, would you mind letting the audience know about, you know, their struggles in your life, set the time when was happening and what are some of the things that at the time were apparent?

Sure, sure. You know, we all human beings are a combination of all of the different experiences that they've had throughout their whole life and it's rarely linear. Right. So I ended up at a place that seems very logical, but it definitely was not a very linear path for me. So the story that you're referring to had to do with my teenage years. So like so many teenagers, and I think the statistic is something like 80 million Americans will struggle with acne at some point in their life. So as a teenager, I Had acne. And what's so interesting about this is putting on the hat of where I sit right now. And looking back to when I was a teenager, I genuinely don't remember washing my face prior to teen years. And I had great skin. I just never actually thought about the need to wash my face. And then my friends started using facial products and it was the cool thing to do. And I started to do it not because I needed to or had to, but because my friends were doing it and it was a cool thing to do. And so despite the fact that my skin was perfectly fine, I never noticed if it was oily or dry or anything. I never applied a single product to it other than water. And then all of a sudden I started using all of these different types of products because it was the cool thing to do. And then, I'm not saying that this is the cause of it, but I do think that it was very interesting that despite my having a skincare routine, that I ended up developing acne, which ended up being a ten plus year ordeal for me. And all of a sudden you start using different types of products. And I for sure can say that I've tried everything from many courses of antibiotics to benzoyl peroxide, to topical antibiotics, to salicylic acid, to peels, to getting regular facials to all of that. And still to this day I have scarring left from it because it is something that lasts for such a long time. And you know, that was something that subsided as I left, as I left college and now as an adult, I don't really struggle with it anymore, but rooted in that was this ingrained curiosity and lack of understanding of why this was happening to me when I really and truly felt like I was doing all of the things that were best practices, right? So I went the dermatologist path, I went the DIY path, making things in my own kitchen. I went the natural products path. I went with like old wives tales like what my grandmother would tell me to do. I mean, I had literally tried everything and I didn't understand changes in my diet. I mean, the list goes on and on. And I didn't understand why despite all of these best practices and all of these different approaches, that it ultimately seemed like it was time and less is more that helped me kind of grow out of it. And now as I look back, I wish I had kind of known what I know now. I think now when I think about all of the different types of products that I used and what I subjected my skin to, I cringe a little bit. I wish I would have sort of like left my skin alone more than I did. And it at least triggered a curiosity in ingredients and chemistry and a general awareness of this as a topic and like the emotional and psychological journey that also goes along with it. And so it's interesting that I ended up where I did. But I definitely, as I was talking to Jamie and David in the early, early days, you know, as before mother dirt was even like, conceptualized fully, there was definitely a part of me that was like, this is so crazy. And yet it makes perfect sense. And not saying obviously that like, mother dirt is the cure to acne to any regard, but bacteria on the skin presents potentially an explanation as to why previous approaches haven't worked for everyone. And it also presents an entirely new approach that we can pursue both from a clinical standpoint and also from a cosmetic standpoint. And that's what was very exciting to me about it.

Absolutely. I really appreciate you being vulnerable and sharing it because I know with skin issues, it can affect the self confidence and it's a huge issue for lots of people across the world.

Yes.

I just wanted to dig in a little bit deeper there. So you mentioned you tried some skincare products. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm certainly not an expert in the beauty world, but do a lot of these products contain antibiotics? Would that be fair to say?

So there are topical antibiotics for things like acne. However, most products obviously do not contain antibiotics. What they do contain, as a different way of stating it, is something that is antibacterial. So many personal care products contain preservatives which in and of themselves are antibacterial. And when we look at how the personal care industry evolved, it evolved. It started to evolve, innovate rapidly.

And.

It coincided with the germ theory of disease. Right. This idea that all bacteria are bad. And that was propagated because the bacteria that we did know of were bad. Right. So the data points that we had, even though we didn't understand that those were just teeny, tiny data points, the results of them were very obvious. Bacteria and like, you died. Right. It was extremely clear. But what we didn't see were all of the invisible, silent workers that were doing the good job behind the scenes, letting life go on basically as it needed to. And so the cosmetic industry started to innovate rapidly after this establishment of the germ theory of disease. And as a result, and one of the things that's been really interesting for us as a company, one of the core pillars of the cosmetic industry is that bacteria is bad. So preservatives are put in every single product because you don't want bacteria to grow in it. There's a strong positive to it. But also, what does that mean as it relates to your skin microbiome? Right. Exposure to all of these products over the course of a lifetime, even at small amounts, what does that mean? And then of course, there are products that are intended very purposefully to kill bacteria. So I'll use acne as an example. Many of the ingredients used in over the counter acne products are intended to kill acne causing bacteria. And whole other topic, but we've learned a lot more about actually not all types of P acne cause acne. There's lots of different types of forms of it. Some of it can cause acne, others can't. But it still doesn't even explain the full incidence of why some people have acne and others don't. But yes, short answer to your question is there is this fundamental principle in the industry that bacteria is bad and it is meant to be avoided and that in order to be clean you need to kill bacteria. And if you kill bacteria, you will be healthy. And if you're healthy, you will look beautiful. That's sort of the. And that hasn't flowed in the way that we've expected. We've killed bacteria to be clean so that we can be healthy. And we think we're clean, but we're not really healthy. And our skin has more issues than it did before, so we don't feel like we look beautiful or look healthy. And so it's this moment of reckoning, I think, where people are wondering, what did we miss? What piece of information was not there that is here.

Now, just to clarify for the audience, P acne you mentioned, is that a specific type of bacteria that's linked to acne?

Yes, it's a type of bacteria that at one point was viewed to be the reason we have acne. When P acne was discovered, it was tied to the cause of acne. And then came a rush of antibacterial products to kill P acne, assuming if you killed P acne, you would no longer have acne. But as we started to discover the microbiome, there was this really interesting thing that we realized, which was that most people have P acne on their skin and yet some of them have perfect skin and others have what we associate with the visual signs of acne. And so it posed this question of why is that? And we don't fully know the answer to that, but a few hypotheses out there are that there are lots of different strains and forms of P. Acne, some of which cause acne and others which don't. And also that bacteria that are not P. Acne probably play a big role in whether or not P. Acne becomes problematic or stays pretty dormant. So you start to talk about the environment and how the rest of the ecosystem is behaving and acting. And then of course, there's confluence of other environmental and lifestyle factors that probably comes into effect here too.

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. It's almost that. It's almost those little tribes that form on the skin to protect the skin and then if one gets out of balance, potentially you get an issue with something like acne.

Yeah. It's so easy to anthropomorphize bacteria in your skin microbiome and turn them into little characters and like little worlds and. And you know, I don't know if you see this through the customers that use our product, they become like a little bit defensive of their microbiome. They talk about it as if it's a person and like a pet or something strange like that, which is really lovely and amazing and also unique. Right. To start to think of your body in that different of a way.

Totally couldn't agree more. These are essentially organs in the body. So whether it's the gut microbiome or the skin microbiome, it's an ever changing organ, which is something pretty special, I think.

Yeah, it is.

We do jump a bit in this podcast, so we'll go a little bit sideways again. And I wanted to ask you the question, has David Whitlock taken the shower?

No, although I haven't spoken to him in a little bit. His birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks here, so I haven't spoken to him in maybe a month or so. He works out of a different office here in Cambridge. But he has not. He has not. And people, you know, it's funny, people always ask that question because. And I understand why they do. It is such an interesting data point that really forces us to think about how much of our hygiene habits are required. Right. It challenges what we have been told and marketed to and all of that. You know, David hasn't showered in, you know, 14, 15 years. Lost count, as he would say. But he does not smell.

I was gonna ask you that.

Yeah, no, he doesn't. And you know, I even did a radio show with David. We went to the local NPR station here in Boston. Wgbh and it was the two of us and one of the radio hosts, Jim Braude, who's really awesome. He did an on air live smell test with David and confirmed that he does not smell. But you know, it does really force us to think about why we do certain things and where our habits and routines come from and how they start. You know, I'll take something like deodorant. There are a lot of research papers that have come out indicating that we don't actually need deodorant. At least not 100% of human beings need deodorant. And yet at some point, probably puberty, we are instilled with this like intense fear that we will lose all of our friends if we smell bad for one day. And there starts a lifetime long relationship of deodorant and this intense fear of body odor, when in reality most people don't have body odor, especially as adults. Right. Once you move past the teenage years. So, you know, there's that and then there's this whole other aspect of these multi step routines which women in particular are told about. And there's one aspect of it that relates to self care and self esteem. And if you engage with these products from a perspective of like self love and this is what makes you feel great, that's a whole other thing. But if you are spending a significant amount of money because that is, you feel like the trick to having great skin is to be rich and to spend like $150 on a product, you know, it's. I would argue that, you know, we, we didn't evolve. Having bad skin is all, I'll say, like do we believe that our natural biology and evolution is one of smelliness, bad skin, inflammatory disorders? That's not. We never, we never would have reproduced, I'll put it that way, and made it as far as we did. I think if, you know, things were not great. So.

Exactly. Couldn't agree more. So let's geek out a little bit into I guess the actual, the bacteria itself is. Being a scientist that fascinates me as well. It's something I'm particularly interested in. So correct me if I'm wrong. The particular strain of the ammonia oxidizing bacteria, is that correct?

Correct.

Nitrous ammonias, eutropha.

Yeah, that's right.

Did I say it right? Is that so? You mentioned that it was Jamie that was, I guess hypothesizing this was a normal bacteria that was on the skin that were particularly losing on our bodies, is that.

It was David that was driving that hypothesis. And so the way David landed at that was this connection point between mammalian skin and the soil. And the way that he drew that connection was that he realized that this class of bacteria that's present in soil everywhere or everywhere, that ammonia is being produced in nature, it's ubiquitous. And the only exception to that is modern human skin, where we are constantly producing ammonia through our sweat. And modern humans no longer have this bacteria, however, aboriginal tribes do. So David was the one that was initially propagating this idea based very much so on sort of an anthropological thought process. However, over the last five to eight years, there have been other groups unrelated to the work that we're doing that have taken an interest in aboriginal tribes or tribes that have been untouched by modern living or hygiene or lifestyles that have corroborated this kind of gap of, hey, this class of bacteria existed on their skin, and yet on modern humans it does not.

So I guess the product, Mother Dirt is all about reintroducing this bacteria back on the skin for a benefit for the skin.

Yes. Correct. Yes.

I love your brand, Jasmine. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mother Dirt is an amazing, amazing brand from, I guess, where you started to where the brand is going. So let's go into the products. Let's go into AO Mist, which I'm sure is a big hit. And then all the products that come with it that assist in kind of maintaining this skin biome without being disruptive.

Sure, yeah. I'll talk about them chronologically as they evolved, as our understanding evolved, because that was very much so how we kind of got to where we are now. Everything started with the bacteria. This bacteria would have naturally existed on us. If you think about how we as human beings once used to interact with the outdoors, we talked about how we evolved from nature. We were walking barefoot in the dirt. We were swimming in lakes and rivers and streams. These are all natural homes to this bacteria and would have been natural inoculation mechanisms for it to be on our skin. However, we don't interact with the outdoors nearly as much as we used to, if at all, unfortunately. Nor do little kids. Right. So that's also decreasing as well. And then we've also introduced all of these products into our day to days that are meant to strip the bacteria. And this bacteria especially is extremely sensitive. So just one shower with a basic body wash is going to completely remove it from our skin. So the main goal for us was to figure out, could we bottle this bacteria? So just a pure culture of this bacteria suspended in like a saltwater solution. Could we get it to people's homes and ensure that the bacteria was still alive and doing what it was doing? So there was about a year that went into figuring out the manufacturing, the scale up, the shipping and logistics, and that was the AO plus Mist. And so this product, as I said, has the live culture of this bacteria, which we refer to as the Peacekeeper Bacter. And when you spray it on your skin, so you can use it anywhere, head to toe, what it's doing is it's feeding off that ammonia in your sweat. This is important in and of itself because ammonia has a high ph and a high PH is not good for your skin. It can leave it more prone to other issues. So by removing the ammonia, it's immediately bringing the PH back down to the normal skin levels. And that in and of itself is extremely positive and useful. And then on the other side, the bacteria, after consuming the ammonia, basically converts it into these byproducts that are beneficial for the skin. So they're sort of calming, soothing, and this is where it gets its Peacekeeper reputation from. So it's sort of keeping balance within there. And it's a constant cycle that's running on your skin because it is alive, it has an active metabolism. And so every time you sweat, it starts another cycle and then it keeps going. And it will continue to do that until the bacteria is removed from the skin. And it could be removed through a swim in a chlorine pool, it could be removed through a shower with a harsh body wash or something along those lines. But the AO plus Mist is really intended to sort of restore that to the skin. People use it as a replacement deodorant. So they find that by applying it to the underarm area, about 60% of them can stop using deodorant. People apply it all over their body, just as because they believe it's a healthier way to take care of their skin, or they're trying to cut down on other products. We find that people are able to remove about two products from their routine, or they might have some ongoing skin sensitivity or issue, whether it's oily skin or dry skin. And again, going back to the promoting balance idea, this bacteria helps get them there. So that's our hero product. And the interesting thing that started to happen as people were using this product is they started to cultivate a different awareness for what it means to take care of your skin and how crucial the skin microbiome is to that. And they started asking us for recommendations. So they weren't going to give up soap in the shower, they weren't going to give up shampoo, they weren't going to give up any of these things. And yet they knew that these things were likely going to affect their skin microbiome. So they asked us, do you have recommendations of other brands or products or what I should do? And back in the day we thought that we could just certify other brands so we could find very like gentle or natural brands that we could screen against our bacteria. And what we realized was that preservatives are much more of a problem than we thought they were going to be. But also that modern chemistry is really complex and that our bacteria is much more sensitive than we thought. And so we were not going to be able to just screen them because we didn't really understand how our bacteria interacted with ingredients and cosmetic chemistry. So we started this, what we call now our biome friendly product development platform. And this platform is basically a full on screening process where we have a series of assays that we use to test individual raw materials and formulas for their toxicity to this bacteria, ammonia oxidizing bacteria. And we use our bacteria as a litmus test because it's extremely sensitive. So it's sort of like a canary in a coal mine situation that basically if we can create something that is not toxic or won't affect the bacteria's metabolism is another way of phrasing it, then we can assume that it's not going to destabilize the rest of the ecosystem. So that's the kind of bread and butter of that platform. But we also have to manufacture in a specific way, package in a specific way. Mostly due to the fact that our formulas are unpreserved and the output of that program thus far has been our cleanser. So this is a foaming cleanser that you can use on your face and on your body. We also have a shampoo and we have a moisturizer. And a lot of people ask us why we don't have a conditioner. And the answer is that it is really hard to formulate a conditioner with the standards that we have. So we are, we're working on it. We're gonna have a couple of products launching in the spring of next year, which we're excited about. But that's a little bit about the product line and what our approach is.

Right. So correct me if I'm wrong. Is your product the only one on the market that contains a live probiotic organism? Because there is a lot of products out there with probiotic claims, but I Haven't come across one with an actual live probiotic before.

The technical answer to your question is no. There are two other brands that are doing some interesting work. So S is a brand based out of South Africa that focuses mostly on the spa category. They work with a live Lactobacillus bacteria that they've encapsulated in a specific way and they're doing mostly anti aging work. And then there's another company that, forgive me, I don't understand their technology as well and they haven't shared too, too much. But they also have come up with an encapsulation mechanism that allows them to preserve their bacteria, which should enable them, according to what they're saying, to have live bacteria. And they're called Yun probiotherapy. So they also have live microorganisms in their product. We are the only brand though that has ammonia oxidizing bacteria in our product, the soil based bacteria, and we have the full patent on it. But, but the other thing that I want to add while you're asking that question is one of the things that the industry right now is really trying to work through, which is first, one of the things that's been really interesting to see is the use of the word probiotic when it doesn't always mean that it's alive. And the industry has been talking a lot about standardizing vernacular and vocabulary. And so it will be very interesting to, to see how that evolves over the next few years. The reason the word probiotic is being used the way that it is is an interesting historical question. Because probiotics became popular with the gut and in food, there is a way to put live bacteria in products because we've been doing it forever through cheeses and milk and all of that. And the supply chain for that is already established. And the method of distribution through retail is already established because you have fridges and you have. So that's all set. Trends from food always end up going into skincare, typically. But the skincare industry ran into a challenge which was that you can't have live bacteria in your product because you don't put your skincare in a refrigerator and you have to put preservatives in your product. So the skincare industry like interpreted it in a different way. And what they started doing was like lyophilizing bacteria, which meant like drying it up and putting in powdered, dry, dead bacteria in there. Or they would like break up the bacteria or they would use the actives from the bacteria. So not the actual bacteria, but things that it produces and they would just blanket call this a probiotic. Nothing necessarily bad with doing that. It's just that it's when you, when it's not apples to apples. And I think because so many companies are taking very different approaches as it relates to the skin microbiome, it has become increasingly important to the industry to standardize what these definitions are. But it's also exciting because you see how nascent the field really is and you know, live while we certainly it's important to us to have our bacteria be alive because dead, it can't do the same thing. There are different approaches that can be taken that doesn't necessarily require a live bacteria. So in some cases live is better, but not, I wouldn't say in all though, there's like a lot of work that needs to be done there as well. So it's early days.

Absolutely. This conversation has gone by so fast. We're coming up to time, but if you wouldn't mind, I've got a couple of rapid fire questions to ask you. A lot of them are coming from our consumers as well, our consumer base. Great. The first consumer question is, is diversity the best for the skin microbiome akin to what they're saying about the gut?

The answer is we don't know. And the skin microbiome is not as diverse as people might think. I think the statistic for the amount of diversity that's on your face, for example, is like three different types of bacteria. But is that the best way? We don't know. So there's a lot more questions that need to be answered there. I think a better way of answering the question is it's not just diversity. It's probably the right types of bacteria and the right type of balance. So TBD is the proper answer to.

That question as the science unfolds.

Yeah. Yeah.

So the next question is, when is it the best time to apply, say for instance, your hero product, the AO.

Mist, as the last step in your routine? So during the day go through anything else you might be using, for example an spf or if you wear makeup, apply it after all of that. So think of it as a finishing step to your routine.

Mm. Does any of your products help with wrinkles and scars? Huh?

We have not done studies on either wrinkles or scars, so I cannot say we don't know.

Tbd. And how about children? Is it suitable for children?

We do have a lot of families that are using the product. So again, parents really trying to make sure that their kids aren't exposed to a lot of harsh chemistry. So there's a reason we have family sizes of our cleanser and our shampoo because we do have parents and kids that are using the product.

Great. That's wonderful. And so what does your routine, being at the forefront of the science company in your space, what's your routine look like, Jasmina, when it comes to your skin?

So use the mother dirt cleanser in the morning. I use the moisturizer right after that. And then I apply an after SPF during the day. And then I use an under eye circle concealer because I inherited some fantastic genetics from my family. And then I spray the mist on, I apply a little bit of mascara. And that's pretty much it for me, which for some people out there might sound like a lot, but I was the woman that had the eight step routine in the morning and the 10 step routine in the evening. So for me, the fact that I can pack all of my toiletries into like, this big of a bag has just been life changing for me. And in the evenings, it's literally the same thing, just minus the SPF and the mascara and concealer, obviously. But yeah, it's just the cleanser and then the moisturizer and the mist. I do apply the mist on my whole body. I don't need like a moisturizer on my body. I don't notice that I have dry skin or anything there. The cleanser sometimes I use in the shower. But generally my routine is pretty light and simple. And I will say that I think about my skin very little, which is a meaningful statement in comparison to what my thought process was and the mind share that my skin occupied 10 years ago. So that's just a very liberating feeling.

Absolutely. And just to wrap things up, if there was one thing that a listener could do to improve their skin health, what would that be?

Less is more is what I would say. So start asking the question of why and start to see if you can use a little bit less. That, I think, is the starting point to kind of changing the relationship with the skin and. And how you treat it.

Awesome. And that's a great way to wrap Jasmina. Thank you so much. You're such a busy woman. I was so excited that you agreed to come and talk to us, but I'm eternally grateful for you taking the time to spend with us this morning in Australia and the afternoon in America. So thank you so much.

No problem. I so appreciate it. It's such a lovely time to take out of my day. It's a nice break. And it is inspiring, right? When you're in the thick of it, it's nice to like, actually take a step back and to talk about the origin story and why we do what we do and all of that. It feels good. So thank you.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Jasmina.

Hey guys. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Gut Health Gurus podcast with Jasmia Aganovic. You can find show notes and links@www.podcast.nourishmeorganics.com. if you enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a positive review and 5 stars on iTunes and share our podcast with your friends and family members. If you're interested in the Mother Dirt Skincare range, head to www.nourishment organics.com and search for Mother Dirt. Use the code mother dirt for 10% off today.