Ep 369 – The Rogue Pharmacist: The Science of Skin Repair

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0:00:55.0 Maggie Staszcuk: Hello and welcome to ASCP and the Rogue Pharmacist with Benjamin Knight-Fuchs. In each episode, we will explore how internal and external factors can impact the skin. I'm Maggie Staszcuk, ASCP's program director, and joining me is Ben Fuchs, skincare formulator and pharmacist. Hi, Ben.

0:01:11.1 Benjamin Fuchs: Hello, Maggie.

0:01:12.1 MS: Ben, can you explain what's really happening in the skin during the healing phase after aesthetic treatments like peels or microneedling?

0:01:20.0 BF: It's the same as exercise. When you stress a living system, if everything is correct and the living system has what it needs to repair the stress, you get growth. And that's kind of an interesting idea because we have this sort of misunderstanding of stress. And you hear this all the time, "Maggie, you're stressing too much. Stop, relax, stop stressing." When do you have the least amount of stress?

0:01:42.9 MS: I don't know how to answer that.

0:01:45.1 BF: Guess. Just take a wild guess. When do we have the least amount of stress?

0:01:47.3 MS: When I'm holding my glass of wine.

0:01:49.1 BF: Ah, I know a time when you have even less stress than that.

0:01:54.3 MS: When's that?

0:01:54.9 BF: When you're dead. There's no stress when you're dead. Because stress is associated with life is what I'm saying. No stress when you're dead. The only time you don't have stress. Stress is part of life. It's how we grow, it's how we thrive. And this brings us to a concept called antifragility. A really cool book, if anybody... It's a little bit technical, but it's called Antifragile. And it talks about how there are systems that are fragile, like porcelain, for example. You drop a porcelain plate on the ground, it breaks. It's fragile. Systems that are non-fragile, like steel. You can drop steel on the ground, it's not gonna break. It's non-fragile. And then there are systems that are antifragile. Those are systems that grow when they're stressed. And under ideal conditions, living systems will do just that. Living systems are antifragile. In biology, they call this hormesis, H-O-R-M-E-S-I-S. Hormesis refers to the fact that a little bit of stress causes growth. A little bit of poison is actually good for you. They do studies on people who drink alcohol and they find that a little bit of alcohol, a little bit of alcohol, not a lot of alcohol, will actually turn your liver... Turn on, activate your liver to produce anti-aging compounds via this hormesis mechanism.

0:03:03.4 BF: It's why we exercise. You lift weights, you tear up your muscles, your muscles grow back. So this response to stress, this stress response can be leveraged. But in order for it to be leveraged, you have to have all the right components, all the right raw materials to sustain the growth that will be triggered by the stress. In other words, if you stress and there's no raw materials to repair with, your body can't respond to the stress in the most appropriate way. Many of the procedures that we use as skincare professionals, the peels and the microdermabrasion and the dermaplaning and the lasers, they all purport to take advantage of this stress response, this repair response. I say purport because many times these ablative therapies, we'll call them collectively ablative therapies, give you the first half but not the second half. And in order to get the maximum benefits, to determine how well your ablative procedure is going to be when it comes to anti-aging or growth or making more tissue, making more collagen or healing, you have to have the right raw materials present. And you want those raw materials present immediately after the ablation.

0:04:22.6 BF: And this is not just true about the skin, by the way. This is also not just true about exercise. This is especially true during surgeries. And anybody who's having a surgical procedure can really do a good thing, can really support the prognosis of their surgical procedure by making sure that they're loaded up with nutrients before the surgical procedure occurs. As soon as they cut you, as soon as the scalpel goes in, the healing process begins. And because it's the healing process that's largely the determining factor for how effective a surgical procedure is going to be, it's critical to make sure that these nutrients are present. And I mean all the nutrients, although I'll tell you about a few key ones, but all of them are really important because the ablative therapy isn't really the determining factor in how effective it's going to be, the process or procedure is gonna be in anti-aging. It's the presence of the healing nutrients. And this is why I always say it's about... Beauty is about healing. Healthy skin is beautiful skin. What we want to do is we want to help the skin heal appropriately, whether it's post-ablation or even if it's just during the day, just when the skin's constantly growing, the skin's constantly repairing itself, the skin in constant turnover.

0:05:34.4 BF: The skin you have right now didn't exist 20 minutes ago when I walked into the studio here. It's a brand new skin. The system is constantly turning itself over, which means it's constantly healing, which means it's in constant need of nutrition. One of the, if not the most important, certainly one of the most important reasons for our collective poor health in this country is a lack of nutrition. Now, there's a lot of other things that could be blamed, but I would say if not the number one cause of our collective poor physiologic health, it's certainly in the top couple, top two or three, and that is the lack of nutrition. And most people are going through their lives way under-nutriated. Now, we're talking about post-ablation, but remember, it's not like real ablation when you go about your daily business.

0:06:16.5 BF: But it's kind of like it. I mean, your skin's under stress and you're losing skin cells and new skin cells are replacing it. So we're constantly suffering from post-ablative, pseudo, post-ablative effects. And if you're under-nutriated, you're not gonna be able to heal as well. I mean, you're gonna age faster, your barrier's gonna be weaker, you're gonna be more susceptible to sun damage and hyperpigmentation and infections and eczema, all of these kinds of things. So making sure your body is loaded up with nutrients is critical. We in this country dose ourselves with nutrients based on something called the RDAs. What does the RDA stand for?

0:06:50.4 MS: Recommended Dietary Allowance?

0:06:52.7 BF: No, it stands for the Ridiculous Deficiency Allowance.

0:06:55.5 MS: Darn it, Ben. I was hoping for an A.

0:06:57.6 BF: No, you don't get an A. Actually, that's what everybody says, and you're technically right. I call it the Ridiculous Deficiency Allowance. And the reason I say that is because most of us are going through life thinking we're getting enough nutrients because we're following the RDAs. We take a multiple vitamin or sometimes we'll take a couple multiple vitamins or maybe we'll supplement, but it's all based on the RDAs. The RDAs are there to keep you from having a disease, which is great, you don't want a disease, but they're not enough to keep you maximumly healthy. And because the skin is constantly turning itself over, not to mention if you have an ablative therapy, it's absolutely critical that you have megadoses of certain nutrients, not just RDA doses. The RDAs are great to keep you out of the hospital, but they're not great to keep your skin beautiful and to keep your body vibrant and healthy. So you gotta know how to supplement correctly internally. And I talk about that a lot. And if you go online, look at my work, you'll see most of the things I talk about are internal nutrition. And when it comes to the skin, the fatty nutrients are the most important.

0:07:53.8 BF: Vitamins A and D particularly, but also to a certain extent vitamins E and K and fat-soluble vitamin C and, as we've talked about earlier, minerals, the ionic minerals. But all the nutrients are gonna be very important. And the more stresses you put on your body internally, the more drugs you're taking, the more alcohol you're drinking, the more processed foods you're eating, the more nutrients you need, and especially for the skin. But if you have after post-ablation and post-wounding, if you will, it's extra important because, as we said earlier, it's not the wounding that gets you the benefits, it's the healing that gets you the benefits. So encouraging healing is very important. There's no drugs that can encourage healing, very little herbs that can encourage healing, but nutrients can do it. And that's why taking your nutrients internal is so important. And that's why using nutrients topically is so important. And that was my epiphany when I was in my compounding pharmacy, and this is how I developed all my theories was from the compounding pharmacy because I was dealing with burns. And the first thing I thought of, because I knew about nutrition internally, I was an athlete and I studied nutrition in pharmacy school and was really fascinated with nutrition even before I went to pharmacy school.

0:08:55.7 BF: My epiphany was we should be using them topically. The most important ingredients for the skin are the essential nutrients. More important than herbs, more important than peptides, more important than growth factors, more important than drugs, more important than anything that you'll find produced by a standard cosmetic company or a drug company is the essential nutrients, the vitamins, the minerals, the fatty acids, and the amino acids applied topically. And if you're not applying topical nutrients on your skin on a regular basis, forget after a procedure, you're completely missing the boat on anti-aging skincare. But topically, when the skin has been burnt, when it's been traumatized, or when you've had some kind of therapy that's been done in a doctor's office or salon or spa, you have a golden opportunity to dose the skin with nutrients, where the skin will absorb nutrients like a dry sponge sucks up water, right? After you come home from the gym, when you're working out, that's when you want to do your nutrients. Why? Because your muscles are in a deficiency state, your body's in a deficiency state, and under deficiency states, the body and the skin and the tissue will suck up nutrients like a dry sponge sucks up water.

0:10:04.4 BF: Likewise, post-ablative therapy. After your ablative therapy, you have a window of opportunity to dose the skin with nutrients. And it doesn't have to be a full-blown ablative therapy. It could be just using a glycolic toner at home or glycolic cleanser at home. You have this window of opportunity to put nutrients on the skin, particularly your fatty nutrients, A and D especially, C, fat-soluble vitamin C, minerals. After you wound the skin, flood the system with topical nutrients. Not only will you accelerate the healing process, but you'll optimize the benefits from the hormesis or the hormetic or the stimulating wound healing procedure that you did with your home glycolic or your salon treatments.

0:10:42.7 MS: I have two questions for you. First, because the skin is constantly turning over, if you're "dosing", let's say, oh, once a week I'm gonna apply this great serum, that's not enough, right? Because your skin has already lost that and turned it over.

0:10:58.4 BF: Absolutely. No. Your skin is burning through nutrients. In fact, next to the digestive system, no other tissue in the body, maybe the brain, is burning through nutrients faster than the skin. Obviously, because it's constantly turning over and it's on the outside of the body.

0:11:11.7 MS: And then in your opinion, instead of these advanced treatments, do you think it is possible to "wound the skin" simply with topical treatments and then topically apply nutrients back? In other words, could I forego peeling my skin or microneedling my skin and exercise or "wound it" just with topical products?

0:11:38.9 BF: Can you get the benefits of topical nutrients without wounding the skin is what you're saying?

0:11:43.7 MS: The benefit of the exercise with a topical product.

0:11:47.3 BF: No. Topical nutrients are not gonna give you the benefits of topical wounding. Topical wounding is necessary to turn on anti-wounding, which is healing, which is anti-aging. So we want to leverage this healing process, and the best way to leverage it is to wound the skin. Now, it's a fine line because you don't want to over-wound. If you over-wound, you put too much stress on the system, then you can run into a problem. You want to find that sweet spot of wounding.

0:12:12.3 MS: Can I wound my skin with a topical product opposed to a treatment?

0:12:17.8 BF: Like just a regular topical product? Like an alpha hydroxy acid product? Heck yes, absolutely you should.

0:12:23.8 MS: Or my retinol. Is that good enough?

0:12:26.0 BF: Yes, absolutely.

0:12:26.8 MS: Or do I need the laser? Do I need the microneedle?

0:12:30.0 BF: Well, that's like saying, will I get benefits if I go to the gym or do I need a personal trainer? Well, you'll get great benefits by going to the gym. But if you really want to work out and you really want to be strong, you get a personal trainer. And that's the relationship of salon treatments to home treatments is personal trainer to going to the gym by yourself. Yeah, you can go to the gym by yourself, use AHAs and retinol. You could definitely do it by yourself. But you want to be really, really strong, find a personal trainer. And I always tell my estheticians, you gotta regard yourself as a personal trainer for your client's skin. That's how you want to look at yourself. You're training the skin. Just like a trainer trains your body in the gym to get your big muscles and get your body in shape, you want as an esthetician, you want to be a personal trainer for the client's skin to get the skin in shape.

0:13:09.3 S1: That concludes our show for today, and we thank you for listening. But if you just can't get enough of Ben Fuchs, the ASCP's Rogue Pharmacist, you can find him at truthtreatments.com. For more information on this episode or for ways to connect with Ben Fuchs or to learn more about ASCP, check out the show notes.

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