What Toxic Cosmetics May Be Doing to Your Microbiome

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Gut Health and Longevity Summit. I am so glad you're here, and I want you to take a breath right now, because what you're about to learn over these sessions may change the way you think about the products sitting in your bathroom, your medicine cabinet, and on your skin every single day.

Most people have been told that gut health starts in the kitchen, but the science is revealing something most people have never considered. Some of the biggest threats to your microbiome may not be on your plate.

They may be in your moisturizer, your shampoo, your daily skin routine. And today's conversation is one that I've been genuinely excited about because I use a lot of products.

So I'm excited to talk about this. But we're going to talk about the gut, skin access, and the hidden world of toxic cosmetics. Now, my next guest has spent over 25 years doing something most health researchers don't do.

He follows his science on toxic Asperger all the way down to your skin, to your gut, and then tells you exactly what to do about it. He's reached millions of people and the product industry does not enjoy it when he talks.

But we will. So let me introduce a Brian. He is Brian Vassili. He is one of the world's most respected natural health and longevity researchers. With over 25 years of experience in evidence based healthy aging, he founded the Art of Anti-Aging with over 500,000 members focused on empowering people with research backed natural solutions.

He's also the founder of Purity Woods, a provider of USDA certified organic skincare products, which I have actually had a chance to try. So he has created and hosted multiple highly acclaimed online health summits featuring top natural, health oriented MD's and researchers heard by over 2 million people.

So Brian, thank you so much. Welcome to this conversation. I'm excited to to really get into it. And you know what? Let's just start with the first question the audience is waiting to hear.

So we talk a little bit about the summit, about already what people are eating and how it shapes your gut microbiome. But you've made the case that what we put on our body matters just as much.

Can you explain to me the gut, skin access, and why this connection between our skin and our gut runs deeper than most people realize? Well, first of all, thank you for having me.

Thanks for turning the tables. You were one of my all time favorite interviews that I did in my summit, so I hope I can be almost as great as you were.

So the gut scanner, skin gut access. You know, we're finding that, you know, all organs obviously are in heavy duty communication with one another. And a lot of them trace right into the gut, obviously.

And that certainly goes for the organ called the skin. A lot of people don't remember. But this is our biggest organ on our body. It's the front line to our immune system.

We can go there in more depth than a bit, but there's a communication pathway that directly between the immune aspect, the inflammatory aspect, the metabolic aspect, the hormonal pathways.

There's a conversation always taking place between your skin and your gut. A lot of people have heard, I'm sure, in this event that your gut is a key mechanism for your immunity, and the skin plays a very pivotal role in that.

So when we're talking that you said you've had other guests talking about the food we're putting in our mouth. Again, another thing a lot of people forget, because the industry that you talked about that doesn't like me, wants you to forget, is that our skin consumes.

It's just another pathway into your body. Let's think about this for a moment. How many different doorways into our physical body are there? There's the mouse, there's the eyes.

You know, physically, even through the eyes and the skin. These are the primary means in when you put anything on your body, it's not on. Just think about it as consumption.

The vast majority of it is going in to your body over 67% when it comes to various skincare products and cosmetics, personal care products of that sort. Typically. Why?

Because they are designed. The molecules are designed to be small enough to penetrate into your skin, and therefore they go into your body and they shoot around.

A lot of them make it all the way to your bloodstream without any filtration whatsoever. A lot of times when I say to people, you know, there's in many cases I would prefer to put some of these chemicals, horrible chemicals that are in these products in my mouth instead of on my skin, because there are more filtration systems, we'll call them through the mouse than there are through the skin.

So a lot of these chemicals that we put on our skin go right into our bloodstream. And they shot around the body. They're shot into the gut. But it's more than that.

There's also a microbiome that a lot of people don't realize they have on their skin, by the way. It's like actually different microbiomes on different locations across the different parts of your skin, including on your face, which is it was just the worst place you could possibly be putting product that in under your arms, on your face, under your arms.

If you avoid nothing else, avoid putting these high chemical products on your face. So I'll stop there because you can see I'm passionate about this. Yeah. And we're getting we're going to get into. The races.

So before before I even go to like another section of what I want to talk about, let's talk a little bit and review what you said, because I think it's a very important for people to understand that we are absorbing.

So it's not like the lotion is just sitting on the top of our skin. It's going through, you know, the epidermis to the dermis where all the blood vessels live and then further down in our subcutaneous tissue and, you know, going further places in our body.

And we'll get into what some of those toxins are. But when someone is thinking about their skin, whether it's a younger person who's thinking about, oh, I'm, I'm breaking out or I have eczema or maybe somebody a little bit older who's going, you know what?

My high school classmate, we have a 30 year reunion. And how come she looks younger than me and we're the same age, right? So could some of these things that exposures were having age us even more?

Yes, 100%. You know, it's ironic because a lot of the product is positioned as, you know, healthy fur skins, appearance, even anti-aging oriented. The irony is, it also ages you faster if you're tongue in cheek, if you're not concerned with your health and everybody listening is at least be concerned with your appearance.

And we're finding that these chemicals that are in these products aid you faster. They part of the reason is they do harm. The microbiome I was talking about that's on your skin.

And that has a very specific role. Just like that microbiome in your gut. It's all part and parcel to your immunity at the end of the day. So you're really compromising your immunity when you're using these products in multiple ways.

How is that? Well, because you are compromising the front barrier in the first place. You're harming and in some cases destroying some of the good bacteria and other microorganisms.

But then it's also like double taxing your skin's job is to try to defend you from pathogens. And many people don't realize they're putting pathogens directly on their body.

So you're compromising its ability to do its job for you. And we talked about the gut microbiome, you know, and it is also a two way street because in terms of skin's appearance, what's going on inside of that microbiome has everything to do with the way your skin looks.

They're finding direct associations with both the microbiome on the outside and the appearance of skin, which is a little more obvious, but also the microbiome inside your gut.

So if you're microbiomes not so healthy, as is the case of so many people today, unfortunately, right? Yes, it's directly tied to skin conditions as well.

Rosacea, eczema, acne. You brought up psoriasis. All of these are part and parcel to how we are treating what we're putting inside of our bodies. Again, through the two doorways, we've talked about the mouth which others have covered and the skin which I am covering for you.

So it matters in a bigger way than most people realize. Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about the skin microbiome because you've mentioned it now a couple of times.

So we, you know, we we want to get into this a little bit more. So for people who never thought of their skin as an organ that eats right. So we're describing the skin microbiome.

So the microbiome there needs to be fed. It needs to be protected just like the gut does. And so can you share with us what the skin microbiome is. What does it do.

Like what are some specific bacteria there. And what happens. You know we've mentioned a few diseases. But what's really happening when this skin microbiome is getting disrupted.

So there are trillions of beneficial microbes on your skin, mostly bacteria, but they also include fungi and and other forms. It's the same situation as we've heard inside of the gut there.

In general, it's not different. There's trillions of them. There have been over 1000 different types, mostly bacteria identified. I could not tick off all 1000 of those for you, and you wouldn't want me to spend the time to do that.

But suffice it to say, they're very important. And again, the awareness here is even far more recent than the microbiome, which is really only come to, you know, beautiful light, I guess I'll say in the last ten, ten, 12 years or something like that, we've had a lot of conversation about it and only very recently, including, you know, wonderful job you're doing here of exposing a lot of that.

So this is a very new area for people. And again, I mentioned it earlier on. It's not it's not just coating your skin in, you know, in equal parts there are specific points on your body where you have these micro microbes.

You can't see them, obviously. I mean, you know, under a powerful microscope you could and it's a little uneasy for people just the same way when they first learn that they have, you know, trillions and trillions of other, other life inside of their gut, that was a little uneasy for people.

It's less uneasy probably today. So they're on your skin. Where are they? Well, under your arms. I mentioned there's some, you know, there's a different community on your forehead.

There's some obviously, I mentioned earlier and this is super important on your face in this area here, for example. And in other part, you know, on our neck, other parts of our bodies have a lot.

And then there's some that are sparse, comparatively speaking. It's not interrupting, but just I thought of something like that a human can do, like their own little science experiment on themselves.

I like doing science experiments. Right. So I don't know if you've ever seen those hydro coil patches, which is like a hydrochloride is something that we use in like with surgeries and stuff, but now they've become popularized around acne and like people put little pimple patches, but when we get them in the hospital, we have this big long roll of a hydrochloride patch.

If you just cut out little squares of that and you put one on your forehead and you put one on your arm and you put one on your leg, you're going to see all different things, kind of like, you know, not grow, but in a way, like you'll see that there's stuff going on there in your body.

So please just. Love it, I love it. Well, now I'm going to go do that after this interview. That sounds like it's quite interesting to me. And maybe in the future interviews I'm going to use that and show, you know, it's a lot not all cases, but a lot of cases.

Think about where you tend to be more oil because they do gather in those. There's sebaceous glands, you know. But their job I mean well, they're to them to all of these organisms right there.

Their job is to live and, you know, live happily ever after. They're not really there saying, I'm going to help, you know, Manisha and Brian, but they do help us.

They contain metabolites that, again, suppress harmful organisms. Just think about that. So when we are putting chemicals on, you know, a lot of chemicals by the way, that are in these products are derived from petroleum.

And it's so funny to me because I still to this day argue with some dermatologists who argue. Yeah, but, you know, we have no proof that some of it, at least it's not all that bad.

I'm like, let's back off from that a moment. Does petroleum belong on and therefore in our body, it's just like the cigarette conversation 50 years ago.

Well, there's no, you know, proof. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense. I was like, you just remind me of Vaseline. Vaseline is still petroleum, and everybody's got a big jug of Vaseline.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't get me started on the common sense aspect of this that, you know, there's been a loss. Again, it's I don't want people to feel guilt or anything like that because, you know, we move away from, you know, from a lot of things that might be common sense because years turned to decades and there's powerful industry.

We could talk about that, too, about the powerful industries behind this. Why is it that in the European Union and elsewhere, over 40 some countries, now it's over 1600 chemicals have been banned from products.

Guess how many here in the United States? 11. Okay, I've just said all you need to know about why. Why? Because they're an incredibly powerful industry and they're in our heads.

They make us believe that we can put all these chemicals on this organ that we would never think twice about putting on any other organ. Would you smear something if you had access to your brain, your heart, your lungs?

And if somebody just told you, here, try this smear. No, nobody would smear it all over. You know, I'd be like, crazy. But we do that because we've been trained to do that.

There's a price. There's a price. You'd identified it yourself at the at the beginning of this conversation, which is the price is we're compromising our gut health, our immune health, our overall health.

And we're unfortunately accelerating, you know, the appearance of aging while we're doing it, using all of these things. Yeah. So you mentioned like, so the way the skin bacteria work is that they have these metabolites that are going to suppress.

But that's really only if we have the good bacteria, the bacteria that and the microbiome that we need. So they'll help suppress the chemicals that we are getting exposed to.

They regulate immune system. They are your first line of defense right from the external side they influence. One thing we haven't talked about is how they will influence wound healing.

Right. So as we age and we get a cut on our finger, it heals a lot slower. So what are your thoughts on that. Like what's going on there if you're five years old versus 60 and you're getting a cut and you're not healing.

Because you've got. To for starters, you've got a healthy skin microbiome when you're five, much more so than you do. You know, when you're 65 and you hit the nail on the head when you kill them?

Okay, let's just be straight, right? What happens? It's not like there's just some empty space. The bad microbes move in. You know, part of the benefit of a healthy, whether it's on your skin or inside of your gut, a healthy microbiome is that you're crowding out, you know, the opportunity for the unhealthy ones to exist.

So when it's crowded out, they can't do their job of healing your wounds. And in fact, it could it could accelerate, you know, potential infections. It's not just healing wounds.

It's also take that a step further. You're more prone to get infections when you are compromising the microbiome on your skin. I mean, they have a big job, you know?

And again, this is just a new light to a lot of people. But, you know, I'll say this too. It's just like if people are like, oh no, another thing I will tell you, the beautiful thing about this is that it's like the lowest hanging fruit solutions out there.

It's pretty darn easy as changes go to do the a better thing in this situation, right, than in a lot of other things where we hear things and we're like, oh my God, I got to change all that.

This is easy, comparatively speaking. I know nothing is simple, but it's much easier than most other changes. And the effect is profound even when you make small steps.

Because a beautiful thing about skin, it's really one of, I used to say the most, and I still think it's the most, but I don't have scientific proof of the most, so it's one of the most this I could tell you confidently.

Most receptive organs to change. What I mean is it it converts to health quickly when you start making some positive changes and it shows. Obviously it's on the outside of our body, so it really shows.

This is why when people, people should never feel guilty about wanting to look younger, because I see two schools of thought going on out there. One is I'm going to age graceful, the other is I want to fight it, want to look like I'm 21 when I'm 81. Well guess what?

That second one is unhealthy. But there's. But a lot of people, unfortunately, do look considerably older than they ought to look, precisely because they're doing things like using all these products loaded with chemicals.

Right. And it's a wonderful thing when people can just start making some simple changes. They do notice fast complexion changes. They notice that they have much more glowing skin, like you do, by the way of amazing glowing skin.

Of my latest salad that I'm eating. It's like a really good one. Yeah, well, it did the trick. So you have great skin, right? And you do notice these changes pretty quickly, which is a really nice thing to see.

Okay. So that gives us some hope because my next question was going to be is this something that can actually be restored and rebuilt? I think you already answered it like a disrupted skin microbiome is not permanent.

Right. So why don't we talk a little bit and I'm going to just go grab something while you're talking how you would restore the microbiome before we get into what everybody's doing to us, let's talk about because I want to give the audience some hope, like it can be restored.

So where do we start with that? Yeah, what a great question. It's the usual suspects. It's what you put into your body and buy into your body. I mean, foods you eat putting into your mouth, but also the foods you feed your body through your skin.

There are healthy foods, make no mistake. Here's another discussion I often have with people. Well, you know, I don't believe in putting anything on my skin, you know, because and that's a better step than putting bad things on your skin.

But you can put good things on your skin because it does eat that actually act as nutrition for your skin, that help your collagen, the help your elastin, that help the microbiome on your skin as well.

Healthy. They tend to be, not tend to be. They are plant based ingredients. Again, nature really knows what it's doing way more than any human being in a lab coat.

To this day, I promise you. And there are a host of amazing ingredients out there that you know, our positioned like we do, like you brought up Pure Woods as anti-aging.

But there are a lot more than that. There really are nutrition for your skin. So it's, you know, inside and outside that helps college in elastin, the proteins inside of your body.

And it helps the microbiome. And obviously the first and foremost step is stop harming it. You know, pull back from using these products with the chemicals.

I mean, that's that's a big step, number one. So you just made me think of and I didn't really think of it this way before we kind of started having this conversation.

But there is a very specific skin mask that I will use overnight. And I notice the difference. If I don't wear it overnight, then when I do and it has probiotics in it, right?

So if we're thinking about the fact that like there's microbiota bacteria that are in our skin and if our barrier is disrupted, that's why I think that this probiotic mask has really, really been helping me because I'm like, all right.

When I, you know, I travel and I might disrupt my skin. Or maybe I did have a piece of birthday cake. Even though it's vegan and gluten free, it's still sugar, right?

So yeah. So something can happen. But what I wanted to show you and actually really show the audience. And I know Brian, you're going to want one of these is look at my skin model.

All right. So that's so cool I do want that. You want this now don't you. You always get bottle right. So this this is really important because what Brian is talking about right.

So we have something called the epidermis here okay. So that's like the layer you're seeing. But below that you have the dermis. And within the dermis is where all the blood vessels live.

It's where your sebaceous glands are. It's where your hair follicles are. It's where your macrophages like cells that are going to protect you are. And so we start damaging this and disrupting this microbiome here just like in the gut.

As if this was the lumen of the gut. Once you start disrupting this barrier and it goes into the bloodstream, it gets to go further into the rest of the body.

So it's the same thing. It's just we're looking now from the outside in versus the inside out. So I wanted to show you my little skin model. That's what I want.

I want to know why you have that. That's just the coolest thing ever. Because I love anatomy when I'm an anatomy geek. Yeah. Me too. Now I need one of those.

Well, okay. We'll talk later about where I wish. Yeah, we do a holiday grab bag every year, and that's going to be mine. It's a good one. I mean, I've got a brain model.

I got all kinds of models. So I will tell you that where I went to medical school was in Europe. And when we used to study anatomy, two things. One, a lot of us actually had our own human skeletons.

And we're not talking about the plastic. The real deal. Wow. The real deal. And, you know, obviously I did not bring them back. You know, if I carried them back to the US in a suitcase, I would not be here right now.

But they were ones that were donated to the university for studying. Right. So like that, medical students can study it. But what we used to do is before an anatomy exam or anatomy lab, we would go in.

There's always a porter guarding like the cadavers and the bodies and stuff like that. Because, you know, we got to go in and see muscle origin insertion and, you know, just memorize all this stuff.

So when we're looking at the body. And so we used to go bribe this guy at 6:00 in the morning. Can we have an extra hour. We need to study this anatomy.

So we, we bring him some like breakfast and be like, can we just go study? And this is literally to do something good to go study. Right. So it wasn't like a bad bribe. But but yeah, the things we do to learn what's going on in the body. So all right my next question for you.

So this is where if you're okay with it, I would like you to get on the record with. You've said that conventional cosmetics and personal care products may be among the single worst sources of toxic exposure and modern life, and that's a pretty bold claim, and our audience really deserves a full explanation around this, that what we are putting on our skin, why it's so dangerous.

So can we go into some of the ingredient categories that, you know, maybe people have kind of heard the words thrown around or they've seen on their shampoo bottle, like something free, like, can we talk a little bit about this?

Yeah, I'd love to do that. So yeah, I did say that and I stand by that. Why do I say it's likely the current most dangerous? Partly because of the lack of awareness.

All right. So that's a big part of it because I would have said if you asked me 15 years ago, I probably would have said the food were putting the northern mouth.

But a lot of people, because of folks like you, are much more aware of that aspect of things. So that's part of it. The other reason is because the average woman in the United States, for example, you puts 168 different chemicals on her skin every single day. Why?

Because she's using about 12, 13 different products on average a day. So it's the sheer volume. And if we I would say this like, you know what, if I put deodorant on once a year, I wouldn't be having this conversation.

But we're putting these chemicals on every single day Darfur day, week after week, year after year, decade after decade. Okay, that is an immense amount of chemicals into the body.

And you talked about, you know, medical school, you probably had to go through chemistry class, if you remember chemistry classes. Many people don't because it was way back in high school for for some folks.

But what happens when you put two chemicals together? They create a different chemical. What happens when you put three, five, ten? They create different chemicals.

We don't know what all of these different chemicals are. You're asking me and I will. I'll hit some of the most common, most popular, but we don't even know what happens when they all convene together.

But it can't be good. I don't think it's diffusing. I don't think it's it's it's defuzing rather than. I think it's making matters worse when you put these chemicals together inside your body.

And one more thing with your wonderful model there. So the chemicals are going in many cases, like we talked about you into the bloodstream down they go into those blood and they shoot around your body.

And where do they get stored in the organs throughout your body. And so I call it it's not it's death by a thousand cuts to be extreme about it. Meaning you will you pay the price increasingly and over time.

So when I address the folks that I do, you know, middle age and golden years people, in those years we have we have been doing this a long time. And so there's probably for just about everybody, a lot that has built up inside of our bodies and our systems.

Sadly, some of these have a half life that's ridiculously long, but you can do a lot about a lot of them, like PFAS. They're probably, you know, the worst, you know, like people are chemicals, pear and poly, floral like it's such a long way, but just call them PFAS.

Unfortunately, there in a lot of products and there are a lot of other things today and they have a long half life. They call them forever chemicals. You can still reduce the consumption of these and make a big difference, but there's tons of other chemicals that are very common.

So let me let me preface that part of the conversation. There are at least 10,000 different chemicals that are used in cosmetics and personal care products today, 10,000 of which other countries, like I identified, have said at least 1600 that we know of are so bad we're not going to use them here.

Again, the US is only 11. It's crazy right? But the point is that we can sit here all day long, and I've got pretty long list in my head, and we're still never going to be able to identify on a package all the worst offenders.

But I will give you some very common ones. Phthalates for a l a t e s is probably one of the top five worst offenders out there. And they're like plasticizers.

They're used to make product flexible. They have other purposes as well. Anyway, the point is that they're common in skincare products. And, you know, other cosmetics.

I mentioned PFAS forever chemicals. I'll give you my you know, I'll give you the level one sheet. What I look for, there's two things I'll look for. And I'll tell you in a moment though.

So I'll do a little cliffhanger for you on that front. But there's a trick, listen, which is an interesting chemical, because I think it was 2016. There was a big battle over it being in in soap and they found, yeah, it's really not good for you at all.

So they banned it from soap. But guess what they didn't do. They didn't ban it from anti-aging products that you're putting on your face. That's crazy when you do like wait a minute.

So it's you said, yeah, it's bad. So we'll keep it out of the soap because that's where they made a big fuss. But quietly, they still allow it. And other products that go on your skin and thought is crazy.

There's formaldehyde producing or releasing preservatives in skincare products. Yes, that same formaldehyde that preserved the frog and biology class.

And it's it's a known carcinogen. This one is not even an argument. It's a known carcinogen. And it is allowed. And it is common in skincare and other cosmetic products.

Oh, and then the sodium. It's the sulfates. Basically sodium laurel sulfate. What does that do that produces foam. And here again we've been trained on a couple of things.

So we've been trained to think that once when thought was soap or shampoo lathers up and it must be good. It's working. That's a psychological mechanism that has zero validity.

In fact, what that means is it's probably got the sulfates in them that I mentioned that are not good for you at all. Foaming has zero to do with effectiveness, but it's a psychological mechanism just like smells.

And that's my little cheat. Number one, what do I look for on a label? First thing I look for most importantly, and not all products yet have them is certified organic or some other independent verification.

Not something the company which says because companies can pretty much say anything they want to say. Independent verification that the thing is free of these synthetic and horrible chemicals.

But if I don't see that and still some products, some types of products out there don't have that yet, I then look for does it have this in it fragrance?

If it says fragrance on that ingredient label or the French variation which is parfum, then sometimes I'll call parfum and sometimes I'll call it very generically scent.

Those three words mean the same thing. I put it right back. There's no way I'm using that. Why? Because that means it's got anywhere from dozens to hundreds of chemicals hidden in that one word.

Chances are extremely high that that's the case. And there have been you know, they've broken down and they done studies. And these are chemicals that you don't want on your skin or in your body.

So I put it right back. Why can they get away with doing that. Because it's a legal trade secret. How they get whatever the smell is that might, you know, that they're associating with effectiveness.

It's all fake. And it's just like I told you, the foaming action, it's all fake, these smells. But again, people have associated the smell of, you know, berries or lemon or musk with effectiveness or beauty or whatever the case may be.

Those are all synthetically created and that's their trade secret. They are allowed not to tell you. And so a lot of times I'll throw other ingredients that they're putting in this product that you don't want on your body under that label.

So I put it right back when I see that. Wow. Okay. So I want to go back to a couple of these and talk a little bit about it. But before we kind of review them a little bit, I want the audience who's listening or watching to just think about what they did this morning from, you know, taking a shower, the soap, the body soap.

They used, the shampoo they might have used, then the body lotion they put on their body after they got out of the shower, then the toothpaste they used to brush their teeth, the mouthwash they might have used, then maybe they put on a perfume afterwards.

And then, you know, for women, if they started putting on their makeup. Right. So if they put on their foundation, their concealer, their mascara, their I shudder, their blush, their lipstick, I'm like already counting on multiple hands here.

Right? So right. And inside each of those products is multiple, multiple chemicals is what Bryan is saying to you. So I'm just going to list off a couple of things that are so common that like once you kind of know about it, it's kind of mind boggling like that.

It still exists, right? So for example, formaldehyde, I see that all the time. But because I work in a pathology lab, this is how we preserve like specimens.

So they stay put. And it's super, super toxic. So toxic that we actually have to wear. Kind of like how radiologists have to wear a little like, radiation meters.

We have to wear formaldehyde meters to make sure that our bodies aren't getting exposed to this. And now I've been doing this for decades, since the early 2000.

Just say I've been in a pathology lab, right? So I'm very intentional about like, okay, that is the job. How am I clearing it out for my body? How am I protecting everything?

So formaldehyde is one for sure. We have a lot of exposure to that. Triclosan is interesting because that I still see in some antibacterial soaps, which if we want microbiome on our hand.

Yeah, well. How would we use an act like I never meant that soaps. But this is also part of that. Like, okay, you've been trained to understand something one way without understanding the full picture.

But triclosan I have seen in a lot of antibacterial soaps. So in the hospitals, those little pumps where like you walk in, if you read them, depending on which hospital.

Yeah, they still have trickle sand in them. And now you're walking into the hospital, you're doing your little antibacterial or you're outside of patients room, you're doing a little antibacterial.

I mean, the whole logic behind it is like mind boggling to me. So listen, I still see a lot formaldehyde, sulfates. So for the individuals listening, when you go buy your shampoo and stuff, you're going to now start seeing sulfate free.

But just remember, just like food where they might remove sugar and say sugar free, they might be putting something else in there. So you have to read the full label, not just what's on like the the front part of the label, just trying to get those key words into your, your brain there and then I want to know, because I don't know the answer to this, but perfume definitely in this country, like all the stuff that's in the stores and shops and stuff like that, I'm 100% I agree with, but what about the ones that are being made in other countries, like so for people who travel and maybe they go to like a factory in France that makes their own perfumes and you can actually see like, okay, these are the plants they took it from.

And this is how they do it with the roses, and this is how they make the scent. What would you advise people on that. So there's echo which is there more advanced?

Honestly in a lot of ways. And they've got much I could tell you as a company with Purity Woods, it's, it's so strict to get your products into Europe.

You have to demonstrate, you know, that you've met all of these requirements. Again, they ban 1600 ingredients, you know, for starters. So when you are or if it's in perfumes and stuff like they're required, basically it's kind of like a to the extent of cigarettes where they give you warnings basically on, you know, on a pack of cigarettes.

You know, I think they still I don't even seen a pack of cigarettes in years, but they used to I'm sure they still have the warnings on them. So there's a lot of more communication.

It's a lot more apparent to the consumer what they might be getting into, you know, and yeah, I can't go to too deep because I haven't been in France in decades now.

I'd love to go back to France, by the way. I loved it there. But anyway, yeah, but they it's much, much more open communication about these things and strict requirements on.

So you know, in Europe you know, look for echo certs on the products for example, which by the way is not strangely not as strict as certified organic.

Here again, I don't you know, we always talk. If I start talking about the government, I know I'm going into very careful territory, but I will just say this one thing, the only thing besides food produce that the certified organic was applied to is cosmetics and personal care.

So that is the government acknowledging. So in this one way they were very smart because they're saying that's food too. So it's what I, what I was talking about at the very beginning, you're feeding your body that as well.

They're not putting that on furniture. You know, certified organic. They're not. The USDA is not putting that on anything else besides two things the food that goes into your mouth and on products that go on to and therefore into your body through your skin.

So I thought that was very interesting. Like a good job on that one guys. Yeah. All right. So let's do a little comparison with food. You use an analogy where you compare conventional skin care products to fast food.

Can you unpack that comparison? Because I think it will reframe a little bit the way that people think about or should be thinking about what they even buy at a drugstore, right?

So whether they're going to our top chains of drugstores, how are we comparing conventional skincare products to fast food? Right. It's a really, really great question.

So well, continues my answer. When you're pushing your grocery cart down the cosmetics and personal care aisle. First of all, if you remember nothing else from this conversation, just remember you are pushing it down a food aisle.

Okay? Now people will say, just like they said 20 years ago, which I did here. I remember all of that as much younger those in the early, early days. But you know, why would they allow that into, you know, into food.

So the conversation then was about to if if processed foods were so bad they wouldn't allow it, you know, and then they were calling some of the doctors who were trying to expose a lot of this quacks, you know.

What do you mean? You know, my Wonder Bread is bad. If it was that bad, why would they allow, you know. So now we're kind of at the phase where still some people are like, well, why would they allow all these chemicals and products if they were really that bad? Wow.

Because they can get away with it. They're, you know, multi hundred billion dollar industry. It's really the chemical industry which is even bigger than that that that benefits from that.

So they can and they do allow that. Why is it like fast foods. What are these ingredients doing these synthetic ingredients doing. Why are they in the products in the first place?

Because they are super cheap for the companies that make the products. They're super cheap ways to preserve the product on a on a shelf. They're super cheap ways.

For two, you talked about chemicals, two different chemicals to mix, so they help the chemicals stay together inside the other horrible chemicals. One of the worst classes of them are called penetrators.

What do they do? They put these chemicals in these products that don't. What they do is they accelerate the penetration into your model, into your skin.

They make it go faster. So you get these short term results quicker and you're like, oh my God, it works. It really is making my skin smooth or whatever the thing may be for that particular product.

So just like fast food, when we go eat, you know, those foods have been scientifically maneuvered to the bliss point, just like processed foods as well.

And fast foods. What's the point? You know, it's the perfect balance of the most basic senses, sweet mommy, or the field of food and sugar. And so all of these foods have been carefully engineered to appeal to us in their most base sense.

So we go eat fast food and like, oh my God, this is yummy. You know, that's the idea, right? And in addicts quotes around that, I have to be careful with that.

But it addicts a lot of people to the food because it's enjoyable in the moment and then we feel like crap to be frank about it. An hour later, a day later, a week later.

Certainly as time goes on, it really, really impacts our health and well-being. It's the same situation with these products. Yeah, they do have some immediate effect or relatively immediate in the world of anti-aging.

I talk about retinol. It's synthetic. A lot of people don't know that. It's it's synthetic chemical. It's the superstar chemical out there, but it's synthetic.

And there's a reason that it makes so many people skin red, and it's compromising your skin. It's making you more susceptible to skin cancer, to be frank about it.

But it has an incredible fast food effect. Meaning, yes, it does show smoother skin pretty quickly. So it does work. It's just you're paying a hefty price and you're again, it's your prematurely aging.

It'll help you look a lot older, a lot quicker. Maybe not tomorrow. It'll look really good tomorrow, just like you'll feel really happy after eating whatever fast food they have out there the burger might make you feel. Oh, this is amazing.

You know, an hour later, like, oh, man, what did I do? So what would be the equivalent whole food skincare product? Like? What would that look like? A whole food skincare product.

Like, if we're thinking about, like, the food we eat, right, we want whole foods. We want unprocessed foods. So what would skincare look like? When it's a whole food skincare.

It would look like Purity Woods. Well, okay, tell me like me more. Yeah. Yeah. So well all right. So yeah, I mean this is this is, this is why. So my story why did I start was because I had the art of anti-aging before that.

And that was that's the information organization doing, you know, fighting the good fight. Like you are trying to put evidence based health and wellness knowledge out there.

It's a little more of a selfish start to the Purity Woods, because I noticed around my eyes and my wife simultaneously. We had a lot of crow's feet, as they're called, you know, and I'm like, I know exactly what.

I've been in geek for years and years and years. I've been researching, you know, plants, you know, that work well for the skin, for our health, in many other ways.

And I'm a geek on that front. And I knew what I wanted and I knew what I didn't want, which was all these chemicals. So I know what I'm looking for. I couldn't find it in the United States.

That's the long story really. Short. Could not find it in a certified organic format. I'm like, that's all right. So I had to. Again, real long story short, I went to Canada, you know, worked with a formulator over there.

And that was the first product I was the first. And my wife was the first customer. It worked like gangbusters. I'm like oh my God I have to I have to offer this to people.

And that is still our best seller today. That very first product is the age defying Dream Cream. So that is what a Whole Foods product looks like. So what does it contain? What is the.

There's more than one magic ingredient, but the one I like to put the spotlight on because it's so different is red maple leaf extracts. There was a study in 2018 of the University of Rhode Island showing that red maple leaf extracts contain unique compounds, 17 of which have not been found yet elsewhere in nature.

I'm sure they're out there somewhere, and they actually block elastase. Elastase is what is an enzyme that breaks down elastin, you know, so we had talked and there's probably 4 or 5 most key components here.

Yeah. There we go I love you. Yeah. So what happens as we age. Right. So you got your epidermis. Well underneath here in the kind of very superficial dermis part when you have sun exposure, aging, the process, we get something called solar elasticity.

And under the microscope to me it looks bluish. That's not really what's happening. It's the elastin that Brian is talking about. Instead of those fibers being nice like taught in a tennis racket, they get kind of like a tennis racket that's been the strings have been played and beaten up.

And, well, that's where you're getting the wrinkles. So it's the loosening of that process. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Really two of the three super key, key things you want to do, your skin is help your body increase the strength, like you said, is perfect of the elastin.

And people have heard this one more collagen and then, of course, hydration and moisture. Super important. Now there's antioxidants and other things that go deeper than this as well.

But so the whole food ingredients, this is what we talked about. This is the nutrition. And by the way, these ingredients, when you are putting these plants on your skin, your microbiome that we're going back to that now. They're happy.

They're happy. They're getting food, you know, just like you feed, you know, the the microbiota inside your body. I'm sorry. The Michael bailout. It's trying to I'm trying to find.

You got another model. To make sure I got my eye cream in there because I have the other cream. I have to start you to that. Like, what's she doing? Hello.

Maybe I started with the wrong one. You're fantastic with props. I got to remember that because it's a highlight. Let me see. All right. Yes. I'm so excited. Okay.

The eye cream is going on tonight. I've got it right here. That's sweet. You're real. Deal. You weren't kidding. You do use them. Yeah, yeah, but I didn't use this one.

I use, like, the face one. I didn't open this one because I didn't realize there were different, but. Okay, I'm going to do my red maple tonight. I'm excited. Okay. Yeah.

I'm glad you're doing this. So that's just one, right? You talked about sun damage. Weather damage. So there's a Astor's anthem. It's called Astor's anthem is derived from red algae.

And it's the same stuff. This red algae is what, like the salmon eat that makes them pink flamingos eat, that makes them pink. And it's a powerful compound.

And that actually helps reverse the appearance of weather damage. Sun damage looking skin. I mean, it's a powerful ingredient. Now that's in the age defying dream cream.

I mean, here, here I could start geeking out because I there's you know, Abla, I know you know amla. Oh, we've got amla in my product. Yeah, of course you do.

Yeah, just your product. Tremendous. And it's wonderful into the body and it's wonderful onto the body. And multiple of our products have amla or Indian gooseberry in them.

It's sky high in vitamin C and other key antioxidants. Super beneficial for so many different reasons for for your skin. Another one that's sky high in vitamin C and other antioxidants is camu camu fruit.

And the extract of that is mango seed extract is in multiple of our products. We have a fern that's exceptional. So the point is that it's a again it's all it's all plant based, all plant based.

And there is a lot of science behind these. You know, it's also a lot harder to do, I'll be honest with you. So at Purity Woods we have 7 or 8 different key products.

Right. Not 40. Not 50. Why? Because it's it's a lot harder to do, but they are so darned effective. I've been around natural products for decades now, and I'm associated with some other ones, but I've not seen the type of love that I have for these products.

And because it is, it's it's kind of what you said. You're feeding your skin the right whole foods that have effect that you could see pretty darn quickly in a lot of situations and that are actually good for you.

And they're certainly not bad for you in the sense of loaded with a bunch of toxins. Yeah. I mean, you have very similar story. You are looking for a solution you could not find.

You produced it. I did the same thing with trevally. And as I now put on my eye cream because I don't want to wait till tonight, make sure I got some of my my red maple here.

We'll make sure we're doing it. All right. So another question for you. You've reached millions of people with this message, right. Has there been a moment where, you know, whether it was a specific person, a letter, a conversation where you you felt that somebody health genuinely turned around because they finally understood.

All right. Like what I'm doing to my skin and how it's related to my gut and my aging and all of that. Do you have an example of anybody? Yeah. You know, in all these years, nobody's ever asked me that question of that directly, which I love.

I'm glad you did. I, you know, through nowadays, you know, it's often through through a team of people who receive messages like emails and stuff like that, and they know to send me those messages and they come in quite a bit.

What people often tell me is because the very first thing I say is reduce first and fourth, even if you're not going to use Purity Woods, okay, reduce your use.

It's very, very difficult to tell anybody. Cut it all out. It's just like saying cut all toxins out. That's impossible today. But I'm telling you, even a reduction, taking the dial down, switching some of these products.

When people do that, they start to see certain. And I have to be careful because I don't want to make specific claims. But many people see symptoms that they didn't understand the source disappear.

They have. They might be. It's certainly associated with some of the skin conditions we talked about, but it's also things like sinus issues. I hear a lot from people.

I had sinus issues. I didn't know why, you know, and I, you know, cut out all of my, all of the and here's the other thing I tell people, like, if you're going to make a choice about where to start, you know, like you brought up and I brought 12 personal care products a day on average, I think. And that always sounds low to me, you know?

But however many of you use, those that you apply directly to, your skin is where I would start. Because they're sitting on your skin. They're designed to penetrate into your body.

I told you, a lot of them have penetrators that suck those horrible chemicals deeper, faster, if you're going to choose between that and shampoo. I'm not saying shampoos loaded with all the junk that they're loaded with are good, but I'm saying you rinse a lot of it off pretty quickly.

Some of the residue still such, but if you're going to make a choice, where do I start? Your moisturizers, your creams, whatever it is, move away from that.

When I've told people just to do that, a lot of people have noticed symptoms of old aches. I mean, a lot of variety, reduced dizziness. You know, these are these are all coming to mind now.

And it's it's a joy to hear that, honestly. You know, because you're making a difference to somebody. You know, we suffer with a lot of these symptoms.

And so often they are chemical associated, whether they're chemicals in these products, chemicals and the indoor air in our homes. And sure, you know, folks are aware of.

So yeah. Yeah. So if anybody is listening and they're like, you know, I always seem to have a headache by this time of day or I feel fatigued by, you know, the afternoon and you've cleaned up your nutrition, you've optimized your sleep.

You've you know, you're moving your body. Maybe you haven't examined all the stuff you're putting on your skin. So, I mean, after listening to this conversation, I really think that that's something people should be reevaluating.

So my last question for you, and I want you to be concrete as possible, because a lot of our listeners are getting so much information. So if people have been using the same and I'm not even going to name these products, but the same shampoo for decades, the same moisturizer for decades, the same deodorant for decades, the same Cologne for decades.

Right. And never thinking any of this could affect their microbiome, whether that's to skin microbiome, their gut microbiome, their overall health, what are the three most important things that they should start doing this week to reduce their toxic load to both support their skin and gut microbiome?

Three specifics, right? Number one, like I said, consider first and foremost those products you are plying applying directly onto your skin and try to make a move there first.

I would say if you're going to narrow that down even more, what are you putting on your skin at night before you go to bed? And so now you're supposed to be in a regenerative mode.

You're supposed to be in a mode where your brain is clearing toxins out of your head, and especially on your face if you're putting stuff on your face, even if you have an allegiance to it.

Apologies if you've had an allegiance to a product for years or decades. Like you said, if it contains the fragrance. We talked about these other questionable chemicals that we talked about.

I would make a move their first. So I went really narrow, especially the ones you're putting on your face at night when you're supposed to be in regenerative mode, when, by the way, your skin is, is actually consuming, you know, all night long whatever you put on it, I would switch that first and foremost, very specific.

I would do more than that. But if I'm going to pick one thing to start with, that would be, you know, the one thing when you do go to your grocery stores, to wherever you're online shopping, whatever you may do, try to give your give your dollars.

It doesn't have to be to Purity Woods, but companies like ours is. Another thing is there are good folks fighting the good fight out there. We're not the only ones. We have competitors.

There's some good ones out there. Okay. And I'll be the first to say that. Of course I want you, you know, trying Purity Woods. But we'll look for those organizations with things like deodorants, which is a very key, you know, place as well.

It's a very thin layer of skin under your arm. The thinnest is under your eyes. So you put stuff. I watch you doing it under your eyes and like, thank God that's our product because this is the thinnest layer of skin, the penetrations fast.

It happens to be near your brain. You just want to be very careful of some key parts of your body. So when you go give your patronize in the positive sense, the organizations that are fighting the good fight who are certified organic, number three, I'd say to you, is frankly, back to number one then and then make the, you know, the shifts to other things that you're putting on your skin first and foremost, like I said, deodorant and those things.

And then the third thing, and you brought it up earlier and I just I really have to tell people to be careful of this. We call it greenwashing. You brought it up earlier.

Be careful, because all of these organizations out there know that the message that I'm sharing that you're sharing is getting out there. People are becoming fast educated about all this, but most of them still are cutting corners tremendously.

They're playing you and they're putting on their labels paraben free. And yes, it's paraben free, but you turn it around and there's 55 chemicals you don't want on or in your body in it.

They're just playing you. It's called greenwashing. Be very careful about, you know, them playing you. Basically, the problem is that there's very little regulation.

And so you could say organic in big letters on the front and then you turn it around. What that means is there's two ingredients that are organic. And there's again 45 that are synthetic.

They're not breaking any laws. They can do that. And they're doing that for a reason. They're taking advantage of people. So be very careful with greenwashing.

Look for those certifications, like I said, certified organic echo certified in Europe. There's some states that have strong certifications. And also, I told you my little litmus test if I see fragrance in there, I put the product right back.

So those those are three very key things I would recommend. All right. Perfect. Brian, this has been a genuinely eye opening conversation. The idea that the products most of us have trusted for years might be quietly undermining our gut health, our skin health, and that there is actually a clear path to doing better.

And that's a message I want everyone to carry with them. Now, if people want to learn more about your work, find you. Where are some of the places we can send them?

Yeah, you can go to the Art of anti-aging. Com and we have a great blog I think people enjoy there. And again, it's all evidence based. Anything having to do with healthy aging and longevity over there.

And then there is Purity woods purity woods com head there. Try anything. But if you're if you're going to start anywhere, you know, a lot of folks do start with that signature product called the age defined dream cream.

Perfect. All right guys, you hear it? Heard it here. Your gut and your skin are in constant conversation. The question is whether you're putting your body on your body.

And if you're helping that conversation or quietly disrupting it. So thank you so much, Brian and everyone. Stay tuned for another episode coming up next.

Don't go anywhere.