151: Biohack Your Skin, Part 1 with Amitay Eshel

Amitay Eshel 0:05

If you learn to manipulate, breathing you learn to manipulate your body. The better we treat our body, the better our skin's gonna look.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 0:17

Welcome to Your Longevity Blueprint Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Stephanie Gray. My number one goal with the show is to help you discover your personalized plan to build your dream health and live a longer, happier, truly healthier life. Today you get to hear from AMI ty eshowe, who's the co founder and CEO of young blue skincare. I divided this into a two part series. In part one, he shares how skin aging drives whole body aging and share strategies to reduce our skin's functional biological age. He shares why he started this company and how these products truly repair skin damage and incorporate peptides. For more youthful function in the skin. He starts sharing about their serums which activate genes that help the longevity of your skin. Now in part two, he'll talk more specifically about treating wrinkles tackling hyperpigmentation product uses his skincare regimen and how important safe sunscreen is. Let's get started

Welcome to another episode of The Your Longevity Blueprint podcast. today. My guest is Amitay Eshel, who is an entrepreneur in the biohacking and beauty fields. He has held executive roles in the Health, Wellness and beauty industry for over a decade, as well as being a business development consultant in that space. As co founder and CEO of Young Goose, the biohacking skincare company and host of the Young Goose's Biohacking Beauty Podcast. Amitay has been making waves in the industry through education and innovation. Young goose embodies his two passions, performance optimization, and skin health who's with products that boosts the functions of natural rejuvenation processes in the body? Welcome to the show me ty.

Amitay Eshel 1:49

Thank you so much. The first person to ever say my name correctly, so gives you a lot of credit. That's harder than medical school.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 1:57

I only said it correctly once I will try to pronounce it correctly the rest of the show. That's great. Thank you for being here.

Amitay Eshel 2:04

Absolutely. It's absolutely my pleasure.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 2:07

So for listeners who follow me on social media, they know that I was very excited to announce that my practice Integrative Health and hormone clinic was really the first clinic here in Iowa to be able to retail your products, these amazing products. And I learned about them from actually some of my past podcast guests who are biohackers. And you know, they're in that industry, who love their products. So for my listeners, you know, Natalie Nitnem, Sean wells, and I even saw recently, Amy Horniman was, you know, advocating for your products. So, I know that will sound familiar to listeners. So additionally, you've trained our staff on these products. And I thought, well, what better way to educate my patients and listeners on their benefits than bringing on the expert and the creator. So today, I want to dive into the products. But first, I want to dive into how we really can reduce skin aging. So let's start with that. And I always like to ask my guests their story. So you know, to kind of tell me the story behind the story kind of what led you to starting your company before we really get into how to biohack our skin.

Amitay Eshel 3:01

I think most people that looking into health and wellness come from a from a point of like from a low point they had some some history of some something, some event that led them down that path. And for me, it's more of a nerdy path. To be honest, it's more about being really interested in how to optimize my performance rather, not running away from pain rather going towards pleasure if to to use some Tony Robbins. Anecdotes here. I started my first career was in the military, I was in Israeli Special Forces head of recon for a special forces unit in Israel. And when I got out of the military, obviously that's a lot of wear and tear on the body. But I wanted to continue to redline my body I'm very interested in in sports and contact sports, wrestling jujitsu, whatever that is. And obviously, a lot of injuries in the military, some wear and tear, I really wanted to perform my best so so that was one kind of introduction into wellness, you know, treating your body a certain way. Some would say like a temple. That's one aspect. The other aspect is I got into this one of these really early on red light therapy companies that was actually a laser and our project was really to make a consumer product out of it. What I realized is that you take this medical laser, and you know, you make the make a panel out of it and you're trying to explain to people that it can reduce pain that he can improve performance, blah, blah, blah, and the sales weren't going that great to be frank. But then when some discoveries and how it can improve skin health came out and we started to use this rhetoric, we found out that a lot of people that's where they want to see a difference in their health journey and their life and that was kind of a eureka moment for me. As far as me understanding that where my Ego is lies as if we would, is how my body performs. But for a lot of other people, it could be how their skin performs, how their mirror performs for that matter how they look, when they look in the mirror, or today, it's when they post something on Instagram or whatever that is, right Tiktok whatever. Really, it everyone identifies with their identifies success as far as their health journey in a different way. That's kind of the two ways that I got introduced into biohacking health optimization, whatever that is, whatever you would like to call that. Along the journey, I fell in love with NAD fell in love with nada V is understood that this is something that is very costly, and we tried to find a way to make it cheaper for people. So we tried to get it to to make a transdermal application of NAD precursors. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we found out that the skin really liked that you give the skin and even if it's small enough to absorb and in the correct makeup to absorb the skin keeps it it doesn't want to share it. So we made lemonade out of lemons. And we made a skincare product, too. And I'm sure we're going to get into it. But what we found out is that we can have the skin behave significantly younger. Unfortunately, unless you have an underlying condition unless you are unless there's something going on that the skin is engaged in, in addressing the skin doesn't know a wrinkle is a problem or a pigmented areas a problem or laxity is a problem. And we can go on and on. And it doesn't know that there is no signal that says hey, please repair this. So the second phase of the company, if you would was looking at signals was improving signals, how do we communicate to the body that we need it to repair, fill in the blank, whatever that is, right. That's kind of the journey of of me and young goose in a nutshell. And I had some other other projects within the biohacking space during that time within the longevity space. We consulted a lot we develop different process processes projects for different people. But this is our our Baby mine and my partner Anastasia which, which is really the heart and soul of this company.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 7:22

And part of me wants to go off on a big tangent and ask about your experience with being an Israeli Special Forces and kind of like if there were any special secrets that that you were taught to help improve performance, but I feel like that could be a whole nother show.

Amitay Eshel 7:35

Yeah, so I'll just say mainly breathing, I think, you know, during stressful situations, civilian, whatever that is, yeah, we realize that breathing is one of the things that changes our state the most, you know, really to make sure that we that we don't get go on a completely different discussion here. What I would say is, is that if you learn to manipulate, breathing, you learn to manipulate your body, whether for better or for worse. And I think this is a huge part of I think there's a difference between like how you feel right now in longevity, and a lot of times they don't actually connect. But I think this is a good way to improve both.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 8:20

Thank you. Yeah, we'll leave it at that and go and go back in aging. So how does skin aging? Dr. Whole body aging?

Amitay Eshel 8:28

That's an incredible question. Because normally what we were used to think of is that the better we treat our body to better our skin looks, it is true to a point what I would say to that specific subject before I go to the the the mirror side of it, which is which is how the skin effects whole body aging, I would say is as we grow older, especially women after menopause, but as we grow older as a whole, the skin becomes less and less a in Oregon that communicates sexual maturity, vitality, etc. And it becomes more and more a an organ that protects the body from the environment and becomes more of more a shield that is being that is being sacrificed in order to protect our body rather than an organ that is supposed to tell the environment. Hey, I am at my peak. And I am and I'm a valuable member of society and amama, youthful, vibrant individual and I think that there's something there as far as why we want to look what why we want our skin to look good as we grow older because that is really the communication method for Hey, I'm a productive member of this invisible this society. Having said that, looking at the opposite side of looking at how what happens in our skin as we grow older. And I'm sure we're gonna go back but When we talk about NAD and senolytics, but what happens is that lack of ability to repair leads to a lot of waste debris, and especially cells that are malfunctioning chief among them cells that are called senescent cells, which you can think of them as zombie cells are normally what people call them. And that's very apt because they don't contribute. they infect other cells. And they are basically in a state that's between living and dead. But we can really think of them as malfunctioning cells. And these cells create a lot of inflammation. This information, obviously, is that okay, we can talk about why inflammation is bad. But really, inflammation is a driver of aging, it's called inflammation. And this is one of the major culprits of why our body ages. But as I said before, the skin is a communication organ, not only to towards the outside, but also towards the inside. If you think of it, this is what stands between your body and the environment. So a lot of the environmental cues that our brain receives, it is received through our skin. To give a short example that's maybe not connected to what we're saying. Studies show that if you put on an eyebrow mask, you won't be able to see any light at all. But you go to sleep in a lit room, your sleep is going to be disturbed because your body receives your skin receives some of that light. And obviously, you know, your skin creates hormones, grades, vitamin d3, there are many things that we can talk about the skin and its ability to communicate to the brain, but it's kind of a to use a military term. It's a term it's kind of the tip of the spear as far as your brain is concerned. Yeah, that is called the skin brain access.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 11:49

I haven't heard that one. I haven't had the skin brain access. Okay,

Amitay Eshel 11:53

your skin communicates directly with the HPA axis, hypothalamic pituitary axis. And the HPA axis is responsible for stress response in the body. And when we grow older, and we accumulate those senescence cells, they create a lot of inflammation. They actually send inflammation using heuristics here, but they send inflammation to the brain. They also infect different cells, like you know, cells that come in contact with them, such as immune cells, blood vessels, et cetera, but they infect the brain with inflammation affects the HPA axis, the HPA, excuse me with inflammation, which then communicates stress to the body elevates cortisol, obviously, when the brain is inflamed, you'll be right to assume that you're the rest of your body, in the inflammatory burden in the rest of the body grows. So by having an older functioning skin, we are not, you know, a lot of people say maybe rightfully so, it's not a saying that I that I would battle against necessarily, I earned my wrinkles, that's fine. If you have that, that's not necessarily a bad thing. But earning senescence cells is definitely bad. Earning malfunctioning cells are definitely bad because you are earning inflammation. And that inflammation obviously communicates through your brain. And that inflammation ages you creates brain fog creates a different hormonal response, which is negative, which which is kind of a self feeding loop, because more inflammation begets more senescence cells, etc. Well said, and now you got an hour and a half lecture and five minutes.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 13:37

So what are some given all of what you said, right, which we don't want to have happen, we don't want our skin to age, we don't want that inflammation. What are strategies to reduce our skins and functional or biologic age?

Amitay Eshel 13:48

So first of all, you know, and I'm going to go back to that, that saying that the better we treat our body, the better our skin's gonna look. Most people wouldn't don't know that around. Only around 20% of skin aging is what we call intrinsic aging, aging that happens from the inside 80% around obviously, it's individual, but in Western society. 80% of aging is from from external factors, extrinsic aging, so it could be pollution, it could be toxins, it can be heavy metals, it can be obviously UV light, and the blue light that we get from artificial life, which is called high energy, visible light. All of those things drive that skin aging, and they're normally in Western societies about 80% of what skin aging is. So first and foremost, prevention. An ounce of prevention is what what do they say an ounce of prevention is like a pound of cure or something. Yeah, so that's number one. Definitely protect our skin and we can do it in a few ways. We can obviously do it through natural or non chemical sunblock, and some peptides that can help Help with us protecting our skin. And we can also do it with antioxidants in our products, and also from the inside. But in general, studies show that we can double the effectiveness of a sunblock if we add antioxidants to it just to give you an idea.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 15:15

Wow. So does your sunblock have antioxidants in it, not only

Amitay Eshel 15:19

antioxidant, it's also very, very interesting peptides that we use to help the skin repair its cellular membrane like super fast before that damage accumulates, it's actually extremely interesting. And that's why people like you know, Molly Maloof, or Dave Asprey, and all those people really like our hours, sunscreen, because it doesn't only protect you from UV, it also protects you from blue light from pollution, and from an helps the skin deal with the damages of EMF, which is electrical magnetic frequencies that we're all exposed to that also damage our skin. So that's number one, prevention. Number two, how can we lower the functional age of the skin? First and foremost, we can serve the skin, the molecule that it lacks as it grows older, that kind of is the culprit of everything that we think of as aging, which is an ad, I knew you're gonna say that. NAD is basically the fuel not only for energy creation, but also over 600 repair processes for DNA integrity. So for many things that are that we think of it as a direct function or a useful function. As we grow older NAD halves by the time we get to 60. And that is an we can think of aging as the accumulation of unrepaired damage. So NAD is essential for damage for for damage repair. And every time there's not enough in AD, we accumulate that damage, and eventually, that leads to aging, and even death. I mean disease that.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 16:55

And just for our listeners, we talk a lot about mitochondrial health and mitochondrial function. And NAD is just absolutely unnecessary for that just so that they can kind of understand more of what you're, you're saying yeah,

Amitay Eshel 17:05

and I will say this, that's something that normally drives in the point, if I took NAD magically from your body, you're going to be dead in 30 seconds. Okay, so I think that that's a good contrast that paint. So unfortunately, if I tried to give NAD to my body to my skin, the body doesn't really understand what to do with it because it only exists inside of a cell. Or it's only utilized inside ourselves. What the body is used to is recycling its own NAD and using different types of vitamin d3 as building blocks for NAD. So normally what we want to do is give the body different types of vitamin B three, there are ones that work better that are in worse normally what people know especially from skincare is nice cinnamon or non flush niacin, I will just this is a whole lot that's going to be a whole podcast, but let's just say it's the least effective form and it can be detrimental. So normally what we want to give the skin is like really high performing building blocks for NAD they are called in our n mn M and tryptophan in a all of those are normally the ones that we want to look for. And guess what we have all of them in our product. So this is the first and foremost we have to raise NAD levels and we have to signal DNA repair. That's how we can have this can behave like a younger skin. We signal DNA repair mainly through patented form of resistance. We do it through a patented form of resveratrol, which which is you can think of if NAD is the the fuel for repair, especially DNA repair, Resveratrol is like the gas pedal for that repair or DNA repair. Okay, so normally resveratrol is not very bioavailable in the skin, we have a process that makes it 50 times more bioavailable. So this is really in by supporting with with CO q 10, pq things like that. Different peptides. We can have the skin behave like younger skin, not we have them into products which are kind of our base products that we believe everyone in the world should use. Which is care, our moisturizer window those Yanko care, the moisturizer and eye care, which is for the skin around the eyes. A little tip you can also use around the lips. That is the two products that I'd recommend the most, which I've been

Dr. Stephanie Gray 19:31

doing since you told me Can you can you see this? Those have the end do you call that the NR noble that pattern over

Amitay Eshel 19:42

we actually are changing. We trademarked it a little differently because people now don't really know what the NR is since David Sinclair, that kind of Harvard longevity expert has really hammered in the other building block that's called N N, which we also have in that in those products. So now the trademark is called na de novo. So we're going to phase out and our noble, but it's

Dr. Stephanie Gray 20:06

familiar with Yeah, sure, sure, yeah, that's in the care of boosting moisturizer, and in the ICARE. And,

Amitay Eshel 20:13

yeah, these building blocks are special because they are nanosized in their lipids, so multiple there is like a protective layer on them. So they, you can give them the freshest and the most active when they do absorb into your skin. If we want it to have the skin specifically behave like a younger skin, we also need to eliminate those senescence cells, right. And that we do through row care serum. So remember, care and eye care are really that fuel for a pair. And our serums would be the signals that different signals or a pair that we can have. So pro care is a signal for overall anti aging, it will treat wrinkles, sunspots position will balance your oils, things like that. But it's a more general anti aging signal. it reactivates 14 different genes that are involved that lower with with, again, with lack of NAD, such as collagen genes, elastin genes, hyaluronic acid, jeans, things like that. This is really an overall longevity system, right? We have pro hair serum, we have care, and we have eyecare. What we could also do, we can also eliminate things that gobble up NAD as we grow older. One of them is called the CD 38. This is really nerdy. Most people are never going to talk about CD 38. That CD 38 Is this enzyme that basically destroys an ad. It's like a Pac Man for NAD as we grow older, and we have a lot of those PAC men as we as we or is it PAC women, I don't know, change the game. But anyway, as we grow older, we have more and more of that than that depletes NAD as well. And they pay very cool little active that's called apigenin. That's what makes you sleeping camo my income homie. That's what eliminates CD 38. So we have it in our adaptogenic cleanser. Yeah, and one of the things that I say about this cleanser is because it has those active ingredients again peptides, which peptides, you can think of them as like little keys, the different they unlock different mechanisms, right? So I leave it on the skin for like two minutes, probably 10 seconds are enough, but I shave with it as well. I make sure that I do other things. And that's on my skin to really eliminate that CD 38 and activate some some pathways.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 22:40

You shave with the cleanser, because I want you to say, Yeah,

Amitay Eshel 22:43

I do a few things that you can do with this cleanser, which are pretty cool. First of all, is using it as a shaving lubricant. But a lot of people if they want to do like facial cupping, or who are sharp, a lot of people don't like the oils that they need to use with it. Some people don't like the smell of those oils, some people are are only skinned to begin with. They don't want to add oils that can accumulate. So you could do that with the adaptogenic cleanser as well use it as a lubricant for guasha, or facial cupping or things like that. And again, so what we did now is we looked at kind of how do we start our skincare routine, we started with a cleanser, obviously. And we kind of looked at the end of the routine, which is we moisturize our skin right? There are a few things that we can do after that. But this is really the two endpoints, what do we do in the middle. So in the middle is where the signals for. That's how we kind of customize our routine. That's how the routine can be customized to each and every person individually. And let's say someone has sensitive skin, and they want anti aging, sensitive skin normally means impaired skin barrier, what we call leaky skin skin that allows different things that shouldn't actually be absorbed into the skin to absorb into the skin. It is more sensitive because of it, it is more inflamed. So we actually have a serum that repairs leaky skin or impaired skin barrier. That's called Bio barrier. It also has antioxidants and amazing as a an anti aging serum. But it will be the best for people who have rosacea, who have sensitive skin. And we can use different actives after that, but this will be the most important one for that.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 24:25

I was just thinking being here in Iowa. And in a couple of months here we're going to have something called rag Bri where many individuals bike for a week across our entire state. We're just a big biking state, I guess because there's not a lot else to do in Iowa. But I was just thinking this would be a great product for those individuals too. As far as I've heard you say before this is great for just either cold weather or just being outside being in the sun. It's great post laser or micro needling or any other treatment because it is kind of that that shield so am I saying that right? That those individuals would need a stronger skin barrier. They're going to be outside for a week

Amitay Eshel 24:58

and definitely first of all you You touched on a good point when we do any aesthetic procedure, even if we do micro needling at home, what we did do right now is disrupt the skin barrier. And we increased inflammation because the environment inflames our skin, dust does, again, different wavelengths do the sun, map pollution, all of those things, inflame our skin. So that signal for a pair that we created through, let's say, micro needling or appeal, or whatever that is really, it is also inflammation, so that there is a lot of background noise, as far as the type of repair that we're asking the skin to do. So to eliminate that background noise, what we can do is, we can use a bio barrier, make sure that the that we isolate the noise that the only the noise that only the signal that we are that we want the skin to to, to signal is being signaled. So that's very important for anyone who's done any aesthetic procedure, anything like that to make sure the results are the best that they can have. And also anyone who is exposed to the elements. You mentioned. You mentioned when

Dr. Stephanie Gray 26:04

fun and cold. Yeah. Yeah,

Amitay Eshel 26:07

that's actually there are many things to learn anyway, how do you build baseball stadiums? I'm kidding. It's the only movie I know. In dreams, yes.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 26:18

Let's stay on this product. I know we're kind of going back and forth. But actually that stay on this product because there are a lot of other benefits of this specific product. You did say could treat rosacea. But I also liked that you this just stood out to me through a training that this product he said contains I'm not going to pronounce this right but the like lipo Croman microman. Six, yeah. Which is 20 times stronger than vitamin C, because I think everyone thinks I need to have a vitamin C serum as a standard in my skincare regimen, whatnot. And I was I was just shocked to hear there was something that was stronger than that.

Amitay Eshel 26:45

Yeah, but I think you know, this is a great point. Vitamin C, most people think they are, most people use it in their skincare regimen. Not because its antioxidant abilities is an antioxidant, it's quite tricky. It's very unstable. It is the conventional types of vitamin C, I would argue are really, really, really bad for you are toxic. ascorbic acid, for example, I would argue, no one should ever take it in my in my opinion, from what I know. But normally what people are using it for in their skincare regimen is for its sensitizing ability for its renewal ability, because it's it's basically acidic. So we're going to we're going to separate those two, it's not a great antioxidant ubique known and they've been known are better. CO q 10, for example, are better antioxidants. Lighter Chrome and snakes is one of the antioxidants that are the strongest in its antioxidant ability, but it's not sensitizing. So it's not going to make your skin more sensitive for that matter. What is amazing about that antioxidant is that natural antioxidants, you can think of like vitamin C, only eliminate oxidative oxygen free radicals, which are natural car environment. That's what we create. For example, when we create energy, everything in our world really is is based on that on that relationship with oxygen. But because we burn fuel, because we have a lot of you know, different chemicals roaming the air around us. There are free radicals that are not oxygen based. And these are the ones that really drive skin aging, because our body has no ability on its own to deal with them. Free radicals that are based on nitrogen, and especially carbon. So what is amazing about like Roman is that not only its strength, but its broad spectrum. It also eliminates free radicals that are based on nitrogen, and carbon. So it's way more than just saying it's strong. It's strong and broad.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 28:55

Okay, I swear, Dr. Mercola just had something on his social media this week about wine oleic acid and your chance of Sun burning. And I don't know if you're aware of this, but I'm just seeing which I didn't notice before the next ingredient in this product is linolenic acid. So I then saw I don't know, I guess I hear it saying that it's you know, great to soften the skin, whatnot. But I'm wondering if that even improving our I know he's saying she's talking about ingesting it. But I'm wondering if you have it in this product to also serve as a barrier or protect the skin from the effects of Sun burning. I don't know, maybe I'm making that up. But you definitely

Amitay Eshel 29:30

have to say you've never heard it before. But if you are right, but you can think of this what we try to do in this product. Again, you can think of every product of ours in two different ways. You can think of it as a product that mimics a process in the body and improves it and you can think of it as okay, we're taking a specific product such as a serum, okay, how do we make it the best there is? So these are two sides to the same point. But as far as like taking a process in the back rd, and really pushing it to its limit in this product is that skin barrier production. So what creates our skin barrier, our skin or more different cell types in our skin and processes. So as we grow older these don't function correctly as well, in our skin is supposed to make up its own vitamin Eflin linoleic acid, and vitamin E. Unfortunately, most of the sources of vitamin F in our diet, are rancid. That's what people tell you don't eat seed oil, for example, don't ingest seed oil, and they are highly oxidized. So you are building your skin barrier with really bad ingredients really bad, you source your ingredient very poorly, if you will, what we are trying to do is to here is to really make sure we create the optimal skin barrier a person could create, but then also supercharging it with that amazing antioxidant that deals with things that your skin never had to deal with before when we evolved when we lived in caves, etc.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 31:11

So this is the ultimate skin barrier. So this is the bio barrier serum.

Amitay Eshel 31:15

By the way, a lot of the times when you hear people talk about exposing your skin early on in the day to the sun in order to have a better response later on to stronger sun,

Dr. Stephanie Gray 31:28

you're meeting rhythm standpoint, you

Amitay Eshel 31:30

mean to get out not only so Dr. Jack Cruz is like very, you know, kind of built his popularity from interactions with the sun, whether you agree with him or not. What is ringing true from what he's saying is that if we expose our skin to light that has a lot of red and near infrared, we're going to express more of those natural vitamins antioxidants in our skin barrier. So we do improve our how we deal with with sun exposure. All right.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 32:08

That was so helpful to me, I'll admit skincare has never been my strength. Although I've always known how important it was. I'm so thrilled with the products he has created to truly repair our skin and delay aging. Remember to use the code listed in the show notes which should apply the 10% off and if it doesn't use code Dr. Gray, that's capital Dr. Gra y. And for those of you who are local, we do have most products at the integrative health and hormone clinic and we'll to honor 10% off your first in store purchase if you reference this podcast. Now if you're very sensitive and nervous to try new products, we do have some samples of the products for you to try. Be sure to check out my book your longevity blueprint. And if you aren't much of a reader, you're in luck, you can now take my course online where I walk you through each chapter in the book. Plus for a limited time the course is 50% off, check this offer out at your longevity blueprint.com and click the Course tab. One of the biggest things you can do to support the show and help us reach more listeners is to subscribe to the show. Leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. I do read all the reviews and would truly love to hear your suggestions for show topics guests and for how you're applying what you've learned on the show to create your own longevity blueprint. This podcast is produced by Team podcast thank you so much for listening and remember, wellness is waiting

the information provided in this podcast is educational no information provided should be considered to be or used as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with your personal medical authority.