WEBVTT
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Welcome to Listen to your Skin by Moon and Skin, the podcast where science meets nature to celebrate the story of your skin.
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Your skin is a living canvas, ever evolving, deeply personal and uniquely yours.
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Each week, we'll dive into the science of healthy skin, share empowering stories and uncover transformative self-care rituals.
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We're here to help you embrace every phase of your journey with confidence and care.
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Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of Listen to your Skin by Moon and Skin, and I'm your host, dr Jen Haley, and this week we are going to talk about something that I'm very passionate about.
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It is called skin sinking, and there are four main components to skin sinking.
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The first is rotating your skincare with your circadian cycle, so we're going to want to use different skincare in the morning than we use in the evening.
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The second is adjusting your skincare with your infradian cycle, or your monthly cycle, so, as our hormones shift throughout the month, our skin's needs are going to shift throughout the month, and we're going to want to work with our natural cycles in our body and treat our skin differently during those times.
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The third component is modifying our skincare with the seasons, so we might have a skin type and our skin type will be adjusted with the seasonal changes.
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So during the summer we will have different skin type than we will in the winter, and we're going to want to adjust our skincare regimen to suit nature's cycles.
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And then the fourth step is that we will have different skin at different ages of our life.
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Our teen age years is going to require different skincare needs than during our 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond.
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So these are the four main components of the skin-syncing method and we're gonna dive into that a little bit today and the main goal is to work with the natural rhythms of nature and of your body, your unique body, so that we can optimally support the skin to be its healthiest and most vibrant.
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So we don't really want to look at what everybody's using out there and the biggest trends and make them our own.
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We will consider them and then make them our own, but we will always attune and be intuitive with what our skin needs, because it's going to be different from what everybody else needs out there.
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So this is something that I always want you to remember.
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So what I'm giving you in everything I do is a guide.
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It's a guide and at the end of the day, you need to listen to your skin, because when you listen to your own body, you will know what you need.
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Okay, so let's get started.
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I want you to think about your skincare as a diet.
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So, first and foremost, we want to nourish our body from the inside out.
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We really want to nourish our body from the inside out because your skin is an organ just like all the other organs.
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It's the largest, most visible organ and it represents the health of all the other organs on the inside of our body.
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So, more importantly than skincare is actually taking care of yourself from the inside out with rest, exercise, good nutrition.
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Nutrition and food are messages.
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They are messages that tell our cells whether to go in a good direction or a bad direction.
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Basically, through the process of epigenetics, what genes get turned on and what genes get turned off is dependent on the foods that we decide to take into our body.
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And if you look at nutrition, you can say that broccoli, for instance, is healthy, salmon, wild Alaskan salmon is healthy.
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Yet if you only have broccoli and wild Alaskan salmon for every single meal, morning, noon and night, through every season of the year, you will not be well fortified.
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You will not meet your nutritional requirements.
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So those might be particularly healthy foods, yet they are not giving you everything that you need in your nutritional requirements in order to make you optimally healthy.
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The same holds true with skin care.
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I want you to look at skin care as nourishing your skin from the outside in.
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So, while it's essential to take care of yourself from the inside out, we also want to nourish our skin from the outside in, and if you're using the same thing all of the time, you are not going to be filling in all of the nutritional gaps that you need to do.
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So remember this.
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Okay, something might be good for a season of your life, it might be good for a season of the year, it might be good for a certain time, but it's not always going to be the right thing for you, so keep that in mind.
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Basically, the first thing I want you to do is think about the natural rhythms of the day.
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So during the day, we, as soon as our body hits sunlight or any light for that matter our photoreceptors, and we have photoreceptors not only in our eyes, but we also have photoreceptors in our skin.
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That's why it's essential to sleep in darkness, because when the room is completely dark, your body knows it's in the rest and regenerative phase as soon as our bodies, our eyes and our skin hit light.
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Even a little piece of your skin slipping out of the sheets at bed at night, exposed to light, will confuse your circadian clock and your body will start thinking that it is daylight out.
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So you get up in the morning and you hit sunlight and you go outside and see the sunrise.
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Your skin gets exposed to the sun, your eyes get exposed to the sun.
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Bam, your body knows that it is in a protective mode.
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All of the enzymes, all of the messages, all of the enzymatic processes in our body understand that it is in protective mode.
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It's time to protect your body from the outside world.
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So what do we do for our skin care in the morning?
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First, we want to cleanse.
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We always want to cleanse.
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So you cleanse in the morning.
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Why we want to cleanse?
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We always want to cleanse, so you cleanse in the morning.
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Why you just cleansed at night?
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You cleanse in the morning because overnight our skin is a major detox organ and as our metabolism is running, as our body is renewing itself, it is extruding metabolic waste products.
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It's extruding maybe some heavy metals, some other toxins out of our pores overnight.
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So we want to cleanse in the morning to remove all of all of those things that were extruded out of the pores overnight.
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And for me I'll use a cleanser and I tend to be a little oily.
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So then I'll use a toner on an exfoliating round and I will see a fair amount of dirt on that exfoliating round that I did not see the night before.
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So that's what came out of my pores overnight.
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It just kind of depends how much sushi did I have?
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How much smog was I exposed to the day before?
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What else is going on?
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It will determine how much dirt was extruded out of the pores overnight.
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So we cleanse.
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We always cleanse first to prep the skin toner plus or minus, depending on your skin type and then you want to apply a vitamin c product with ferulic acid if possible, because that will help the vitamin c to become more stable.
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Now there's different types of vitamin C products and most of the vitamin C products will convert into L-ascorbic acid eventually in the skin, which is the active form.
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The problem with applying an L-ascorbic acid serum to your skin is it's very volatile.
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So while it's active in vitro in the lab, when it's put into a formulation in a bottle.
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It's often inactivated very quickly and it can turn usually orange and then brown when it's exposed to heat, oxygen and sunlight.
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So those are hard things to avoid, right?
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So there's different forms of vitamin C.
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There's THD ascorbate and there's sodium ascorbyl phosphate.
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Sodium ascorbyl phosphate is the form of vitamin C that Moon and Skin has chosen to put in their formulation, and I like this form of vitamin C because it's great for sensitive skin, it's the least likely to cause irritation and it's also great for acne-prone skin.
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So one of the complaints that I've seen over the years is People with acne tend to get worsened acne and breakouts with vitamin C products.
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That's usually due to the L-ascorbic acid form.
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So if you are prone to acne and have an intolerance of vitamin C, I want you to look for a form that contains THD ascorbate or sodium ascorbyl phosphate, and this will be less likely to be a problem for you.
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Okay, so after your vitamin C completely dries and is absorbed into the skin, then the next step is to apply a moisturizer.
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So even if you're prone to acne, use an oil-free moisturizer, something with hyaluronic acid, to help hydrate and protect the skin.
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So we want to prep and then we want to protect the skin Moisturizer, let it dry, and then your sunscreen Always, always, always, spf 30 or higher containing zinc oxide.
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I'm not one to wear much makeup, so I use tinted sunscreen, because tinted sunscreen contains iron oxide and is great for helping with pigmentary issues.
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And I like to wear my sunscreen face, neck, chest, sweep, the back of your hands every single day before leaving the house, for not only UV radiation but a lot of incidental sunlight.
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So we get UVA radiation through the windows of the car when we're driving, through the window of our offices.
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Each of us is walking outside, even in the winter months.
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If you live in Colorado or Michigan or Chicago, somewhere cold, your face is getting exposed to the sun for at least 10 minutes walking to and from the car every single day.
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Well, what does that add up to?
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More than 50 hours a year.
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So 10 minutes a day adds up to at least 50 hours a year of getting sun exposure to these high-value areas that are going to show our age over 20, 30, 40 years.
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Over 20, 30, 40 years and wearing an SPF 30 or higher with zinc oxide every single day before leaving the house is going to help protect these areas from showing their wear and tear over time.
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This is our morning routine that is working with our circadian clock when it is in the protective phase.
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Now, in the evening, when the lights go down, our body starts producing melatonin.
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Our body now is in a renewal phase renewal and recovery.
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There is such a thing as beauty sleep.
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We need rest, recovery, sleep in order to renew, and basically what we're doing here is we are giving our body the tools to renew and regenerate just by getting out of its way.
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That's what we want to do.
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We want to support our skin to do what it wants to do.
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Naturally, what we do at night is we cleanse.
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We cleanse.
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You can do a double cleanse if you wear quite a bit of makeup, where you use an oil-based cleanser maybe micellar water, to remove your eye makeup, and then an active cleanser, something that is gentle yet effective.
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So we don't want to have stripped skin.
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We don't want to have taut skin when we, when we cleanse, we want to use a cleanser that we apply to the skin for two full minutes after removing makeup, where the cleanser can penetrate and actually remove dead skin cells and remove any dirt and debris and basically prep the skin to absorb the actives.
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So an effective cleanser will not strip your skin of its natural oils and it will also not leave residual dirt on the skin afterwards.
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So if you like to use a toner or I use another product called AO2 clear that is hyper oxygenated water, and I can see on the cotton pad, whether I use a toner or the AO2 clear, that there is no residual dirt afterwards.
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And you should not see residual dirt if you have an effective cleanser.
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So we cleanse, let the skin dry and then apply a retinol.
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So retinol it's not a sexy thing.
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It's been around since the 1970s and it's the most scientifically studied ingredient in all of skincare.
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So retinol can help unplug pores.
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It can help to enhance cell turnover, which we want.
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We want fresh skin cells to renew and turn over.
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It can help lift off pigmentation.
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It can help stimulate collagen and it can help reverse some sun damage.
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So these are all wonderful things.
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The issue that we have with retinol is that oftentimes people will use too much of it or too strong and that lifting off and separation of dead skin cells can happen too quickly and it can make your skin look really dry and irritated.
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So we don't want that.
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You can get benefits from retinol without going that way.
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So when you're first starting a retinol you want to start using it.
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Maybe three times a week is enough, just to get your skin acclimated to it.
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So I have people take a pea-sized amount, apply it to your forehead, cheek, other cheek, chin and your chest and then rub it in.
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Avoid letting it sit in the creases around your eyes, nose, corners of the mouth or the crease of your neck where at night you sleep and it can kind of pool in those areas and become more irritated.
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So that's the key with retinol three times a week, small amount.
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It works through cell signaling so you don't need complete contact like you do with a moisturizer.
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Trust the science because it works through nuclear receptors in the cells and self signaling doesn't need to have complete coverage.
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More than a pea-sized amount is only going to be more irritating and not necessarily more effective.
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And with the retinol you just start slow and you start low and you go slow.
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And the moon and skin, the folks at moon and skin, created a liposomal technology of the retinol, which I really like.
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Because the liposomal technology of the retinol which I really like?
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Because the liposomal technology allows the retinol to penetrate the bilipid membrane in the skin and get to where it needs to be, in the nuclear receptors, without causing irritation to the epidermis like traditional retinols where you're getting all of the peeling and the redness and the scaling of your skin.
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So start three times a week.
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If you're having no irritation after about two weeks, increase to four times a week.
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No irritation in another week or two, go to five times a week and gently go until you can get to every single night and that's how I like to initiate retinol.
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After your retinol, you want to moisturize.
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So moisturization, if you're someone who's a little bit oily and you don't like to moisturize during the day, you definitely need to moisturize at night because we have more trans epidermal water loss.
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There's more evaporation and loss of moisture from the skin at night.
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So we definitely need to, like the women in the 1950s, packed on the cold cream.
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They were smart.
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That's what we need to do.
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We need to put more moisturizer on our face at night, because we are working with our circadian clock.
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So don't forget your eyes around your eyelids and don't forget your neck and your chest, whatever's left in your hands when you're using your skincare regimen.
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Sweep the back of your hands, because we want our hands to age the same rate as the rest of our face, which is slow.
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We want all to age slowly.
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So that's it for night.
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You really need three steps in the morning and three steps at night.
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This is your basic skin care regimen that everyone can do.
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Now if you're targeting pigmentation or acne, we can add in a separate serum for those and we will discuss that on future episodes.
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So this is phase one of your skin sinking program.
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Now phase two is working with the infradian cycle.
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So phase one is working with the circadian cycle, morning and night.
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Phase two is working with your infradian cycle, so the infradian rhythm.
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It's a 28 day biological cycle.
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Now every woman does not have a 28 day menstrual cycle.
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There's many variations in there, from 25 days to 35 days, and you know your body best, right?
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So 28 days is a rough estimate.
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So it's a 28-day biological cycle and it affects many systems in a woman, not just our reproductive organs.
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It affects our athletic performance, we know.
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It affects our mood.
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It affects our skin.
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So not much is talked about with how the infradian cycle affects your skin, but it does.
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And now just say you're post-menopausal and you're like I don't need to pay attention to the infradian cycle?
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You might not.
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If you're perimenopausal, it's more difficult to predict what your hormones are, because they can be up and down and all over the place.
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If you're post-menopausal, you can choose to follow the cycle of the moon or you may be on a consistent program of supplemental hormonal therapy where your hormones are consistent and then you do not need to follow an infradian rhythm cycle of your skincare.
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But if you are someone who does cycle cycle, if you do have a menstrual cycle in any manner, then you should pay attention to how to sync your skin care with your infradian cycle.
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So let's just dive into exactly what happens during this month.
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Okay, day one of your menstrual cycle, of your infradian rhythm, is the day you bleed.
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So day one is the day you bleed and during the first week of your menstrual cycle, estrogen and progesterone in the body are at its lowest.
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It's at the lowest and your skin is most likely to be dry and sensitive.
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So that first week of your period is when your skin is the driest and the most sensitive of the entire menstrual cycle.
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So what are the recommendations?
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How should you adjust accordingly to work with your Natural rhythm, because we want to work with our own bodies.
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We don't want to work against our bodies.
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So first, change to a gentle cleanser.
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Make sure your cleanser is really gentle.
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Possibly in the morning you only use water and at night you use your cleanser to remove makeup.
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If you could tolerate the gentle cleanser twice a day, I definitely recommend continuing to do that.
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Secondly, you want to cut out the toner the first week.
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So avoid toner or any exfoliants or anything that is going to be harsh and cause more irritation and dryness of your skin.
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Just be sensitive to the fact that your skin is going to be more dry and sensitive during this week.
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It's not because you're doing anything wrong, because what you were doing the week before was perfectly fine.
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Yet the inside of your body has changed, your hormones have changed and your skin is going to change accordingly.
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So we're really looking at gentle cleansing.
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Avoid toners, avoiding exfoliation.
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During this first week of your infradian rhythm, you may find that you have to reduce your retinol back down to three times a week, and that's okay because you're still going to get benefits from it.
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You may find that you need to add more moisturizer, and one of the tricks that I often have people do with retinol is to do the sandwich technique to tolerate it.
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You apply a moisturizer first, then you apply your retinol and then you apply another layer of moisturizer, and this is something you can do to tolerate moisturizer.
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Or this is something that you can do during the first week of your infradian rhythm.
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You may be someone who normally only needs to use moisturizer at night, and now you need to do it twice a day during this first week of your menstrual cycle.
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And then, if you have noticed that your skin is more sensitive, look for a product that has ingredients containing niacinamide.
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So niacinamide is vitamin B3, and it's very calming to the skin.
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It's very anti-inflammatory.
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And then the last recommendation I have for you during the first week, if you're dry and sensitive, is you can look to add a sheet mask to boost hydration to your skin.
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So take some time for yourself and apply a sheet mask for about 15 minutes at night to boost hydration to your skin.
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So take some time for yourself and apply a sheet mask for about 15 minutes at night to boost hydration and just see if it feels good.
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We're always trying to balance cost with effectiveness, so you know the cost for a sheet mask is a little bit higher, but it can come in handy during this time of the month.
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So that's week one.
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Now week two is the follicular phase.
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It's the beginning of the follicular phase and that's when your estrogen starts to rise and your skin starts to glow.
00:21:42.798 --> 00:21:44.689
Estrogen is our friend.
00:21:44.689 --> 00:21:50.809
Your skin's going to become more resilient and less sensitive, so estrogen is collagen promoting.
00:21:50.809 --> 00:21:55.939
So you'll notice that your skin is more supple and more glowing.
00:21:56.019 --> 00:22:01.076
During the second week, it's really a good time where you can just get back to your core regimen.
00:22:01.076 --> 00:22:06.817
You can add in some alpha hydroxy, beta hydroxy acid and some more exfoliants at that time.
00:22:06.817 --> 00:22:13.828
You can definitely bump up your retinol to every night during that second week and adjust the moisturizer as needed.
00:22:13.828 --> 00:22:15.032
One to two times a day.
00:22:15.032 --> 00:22:17.193
Listen to your skin.
00:22:17.193 --> 00:22:22.192
I'm going to tell you a thousand times to listen to your skin, because that's really what ultimately you need to do.
00:22:22.192 --> 00:22:26.496
So I will always give you guidance and tried and true things that we know.
00:22:26.496 --> 00:22:30.574
And then you adjust accordingly, just like if you had a meal in front of you.
00:22:30.574 --> 00:22:34.807
Like, the amount that you eat is not going to be the same amount that a football player eats.
00:22:34.807 --> 00:22:44.736
Right, we adjust based on what our body needs and that is what my goal here is to teach you to eventually do is to just become so attuned with what your skin needs.
00:22:44.736 --> 00:22:48.711
You know the answers, okay, so that's the second week.
00:22:48.711 --> 00:22:51.798
We are bumping up the retinol to every night again.
00:22:51.798 --> 00:22:59.338
Where we tolerate, we are a moisturizer one to two times a day, based on what we need, and you can add back in your exfoliators.
00:22:59.585 --> 00:23:03.316
Week three is ovulation, and this is when you're fertile.
00:23:03.316 --> 00:23:09.130
You're going to be at your most attractive.
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This is nature.
00:23:09.730 --> 00:23:21.041
Make more money during the week that they are fertile than women who are not cycling, who are in birth control and women who are not in their ovulatory window.
00:23:21.041 --> 00:23:36.770
There's much more to it than even hormones, but overall, we know that because your hormones are peaking during ovulation, you are naturally at your most attractive and your skin's also going to be at the best with this week, because the skin is a sign of fertility.
00:23:36.770 --> 00:23:41.345
Healthy skin, healthy hair is a sign of fertility and attraction.
00:23:41.345 --> 00:23:44.194
It's deep seated in our evolutionary roots.
00:23:44.435 --> 00:23:47.385
So recommendations for this week are just cruise control.
00:23:47.385 --> 00:23:50.569
Basically, maintain your routine from week two.
00:23:50.569 --> 00:23:53.834
Your skin's going to tolerate exfoliation more this week.
00:23:53.834 --> 00:23:59.000
It's a great week to experiment, try new things.
00:23:59.000 --> 00:24:18.872
It's a great week to get procedures, because your skin's going to heal better, because your estrogen is going to be more at the ready to produce fresh collagen to help heal, and it's just a great time to undergo any procedure if you want to do laser or microneedling or chemical peels, anything like that.
00:24:18.872 --> 00:24:21.761
So collagen remodeling is really supported.
00:24:21.761 --> 00:24:24.869
Otherwise, just do cruise control with your skincare routine.
00:24:24.869 --> 00:24:28.097
Maybe try that latest trend that you've wanted to try.
00:24:28.097 --> 00:24:31.430
Don't expect it to work the rest of your cycle, though, okay.
00:24:31.470 --> 00:24:47.210
So week four is now your luteal phase, and this is when progesterone rises and this is often when the PMS symptoms happen and you can experience more oil production and even more breakouts during this week.
00:24:47.210 --> 00:25:05.151
So I have seen a lot of women in their twenties, thirties, forties and even fifties that are experiencing the jaw hormonal acne, which I'm going to do a deep dive discussing and this is usually the time of the month that it happens, okay, when that progesterone rises and there's more oil.
00:25:05.151 --> 00:25:16.385
So if you notice that you're one of those people that even if you don't break out, you still might have more oily complexion, you want to focus on clarifying products during this time of the month.
00:25:16.385 --> 00:25:40.924
So clarifying products typically will contain salicylic acid, and you can look for these in the form of a cleanser or a toner or even a treatment mask, and I like salicylic acid so much for this reason, because salicylic acid is drawn to oil, so it's an acid that is drawn to oil as opposed to water, so some acids are drawn to water.
00:25:40.924 --> 00:25:55.640
Salicylic acid is drawn to oil and the oil glands are holding on to dead skin cells, which is what's making the pores look larger, which is also one component of what causes acne.
00:25:55.640 --> 00:26:08.067
So we want to selectively remove those extra skin cells and oil that's leading to acne and breakouts, and salicylic acid is a good way to do that.
00:26:08.509 --> 00:26:19.991
Other things that you can do if you're noticing that you're more oily and acne prone during the luteal phase is to skip your morning moisturizer and only moisturize at night.
00:26:19.991 --> 00:26:25.173
You must need moisturizer at night because that's when you have so much transepidermal water loss.
00:26:25.173 --> 00:26:30.715
You really need to moisturize at night, otherwise you're going to get over dry skin and even more clogged pores, which we don't want.
00:26:30.715 --> 00:26:54.954
So you may need to just skip the morning moisturizer or apply it only to the periphery of the face and your neck and your chest and skip the T zone where you tend to be more oily, and then, if you're not using a vitamin C that contains sodium, ascorbyl phosphate, you may want to skip your vitamin C during this time of the month, because some vitamin C's containing L-ascorbic acid can make you more prone to acne breakouts.
