Ep 302 – The Rogue Pharmacist: Skin Microbiome

0:00:00.3 Benjamin Knight Fuchs: Calling all forward-thinking estheticians, it's time to redefine the art of skincare and embrace a revolutionary approach that begins with your clients' skin cell health. I'm pharmacist Benjamin Knight Fuchs, welcoming you to Truth Treatment Systems, where beauty begins at the cell. We believe you're not just a beauty professional, you are a healthcare professional. You want to make a positive difference, and you want to make a good living and we will help you do both. We're here to support your out of the box thinking and empower you to question traditional products, outdated formulations and old school ingredients.

0:00:32.6 BF: Imagine a world where solutions to the skin's enigmatic conditions lie just beyond the horizon. At Truth, we're not just a skincare brand, we're a movement that encourages you to explore better solutions and find that aha moment that changes the game. You are an artist and a healer of the skin and we're here to provide the canvas and the tools for you to create tailored protocols leaving generic ones in the past. Sign up now at truthtreatmentspro.com and receive two complimentary mineral rich electrolyte sheet masks. That's truthtreatmentspro.com where healthy skin is beautiful skin.

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0:01:12.3 Maggie Staszcuk: Hello and welcome to ASCP and the Rogue Pharmacist with Benjamin Knight Fuchs. In each episode, we'll explore how internal and external factors can impact the skin. I'm Maggie Staszcuk, ASCP's program director. And joining me is Ben Fuchs, skincare formulator and pharmacist. Hey, Ben.

0:01:28.9 BF: Hello, Maggie. Good to see you.

0:01:30.2 MS: Good to see you. Every esthetician knows a balanced microbiome is essential for maintaining clear, healthy skin. And I've often heard of this microbiome being referred to as the second brain.

0:01:42.1 BF: Whoa.

0:01:42.8 MS: Yeah.

0:01:43.1 BF: You're diving deep in here.

0:01:44.5 MS: I'm getting deep, yeah.

0:01:45.9 BF: Every... First of all, I wish every esthetician knew that.

0:01:48.7 MS: Okay, I guess I'm stretching.

0:01:51.2 BF: And the good ones know that, that's for sure. The real ones know that. And more and more, it's becoming known that there's a very important relationship between gut health and skin health. And you know, we've been talking about this for years on this program, and I've been talking about it for years. And anybody who really works with the skin will eventually find out that if somebody has a digestive problem, it's going to show up on their skin. So there's an intimate relationship between the digestive system and the skin. And the heart, if I can use that phrase, of the skin, of the digestive system is the intestine. It's all about the intestine.

0:02:21.4 BF: And I have this saying when I do my talks, I say, all disease is cell disease, but all cell disease is preceded by dirty blood. And what is it that makes the blood dirty? How does things get into the blood to make it dirty? Well, first of all, let's talk about the blood real quick. And that is the blood is actually an organ. We think of it as a liquid, right? But it's a liquid organ. It's a liquid tissue, which is kind of weird when you think about it. But the reason this is important is because when we think of an organ, we know that that organ, say, we'll take your lungs or your spleen, for example, we know that that organ has a certain structure to it, and we know that that organ has components within it that help maintain that structure.

0:02:58.4 BF: The blood is the same way. The blood is incredibly complex. There's all kinds of various proteins and fats and molecules and enzymes, all kinds of nutrients, all kinds of stuff in the blood. And the blood has to be kept at just the right acid level, just the right enzyme level, just the right hydration level, just the right oxygen level, just the right amount of fluidity and hydration. Just so. So nothing is supposed to get into the blood until it's been vetted, until it's been approved, if you will. You almost think of the blood as being a country that you're going into and vetting agents as immigration or customs, if you will.

0:03:43.4 BF: And how is it that things get into the blood? Well, there's only two main ways that things get into the blood. One way is through the skin, and that topical skin care isn't really going to get into the blood, but if you inject things through the skin, those will get into the blood. And this is why you want to be very, very careful about injecting things into the blood through the skin. Now, we know if you... Obviously, people who are shooting up crack or heroin, they're going to have problems. And very often they'll have diseases that people have, chronic diseases that people have when they get older.

0:04:16.0 BF: So people who will abuse drugs, inject IV drugs like crack or heroin or whatever that you're injecting will get Parkinson's disease, they'll get autoimmune diseases, they'll get various movement disorders because they're violating the sanctity of the blood through the skin. And also, by the way, this is why, when in the culture, they tell you, oh, you might catch a virus, you better inject this. You gotta be very careful. You gotta be very, very respectful of the sanctity of the blood by things that you're putting into the bloodstream through injection. Also through skin care, but not as much because it's a little bit difficult to get things into the blood through the skin. But for the most part, things get into the bloodstream through the intestine.

0:05:00.8 BF: You eat a food, it goes into the intestine. And at the level of the intestine, the substances that are supposed to get into the body... And by the way, if you eat a hamburger or a peanut butter sandwich or a piece of pizza, 99.99% of that food is going out the other end. It's a very small fraction of most foods that go into the body that go into the blood. And that small fraction is going to involve nutrients, what we call essential nutrients, vitamins, minerals, amino acids and fatty acids. And those get delivered into the bloodstream through the intestine very carefully, in a very tightly regulated fashion.

0:05:37.3 BF: However, as we age and as the impact of poor food choices and nutritional deficiencies and stress levels kick in, what happens is that the boundary, the wall, the barrier between the intestine and the blood starts to become weakened and inflamed. And at that point, things sneak in to the bloodstream. And when I say things, I'm talking about food particles, I'm talking about bacterial particles, I'm talking about immune substances, and they get into the blood, throw off the blood, the consistency of the blood, and the chemistry of the blood. And this is the start of chronic disease.

0:06:14.9 BF: All chronic disease, not 99.9%, 100% of chronic disease involves toxicity in the blood. I call it dirty blood. And it really is dirty blood because when things get into the bloodstream, the blood will coagulate because to the body, when something gets into the blood, it doesn't want to distribute it everywhere. So it will slow down the movement of the blood by thickening the blood. So I say dirty blood. I'm talking about thick, sludgy blood. This will prevent nutrition and oxygen from getting to cells. It will also cause toxicity to accumulate in cells because the blood and the circulatory system are supposed to remove toxicity. And this is where disease begins.

0:06:54.8 BF: But one of the most important reasons why you get this increase in permeability of the barrier, by the way, it's called leaky gut, which I know you've heard of, or intestinal permeability syndrome, is from disturbances in the bacterial profile of the intestine. So the digestive system is where all disease begins, but the intestine is the part of the digestive system where all disease begins, and the bacteria in the intestine are where the intestinal problems begin, which lead to the digestive dysfunction and the blood toxicity.

0:07:30.5 BF: It's the bacteria that live in the intestine. These bacteria we've known about theoretically anyway, for 100, 150 years, almost 200 years, beginning of the 19th century or beginning of the 20th century, they really honed in on bacteria as being a very important part of good health, but really didn't kick in until maybe 20 or 30 years ago, how significant these bacteria in the intestine, the significance of these bacteria in intestinal bacteria were to overall health. We call these bacteria the microbiome, and I know you've heard that term, that microbiome is begins in a human being's intestine, begins their life in a human being's intestine at birth.

0:08:12.6 BF: When a baby is born, it's supposed to come out the birth canal. And as it comes through the birth canal, it's coated with a layer of bacteria. And that bacterial coating goes in from the mother's birth canal, goes into the baby's nostrils and the baby's mouth, and it goes down into the baby's digestive tract, and they implant in the intestine. And at that point, those bacteria become that baby's best health friends. Those bacteria detoxify substances, digest substances, make vitamins, and make hormones. The bacteria in the microbiome in the intestine are actually a library of genetic information that provide genes for the body, for the human body.

0:09:00.1 BF: They're like a reservoir of genetic material. They're actually making proteins and making substances that the body can use. What's more is every human being has their own specific bacteria, their own signature bacteria, their signature profile, bacterial profile. And in the future, when there's a crime that's committed, they will be able to look for the bacteria around the crime, and they'll be able to track it back to individual perpetrators because every bacterial profile, every perpetrator, every individual has their own unique bacterial profile.

0:09:34.8 BF: Long story short, many, if not most of us are walking around with a compromised microbiome from day one, from the day we're born. And this shows up as a whole host of health challenges. And the situation, as bad as it is today, it was worse 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago when people, the medical profession, or medical professionals were completely oblivious to the importance of the bacteria or breast milk or the microbiome itself and implantation and the coding that the baby gets.

0:10:12.5 BF: Now, the microbiome that lives in the intestine is incredibly important. But there's a microbiome everywhere in the body. You have bacteria in your eyes, you have bacteria in your lungs. And of course, as we're going to talk about here, you've got a coating of bacteria on your skin. In fact, in this room right now, Maggie, the bacteria off of my skin are coming off, and the bacteria off of your skin are coming off. And there's a bacterial cloud just in this room that's composed of our bacteria. And if we go to a party or we go to an event, there's thousands of people, there's a huge cloud of bacteria that is coming off of everybody's body to the point where the whole earth is coated with a cloud of bacteria that represents emanations from everybody's skin. Microbiome.

0:10:57.9 BF: And just like the microbiome is critical, the bacteria critical for the health of the intestine, the health of the digestive system, and the health of the internal milieu, it's also critical for the skin. And disruptions in bacteria can cause all kinds of skin problems, including eczema and sensitive skin and psoriasis and rosacea and acne. They all have an element of what we call dysbiosis. Dysbiosis means dysfunctional or messed up, and biosis means bacteria. So all skin diseases, including just plain old dry skin, have an element of dysbiosis.

0:11:34.1 BF: And there's a lot of reasons for this. First of all, as I said, people start off, many of us start off our lives with disruptions at the level of the microbiome. And if you have a disruption at the level of your intestinal microbiome, it's going to be a short jump to disruptions of the microbiome in the skin or in the lungs or anywhere else in the body, the genitals or the reproductive tract or the urinary tract. These are all places where you'll find bacteria. And disruptions at the level of the microbiome will cause, intestinal microbiome will cause disruptions everywhere.

0:12:01.0 BF: But even worse, when we take antibiotics, we kill the bacteria. And guess what? Even if you're not taking antibiotics, you're taking antibiotics because it's in the water and it's in the milk and it's in the butter and the ice cream and it's in the animals. Antibiotics are everywhere. We're swimming in an ocean of antibiotics, which cannot help but cause disruptions at the level of the microbiome or of bacteria in the intestine or on the skin as we'll talk about here in a second. The food supply is completely different in the year 2024, 2025 than it was even a hundred years ago, let alone 200 years ago. Remember our bodies at least hundreds of thousands of years old, and today we're ingesting foods that our bodies have enough, don't have any idea of what to do with. And that can only have a negative effect on the microbiome.

0:12:51.6 BF: Sugar also has a negative effect. Antibiotics also have a negative effect. And so does chlorine and fluoride, which are intended... Chlorine anyway is intended to kill bacteria, intended to be anti-life or antimicrobial. Fluoride's not intended for that reason, but it does have an antimicrobial effect as well. So we're doing all kinds of things to cause disruptions at the level of the microbiome in the intestine, and that's leading to a slew of health challenges, long-term chronic health challenges. In fact, it may be the ultimate cause of long-term health challenges.

0:13:28.5 BF: But the skin is the same way. We're doing things to the skin that cause disruptions in the microbiome, particularly washing our face. Right. Every time you wash your face, what do you wash your face with? Chlorine and fluoride in tap water, not to mention all the other things that are in tap water. There's all kinds of stuff in tap water that has a killing effect on bacteria. Skincare products can kill bacteria, particularly preservatives. What does a preservative do? It kills bacteria. So when you put a skincare product on your skin and it has a preservative in it, of course it's going to change the nature of the skin's microbiome.

0:14:04.5 BF: So in addition to having disruptions at the level of the intestine, in terms of the microbiome, we're doing things that disrupt the skin's microbiome. And we know that disruptions in the skin microbiome are associated with skin diseases. So recently, and by recently, I mean the last maybe 15 or 20 years, it's become a kind of thing to put probiotics in skincare, to put bacteria in skincare. And while that may have some temporary benefits, the problem with putting probiotics in skincare products and applying it to your skin is your skin is constantly changing. Every time you think a thought, you are changing the bacteria on your skin because you're changing your hormones and you're changing your biochemistry and that's going to have effect on the skin. Every time you wash your face, you're going to change the bacteria on your skin. Every time you eat a certain food or eat types of food, you're going to change the bacteria on your skin.

0:14:55.6 BF: So using probiotic skincare is kind of like a little boy putting his finger in the dike. You put your finger in the dike, another hole pops out, you put another finger in the dike, it's like playing Whack-A-Mole, if you will. It's really difficult to create long lasting changes with so called probiotic skincare because the microbiome on the skin is changing all the time. It's a much healthier strategy to address the systemic microbiome, the microbiome at the level of the intestine, and that will naturally create a profile change or a population change in the bacteria, the microbiome on the skin. It's much better to work systemically than to try to approach the skin topically with probiotics.

0:15:38.0 BF: And on top of that, preservatives in a skincare product are going to kill the probiotics. So it's very difficult to get real probiotic activity in a skin care product. There is some benefits from just dead bacteria, from just the particles of the bacteria, the walls of the bacteria, there might be some benefits there. But to really have live bacteria in a skincare product, I don't really know how that could even happen. Given the fact that bacteria proliferate and your skincare product would be filled with bacteria, it would be bacterial mass if there were indeed living organisms in your skincare product. And if there are preservatives in a skincare product, there's no way there could be living organisms in there anyway.

0:16:20.7 BF: Long story short, the microbiome is incredibly important, unspeakably valuable. For most people, they begin their lives with microbiome disruptions which lead to all kinds of health challenges, immune health challenges, digestive health challenges and skin health challenges. And that can only inevitably show up as disruptions in the skin microbiome. If you want to have healthy, beautiful skin, it always boils down to taking care of the internal milieu of the body, which begins at the level of food and digestion, which of course means the intestine. And then using, as we talked about earlier, topical nutrients on the skin so that the environment of the skin is conducive to a healthy skin microbiome, rather than trying to change the skin microbiome artificially from the outside in.

0:17:09.8 MS: That concludes our show for today, and we thank you for listening. But if you just can't get enough of Ben Fuchs, the ASCP's rogue pharmacist, you can find him at truthtreatments.com. For more information on this episode, or for ways to connect with Ben Fuchs, or to learn more about ASCP, check out the show notes.

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