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The Edit Alaverdyan Podcast
Welcome to "The Edit Alaverdyan Podcast," the podcast where insightful conversations unfold, and the depth of the human mind is explored. In each episode, I sit down with a diverse range of individuals—thinkers, innovators, and captivating personalities—who share their unique insights and experiences. Together, we embark on a journey of discovery, unraveling the complexities of the human psyche and uncovering the untold truths that influence our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
The Edit Alaverdyan Podcast
Danny | Natural Skincare, Anti-Aging Myths, Emotional Health | The Edit Alaverdyan Podcast
Get ready to challenge the status quo of skincare as we welcome Danny, a renowned esthetician with over 35 years of experience, to the podcast. In our conversation, we explore the evolving landscape of skincare and dive into the anxiety surrounding aging. Join us as we question the necessity and safety of invasive procedures like Botox and fillers, and instead, uncover the benefits of a more natural approach to skincare. Discover how you can embrace aging gracefully while still seeking effective ways to delay its effects using organic skincare products. Don't miss this empowering discussion on achieving healthy, radiant skin without compromising your natural beauty.
In this thought-provoking episode, we delve into the concept of trauma-based skincare and challenge the traditional belief that damaging the skin can lead to healing benefits. With Danny's expertise, we examine the long-term impacts of aggressive treatments like microdermabrasion and microneedling, advocating for a "nourish to heal" philosophy. Uncover the contradictory messages from the skincare industry and learn why preserving and nurturing the skin's integrity is crucial for achieving a youthful glow naturally. Gain insights into specific ingredients and peptides that promote dermal health and discover the power of embracing a more holistic approach to skincare.
Join us as we explore natural methods for maintaining youthful skin and uncover the potential dangers of invasive procedures like fillers and Botox. Danny shares her expert insights on the detrimental effects of these treatments, including the loss of facial expressions and disrupted skin texture. We'll discuss the rising popularity of bison tallow in skincare and the benefits of building facial muscles through microcurrent devices and face yoga. Learn how to delay aging without compromising your natural beauty and discover the profound connection between emotional health and skin aging. Prepare to embrace a well-lived life and unlock the secrets to achieving healthy, radiant skin.
Women, us women. It's just in our nature and it's what we've always done. We've always done our hair, we've done our skin, we've done our nails, and this goes way back before medical doctors got involved with all of this, because this is just what women do all right.
Speaker 2:Ladies and gentlemen, today's episode is with the amazing danny now. Danny has been a esthetician well over 35 years. She's phenomenal, and why I wanted to get her on the show is because I think, as women, we're all really just concerned and not really used to aging as our mothers would, as our grandmothers would. There's a big concern now. We are more focused on delaying aging and looking more beautiful and youthful, and it's very understandable because that is what the norm is now. We're so scared of wrinkles. There's so much anxiety around it. However, there are so many really aggressive procedures that people are taking on, such as Botox and fillers and all these lasers and real just trauma to our skin that we're applying, whether it's skincare or lasers or chemical peels and etc. And why I wanted to bring on danny's? Because she has a very natural approach to aging and skin. So the topic is delaying aging and how we can do that, what skin products we can use to do that and, honestly, how negative is botox and fillers for our face? Is that just a myth or it's really honest and there's a truthful evidence and science behind it that Botox is bad for our skin and fillers are bad for our skin and chemical peels are bad for our skin. So Danny and I really sit down and discuss that, and also what skincare we can use organically to delay aging, because I think that's what we all want as women. As much as we like to sit and talk about how we like to age gracefully which I'm a big fan of I love aging gracefully, but at the same time, I really want to know how we can delay it. I think that's an important science that we all need to learn. So enjoy this episode.
Speaker 2:But before you start, I genuinely want to introduce you to Anita. Anita is somebody who is just dear to my heart. She's a phenomenal tutor at Anita's Tutoring Center and I look up to her. She's a phenomenal person, but also she is our sponsor and she's an amazing sponsor. So if ever you need any tutoring needs whether it's math, most importantly, critical thinking she's definitely someone you need to reach out to because she's a gem in the community. Her tutoring center is huge, it's safe, it's clean, it's reliable. She's reliable. Her educational background is amazing. I love how she's so educated, well-rounded and beautifully. Most importantly, she's a teacher and she's taught for several years in public schools. She's very well reversed with the education system. So definitely look up Anita's tutoring center and definitely trust her, because I trust her with my children and I love her. Hi Dani, how are you?
Speaker 1:I'm good Hi.
Speaker 2:Hi, it's so nice to have you on my show. I'm very grateful and honored to know you and thank you for accepting my invitation for today's show.
Speaker 1:Absolutely my favorite things. Talk about skin.
Speaker 2:I know right. So I mean us women and men. We're going to go insane already with all this information. I want to kind of first bring up the difference between estheticians and practitioners. One thing that sticks out to me is you guys were I mean estheticians were taking care of skin way before aesthetics were introduced right To the world.
Speaker 1:That's true. I mean women, us women. It's just in our nature and it's what we've always done. We've always done our hair, we've done our skin, we've done our nails, and this goes way back before medical doctors got involved with all of this, because this is just what women do.
Speaker 2:That's right. I think that one thing that I've learned from following you, from using your amazing skincare line, and also just the way your approach is to skin, also just the way your approach is to skin, the most important thing is to nurture your skin. That's what I've learned, but there is this other side to it, that taking care of your skin is presented very differently, and that's through all these lasers, morpheus. There's these CO something, laser, there's all these like harmful products, these chemical peels. Are those truly an essential for our skin? Because that's what we're hearing. We don't have a lot of estheticians talking about nurturing our skin the holistic way, the traditional way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's a whole conversation because you know, trauma-based skincare and that's what I'll call it. It's something that's referring to the hermetic effect, where if we give our skin a little bit of harm, it heals itself. And that's what has to be redefined is we can't harm to heal our skin, although I do realize that 98%, 99% of the skincare industry operates on this old belief and that all got started in the 1900s with the first chemical peel and that's what started this whole idea, because it was discovered that our dermal layer could be, could completely replace our epidermal layer if our epidermal layer was removed by this chemical peel. So that set into motion this, this whole idea that we have to hurt our skin to get it to anti-age or to heal itself. And then in the 1970s it went into dry to fix where we have to dry out our sebaceous glands, dry out our there's too much oil, too much excess skin cells, and so that added another layer of what we now know as corrective skincare. And that's very American in many ways, where we've gone in and have gone kind of overboard in this way of harming our skin and drying it to fix it and what estheticians know, to bring this back to what estheticians do like I've been in the field.
Speaker 1:You know I got started when I was 19 years old, started working actively with skin in my early 20s, and estheticians are actually seeing skin day in and day out over many years at a time often family members, so we're able to see how genetics play out. We're able to see all the different age groups. I've seen many different income levels and in doing this, in this combined 30 years, it's become obvious and completely apparent to me that when we hurt our skin by harming it with chemical peels, microdermabrasion, microneedling, anything that is inflammatory, this thins our dermal layer faster. So this creates accelerated aging for our skin. And I know that this flies in the face of what many medical providers do, but in fact there's many, many more holistic skincare providers of. Even medical doctors were called corneotherapists, and it's this whole group of skin professionals that believe in keeping our skin intact. Corneo is our skin layer, is our, you know, our skin cells, and so it's all about how do we keep this intact for optimized long-term skin health.
Speaker 2:So there are no actual. Honestly, I haven't found any. I haven't found any evidence-based or peer-reviewed articles or studies that show that Morpheus and these laser and chemical peels are hurting the dermal layer and not really delaying aging. I haven't found any. But what you're saying is that estheticians see skin every day, maybe like four to five clients a day so you're able to see that there actually is Right.
Speaker 1:And it's very divided. To be honest, like this is a very controversial topic and what's funding? A lot of research and it takes very divided to be honest, like this is a very controversial topic't make sense for a lot of the industry because it's operating at. You know, only one or two percent of the industry is operating with this nourish to heal approach and so it doesn't serve them. And so that's what we see that all clinical studies are all funded by companies that are proving that agenda.
Speaker 1:But we are able to measure dermal thickness and it's called angiogenesis, where we want this thickening of our dermal layer. It is measurable and there's been two things that I have found over the years that actually delivers. That we can talk about that later. They're both patented, of course, and that's what we're looking for when it comes to nourish to heal skincare and it's also this nourish to heal idea is it's mostly lip service, like it's this idea that has just kind of Charlie Brown to crop, like nourish to heal and it's just like this cliche you hear in a lot of skincare and honestly, it's lip service unless you're actually using the ingredients that are going to build and promote this angiogenesis and then have the other practices that go in alignment with that, because we can reverse ourselves really quickly, like if we're using these powerful ingredients, we're not using them correctly and then we go out and we reverse it with getting trauma-based skincare, lasers, chemical peels, microdermabrasion and all that.
Speaker 2:So the most important thing in delaying aging since that's the topic is nurturing our dermal layer right, you're right, that's one piece of the puzzle and like that, that's what I said.
Speaker 1:It's topical dermal nutrients and there's a new peptide that's out that specifically can build that dermal thickness, and those are the only two things that I've ever said that. But that also has to be combined. So we're preserving and growing and, you know, keeping that dermal mattress really thick so that it keeps making new skin cells. But our skin also has to be hydrated, it has to have a restored barrier and our skin has this native capacity to release, and that's what needs to also be brought in, you know, needs to be activated within our skin, and then we have to just not be doing all of the things that overexercise our skin and actually wear out our skin. So it's about magnifying our dermal layer and then it's about preserving what we have for as long as possible.
Speaker 2:You know what's interesting to me? That I just literally remembered and I'm laughing as I'm talking to you about it because it's they promote all these lasers like Morpheus and et cetera. But then you also hear him saying how important it is that use this product. It helps the dermal layer. Those things conflict, it's so condescending.
Speaker 1:It's complete madness. And I mean I stepped into this when I was 19 and got really confused and overwhelmed and then I went to a set of even more confused and overwhelmed and it's, it's complete madness and insanity. When you actually go through everybody's protocols, because you will find that they were, they are so contradictory and they negate each other and it's and they negate each other and it's. It's just a form of mental illness in my opinion. And what emerged? Yeah, I mean all these beauty practices of like peel, peel, peel, harm, oh, and then you're I actually have, years ago, started calling it the bipolar approach where you do all of these things to your skin to harm it, all of these things I've listed out, and then you turn around and you're soothing and you're nice to it and you do things that are preserving and nurturing and kind and gentle, and you're basically just flip-flopping between those two strategies.
Speaker 1:And so it's very apparent exactly what you're saying to me, to somebody who's like really paying attention and really trying to get to the bottom of it. What emerged is what I call the regenerative skin process, and it's my life's work and it's 30 plus years of my time being very intimate with skin and this process that I've developed is the antidote for the madness, shall we say.
Speaker 2:So I love how you call it the bipolar era. Is that what you called it for skin?
Speaker 1:approach? Yeah, because that's that's essentially what I was doing after I left aesthetic school and was trying to adhere to corrective skincare protocols that I was taught, but it was also conflicting with my holistic roots, and so it's like this mishmash of insanity, and that's what I find time and time again when people come to me. It's this, you know, complete reworking and belief change and return to simplicity of some core values that have a practical application.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree with you 100%. It's like now that we're talking and getting more deeper, deeper into it. You know, it's like you use these peels but then you go home you use like all these like soothing things to soothe it and try to make it come. It's like, you know, making a child super angry but then giving it a lollipop like triggering a kid, giving it a lollipop and that makes no sense to me and I'm so happy we're talking about this. Wow, this is amazing. I do have a lot of questions. I want to get through them because I think it's important that you know my, my followers hear this out. So this topic is all basically aging. You know, aging and how do we really delay aging with holistically, naturally, and I think it's important for women to know these. So first topic is the skin health, dani. What daily skincare practices are most effective in maintaining youthful skin and preventing signs of aging?
Speaker 1:Okay, so I'm a big proponent of minimal cleansing. So a lot of people are over-cleansing their skin, trying to remove clogged pores or to take away bad old skin cells, and that's old thinking. And so it's minimal cleansing, using a hydrating mist, using a nutritive serum, which are those two ingredients that I mentioned.
Speaker 1:That you have ingredients that I mentioned, and then a barrier restoration using a dense moisturizer to actually trap that in, and a sunscreen without chemicals and saying no to inflammatory practices. And of course, that includes saying no to the astringent and the drying out practices, and that would include essential oils. A lot of people think that using essential oils are natural, but they're very drying for our skin. I think there's just a few obscure handful that couldn't be used so on a daily basis, that would be my, that's my recommendation.
Speaker 2:That's interesting. So we have a minimal cleansing, which lots of people well, is this also for women who wear makeup? The minimal cleansing goes for women who have makeup.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm just using a gentle cleanser, very gentle cleanser, if you have makeup on that's plain and non-scented and kind of boring if you will, but not focusing on cleansing. And if you don't have a lot of makeup or sunscreen on, you know you just using warm water cleansing is completely effective. So when I say minimal cleansing, it's like just not all never using a cleanser in the morning and only using a gentle cleanser when you have those things on. Many people are so hyper-focused on cleansing their skin and exfoliating their skin and those have gone overboard to the detriment of thinning our dermal layer faster, disabling our acid mantle we can talk about that Like. Those things do not, you know, contribute to daily wellness of our skin?
Speaker 2:you know, contribute to daily wellness of our skin. So we've been taught, with all the reels out there, that cleansing with an oil first and then cleansing with a normal cleanser is okay. But what I'm learning from you is that the more minimal, the better it is.
Speaker 1:So when it comes to cleansing, yeah, and staying away from acid cleansers, and like those BHAs and those things that exactly glycolic acid, salicylic acid, lactic acid.
Speaker 1:Why are they harmful for the skin? Because they dissolve the top layer of our skin in one form or another and it's exfoliation based in that way where it's it's cleansing, yeah, in a way where it's just destroying the top layer of our skin slowly over time, and we don't need that distraction for our skin. Our skin, when it has access to the nutrients, is making new skin cells voluntarily, abundantly, and then we want to keep our natural oils on our skin intact, and so by over-cleansing, we're just stripping our own natural oils, which takes our skin backwards, and we're also over exfoliating and drying out our skin, which takes our skin backwards.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm going to add to this because I know that when we talked a few months ago, I brought up my mom's skin.
Speaker 2:Okay, Now she is and I and I want everyone to hear this because it's not just my mom, I think it's many of our mothers you know. She's in her late 60s and minimal wrinkles. Okay, Very firm, just soft, even beautiful looking skin and I look at and my skin's not that bad. But I fell into the whole product and this and that. But when I'm looking at her skin, Dani, she does nothing to her skin, it's just water. She doesn't put like all these retinoids and retinols and nothing Absolutely. Even in the Soviet times when we were living in Armenia, there was no such a thing as products. Back then times when we were living in Armenia, there was no such a thing as products. Back then, Women had just laundry soap to wash their face with. It was just a black soap, that's it. If that, so it kind of goes with what you're saying, the less you do, the more nurturing the more healing your skin is and that's what absolutely, and it's.
Speaker 1:It's a saying no to those things and then saying yes to a few, very a few, of these really important things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is so interesting. Okay, second question how does diet influence aging? I think this is so important because we know we're all about the sugars and the breads and the spaghettis. I mean, do, do. Does food really play a role in aging?
Speaker 1:to body health and therefore skin health. And our skin surfacely has a microbiome as well, and this I've often talked about the skin, soil, gut connection, like all of these things are combined, but what we get, the microbiome that we deserve. So whatever foods we're eating, we're eating reflect that directly, and I find that the best diets include really high quality animal proteins and collagen and you know really these really dense foods because our bodies are animal bodies and it recognizes these nutrients and is able to make repairs. There is a lot of research about how, you know, vegetarians and vegans just have more complications with scars and recovering from surgery scars. So I'm inclined to just encourage people to eat really high quality animal meats to bring that into their diet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was just going to ask you, as somebody who has over 30 years of experience, what do you notice? The skin difference between person who eats lots of animal fats or good you know, dense foods, versus vegetarians and vegans?
Speaker 1:Wound repair. So if there's a small extraction spot that I that I give, it's like immediate, you know their skin repairs, whether it's something that they they bump their knee or scrape their foot or something, it's just this our bodies have this ability to just do this immediate wound repair, no matter what it is.
Speaker 2:Wow, and this is why let's get into the topic of tallow it's. It's such a huge thing on the market right now. And I actually I'm using the bison tallow you sent me. I don't know what I can say about that, but it's like there are no words to explain how phenomenal it is. I think each person has to use it for them to see it on themselves. Like it's made such a huge difference on my skin.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've experimented with making animal tallow moisturizers years ago I mean in my early 20s years ago and I've used them off and on and I was really excited to see it come back into mainstream. And I put my moisturizer together many years ago and it's now finally taking off with everybody else, and for good reason. It smells kind of funky. You get used to it. But now I reason it smells kind of funky, you get used to it. It's a, but now I mean it's a it's a sophisticated acquired taste.
Speaker 1:Now I I mean, I've always really appreciated it, but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:No, it's, it's. It's definitely not pleasant, but it goes away after like a few minutes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and now I don't find it unpleasant at all, and there's a lot of A, c and and E vitamins in tallow Not the type that's going to build that angiogenesis, but it still matters to some degree. And it also penetrates so deeply into our skin, deeper than any other.
Speaker 2:Tallow. Does really, dani? Is there a difference between bison tallow and beef tallow?
Speaker 1:bison tallow is a very lean animal. There's less animal, there's less fat when it comes to bison, so it's just. And many people believe that bison is just a more nutrient, dense animal compared to cow. So and it's just been a special animal to me, being from the native Southwest. So I mean there's differences but they're both wonderful and bison tallow is especially precious because it takes a lot more buffalo to render the tallow than beef.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, is there a result difference between the bison tallow and beef tallow?
Speaker 1:No, I don't think so. I mean, I think it, just I don't think that that would be measurable. It's just a preference. I mean beef tends to be harder, sometimes harder to get or not harder to get, but over farmed, and of course you always want to get grass fed tallow, whether it's from beef or from bison.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Do you recommend any particular brands for beef tallow for people that are starting to get into it or want to?
Speaker 1:You know, I mean this, have to get your. I don't. I couldn't say. I worked through about five to seven different vendors because it depends on season for my, for my, bison tallow, anyways, they come in and out of season. It's a commodity, so you have to. I have several different vendors because it depends on season for my, for my, bison tallow, anyways, they come in and out of season. It's a commodity, so you have to. I have several different vendors that I work with and if they're out I go to the next and I kind of go down my, go down the list. Regenerative farming is becoming more popular. So I would say, find your local farm who's doing regenerative farming and go to them and ask them for tallow. Go to your farmer's market in your neighborhood.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's amazing. And, by the way, if people are interested in bison tallow, they can contact you correct.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't sell the tallow, I sell the moisturizer. It's called Nomad, my bison tallow moisturizer. It's whipped and you can find that on my website. Awesome, yeah, that's the one that's. You can find that on my website.
Speaker 2:Yeah, awesome. Yeah, that's the one that I use and I'm obsessed with, okay, dani, natural treatments. So, since the topic is delaying aging, what are some natural and non-invasive treatments that you recommend to reduce wrinkles and produce more collagen? Well, yeah, so the question for you right.
Speaker 1:Well, this big. There's this refrain that we hear in the skincare industry all the time, when you see products and ingredients and just all of the services is that it stimulates collagen and elastin and, technically, anything that is trauma, any. If you slap your skin, it, anything is a smack or a laser or a microneedling that technically creates collagen and elastin. And this is the rub. However, even though it might stimulate it through a trauma event, it can't reclaim what was hurt in that traumatic event. And so there's this justification of what's going to stimulate collagen and elastin and to me, it's just, it's just not worth it. We have to. We have to preserve what we've been given through a mineral-based sunscreen and by not giving it these, um, giving it these trauma-based events that destroy more than it creates.
Speaker 1:And I know that's hard to hear, because everything under the sun and you hear that over and over that it stimulates collagen elastin. And they'll say that, even when you get injections, oh, this is stimulating collagen elastin. So, that being said, the things that actually build, not collagen elastin, because we can't that's measurable to any kind of degree that would actually create visually more volume is we want to add muscle to our skin and that would be a microcurrent device and that's. There's many different companies that are selling them. It'd be too hard to go into all of that. But microcurrent because it actually builds muscle, and and then also face yoga because that builds muscle as well into the face, and we can gain products that's going to get us to feeling more lifted, and it's the face.
Speaker 2:What is the microcurrent? Can you tell us about that?
Speaker 1:So it's all technology. It was invented many years ago to help stroke victims regain muscle control, so there's a lot of research on it. But it's a micro electricity jolt. It's not you won't feel it as such, but it stimulates the muscle so that you're building muscle tone. And so it's a. It's a muscle one? No, not at all. It feels incredibly pleasant, it's can be very calming, and so that will actually lift and tone and build volume into our skin. And even that, I will have to say, can't compete with what injections can do volumizing injections visually. But those volumizing injections are not the kind of volume that we want. That volumizing is decreasing skin health, creating all sorts of havoc in our skin. But what we do have is this microcurrent and then face yoga for volumizing our skin.
Speaker 2:Have you seen like good results from microcurrent?
Speaker 1:Yes, and, and the thing is that you have to do it a few times a week. It's like going to the gym because, again, it's muscle Like you can't. You can't get muscle any other way, by actually doing the thing.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's insane. So it's good for wrinkles as well then.
Speaker 1:Well, there's several, there's many. The anatomy of a wrinkle is there's superficial wrinkles that are due to lack of hydration and the lack of this our skin being able to hold onto water, and then there's deeper wrinkles that have to do with this collagen elastin loss over time. And so we have to go at go in both ways to be able to affect wrinkles Like these. Deeper wrinkles is all about saying no to trauma-based procedures and, you know, feeding your skin these dermal nutrients so that you can get at least get dermal thickness happening and new skin cells happening. But it has a lot to do with optimizing hydration with our skin, which is a very specific layering sequence which we first started talking about with daily practices and not subscribing to these dry to fix acne protocols which will dehydrate our skin and you know, a lot of all of those acne protocols will bring on premature aging, sadly, will bring on premature aging, sadly, you know.
Speaker 2:Since we were talking about, I mean you brought up injections a little bit and I want to bring this topic up. What is this? I mean is injections, these fillers for the face, botox for the face? Is it really bad for?
Speaker 1:aging it is. They do not increase skin health one bit. They absolutely just don't yeah.
Speaker 2:Where do these fillers go? So I was reading something I can't oh my gosh, I wish I could remember which article it was, but it was talking about how fillers don't just dissolve, they go into your body. They go into your skin is. Have you heard about this? What's your course? Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, tell us about that. Yeah, yeah, I mean it is.
Speaker 1:I mean these things, these the Botox injections, the volumizing injections. They stretch soft skin tissue which then creates like, oh, you have to do more, and they have a negative effect on the overall ability of our skin to self-release. So this I talked about this when we, when we first got on this native release capacity for our skin and all of these acne protocols and conventional anti-aging protocols shut down our skin's ability to actually release our own oil, and our own oil can't make it to the surface of our skin the way that it's supposed to. And so all of this subsurface microclusters, you know, get underneath our skin, create all sorts of problems for our skin and the injections directly shut this down.
Speaker 1:Every time our skin is in experiences trauma through microneedling or an injection, it creates a load of a distraction of what it has to deal with. It has to process it away, it has to endure it, it has to reduce the inflammation. And when our skin is in this state of always having to deal with these things, it never and it's not supported in in the ways that the skin harmonics protocols do. It never gets to actually being the way that it's supposed to be, you know, in the true aging delay state, and so those, those it disrupts. It disrupts the way that skin is supposed to be.
Speaker 2:Um, what are some some of the negative results from fillers and Botox that you've seen from your experience?
Speaker 1:Um, a lot, of, a lot of these subsurface micro clusters underneath the skin.
Speaker 2:I mean, are they visible to see on a woman's skin?
Speaker 1:Sometimes, it's like blackheads that are just underneath the surface milia, m-i-l-i-a, milia clusters. They disrupt the skin texture. It's when people have these just constant breakouts, but they never really go away. And so it might kind of go away, but then the same place is erupting again and again, so that there's buckling of the skin. When the skin gets overfilled, there's just a lackluster, blotchy skin tone and even like their whole face.
Speaker 1:You know, people lose their facial expressions and but there's and there's also just like an unevenness to this skin and like an overstretched to the skin. And there's also atrophy where muscles can drop. When there's a lot of Botox put in, muscles actually atrophy and drop, when what microcurrent does is it lifts, it relifts and tones the facial muscles. So we're working actively against this optimized, delayed aging state, which is possible by trying these toxic band-aids that are might create, you know, like from several feet away, for a week or so, while, while, and then, and then that all falls away and then we have skin that's like really depressed, it's exhausted, it's tired, it's thirsty, it's hungry and you know it's all. It's filled with all this gunk.
Speaker 2:I'm so basically what? What? What I'm hearing you say is that fillers stop your skin from working from underneath, from the way that it's supposed to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's just that combined Right, that combined, it's sort of all of these things together and it might.
Speaker 1:Sometimes people can never, never have gotten injections, but their skin is already suppressed in this native release capacity because of everything else they're doing. So it's just there's this onslaught of, like you know, death by a thousand cuts, in a way, all combined that create this. And sometimes it's just I've had people come to me where they had one really intense microneedling procedure and that was all it took for their skin to go over the cliff and have hyperpigmentation issues never be the same in so many ways. And we've had to get back on skin reclamation protocols that's what I said, the skin harmonics protocols. Like there's a way to intervene and reverse and turn all of this around so that we can go to that final destination of delayed aging and we all want delayed aging. Like that's where we all want to go and there's just so much more that we can do to get there. Better now, especially with you know, my years of experience with having taken a lot of wrong turns and have had to find out the hard way about a lot of things- yeah, you know what?
Speaker 2:I think it's such an essential to teach younger girls the importance of really nurturing your skin the proper way, versus you know how many girls do you see at Sephora buying retinols and retinoids and all these really, really harmful products where I think they need to be taught, maybe in schools too, or by their mothers? You know eating animal fat and using all these? You know exercising hydrating sunscreen? I wish that I was taught these things when I was younger. You know it's. I think it's important, but now it's like 20 year olds getting Botox because it's considered preventative. What, yeah?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there's a fixation on volume and wrinkles in a way that doesn't serve us, where the fixation, in my estimate, would be to focus on hydration, barrier restoration, allowing our skin this release capacity, deep pore cleansing sessions, abstaining from trauma-based procedures and using a mineral-based sunscreen. Like, yeah, our skin does have a love language, like it really does, and there is a way to get back on track. But again, I'm just one person in this sea of people, of companies, this multi-billion dollar industry, and so it's. It's a hard. The right information can be very hard to access.
Speaker 2:It is, and you know when you look at the world of you know estheticians and practitioners, it's just as I said in the beginning like, aesthetic estheticians don't have that voice. We don't listen to you guys. We don't because everything else is so loud.
Speaker 1:You know, like our hierarchy, like my place in the industry, is very low, because we have, like, the medical doctors here and then the registered nurses, and then we have the different levels of estheticians, depending on who they're working for medical estheticians and and whatnot, and so, yeah, there's, there's a whole hierarchy, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but again, as I said, you guys were doing this way way before any doctors were around to do all these like traumatic skincare stuff.
Speaker 1:you know you guys are nurturing with rosewater and carrots and you know, and then we and then we go to school and we get you know, taught into other ways and I've I've stayed independent all these years. So I've went and I've studied and I've looked at a lot of different things and have practiced a lot. But what emerged about 15 plus years ago was this methodology that I practice now and just don't look back from Like I've stayed independent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm gonna ask you what made you stay independent, because I do hear you talk about your view on how and I love it because it's a very natural approach but with all the confusion and all this information, what allowed you what was like the, the point where you're like, uh, this doesn't make sense. Like I, I don't like the way they're approaching skin.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I got really depressed and angry and I wanted to just like shut down. Yeah, I went through a whole dark night of the soul and wanted to quit. And well, because it was just, I couldn't figure it out and I had spent all this money I had, it was in like up over my head and and was like this is nowhere and I don't feel like I'm helping anybody's skin, and so I just showed up at work. Anyways, I had opened up the skin sanctuary of Taos in Taos, new Mexico, and I couldn't get out of any of my financial commitments and so I just kind of showed up day after day and slowly started to figure it out and I guess I'd have somebody would have to analyze my astrological, my astrology chart as to why I stayed with it.
Speaker 2:I think, I think it's great that you did. I mean, and I'm saying this, and we're going to get into the products that you have, because they're very important and I want everyone to know about them. I mean, I've used them and I've seen what they do, so it's important, but we're going to get to that. So we talked about the yoga, the face yoga. That was really important. Um, is that something that we can do at home? By the way? Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, there's so many people doing good face yoga, I just get on YouTube and just it's yeah, it's free, it just it's the time, right, it's the time and dedication to do it.
Speaker 2:It is a time, Um, Danny, I wanted to talk about sunscreens a little bit, so there is a little. It is a little bit of a controversial topic because there's many people who say that they have their skin has been damaged from sunscreens. Are sunscreens truly an essential in our life?
Speaker 1:Well, nobody should be using a chemical sunscreen because they are indeed toxic. What is a chemical sunscreen Like benzoin? There's a whole list of ingredients. You can Google them where they. I did a whole blog on it actually. But yeah, chemical sunscreens just like should not be marketed, they should not be sold. Yet zinc oxide the mineral sunscreens are, and we should be covering our face. We shouldn't be covering our whole body with sunscreen all the time, because we do need vitamin D synthesis, but high exposure areas our face, our neck, our hands absolutely put some mineral sunscreen on and use the rest of your body to synthesize the vitamin D.
Speaker 2:What is it? So you were saying use a mineral sunscreen. Does that mean that it doesn't have the chemicals in it?
Speaker 1:Correct, correct does that mean that it doesn't have the chemicals in that? Correct, yeah, and sometimes they're both. But you want to get one with it. Has the, the zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, just the ones that have the mineral, the physical blockers.
Speaker 2:If a person doesn't use sunscreen um, is that going to increase aging faster? Well, what is it? How does a sun age our?
Speaker 1:skin. It takes away our collagen elastin, our very precious inborn volume. That collagen elastin mattress it does diminish it faster. Oh my goodness that makes such sense.
Speaker 2:Oh my God. Oh, let's see when are we at, danny. Hmm, I have so many questions, I don't know which one is like essential or Okay, so I think this one's a really cool one the mind and body connection. So how does emotional health or mindfulness play a role in the appearance of aging skin? Cause we're all stressed. So how do you stress, you know, age, or age us?
Speaker 1:Well, how does that work, I mean stress, is the fastest ager, and I mean we do. We've heard this. I've heard this ever since I as a child, that aging is a state of mind, and it's absolutely true. There is a realm where there is no aging and it's us, you know, in direct communion with divinity and that something that there's a part of our souls that just never age, is completely timeless, and that is a hundred percent true. And, like I mentioned earlier, there is a love language that our skin has and that our whole body has, and it is knowing right practices.
Speaker 1:It boils down to beliefs. Our beliefs drive our patterns and if we have beliefs that are in alignment with magnifying and preserving life, then we will be doing those actionable things every day that are going to take us to this delayed aging state. And this is where we have to. The skin harmonics protocols is a complete reworking of our deepest beliefs about our skin that we no longer have to harm our skin to heal it. That we don't have to scrub away bad skin cells. That we don longer have to harm our skin to heal it. That we don't have to scrub away bad skin cells. That we don't have to over cleanse and exfoliate our skin to clean it Like. There's these very deep beliefs that therefore create these patterns that are life positive and deliver us towards this delayed aging state.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, the unfortunate thing about life is that it's it's not all rainbows and butterflies. It's. It's really hard for a lot of people and when I, when I look at life and I look at you know the the different, the different times. Um, it's impossible to not be stressed, it's impossible to be happy all the time and eat healthy all the time, stay hydrated all the time. You know we're humans, but why I'm saying this is because wrinkles are not really accepted anymore and and these things are impossible to kind of jump over all these stressors. And you know the air and all these pollutions. What happened that wrinkles are really not accepted anymore? It's like you see somebody who has wrinkles or doesn't want to do Botox. We look at them like they're an alien from another planet. Aging is gone, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean it just depends on what circles we work in and live in, because there's a lot of places I think I mean a lot of Americans get caught up in these little tiny micro bubbles of culture and, you know, clicks and fail to see the rest of the world. Our relationship with aging, that has to change and it's very personal, it's very private, it's very deep, it's very spiritual. And in that relationship with aging, what I've come to know is that I mean we're going to get wrinkles. Like, of course we're going to get wrinkles. It's just how can we? Our physical bodies are going to age. We can't stop that.
Speaker 1:We want that delayed aging and at the end of 60, 70, 80, 90 years old, we just want to glow. A well-lived life will have a face that tells a story and there will be wrinkles. If you have laughed, if you have cried, if you have lived your life, there will be wrinkles. And I've come, I've come to know, I mean, a lot of my older clients and, as I'm turning into one of my older clients, like I, these wrinkles are beautiful. We just have to keep feeding them, hydrating them, supporting them and getting getting that smooth texture and that overall glow like that that we can maintain till we're a hundred plus years old. It's, it's that worn out skin, the rough texture and that blondness. That's that doesn't have to be, that can be completely reconciled.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I don't know. It's just women and I. What you just said is so beautiful, you know it does your wrinkles do tell a story. That's beautiful. Why are we so scared? Just women, and what you just said is so beautiful, you know, it does your wrinkles do tell a story. That's beautiful. Why are we so scared as women, and some men too? Men are falling into this too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's an American kind of mental sick culture where we're fixating in these ways that are not healthy for our wellness. It's about we have to redo our whole lives. We have to find ways to live that structurally support us to where we're not overworking, we're not driving a million hours in traffic. You know that we have to rebuild our lives in a way that they are wellness and sustainable, and that's what we're all. That's what we're all doing. All the good people I know are working towards, you know, simplicity in their lives, towards family, these um health and nutrition in these ways.
Speaker 1:That isn't like Disney world, like you know you don't have to have Disney world happening and complicated things to have this, this very deep way of satisfaction and wellness in our lives.
Speaker 2:That's so true. I love that, danny. What are the main products with people that want to age gracefully and do it holistically? What are? I know we talked about the cleansing, but what are the essential products they need to use to keep their skin hydrated and also for glowing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I have three different what I call origin sets and it's a set of a mist, a serum and a moisturizer. And there's three because there's different doses of the dermal nutrients. Our skin does have an appetite, has different appetites for the dermal nutrients. So the Balance Origin Set is for somebody that has very sensitive skin, reactive skin, and then the Fortify Origin Set is where most people would get. It's just your really fantastic hydrator, your dermal nutrient serum, and then a moisturizer. The Feast Origin Set is a little bit stronger, where it has a little more corrective power to get new skin cells to the surface, for delayed aging and to correct acne. So those the Balance, Fortify and Feast Origin Sets are the place to start.
Speaker 2:I know that I've been using your products for about two months now and I'm in love with them, but I talked to you about retinoids and retinol and you said Feast, correct, fortify and Feast. Yeah, this is the serum that I'm using. I believe, and I read on there, that it had carrot in there, and I think you had mentioned that carrot plays a role of a retinoid. Is that correct? Can you tell us?
Speaker 1:Well, it can be a source of where retinols come from, but the dermal nutrients that I've been referring to is a form of vitamin A called retinaldehyde, and these are patented with liposomal delivery. So it's like what I think I told you the Tesla of vitamin A. It's like not our mama's retinol and without the sun sensitizing effects associated with traditional retinol, because those can make retinols can be very tricky, in that way that if you don't get the dose just right, that it creates the sun sensitivity and inflammation, which is inflammation, like that's what actually ages people, and inflammation, which is inflammation, like that's what actually ages people. So, with these dermal nutrients, with these retinal to hide liposomal delivery, we're able to get this deep nutrition without having to have wait for that other shoe to drop.
Speaker 2:I want to talk about Lamina, okay, because she has changed my skin, my world. It's incredibly unique. It's not your typical moisturizer where you can just dive into and just apply you. It's very hard, you guys.
Speaker 1:I want you to.
Speaker 2:I want everybody to listen because this, I think for me, I know I love all your products, but Lamina, is it just it. It's so special and I've told you that so many times and I'm not tired of telling you it's very special. How did you? Because it's rock hard and you have to kind of warm it up and then it's yeah, it's a very radical.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a very radical product and consumers have been taught over the years that a moisturizer should go in, and then you our skin, and it prevents water loss, like it's a saran wrap, if you will, or a roof or a lid that actually prevents water from escaping our skin. And the word that is used is barrier restoration. So this is a medical barrier restoration product and I just I formulated it before COVID and I just kept making it all the prototypes no more dense, more dense, more dense and realize that if the product could be completely liquefied by friction in the palm of our hand and then applied, it creates almost like this waterproof barrier. It's like a Vaseline, but it's with better ingredients, obviously, and it's even more dense, so it creates this like really thin lipid seal. Yeah, on the skin lamina. I love the way you said it, though. I like that.
Speaker 2:I said it in Armenian. Well, I'll take that.
Speaker 1:And it's instant barrier restoration. So this supports our skin's natural acid mantle and our acid mantle is our own natural oils, mixed with our own, a little bit of our sweat, that create the microbiome on our skin. And the anti-aging conventional protocols and acne protocols that are conventional completely annihilate our acid mantle on a daily basis. And so going back in and supporting it and refortifying and building and keeping this really beautiful, you know acid mantle happening in our skin, it. It creates like no dehydration lines on our skin, our skin oh my gosh, none none my skin.
Speaker 2:I put lamina on at night. I wake up in the morning glowing, glowing, danny. My skin loves her I do not I mean, she is obsessed with her and I will never literally I don't have a single any other moisturizer but your Bicentello and Lamina. I don't. I love them both so much I do. You're a genius. Has anyone ever told you that you're a genius, dani? What advice, what skincare advice, do you give women who do want to age naturally and gracefully?
Speaker 1:What's a few advice that you would provide for women like that, yeah, I mean just to go along with what we've been saying is learn about these dermal nutrients and the peptides and sandwich them with the mist and the moisturizer and learn and become empowered and to say no to these conventional, this conventional way of feeling like you have to laser your skin and then learn about microcurrent and face yoga and there's acupuncture, there's facial massage, like there's a whole list of things that are that are so supportive for for aging delay. And I want to say that it this would be honestly for anybody who wanted aging delay, you wouldn't necessarily like people think that if you go about holistic aging delay, it's sort of the sissy way and the less powerful way of doing anti-aging. And what I've come to know is just not true. I'm knowing what I know and seeing what I've seen, it's the most effective way to arrive at aging delay. So even if you had a lot of money and a lot of time on your hands and you were going to be doing all of these procedures, these, these skin gets over-procedured and skin accelerates and it's aging. So so it's just to become empowered and, you know, get good knowledge.
Speaker 1:I have a book that I wrote the relearning skincare the story of skin in a new way. It gets a lot of listens on YouTube. It's 90 minute, you know easy breezy, listen and you know, just get access to new information that might be outside of the media bubble, that you might be in with your medical spa mailing list and all of the normal rigmarole, all the Charlie Brown want, want of all the same things that every place is like rolling out retinols, chemical peels, you know, and benzoyl peroxide, like there are other ways of doing things.
Speaker 2:I love that. I absolutely adore how you said learn more, give yourself the knowledge and the education, because it is a blessing when you don't. You fall into this. Let me go and do this. Let me go and do that because it's everywhere and everyone else is doing it. That's called questioning authority.
Speaker 1:We don't know what we don't know, and so we have to be willing to find out what we don't know, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I love that, Dani. Thank you so much. Is there anything else you'd like to add for us to know about?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm excited. I have a new app that people can access free information from. There's four oh, it's skin harmonics. I'll have to put it in. I'll. I'll put it in there, yeah, and it's free and it gives some really great information. And I also have six different skin courses too, for I have one for acne, for menopause, for sensitive skin, I have one for the possible precursor lesions and I have one for outdoor skin.
Speaker 2:So in all of the 36 videos at people's fingertips, yes, and I'm going to link all of that for anyone that wants it. I highly recommend the book, though. It's phenomenal. I love how you just explained what has worked for many, many years. Before. It was kind of shut down in a way, but yes, definitely I'll link everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Thank you, guys, for tuning in. And Dani, thank you so much for all the beautiful information. I appreciate you and I'll definitely link where everyone can find you.
Speaker 1:My pleasure.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.