LS 28 - The Water Secret to Maintain Hydration at the Cellular Level with Dr. Howard Murad

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Welcome to the Longevity Show, Informing listeners on the important aspects of health, wealth, and happiness to ensure you live life to its fullest. With fascinating interviews with top authors and gurus in the field, along with the latest news in the science and technology of longevity, we're going to reveal expert advice and amazing secrets of living a long, happier life. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman. It is my great pleasure to welcome Dr. Howard Murad to the show. I'm sure you know his name. He is the founder of Murad Skincare, the founder of the Inclusive health movement, author of the Water the Cellular Breakthrough to look and feel 10 years younger, and the new book Conquering Cultural the Ultimate Guide to Anti Aging and Happiness. And I've got to tell you, I the Water Secret just about a month ago, and I was fascinated. That whole approach that Dr. Murad outlined just made so much intuitive sense to me. So I wanted to get him on the show to talk to us firsthand about some of his research. Howard, welcome. How are you?

I'm fine. Thank you for inviting me, Jason. It's an honor to be on your show.

Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you. So, you know, maybe first we'll talk about the Water Secret and then your new book about conquering culture cultural stress. You know, when I read the Water Secret, I've always been a huge fan of water. But, you know, water isn't the only way to get water. Right? You can get it from other sources, and you outline that as you talk about water, rich foods and so forth.

My thing is, eat your water, because think about it. I ask my patients, what's your favorite vegetable? They come out with a cucumber. Cucumber is 97% water. So 3 ounces of cucumbers. 3 ounces of water. But what are you getting in the cucumber that you're not getting in the water? You're not getting all those phytonutrients. You're not getting the roughage. Your body isn't becoming alkaline, resistant to cancer and bone loss. Plus, the water is in the structure, so it's gradually released rather than going right through you. And the only exercise you get is that trip to the bathroom eight or seven times a day.

So why is it important to eat water rather than drink it? Is it more effective when it comes with the fiber in fruits and vegetables? Or is it less effective when you just Drink it out of a glass.

Well, the water is just water. And so you're not getting all of those other benefits that you would get by eating it. It's a little bit more complicated than that. It's based on looking at your cell and how we can make your cell more sturdy, resistant to breakdown by what you eat, knowing that the cell membranes are made out of amino acids and lipids. So eating those good foods strengthens your cell mem. New cells every hour, every second of the day. Our skin turns over once every month. Our stomach linings about once every five days. So we're constantly making new cells as we make them. It's important to give our body the good raw material. So eating the good fats, which we know what they are, and good amino acids, the ones I like the most, I call embryonic foods. Eggs, beans, and seeds, only because those are foods that turn into something complete. So it's a more complete food. Chicken sits on an egg, out comes a chick. So it's a complete food.

And the good fats, olive oil, flaxseed, cold water, fish, things like that. So eating those and the raw fruits and vegetables in combination is going to encourage every cell to maintain its water. And truly, when we look at what happens to us as we age, the only thing for sure that happens to us is we become dehydrated. I ask my patients to touch their skin today and imagine what it was like 10 years ago. And they say, yes, it's drier now than it used to be, but so is every cell in our body. And when it's drier, it's more sensitive to the damage, whether it's free radicals, inflammation, microbes, stress, whatever, it's going to damage it, and we'd be more sensitive to it.

Okay, so I, you know, I kind of led you into this a little bit quickly maybe. And, you know, for the listeners that don't know the background of the water secret, I just wanted you to maybe back up and explain the big picture on. On the water secret. I mean, I love the way you explained that our cells need to not only have water, but they need to, as they age or become damaged, they don't retain and process water as well as they used to. Right. Kind of explain that whole. The overarching thesis, if you would.

Absolutely. Y. You know, the way I could describe it is give you an analogy. So imagine your cell being a tire and it's full of air, but in this case, your cell is a cell that is full of water. And as we drive down the road and go over bumps in the road. Over the course of time, the rubber becomes thinner and thinner. And like when you had a new tire and you went over a couple of tacks, nothing would happen. As we get older, because our cells are thinner air, we begin to maybe have a blowout at the end or we're not functioning as well, we don't have the energy. You push on the gas pedal with a new tire and you go 60 miles, you push the same amount with a tire that's old, that's leaking a little bit of air and it's going 50 miles or 40 miles an hour. So in essence that's what's happening to our life. As we get older, ourselves are becoming thinner, drier, more sensitive to damage. And in doing those, we are now more susceptible to chronic disease, stress, all kinds of issues that we deal with on a regular basis. We don't expect a two year old to have chronic disease, but we certainly expect a 92 year old to have chronic disease.

Yeah, why is that? I mean, why can't the 92 year old be healthy too? What really is it about aging that causes us to decay? I mean, it's all, all really just the cellular issue, I mean, is that, you know, what it, what it consists of. I mean, I know, you know, as I've researched this over the years, that basically people die or become unhealthy through two things, inflammation and oxidation. But I don't know how those exactly tie in with your theories.

Okay, well my hypothesis on aging is basically dehydration. So imagine you have this cell that is a fixed cell membrane. And the truth is the damage is not only from inflammation and pre radical damage, it's also from stress and microbes and all kinds of other things, radiation of different sorts. So what we're seeing is the thinner your cell membrane is, which happens as we get older. Just that our skin becomes thinner. Every cell membrane in our body becomes thinner and more sensitive. So for example, you put a two year old out, they'll get a sunburn, maybe they'll get a freckle. You put a 92 year old, they may get skin cancer from the sun.

Same thing happens as our cells become thinner and thinner, that becomes the issue. Another way to look at it frankly is we think about say a 2 year old. Let's pick a 9 year old person getting pneumonia and a 90 year old getting pneumonia. Give them the same antibiotic because it's the same bacteria. The nine year old is probably going to do well and be fine. The 92 year old may not because of the interconnection of every cell in the body. So while the lungs are now more damaged by the bacteria than the young one, but also the heart, the liver, the brain, the kidneys, everything else is thinner and it can't the lungs to function at their highest level. So the idea of understanding as we age, our cells become thinner, more sensitive to damage, regardless of what the cause. And frankly, I think a big part is stress that we have and it's a constant and pervasive that we're getting. And along with obviously free radicals, inflammation, microbes, radiation, who knows what else is damaging us.

So in terms of preventing or mitigating this damage, what does water do and how do we, you know, what does it actually do to the, at the cellular level? A little bit, maybe explain a little bit more about that, if you would, and how we make it more healthy, you know, making ourselves more healthy. It's just a, you know, it seems like the foundational aspect of all of this. I really just like the way you presented it in the book. Unfortunately. You know, I finished the book maybe a month or even six weeks ago, now that I think about it, and it's not as fresh on my mind as it was. If I was talking to you right then, I would have had a dozen questions, you know.

Well, you know, I guess the way to look at it is we are born with 75% water. The average man is about 60% water. Average woman's about 50% water today. And as we get older, our body becomes drier and drier and we become less moist. And the reason for that is again, the analogy of that tire. When it's got 50,000 miles on it, it's not going to be as good going over rough bumps in the road as the brand new one. The rough bumps in the road for us are, you know, infections and free radicals, inflammation, stress, all of those things that damage us. So the constant way to look at it is there is an aging process. There are over 300 different theories on aging. And at the end result of every single one of them is that we have loss of cellular hydration. Our cells become drier and drier. We know for sure where skin is drier. And the cells in the skin are not the only cells in the body that become drier. So does every other one, and that can't function as well. You take an older person and their skin is so thin, they'll bump in a bump on the, or something and they'll get a bruise that doesn't happen to a two year old. So how do we mitigate that damage? Number one, and people don't realize this, but skin care is really critical using things that improve the barrier of your skin. Certainly sunscreens are good, but that just protects from the sun. Moisturizers are actually more important because they improve the barrier. They add a certain amount of lipids to the top surface of your skin and they reduce the damage. People, as we get older, our skin looks more like Swiss cheese than it does like American cheese. So we want more American cheese, not so much Swiss. So that's one thing. Number two is the food that we eat. Again, the cell membranes are made of amino acids and lipids and we want good quality water to penetrate into it. So good amino acids, good lipids, and good quality water that's released gradually and penetrates into the skin. There's something called osmolyte, like osmotic pressure. And some of our foods contain a lot of that, beans and things like that that we eat. So adding those are very beneficial. Exercise is important because fat is 10% water, muscle is 70% water. So as we exercise, we get more water. And I like people to exercise the way they like. So.

When we think about exercising, people say, well, I'm getting thirsty, so I'm drier. Well, you're thirsty? Yes. You could drink some or eat cucumber or grapes or whatever, but.

You'Re building muscle and muscle is much more water.

That's interesting, by the way. I didn't know that. So if you have more fat in your body composition, you're just automatically more dehydrated, Right? Is that correct? Wow, that's an interesting thing. So people who are lean and muscular are just naturally more hydrated. That's an interesting aspect on losing weight and that age old discussion of all of that.

Absolutely. A good way to look at this is you take a man and a woman. Women tend genetically to have more fat in their body as a percentage of their weight. You take a man and a woman and you give them the same amount of alcohol, the woman will have a higher blood alcohol level because she has less cellular hydration to detoxify the alcohol.

Okay. So it's not just her body weight because, you know, typically a woman will weigh less than a man. Not always nowadays though.

Generally they do, yes. They're more careful about what they eat.

Right, right. And they're smaller framed people mostly, you know, apples to apples comparison. So even if they weigh the same, it's not just the level of intoxication it's not just determined by body weight.

Absolutely not. A woman will have more. Even if she weighs exactly the same as a man, she'll have a higher blood alcohol level than the man. I mean, we tend to just go by body weight, but it's not really true. It's not fair in a way because it's the amount of fat that's also important.

Talk to us about the differences in the way the genders age. You talked about that in your book. You know, women have long said that it's not fair. Men age better. And I guess you said that's actually true, right?

It is actually true in a way. Although generally men don't live as long because they don't emotionally take care of themselves as well as women do. You know, you look at a widow and a widower, the widow somehow manages to have a social life more and things like that. There are a lot of social issues that women are better at than men, and that's a big reason for that. What I was talking about is the fact that the appearance is different. We're going to be more likely to have women have a little bit thinner skin than men. The collagen bundles are slightly different. So we're seeing men looking.

Younger without cosmetic surgery than women the same age.

Yeah. Okay, interesting. So what do you mean about the. That was an interesting comment you made, Dr. Murad, about the. I mean, women don't live seven or eight, eight years longer just because they take better care of themselves emotionally, do they? Is that really the only thing? And what does that actually mean? Please explain what that means too.

Well, you know, I think it's a combination of things. It is that they do take care of themselves more. But, you know, there are some other factors. You know, women generally, at least in the very past, maybe didn't smoke as much as men did. They didn't do dangerous things. Men are more likely to be, and this is obviously not everyone, mountain climbers and doing some dangerous activities and things like that. In the past, men generally had more stressful lives with their jobs and things like that. But that's not true anymore.

But I think in the end it's the ability of women to deal with more with the stresses because men keep it in and women expose it, if you understand what I'm trying to say.

Yeah. So men are the emotional stuffers, as it's been said. Right. And they bought. We. We shouldn't say. They. We bottle stuff up more and women talk about things and that's good for your body to Talk things through and. Yeah, right, okay, that makes sense. And I gotta say, guilty is charged, by the way, but we all are.

Part of our genes or whatever.

Right?

Right.

Okay. All right, good. So what else?

So the last thing really relates to my new book, Conquering Cultural Stress. And stress is a killer. I mean, if you look at what happens with stress, we have the release of cortisol that does all kinds of damage to our body. We don't sleep as well and we can't understand. There's ghrelin which tells us we're hungry, and leptin which tells us we're full, we don't remember what that is. And we tend to eat more, we tend to be more obese when you don't sleep well, there are a lot of other issues from Alzheimer's to obesity to heart disease and suicide. So stress is damaging. And the way I look at stress, certainly there's what I call traditional way that we look at stress, like death in the family, a divorce, an auto accident, an injury. And those are things that we actually deal with.

So dealing with stress actually helps mitigate the damage of it. When we don't deal with stress, then we have a problem. So think about the stress of modern living. How many emails do you have to answer every day?

Oh, 400. It's crazy.

Yeah, I know. Like that's minimum. How many texts do little children have every day? The 10 year olds and the 15 year olds, rules and regulations, the expectations of us at home and work and everywhere else. And that happens from age to everywhere. The results of which are this tendency to be add.

I just look at people and all they look is the headlines. They can't do anything, they don't have time for anything else. We tend to be more critical, we tend to be trying to be perfect, which we can't. And we tend to kind of look at life in a very narrow way. So I know I can go from here to there by doing X and I'm not going to try Y because I might fail. So we don't take the risks that maybe we should. And so these are aspects. And then. And the same hormones are being released, whether it's stress of modern living, which I call cultural stress, or the stress of death in the family or divorce. So it's constant, pervasive and constantly damaging. And it's ever increasing. It's never going to get better, it's only going to get worse. We have more and more pollution, more and more traffic, more and more noise, more and more expectations, more and more Rules and all of those. Continue. So, you know, the interesting thing about my philosophy and my theory is it all boils down to water. Number one. Obviously when you were younger you were more resistant to disease.

And when you were younger.

You were less likely to have wrinkles. So let's look at an average 1 1/2 year old child. How many times does he or she have a belly laugh? And how many times does a 50 year old person have a belly laugh? How many times did that child fall and trip until he or she learned how to walk? And how many times would we fall and trip before we decide we needed a cane or something like that? How many times would, where they didn't have to be perfect, where they were playing around and they, they got mud on their clothes, it was okay. How many times were they smiling so much and so happy about life and were so cute and wanted to be hugged and picked up and how many times do we get somebody to hug us anymore?

I hear everything you're saying and our listeners do too. But maybe just add to that. How, how do we do these things? I mean, you know, part of it is definitely attitudinal. We've got to just maintain a sense of wonder and curiosity about discovering life every day. Right. You know, laughing, I guess you can try to do that. Certainly you can control to some degree how many hugs you give and get.

Yeah, it's hard to get a belly laugh until you really know it.

But, but any tips on actually doing these things? I mean, I think, I think we all agree.

Yes. You know what I did actually in the book Conquering Cultural Stress and my other book Creating a Healthy Life is I created what I call insights. Things like a bear hug a day, keeps the psychiatrist away.

Be imperfect, live longer.

When you wake up in the morning, remember to wear a smile. So I have a lot of these, hundreds of them actually. There are 365 in conquering cultural stress and over 300 and creating a Healthy Lifebook. And in those books, in essence, just giving you those thoughts and what I've done with my patients is ask them to pick one of those that really relates to them. Because everybody knows either I'm too perfect or I'm too hard on myself or I don't give myself permission to take a risk. I'm afraid to fail all of those things that we have. And so they can pick a few of them and then they write them on a paper or at the office. Obviously I give them one that's colored and more vibrant and there I ask them to put it on their refrigerator or in their bed stand or in the mirror in the bathroom. And every day when they look at it, they'll say, okay, I have to remember to be less perfect. It's okay, I won't be bad. Remember not to be so hard on myself, to remember that I need to be thrilled with who I am. Remember that. Allowing the uniqueness of me to be the best. So all of those things are those attributes that we lost over time. A good way to show that. For example, you take a one and a half year old and you give them coloring paper with Donald Duck on it with crayons. Where do they color? They color all over the paper. They may even color on the table that they're sitting on. Where do we color? Inside the lines? And that happened early. That happened by the time we were three or four, we already limited ourselves. We already had a box, and that box becomes narrower as we get older. So certainly all the things that everybody tells you to do for strategies, the yoga, the exercise, the meditation, of course, those are good things. So I'm not against any of those. But I think the missing link is the idea of returning to that youthful person you used to be, as much as possible, not only in your physical, but also your emotional attitude, being willing to take some risks, being so comfortable when things aren't exactly going the way you expected.

I have a lot of sayings. One of them is have only big, flexible dreams with no limits. So your potential will have no limits. And we limit ourselves as we get older. So there again, it's hard to go over the whole book with all those hundreds of sayings. But in essence, those are the things that I feel make a difference. And in a way, it all goes back to cellular hydration because stress dehydrates us. We know when we're under stress. We have underarm perspiration and sweaty palms.

So that means we're excreting water, right?

Yeah. We're not creating water. We're minimizing the loss of water. There's an aging process, you know, I don't care what you did, you probably would never live to be over 300. We could, if you did everything correctly, maybe live to be 170. I don't know. I'm just making those numbers up. So there is a certain limit to the aging process.

But the longer we can minimize the time or increase the time that we live. And it really is hydration. So the things where we lose water, we lose water when we're exposed to the environment. So when you think about it, I tell people, is your skin connected to your heart? And they say, I don't know. And I say, of course it is. They're blood vessels. So you get a sunburn, you get a headache, you feel nauseous, affects your whole body. So taking care of your skin, obviously eating better and exercise is important. And the stress relief. And my feeling on stress relief is again, as much as possible, return to that youthful person you used to be before society got a hold of you.

Yeah, yeah, Very interesting. Let me just ask you some kind of specific questions in terms of supplementation. Now, I believe that your company sells some actual internal supplements. Of course you sell skincare products, which are great. But, you know, what should people be taking every day? I mean, it's so easy to have 30 bottles of vitamins. And, you know, I don't know, there's been studies that say vitamins are actually bad for you. How do you know what to believe?

You know, well, you know, talk to no one. But here's my philosophy. And again, it's based on the water. So you should have a one a day vitamin. One a day vitamin contains basically what's in the fruit or vegetables without the water. You should take an amino acid supplement. That's good protein. You should take a good omega, and you should take a glycosaminoglycans, glucosamine. Glucosamine is important because it helps build collagen. Your body needs that along with amino acids to build collagen. And we could not live without collagen. Collagen makes up our blood vessels, our tendons, our ligaments, and even the dermis of our face. So the basis for what you should take is those then adding to others. Certainly we've learned more about vitamin D and other supplements that people need. Maybe if you're taking statin drugs, you might need coenzyme Q10. That's up to you and your physician. But in essence, what I'm suggesting is looking at what I call my picture of health. And the picture looks, because it's all about water at the base is eating more raw fruits and vegetables, whole grains. I believe the shell of the whole grains act as a glycosaminoglycans, and they may help build collagen besides being a good source of energy, good fats, good amino acids. And so we're giving you those as a base in case you're not eating as well as you should. And as we get older, we don't tend to eat as well as we should.

When we get older, we don't eat as well as we should. Huh. Interesting.

Yeah. A couple of things. When you get really old, it's a milk, it's a toast and tea, really. Older people tend to eat a lot less. And at my age anyway, I tend to eat sometimes poorly. And I tell people it's okay, you know, as long as you generally eat based on this picture. Give yourself permission to have a hamburger and a cheeseburger and whatever once in a while, it's okay for you. But I don't like to be astringent where you can only do this. I like you to become yourself, be happy. And the foods that I like you to eat are the ones you like. So fruits and vegetables are good for you. I don't tell you you have to eat kale. It's good for you, but if you hate it, you won't eat it. So eat the one you like.

Anything on the vitamins, like a certain manufacturer or a certain thing you should look for in vitamins. You know, vitamins, some of them say that they're pharmaceutical grade. I don't know that that has a lot of teeth or meaning to it, like organic food does. So that's one thing. And is there one pill you can take that has all of this stuff, or do you really have to take a whole bunch of pills every day?

It'd be hard to take it all in one pill. I mean, the one a day would have most of what you wanted if it was a really good one a day. It had trace minerals and B vitamins and antioxidants and all of those things, the B vitamins.

So a really good one a day vitamin, but in omega, they're kind of large. Except I guess you could get krill oil. That's a small tablet. Amino acids have to be a little bit bigger. And glucosamine, you need a, you know, 12 to 1500 milligrams. So it'd be kind of difficult to get it all in one pill. But you might need, you know, more. But as a base, this is what I feel people need.

Yeah, right. Yeah. Very interesting. Very interesting. Any just additional tips, tips you want to share as we wrap up? And of course, please give out your websites and tell us a little bit about your spa. You have a spa location in Southern California, in Manhattan Beach, I believe, right?

Yes, it's in El Segundo, which is 2141 Rosecrans Avenue. But actually, I do believe in the concept of wellness. What's happened to us in Society has gotten so much many new technologies, so many new things that we tend to what I call spot treat. So you go to, I'm a dermatologist. You go to a dermatologist and you have acne, they're going to look at your face and they're going to say, here's an antibiotic or here's a cream or here's some treatment for your acne. But the concept of your cells are connected, every cell in your body is connected, is so important. So if you have a pain in your toe, the pain actually came from the nerves in your brain. And if you didn't have a good heart, you wouldn't have good circulation. If your digestion was bad, you wouldn't have good nutrition. So treating the whole person is so much more important. And the concept of treating everybody. My philosophy is called inclusive health, meaning again, every cell is connected and we have to treat everyone. And the difference between inclusive health and traditional, integrative, holistic or whatever is the final common pathway of disease. Aging, obesity, wrinkles, unhappiness, maybe is dehydration and trying to in different ways to encourage better cellular hydration. Good.

Give out your website.

It's murad.comm u r a d.com and.

When it comes to Murad products, I'm just curious, how does someone decide on which. I mean, you have. So how many products do you have?

We probably have about 70, 75, something like that. To us, we try to be simple because we color coordinate and certainly acne is acne and it's a blue line. But when we look at aging, I look at aging as three different types of aging. There is at least topically genetic aging is based on the age and I'm sorry, based on the parents that you pick.

Based on the parents that you pick. I love that. As if we get to pick.

We might, who knows? Some people think we do. I don't know if they do. We do or not. But Irish or Scottish, you're going to have thinner skin. If you're African American, you have thicker skin. So it depends on that. But regardless of which one, there is a pull of gravity. So you begin to have jowls and nasolabial folds, the lines from the nose down to your chin. So the pull of gravity and using ingredients like the alpha hydroxy acids and retinols really help with that. Then we age because we didn't take care of ourselves. We were out in the sun pollution, we ate badly. And again, I look at skin care and healthcare as totally being connected. So what you eat makes a big difference on what your skin looks like. It's important to understand that that skin care isn't just what you put on your skin or the Botox shot you got. It's also what you ate, the exercise you did, the stress, all of that. So here.

You'Ve got redness, freckling, maybe a little bit of dryness. So vitamin C and antioxidants are very good anti inflammatories. And then finally, as we age, we have hormonal aging. Our hormones begin to take its toll and our skin becomes thinner, drier, maybe larger pores. And here we need some, I call them phytoestrogen plant extracts like shiitake, mushroom, iris plants, things like that that help that they're not hormones in the sense they're not estrogen, but they act somewhat like that. So each one of those is a different color. And then you can, if you understand that process, you could pick what is it? Where in this are you aging? So it's not one size fits all in that respect. You can mix and match. If you have a lot of freckles and you have dryness, you could use a combination.

Very interesting. Good stuff. Good stuff. Dr. Murad, I'm going to check out your new book and it sounds great and really enjoyed the Water Secret. You know, this longevity stuff and anti aging stuff. It's an inside job.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. What we eat and drink. Yeah, it's an inside job.

The one thing I'd like to leave you with is the idea that every cell in your body is connected. And don't spot treat. Don't just be on a diet to help yourself. It's not about just the diet. It's your emotional. Your exercise is taking care of your skin. Look at yourself as a whole person, not as a fat person or a skinny person for that matter.

Yeah, neither one is good. Well, good stuff. Thank you so much. And I love the holistic approach to everything and we really appreciate having you on the show. Check out mirad.com for more. And of course, the books are on Amazon.

Thanks so much.

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