Ep 313 – The Rogue Pharmacist: Hormonal Influence on Skin

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0:01:12.3 Maggie Stasik: 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. Maggie I'm Maggie Stasik, ASCP's program director. And joining me is Ben Fuchs, skincare formulator and pharmacist. Hey, Ben.

0:01:28.6 BF: Hello, Maggie.

0:01:29.8 MS: Hormones play a huge role in so many aspects of our health. And when it comes to our skin, their impact can be significant. As estheticians, understanding these hormonal shifts can really help us tailor our treatments to better support our clients. Ben, tell us, walk us through how these hormonal changes affect the skin and what we can do to address them in our treatments.

0:01:53.2 BF: Oh my goodness. I cringe when I have to talk about hormones because hormones are complex in such a way that every time you touch, it's like that old saying, if somebody sneezes in Brazil and somebody catches a cold in Canada, it's like everything is all connected. And it's so hard to tease these things apart and to say this is caused by estrogen, this is caused by thyroid, this is caused by insulin, etcetera. Because they're all connected and they're all linked to each other. And this is why hormone replacement therapy is doesn't really work. And it's fraught with peril because you're trying to reduce the hormone system into three different hormones or two different hormones. In reality, there's so many, and they have so many different functions. So that being said, hormones are messengers. They tell cells what to do. The word hormone comes from the Greek horméō, which means I arouse to activity. And so hormones are like a kick in the butt to a cell. They make cells think, they make cells do things. Nutrients help cells do things, hormones make cells do things. And that's why arguably the most important topical skincare ingredient is a hormone, which is vitamin A.

0:03:01.8 BF: That's why even though we call it vitamin, we call it a vitamin, it's actually a hormone. Same with vitamin D. We call them vitamins because you gotta get them in the diet and they're two hormones that the body doesn't make that you gotta get in the diet. Hormones are typically made by the body. So to really simplify, which I hate doing, but if we're gonna simplify, a hormone tells a cell what to do. Now, most hormones are proteins, but when we think about hormones, what we think about are the few hormones that are fatty, that are fats. So the bulk of the hormones are proteins or water soluble proteins. But the ones everybody thinks about when they think of the word hormones are the steroid hormones. And those are all hormones that are forms of cholesterol, DHEA, progesterone, pregnenolone, testosterone, estrogen. Those are collectively referred to as the steroid hormones. Cortisol also comes from the same, this same pathway. And they're a small segment of the entire hormone pool, but they're incredibly important. And those are the ones that we think about when we think about hormones. Now interestingly, when people think about these steroid hormones, they think understandably about the ovaries and the uterus and the reproductive organs.

0:04:12.3 BF: But it turns out that the skin, the keratinocytes make the steroid hormones. And the skin is actually a major source of steroid hormone synthesis, which really makes sense when you think about it, because the steroid hormones make things happen, they make things grow and they're responsible for repair and they're responsible for protection. And so the skin being on the outside of the body, is subject to needs for growth and for repair and for protection. And so it turns out that keratinocytes are a major source of steroid hormones. So you can't really, it's very difficult to target specific hormones and to work with hormones. But what you can do and what we should do in order to control our hormones is work one level up see hormones, all of the hormones, the steroid hormones, the non steroid hormones, are all controlled by the nervous system. And the nervous system is where we do have an ability to control what happens in the body. So you can't control your hormones on their own. But by working on the nervous system or with the nervous system, that is the brain and the central nervous system, you can have a huge impact on hormones.

0:05:17.0 BF: Now, working on the nervous system can occur in two phases. You have two types of nervous system. There are two aspects of the nervous system. You have the voluntary nervous system, and that's the nervous system that we control by how we think, by how we move, by how we stand, by exercise. All of these are great ways to rev up your hormone system to make more hormones. And you probably heard said the set sitting is the new smoking. And one of the reasons that is, is because when you sit, you don't move. Your body doesn't make hormones, it doesn't need to make hormones. Hormones are action. If you're not in action, you don't need to make as many hormones. So exercise and moving your body and changing your posture, even things like smiling, if you change your posture, you will change your nervous system and you will in turn change your hormones. And that's the voluntary aspect. But you can also tap into your hormone system or hack into your hormone system, if you like, with the involuntary nervous system. The involuntary nervous system is also known as the automatic nervous system. Technically they call it the autonomic nervous system.

0:06:15.1 BF: And this autonomic nervous system is made up of two parts. So you got the nervous system. The nervous system is divided into the voluntary nervous system and the involuntary or automatic nervous system. The automatic nervous system regulates things like heart rate and breathing and digestion, the immune system and all the things that the, all the functions of the body that we don't voluntarily control. Those are automatic or autonomic. But here's the thing. The autonomic nervous system is also subdivided into a nervous system of fear and a nervous system of safety. We call that the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. And if you really want to control your hormones in an effective way, what you want to do is you want to start to override the automaticity, the automatic nature of this autonomic nervous system by actually participating in the parasympathetic response, by relaxing your body, by breathing slowly, by thinking good thoughts, by eating correct foods, and all the strategies that we know we're supposed to do to stay healthy and well are really strategies for activating the parasympathetic nervous system so that the parasympathetic nervous system will then take care of your hormones.

0:07:31.0 BF: And that's really the key. So for example, one of the biggest problems we have in our country and really around the world is infertility. People... There's a real, I don't know if you know this, but there's a, it's a serious infertility uptown. Some 25% of couples are infertile. That does not bode well for the human species. And so if you go to the medical route, which most people do, if they want to make a baby, they want to have a baby and they can't have a baby, they go the medical route. What do they do? They get IVF or they'll get Clomid or some kind of pharmaceutical to kind of make, force your body, make a baby. What you try to do. And this is just one example, you're trying to override the body's hormonal wisdom that's not letting you make a baby. So why is the body not letting people make babies? Because to the body, or I should say the body is receiving hormonal signals of don't make a baby. It sucks out there. You know, life is hard. Do not make a baby. No, no baby. You know, it's like there's a red flag going off in there.

0:08:31.4 BF: And that red flag is the manifestation of a hormone called cortisol. And so our inability to procreate is caused by hormonal signals that are the end result of an overactive stress or survival nervous system, sympathetic nervous system. So what's the answer? Activate the parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system is a relaxation nervous system, the calming nervous system. Another example is female health issues. Female health issues. A lot of women want to be on hormone replacement therapy. They want more estrogen. Well, it would be better off if you are... If your body is somehow not... The estrogen part of your body is not working as effectively. You can take artificial estrogen, you can go get, you know, hormone replacement therapy, but if you activate the parasympathetic nervous system, your hormone system will naturally be balanced. And not only will you be able to make better estrogen, but you'll also be able to balance out that estrogen with progesterone. So by working up level at the level of the nervous system, whether you're working at the brain level with the voluntary nervous system, or working at the parasympathetic or the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system.

0:09:45.6 BF: That's really where you want to work with hormones. That being said, there are some people who will get benefits if they have severe deficiencies in testosterone or severe deficiencies in estrogen, or severe deficiencies in progesterone from hormone replacement therapy. And you gotta kind of take the good with the bad. I don't recommend it because you are sort of playing with fire when you start to change the hormone level exogenously. But if you notice that you have benefits from hormone replacement therapy, by all means do it. Another thing that you can do is the steroid hormones, as long as we're talking about the steroid hormones is use fats correctly. All the steroid hormones are derived from fats, particularly from cholesterol. Cholesterol, unbeknownst to most people, certainly to most doctors in the medical model, is a stress management molecule. It helps the body deal with life. And so if you have an issue with cholesterol deposits and the doctor says, well, you gotta be on a statin drug, you're running the risk of suppressing your body's ability to grow, to repair, to anti age, to build muscle, to improve neural functioning and brain functioning, all of which are important for having a good life.

0:10:50.8 BF: So if you really want to work on your steroid hormones, steroid hormone synthesis, and improve steroid hormones, testosterone, estrogen, DHEA, progesterone, etcetera, the best thing you could do is work upstream at the nervous system level and give yourself through supplementation or also through diet good fats, quality fats. That's really the most important thing you could do from a dietary or supplemental perspective in order to work with steroid hormones. Now any, we're talking about steroid hormones because that's what most people think about. But any discussion on hormones really needs to also address two major hormones that are not steroid hormones, and that's thyroid hormone and insulin. And both thyroid hormone and insulin, like the steroid hormones, help the body grow, they make things happen. And under conditions of hypothyroidism, which is pretty much an epidemic, you're going to be deficient in pretty much all cellular functioning. And under conditions of either excess insulin or what's called insulin resistance, you're going to end up with pretty much all chronic degenerative diseases. All chronic degenerative diseases not only have an inflammatory component, they also have a component of insulin resistance or excessive production of insulin. And that's what's called metabolic syndrome.

0:12:04.5 BF: And of course, the best way to deal with that is to work on your blood sugar and on calories and, and ketogenic diet, paleo, etcetera, and also using nutrients that help the body use insulin. And then as far as the thyroid goes, it's really interesting. You can't really work on the thyroid, and this is one of the reasons why thyroid medication every year is the number one or number two best selling medication. And at the same time, we have more hypothyroidism than ever before. It's very difficult to treat a poorly functioning thyroid unless you work backwards. And the major place to work on the thyroid is on the, is at the level of the adrenal glands where you're making the steroid hormones. So by, via the interplay between the steroid hormones and the thyroid, by lowering cortisol, which is a steroid hormone, by balancing out estrogen with progesterone, by improving clearance of estrogen at the level of the intestine or the gallbladder or the liver. That's the place where you want to work on thyroid function. To work just on thyroid hormone by itself is very difficult. And in fact, the only real treatment for hypothyroidism is thyroxin, which is not a great treatment because hormones are...

0:13:19.3 BF: And this is one of the reasons why hormone replacement therapy is such a problem. And Levothyroxine or Synthroid is a type of hormone replacement therapy. Hormones are supposed to be responsive, supposed to go up and down and up and down as needed, based on the environment. When you hack into that by taking Synthroid or taking the thyroid medication, or by hormone replacement therapy, by just putting testosterone pellets in your body or using estrogen creams or estrogen medication, you bypass the body's ability to be responsive to what's happening in the environment, keeping your hormone levels at elevated steady state. And that's really problematic because that is kind of the antithesis of how hormones are supposed to work.

0:14:00.6 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.