[00:00:00] Luke: Well, I feel like we already had an amazing podcast in the last 20 minutes. It's so common over the past eight years or so of doing this show that someone sits down and we start vibing and having a great conversation, and I think, oh, we should have recorded that. And then I think, well, where would it start? Maybe it doesn't have to start anywhere. It could just start in the middle.

[00:00:23] Amitay: Yeah.

[00:00:24] Luke: So we're going to be talking about skin care, skin health, biohacking one's beauty and the longevity of your appearance. And that's something I would say most of us are interested in to some degree, because we see the benefit in our appearance. It definitely does things for us in our lives.

[00:00:43] If we look healthy and we get a positive response from other people, I think it does add to our wellbeing and quality of life. So my first question is, where does the line from egoic identification and vanity of being body identified with the superficial version of who we really are is a, for me at least, my belief is we're a soul inhabiting this flesh protoplasmic meat suit.

[00:01:18] So how much of caring about how we look on the outside is associated with ego versus self-care and self-love and really honoring and valuing the protoplasmic meat suit that we've been gifted at birth, or I guess prior to birth, actually?

[00:01:32] Amitay: Yeah, I think it's an apt question when we talk about the skin, or appearance, but I think it applies to everything about the meat suit, like, physical fitness, cleanliness, brain function, whatever that is. We can have a discussion about how do we live a life well lived and setting goals and getting to them, or creating a lifestyle that will get us somewhere and have a positive direction that imbues positivity to other parts of your life.

[00:02:14] And then there is, I would say, the going over the top or the tipping point where it becomes destructive, too much of a good thing. And in skin health, or really more than skin, in appearance, it's extremely easy to understand where that line is being crossed because it's such a big focal point for people.

[00:02:42] And we mentioned before in our secret podcast, before this podcast, we mentioned entropy in a system, and we mentioned quantum physics and quantum systems. And really, if you think about it, looking young requires everything to work correctly. And trying to reverse engineer it is not only extremely difficult, it's actually impossible.

[00:03:16] You can reverse engineer it to an apparent degree, but not in its core, in its core being. That's what I've been in pursuit of, but granted it's much more difficult than just appearance. And if you're hyper focused on appearance, it could go over the edge extremely quickly.

[00:03:35] And in today's society, we can really see it with fillers, Botox, plastic surgery, other things that are involved with your appearance, obviously, body dysmorphia. All of those things are tipping points to one's appearance and sanctifying one's journey in this world and the yearning to see results in your journey. It's just taking one short cut, and maybe another one and another one, and it starts to destroy your integrity from the inside.

[00:04:11] Luke: Indeed. As I listen to your answer I thought about my former life living in Hollywood and working in the fashion industry and working with celebrities and whatnot and having to reconcile the superficiality.

[00:04:29] Amitay: Yes.

[00:04:30] Luke: Literally, my job was to make someone look handsome or beautiful on the outside. And a lot of those people that many people would consider to be attractive or beautiful, handsome, et cetera, weren't so on the inside. And I got to see that firsthand for many years.

[00:04:55] And so there was a time when I just discounted all of that, but then I would realize that, whether it was working with a client and helping them to look their best, or as I started to make a bit of money and could afford clothes that weren't from a thrift store, there is something to be said for how you look affecting how you feel.

[00:05:13] And if you think about you go to a formal event and all the men are wearing tuxedos and the women are wearing gowns, there's a certain energy or a certain consciousness that starts to reveal itself, because everyone looks good, and people start to feel good. And I think people, even to some degree, will behave differently.

[00:05:37] So if I go out to a party and I'm just wearing my sweats, which is what I'm wearing right now every day, I won't feel quite as confident as if I was dressed really sharp, going out to a nice dinner or something like that. So I think there's really something psychologically valid about wanting to present yourself in a way that matches what you aspire to on the inside.

[00:05:59] And it's just an interesting psychological quandary to me, because no matter how beautiful you look on the outside, it's not going to fix underlying issues of self-worth, and judgment, and shame, and things like that, but it also does help. And people that look attractive and look healthy, they have an easier time in the world.

[00:06:23] Amitay: That is, by the way, scientifically proven. I would say about going to that proverbial party, I think there's something about rules being followed by everyone there. So it's something that we can definitely talk about when we're talking about youthful appearance.

[00:06:40] But I think the party scene, the fact that everyone adheres to a certain dress code or code of conduct even, because they're all very formal, it soothes our soul because we really look for people who follow the same rules as us, whether it is in our personal relationships, whether it is in our close communities, whether it is, obviously, in a society that we live throughout and everyone at least is supposed to follow the same rules.

[00:07:10] I think there's something very primal in suspicion and rejection of people who do not follow the same rules. So if you were coming to a party, even though you could come to a party where everyone's wearing a tuxedo and you did not, that would really weigh down everyone else because there is that game theory being played, and you're breaking the rules, and you're getting away with it, which is very bad.

[00:07:45] Luke: Right, social agreements.

[00:07:48] Amitay: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:49] Luke: Yeah. So tell me a little bit about the science of how people have an easier time in the world if they're fit and attractive and so on. And I'll preface it by saying, years ago, and I've talked about this in the show before because it was so interesting, there was a TV show that was like a science experiment show, and they had a hidden camera.

[00:08:10] It was in New York City, and they'd have a man or a woman say carrying a bunch of papers in a briefcase. And they would trip and fall, and they would spill all over the street. And the attractive men and women would have droves of people just clamoring at them, and helping them pick up their papers and stuff.

[00:08:28] And then they would do the same thing with an average or what might be considered a less attractive or out of shape person, and so on, and everyone would just ignore them and walk by. And then there were other ones they did where they would send people on job interviews without the hiring party knowing what they were doing. And the attractive people were so much well received and also were hired more often statistically. And there was a few of them like that.

[00:08:53] And I wish I could remember the name of the show. It was so fascinating. I thought, wow, it's such an interesting aspect of society, and then also an interesting aspect of the meat suit that one is karmically born with. And that there's a certain struggle that one go through if they're not gifted in that way.

[00:09:11] And then of course they're going to learn other things and have to refine their character and sharpen their spear in a different way because things aren't as easy for them. It's just such an interesting thing.

[00:09:19] Amitay: That's how humor is born, I guess.

[00:09:21] Luke: Right. So anyway, that's one of my observations on that.

[00:09:25] Amitay: I think just to mention, there are studies showing that taller people, more aesthetically symmetrical people, people who are naturally appearing more homogenous with a society that they're a part of do get better treatment. They mainly appear more reliable.

[00:09:52] This could be played with a little bit, scientifically. Again, if I refer to what I said before about playing by the rules, if you're not groomed and you're going to an interview or you're falling down the street and you're not wearing what everyone else is wearing, subconsciously, you're going to get less help because people feel less associated with you, if you would.

[00:10:12] So just as a caveat, but we are, first and foremost, animals that have always a sense of hierarchy, and some of that hierarchy is our ability to pass on valid offsprings and be a contributing member of our tribe and someone who appears to be a better hunter, a better childbearing. Whatever we want to associate better appearance with will eventually be ranked subconsciously higher in the hierarchy.

[00:10:51] Therefore, is going to get better treatment. Therefore, there's going to be some bias associated with their hiring or whatever. And I would also say, if you look, the person's who's looking at you and deciding if to hire you or not, whether they admit that bias, whether they're aware of that bias, we know that doesn't really matter if people are aware of biases or not.

[00:11:14] They're going to follow them regardless. Even they could be looking for exactly the opposite. They will still have better emotions going towards the person that appears to be of their ilk.

[00:11:38] Luke: In other words, nature is not fair.

[00:11:41] Amitay: Nature is not fair.

[00:11:42] Luke: Or else it's completely fair, depending on how you look at it.

[00:11:45] Amitay: Yeah, I don't think fairness exists. I really don't think fairness is a function of nature. We're not fair to nature who are in this house. So that's the basic premise of [Inaudible].

[00:12:03] Luke: It's interesting thinking about how other human animals perceive our viability, as you said, based on our, of course, modern society is different. Everyone can provide for themselves regardless of gender and stuff, but just going way back, anthropologically speaking, a woman is going to be more attractive to a man if her general shape communicates that she'd be good at making babies.

[00:12:31] And a male is going to be attractive to a female if he looks good at hunting prey and bringing home food. And I just thought of another funny thing when I was working in fashion, that template for working with different body types, whether that's one of the predominant male body types, ectomorph, mesomorph, endomorph, and that also applies to females.

[00:12:53] But in women's fashion, they'll use pear-shaped, or stick-shaped, or whatever. But the goal of a stylist is always to create an hourglass shape for the female client, and to create a V shape for the male client. So if you have, for example, a male that has really slumped shoulders and a sunken neck and skinny arms, you're going to beef up the emphasis on their silhouette to create broader shoulders and so on.

[00:13:23] And if a woman for example has really big boobs and a really big butt, then your emphasis will be to create a waist. It's something we just learn dressing people, and their clients don't even know that's what you're doing. But essentially, you're trying to cheat the silhouette into one of those two shapes and exaggerate the parts that they're lacking.

[00:13:46] Amitay: Yeah, and the client's going to like it also. That's the funny thing. They might be offended if you told them, hey, that's what I'm trying to do. But if you don't and just do "your job" and they then look in the mirror, they're going to like what you did for them, which is, again-- so we're talking about a very primal part of our brain, which by the way, applies to, I would say, aging as a whole, because our body doesn't even prioritize looking good past our reproductive prime, or it prioritizes it less and less.

[00:14:28] It prioritizes other things, retention of the information you can pass on, or different things you could look after someone else's offsprings or anything like that. But communicating that you're sexually viable goes out the window once you're not sexually viable. There is no excess of energy being expressed towards it evolutionarily. And there's so many--

[00:14:57] Luke: That's interesting. It reminds me of one of the, I think, really unfortunate things about our culture in the West is the wholesale discounting of the elderly, which in many other cultures is not the case. The elderly are revered for their wisdom, regardless of whether or not they're still sexually viable and have great skin and don't show the external signs of aging.

[00:15:21] In this country, to me, it's always been so sad that elderly people, when they become a burden, some are just shoved away in homes. Maybe the family visits them on the holidays or something. Of course, I'm generalizing grossly, but we do seem to be superficially motivated by that, where there's less value placed on someone as their external appearance starts to decline.

[00:15:48] Amitay: Yeah. And I think that this is a source of societal malcontent or unhappiness because we all know we're going to be there one day. And we can deny it to ourselves, or we can deny that we're going to get to this situation, but I believe anyone who, for whatever reason, gives up on taking care of the elderly that they associate themselves with, something in them dies a little bit. And they understand that that might happen to them, and that's not something that you can reconcile in the present. It's very difficult.

[00:16:31] Luke: It is. Yeah. I think there's something to that of us. It's confronting because it forces us to face our own mortality. It's like if you're looking at your mom, or your dad, or your grandparents, and they're starting to get lost driving around, or they can't walk up the stairs, there's something subconsciously we know we're headed to that same destination. We don't want to face that.

[00:16:53] It's also so sad that so many kids aren't given the opportunity to learn from their elderly elders. It's just a really weird thing about our society. And again, I haven't immersed myself in tons of indigenous cultures where their ancient traditions are more revered and upheld, but I get the sense that in other cultures around the world where elderly people are respected and continue to be involved in the family system, that that's got to be a much better experience for the kids.

[00:17:27] Amitay: Yeah, I'm sure there are pros and cons. I'm sure that someone could push back on this, but we definitely are a society where we have a harder time assigning value to ancient knowledge. We believe whatever is newer is inherently better. And a lot of the things that we're dealing with today, we can't stop certain things, like the rapid advancement in AI or whatever that is that a lot of people are going to have problems with, or at least they would want a discussion around it.

[00:18:09] The reason it is so hard to stop this cascade is because in the Western world, newer is inherently better. Newer knowledge is inherently better than older knowledge, if you will. And so I think it affects us way more than how we treat our own elderly. It's just, how do we treat things that are older in time? And I think we're starting to understand how that can really affect us as a society.

[00:18:42] Luke: It's as though we're addicted to novelty. And we often view tradition as antiquity and invalidated by superstition or something, right?

[00:18:57] Amitay: Yeah. And in other cultures, like Confucianism is exactly the opposite. It's the assertion that nothing is new. So you'll see, basically, even if someone wants to innovate something, they almost would pretend they have rediscovered some older tradition in order for them to introduce it to a society that repels anything that claims it's new.

[00:19:24] So you got to say, oh, people did it a thousand years ago, and we've rediscovered it now. So I think as a society, as human beings, we're drawn to novelty, for sure. But as a society, as Western society, we almost shun anything that's not normal, which is a problem.

[00:19:43] Luke: So true. Well, that's a good preface, I think, a good setup for then talking about how we can look the best externally and also some of the things that happen in our environment and our diets, and things like that, which we'll get into. But a great place to take off from here, I think, would be, and I feel like many people already know this, but I'm sure some listening will not. What are some of the main offenders in terms of things that we use to maintain and cleanse our bodies that actually age us faster?

[00:20:20] Amitay: So that's a great question because I think obviously most people would know that we should, eat well, we should not have high inflammatory diets. We should treat our body like a temple, and everything that I'm hoping everyone that's listening to the podcast is aware of.

[00:20:40] But it's important to know that as far as our skin is concerned, there are two forces. There is intrinsic aging and extrinsic aging. Intrinsic, I think it's obvious. It's anything that corresponds, first of all, with our chronological age. Time moves on, and more mistakes accumulate in the body as a whole.

[00:21:03] More damage is accumulated, unrepaired, and we can only help it. We can only try to stave off some of that damage or obviously, if we treat our body poorly, that damage becomes accumulated more rapidly. But I think it would come as a shock to people that that's only 20% of the reason our skin ages.

[00:21:31] So 80% is what we call extrinsic aging, which would be-- obviously, UV damage is huge, but also, that would be pollution. So UV damage, and I think this is a big discussion right now. Is the sun good for us? Is it not good for us? We evolved around being exposed to the sun. So the discussion is a good discussion, but that's only about another 40% of weight why our skin ages.

[00:22:02] The things that we did not evolve to deal with, like pollution, like heavy metals, like glyphosates, like EMFs, artificial blue light, which has a name, it's actually HEV, high energy visible light, all of those things, their repair mechanisms are improvised. They're borrowed from something else, so they're not as effective at dealing with that.

[00:22:31] If you live in, again, a city, you're aging more from other environmental stressors than you're aging from the sun, and more than your diet for the most part. So anything that is going to expose you more to these things, that is going to be the real factor in determining how fast you're aging. If you're living next to a highway, for example, or you're sleeping next to your computer on your router--

[00:23:09] Luke: You got me there. That's something I talk about all the time.

[00:23:11] Amitay: I'm sure.

[00:23:12] Luke: It drives me nuts because there's always these diet wars of like, who has the right diet? And this is going back to my early days of diet wars, 27 years ago or so. I was a vegetarian, and then paleo, and this and that. And I think it's important to eat healthy, and organic, and whatever serves your body, but when people ignore the EMF issue or say somebody's spending all this money on organic food and supplements and they're sleeping next to their Wi-Fi router, it's like, ah, fix that, and you can have a lot more leniency with the diet if you're not radiating yourself all the time.

[00:23:49] Amitay: Yeah. So important. You will find you will have a much easier, much easier time proving that blue light-- when I say blue light, I'm not saying this part of the spectrum of the sun, even though it could be, but mainly through artificial light from your office halogen lights or whatever. You'll find that it's much easier to explain how that is aging your skin rather than if you chose corn-fed or grass-fed beef.

[00:24:25] Luke: Totally.

[00:24:26] Amitay: You'd actually have a pretty hard time proving that corn-fed beef ages you faster. By the way, that's a belief I hold, but it's much harder for me to convey that belief rather than blue lights or pollution, again, heavy metals. All of those things are really, really affecting our skin and--

[00:24:48] Luke: Sorry to interrupt, but when you look at the skin cancer rates for shift workers, people that work in hospitals, military prisons, whatever, the cancer rates are off the charts. And these are people that are ostensibly never in the sun, they're under blue light.

[00:25:06] If they're a shift worker in the classical sense, then they go home and sleep all day, probably with windows closed, making blue light because you're filtering out a lot of the spectrum of the sunlight. So a person that's been in that work schedule, in that environment for many years is way more prone to having skin cancer than an aboriginal person that's out in the sun all day long in the desert in Australia or something. You know what I mean? It's just crazy.

[00:25:32] Amitay: A lot of people are sensitive to the C word. By the way, there is a sect in Judaism that they don't even say cancer. They say the disease. They don't even refer to it as the word. But the cancer and analyzing drivers for cancer really is the inception of longevity science.

[00:25:52] Most people don't know that the seminal paper was written about the hallmarks of aging, which we all cite now, started as the hallmarks of cancer. So it is very apt to start the conversation talking about cancer and obviously shift work and mismanaging your circadian rhythm.

[00:26:25] There is so much there from temperature. By the way, literally, your skin is extremely sensitive to your body's temperature, and all the way to, again, the light that you're exposed to, red, near-infrared, and far infrared to some extent, increase energy production. They increase the abilities of great energy, not only energy production, whereas blue light, literally, on a mitochondrial level, makes you older.

[00:26:56] Literally, if we're exposed to blue light, at that moment in time, our skin behaves up to 20 years older than it is once we remove that exposure, just from an energy standpoint.

[00:27:08] Luke: That's interesting.

[00:27:09] Amitay: Yeah.

[00:27:09] Luke: That's interesting. Yeah.

[00:27:12] Amitay: In all animals, by the way.

[00:27:14] Luke: Wow. Well, we were talking when we were making coffee earlier, the correlation that I've made a lot, and I won't take credit for it because I'm pretty sure I stole it from my friend Daniel Vitalis, but he's looking at animals in captivity, whether it's livestock or zoo animals, and these animals would be perfectly healthy and live out their natural life in their natural environment. And when you put them into an artificial environment and domesticate them, they start getting all these diseases and pathology that they wouldn't get if they were out living on the land.

[00:27:49] And so that's a really easy observation I think for us to make. If you go into the zoo, the animals, they look pretty scrawny, and they have skin issues, and they don't look terribly happy because they have-- if you take a lion that's used to roaming hundreds, if not thousands of miles a year, and being in the sun, and all the things.

[00:28:05] And I think it's so weird that we as humans don't make the correlation that we've domesticated ourselves and we spend, what were you saying in a podcast, 95% of our time indoors? So you think about lack of real light, which, as you said, includes blue, pure water, spring water, unadulterated water, high oxygen air, not breathing our own breath of carbon dioxide in a closed box, all the things, the way we sleep.

[00:28:34] Amitay: Grounding.

[00:28:34] Luke: Yeah, getting the electrons from the ground. It's like, ah. It's maddening to me because the solution seems so easy. The solution is, get outside as much as humanly possible, and spend as little time indoors. But I think for many people, it's like, well, it can't be that simple. I have to complicate it and go into all these advanced biohacking techniques. And a lot of those are fun, and I do a lot of that stuff.

[00:29:01] Amitay: I want to say that is biohacking. Biohacking is, how can I not live in accordance with nature, but again, hack my biology to trick it to think it is living in accordance with nature, which is very fun, but it definitely is just the family member of living a healthy lifestyle. It's not living a healthy lifestyle.

[00:29:28] Luke: Right. I want to let everyone know too, the show notes for this episode, because I'm sure we're going to talk about a lot of things that you'll want to click on, will be at lukestorey.com/amitay. That's A-M-I-T-A-Y. And we'll put that link, of course, on the podcast apps and all of that.

[00:29:45] So that's really interesting, this idea of extrinsic damage in terms of our external vitality and how quickly we age. I thought about the light thing a lot, and EMF, to some degree, toxins. You said living next to a freeway where there's brake pad dust getting over our skin and God knows what else, things that we're eating.

[00:30:09] And that's a really illuminating idea to me because when I think of things that damage the skin, I think of just toxic products that have petroleum and preservatives, a lot of the shampoos, and cleansers, and conditioners, and lotions, and makeup. Cosmetics is a really gnarly one. And I know this to be true from just doing a bit of research about lead and lipstick and just crazy shit like that.

[00:30:35] Amitay: Do you know the statistic on the average American, how much lipsticks they swallow a year?

[00:30:41] Luke: I don't want to know.

[00:30:42] Amitay: Four pounds.

[00:30:43] Luke: What?

[00:30:44] Amitay: Yeah. A person who's using lipstick is going to swallow four pounds a year.

[00:30:48] Luke:  And it's not regulated, right?

[00:30:50] Amitay: No, it's as regulated. So, again, going back to meat, the discrepancy between the ingredients, says the same thing on the label in skincare and supplements, the discrepancy is larger than between the worst meat you can buy, whatever fast food chain, and whole foods, or whatever the best would be, regenerative beef from somewhere.

[00:31:19] This is a smaller discrepancy by far, by the way than anything you'll have in supplements. And supplements are even more scrutinized than skin care because skin care is so much more visceral to the user that the language evolved to give you the hopes and dreams of miraculous results with skirting around regulation, by the way, of messaging.

[00:32:01] Whereas in supplements, first of all, no one's trying to sell you a supplement that's $500 a box. The more costly something is, I need to promise you more for you to buy it. And skin care is normally more expensive than supplements per product, so you need to promise more.

[00:32:27] Even if you think of the word anti-aging, it is associated with looking younger than before you use the product. But the word anti-aging actually doesn't mean that. But we're all conditioned to think age reversal when we hear anti-aging. You could even think of the word longevity.

[00:32:44] Now, when we say longevity, in most of our minds, we really think of age reversal, even though it doesn't mean that at all. It just means living for longer. That is what longevity is. But none of us, none of us think about that when we say longevity science, for sure.

[00:33:04] Luke: Interesting. Going back to the cosmetics, I guess because we're talking about the superficial appearance and stuff, I keep thinking about all those years I spent my former career, and another observation I had, which I didn't put together at the time until I really started getting into health, was when actresses or models would show up without their makeup. I was often surprised that they were the talent.

[00:33:33] Not to be a dick, but someone to walk in, I'd think, oh, they're on the crew or something, because they weren't exceptionally beautiful like you would expect someone who gets paid to be exceptionally beautiful to be. And then I would see the hours that went into the application of all these layers and layers and layers of makeup, and hairspray, and hair dye, and chemicals.

[00:33:51] And then they're out for hours and hours shooting film, commercials, photo shoots under these kind of really horrible lights without ever going outside, and it's no accident that that subsect of people in those careers are, I would say, probably the largest consumers of plastic surgery.

[00:34:12] Amitay: Or that it's notoriously not a happy way to live your life. A lot of, obviously, mental illness or just people who are prone to seek esoteric professional help because they feel like the world has let them down, because your work is pretending to be an exceptionally genetically gifted human being, but it is not congruent with how you feel on the inside.

[00:34:48] That could be fun if you take it lightly, but most people don't. They start to view this Delta, this difference between who they're perceived to be to who they really are as a pit that they cannot bridge, and that is very difficult.

[00:35:16] By the way, it's happening now with social media and influencers. There are more and more people who are going to their plastic surgeon, showing the plastic surgeon how they look with the filter, and saying, can you make me look like this?

[00:35:30] Luke: Oh, wow.

[00:35:31] Amitay: Yeah. Again, we sell a lot of products to plastic surgeons, so we have a lot of conversations with plastic surgeons. And that's a pretty common conversation among people who are doing, whether it is injections or plastic surgery.

[00:35:48] Luke: Wow, people listening, you just got to love yourselves, fam.

[00:35:53] Amitay: Yeah.

[00:35:54] Luke: It's funny growing older. I'm older today than I've ever been before. I'm going to be 54 this year, and I don't really look in the mirror a lot and primp and stuff I did a lot earlier in life when I was much more externally motivated.

[00:36:11] But it is interesting sometimes looking at photos as you get older, and the hair thins, and there's wrinkles where they didn't used to be, and you just look older. It's like I see a photo and go, who's that guy?

[00:36:24] And then if you do some social media filters and it's two seconds and you just took off 15 years, which doesn't really impact me psychologically, but I can imagine if you're a young person and you're building the model of who you think you are and how the world is going to receive and perceive you, that could cause some serious neuroses.

[00:36:45] Amitay: Oh yeah. And there is a new trend that is not really a trend yet, but we see it in the future is when people are going to start to have-- have you seen Zuckerberg and he was talking to someone in the metaverse? He was doing an interview in the metaverse.

[00:37:09] And they did an extremely intricate scan of both of those people to the extent where you wouldn't believe it's not a real interview. And they were conversing, but obviously, they looked in this conversation, not like they were looking then and there. They could have just got out of bed.

[00:37:30] They looked how they looked when they were scanned. So that's opening the door to another whole can of worms where people are only focused on one event in their life where they want to look the best, which is when they're going to get scanned and uploaded into some virtual world. And then taking off their glasses or whatever, looking in the mirror and seeing a completely different person, which they identify with.

[00:37:56] Luke: Who's this monster?

[00:37:57] Amitay: Yeah. And they identify with this person less and less because the more you're going to be living in a virtual world, the more you're going to be identifying with that person and less with who you are. And now let everyone ask ourselves, how are we going to feel when that day comes where most of us, most of who we identify as human beings is virtual and not physical?

[00:38:18] Luke: Oh my God. I hear shit like that, and I just want to go back in time and live in the 1800s.

[00:38:25] Amitay: I agree.

[00:38:25] Luke: Not really, but part of me. Like, wow, we really lost our way in so many ways. So we've talked about some of the intrinsic and extrinsic. Let's go a little more into sun because I'm such a fan of the sun in so many ways. It's one of the reasons we moved to Texas, because there's a lot of great sun here based on our latitude and longitude, and all those things.  I don't know which one's which, whichever one puts you in more sun.

[00:38:59] Sun here is very powerful. And so I've observed throughout my life all of the propaganda that's anti sun, and that it's going to give you cancer and age you more quickly, and things like that. It's difficult to subjectively see yourself as other people see you, but I feel like for someone who gets as much sun as I do and have for so many years that I'm doing okay in the wrinkle department for my age.

[00:39:27] So my own subjective experience of like the sun ages your skin doesn't match my reality. And who knows, maybe I would look younger and my skin would be better if I wasn't getting all the sun all the time, but I don't know. I meet people my age that are just living the normal domesticated indoor lifestyle, and again, it's difficult to tell how you look because it's you.

[00:39:48] But I meet guys my age or even younger than me, and they look hella older, and they're afraid of the sun and don't go on the sun because they don't want to look old. So from your perspective, being an expert on skin care and biohacking the skin, what is up with the sun, and what steps should or could people take to enjoy the benefits of it without prematurely aging themselves?

[00:40:09] Amitay: First of all, I think you should also be mentioning the fact that when you're in the sun, again, you're not under blue light. You are a person that understands other aggressors like EMF. So you're a person that takes care of their environment in order for their environment to be conducive with health.

[00:40:33] And the sun is very tricky because the sun is like, damned if you do damned if you don't. And what I mean by that is there is very little controversy whether UVA ages you, and UVB burns you. It's very easy to prove. It's actually a rule of life, but that is, again, something we evolved to deal with.

[00:41:04] So not saying that it doesn't affect you. Actually, you can't deny that, but if someone's just hiding under their, again, halogen blue light HEV lights and thinking that they're serving their skin in a positive way, they are literally taking one step forward, two steps back. Having said that, there is something to exposure early to fortify your skin for later on during the day. So there is a misconception about solar callus, which is--

[00:41:49] Luke: Oh, please, because I use that term all the time.

[00:41:51] Amitay: So it's a misconception as far as what that means chemically.  And one of the things that I see floating around there is an expression of an acid spell, UCA, the more you're in the sun. But this acid is a really poor sunblock. It's like if we equated it to an SPF rating, it's less than one.

[00:42:19] So it's a really bad analogy to building a callus. By the way, building a callus is building something that can take the brunt of damage and nullify it. So if we think of callus in our hands when we're using the rings or lifting weights or something, it's not like we're absorbing power through the weight when we touch it like we're absorbing light from the sun.

[00:42:43] So building a callus would be counterproductive because we still want to get the good benefits. We don't want to block all the good benefits. We can talk about them, but anything from mitochondrial function obviously to vitamin D, there is actually more than that. There are some really interesting things like water restructuring and polarity of proteins.

[00:43:05] But something interesting that I want you to consider is that when I tell people you should really expose yourself to sunlight early or late during the day, they tell me, oh, but I'm not going to get both UV wavelengths, which it's like a multivitamin. They do exist at any time of the day. The ratio changes.

[00:43:31] And that's the least important ratio. The ratio that you really want to look at is the near infrared and red light ratio. There's actually a really cool study from the University of Yonsei in Korea showing that if you expose yourself to red light therapy before you go out to the sun, you're less susceptible to sun damage.

[00:43:51] So if you think about it as a cocktail, if you go out at sunrise or 6:00, 7:00, 8:00 AM, and you are spending time outdoors, and you're getting all that red in near infrared, you are then better equipped to deal with noon sun, even though I'd still recommend, just from a biohacking perspective, to stay away out of the sun in these times, especially if you're white. You're not really evolved to deal with Texas sun, noon, summer. You're not. Your ancestors are from Norway. It doesn't exist there.

[00:44:31] Luke: That's funny because that's my favorite time. I was like, when solar noon, I better get out in the backyard, but I'm also either doing red light therapy in the morning or I'm watching the sunrise. Now here in Texas, it's often cloudy in the morning, so you don't get like, I don't know, you would in Arizona where you have a really nice horizon without any interruption of hills, and you're really getting that first-- or on the coast in different places where you get that red ball coming up and you can stare at it the very first time it's--

[00:44:56] Amitay: It's still 10 times more than you're going to get if you're indoors, the more light in general than you're going to get if you're indoors. Really, it does matter obviously, but not as much as people think. Now, as far as getting the benefits from the sun, you actually don't need to be outside, as long-- I actually have an algorithm that I built to calculate as far as your skin type, where you are in the world-- the UV index could be a function of that-- a few other things, and how long you need to spend outside in order to get sufficient vitamin D synthesis.

[00:45:38] Luke: Oh, wow. So like the minimum effective dose kind of thing?

[00:45:41] Amitay: Yeah.

[00:45:42] Luke: Wow.

[00:45:43] Amitay: And that's not that long. 30 minutes is pretty generous. Having said that, I want really for you to consider what you would consider in other areas of your life, which is three pillars, which is optimal performance, resilience, and longevity.

[00:46:06] And they are a Venn diagram, which means they do coalesce at some point, but they are not unanimous. So I can take a longevity drug like rapamycin, which obviously increases my longevity, one of the most popular Silicon Valley type longevity molecules right now, or metformin for that matter.

[00:46:30] But let's talk about rapamycin. I will get sick faster, beyond a doubt. So it lowers my resilience. I'm trying to explain that these pillars can function on their own, but we want to try and balance them out. Being in the sun, as far as your skin is concerned, lowers your longevity.

[00:46:53] It is not congruent with longevity. It's congruent with optimal performance, for example, creating more vitamin D, creating more energy, but it does start to weigh negatively on your DNA, on the information of what it means to be you, the most fundamental form of what you are.

[00:47:16] And that is at the base of what is called the information theory of aging, which is like, there is a pristine version of Luke. There is pristine version of Amitay, of anyone. And what we accumulate at the base is inability to access that information. And the sun does it in an irreversible way because some things like, for example, inflammation, like stress, it changes it in a way where we can reverse it because it's about changing the order of things.

[00:47:57] The sun fuses things together. So it's very, very, very difficult to diffuse them. And that fusion also takes a lot of resources. So you're looking at something that weighs heavily later on in life, and that we need to be smart on how we expose ourselves.

[00:48:17] And another thing I'm going to say is a lot of people care about how their face looks, how where they are exposed anyway, looks. They don't care how many wrinkles they have next to their belly button. If you do, God bless you, but most people don't really care about that.

[00:48:34] But when they think of going out to the sun, they think of exposing the same areas of their body, which they want to look better at. Oh, by the way, that's another part of the algorithm, what's the percentage of your body you're exposing? So I recommend exposing areas that are normally not only not exposed to sun, they're also not exposed to other environmental aggressors anyway, because they're covered.

[00:49:01] Whether it is everything that we talked about, blue light pollution, whatever, when we wear clothes, you're exposed to these things less as well. Maybe not the EMF, but all the other things. So expose anything which is over your knees and your torso to the sun, and you're a much better solar panel than your face, the back of your hands, which were bombarded with the other stressors as well, so they are not as good at creating vitamin D anyway. They're dysfunctional anyway.

[00:49:37] Luke: That's cool. Yeah, I do tend to wear hats when I'm out in the sun, just, I don't know, intuitively. Plus, sometimes it's quite bright. But that's an interesting observation between the longevity and vitality. I forget the word you use, but just thinking about--

[00:49:56] Amitay: I like those better.

[00:49:57] Luke: And that works great for me because I'm not really concerned with how long I'm here. Of course, everyone wants to be here and not die, myself included, but my motivator for all of the things I do to support my health and well-being are really about just feeling as good as I possibly can.

[00:50:15] And as soon as God wants me to check out of this body, I am happy to go. But I'm not interested in being an elderly person that can't walk across the street without a cane and all the things that can happen. It's funny because I knew we were going to have a broad conversation here.

[00:50:32] I didn't know it was going to be this broad, so I'm really enjoying this, and you're such a wealth of knowledge. What is up with sun exposure, if you even have an answer for this, and mood? Because I know people who feel the same emotionally, whether it's an overcast day, snowy day, rainy day, sunny day.

[00:50:51] And then there are people like me, my friend Rick Rubin, who's been on the show shares this too, because we've talked about it extensively. If it's cloudy out, I'm bummed. I'm just not as happy, period. And I've known that for a long time, and I try to cheer myself up, and it's just all in your mind, Luke. It doesn't matter.

[00:51:10] No, it really makes a massive difference. And I know everyone isn't affected to this degree, my wife, for example. She likes sunny days, but she's not like, I'm just down today because it's cloudy. Do you know anything about the neurochemistry of that?

[00:51:25] Amitay:  Yeah, it's actually there are many different things that are happening that are coalescing in your mood. Your mood is your experience, so it's very difficult to quantify it in like one neurotransmitter. But we can talk about a few things. One is literally your circadian rhythm. So the amount of photons that are going into your brain, but really your eyes affect how robust or how accurate your circadian rhythm is.

[00:51:54] And one of those things is your ebbs and flows of distress hormones, mainly norepinephrine or noradrenaline and cortisol. By the way, not the suppression, but the expression at certain times of day leads to a lot of the happy hormones we're feeling or the cleaning out of the brain from stress signals.

[00:52:20] So the problem that the brain has and many people have chronically is that they don't clean out the used neurotransmitters, and you're getting a response of lingering emotions. And that's one thing. The other thing is vibrancy of colors. So we know, without a doubt, that vibrant colors put us in a good mood or at least communicate a certain mood to us.

[00:52:47] It could be blue could mean something, or purple could mean something negative to you. But the more vibrant colors are, the more they will affect your mood. And when there is more sun outside, the more we see the colors of nature, which are green, red, orange, brown. These colors, which normally signal to your brain positive things, are less vibrant when the environment is cloudy, so you're getting less of that supplementation of positive energy.

[00:53:20] And the third thing is that you are, again, evolved around being a secondary receiver of information from nature. Us as human beings, as a species, we're really poor at getting firsthand messages from nature. We can't see a solar flare, for example, so we don't know there is high UV.

[00:53:41] Or we don't know when there is a fungal disease going on in trees. We do now, due to very, very complex science, or very, I should say, not complex, but advanced science, many, many years of studies and thousands of years of wisdom. But at our core, we can't really tell things like that.

[00:54:01] So one of the things that we can tell very well is when we shouldn't actually go outside, which is when the weather is not to our advantage and we can't see things as well. For example, the two time of times of day where it's the most difficult for you to see predators and to discern between three dimensions are dawn and dusk because they're interesting, more than night, by the way.

[00:54:32] Dawn and dusk, your brain has a really hard time seeing in three D. And your brain is telling you, maybe we shouldn't go outside when you are in that kind of scenario. Even if it's midday and cloudy, you have a hard time seeing in 3D, basically.

[00:54:48] Luke: That's amazing. So interesting. I love nature. It's just so fascinating the way it all works. You can never know it all. I think that's why after all these years of talking to brilliant people like you, I just want to keep doing it, because every time I do one of these podcasts, I'm like, shit, I didn't know that, that, that, this, this. It's like 10 more pieces of data to assimilate. So fascinating. Well, I'm also glad to know I'm not just overly moody or crazy because I'm so affected by the light.

[00:55:20] Amitay: The seasonal affective disorder is a real experience of whole societies that are living in areas where sunlight in the winter is not as bright or you don't have as much sun. It's very well documented.

[00:55:40] Luke: Oh, right. Thinking about Scandinavian countries that have the highest rates of alcoholism, and suicide, and things of that nature.

[00:55:48] Amitay: Yeah. But even if they didn't, even if they had like a magic pill they popped in and they didn't experience it-- and by the way, within that discussion, blue light or full-spectrum light is actually very positive to treat seasonal affective disorder. It is still an experience of an entire society. Even if we couldn't back it up by data, it is something that is a wisdom of that society. And I would say that it's aptly abbreviated, SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder.

[00:56:24] Luke: Yeah, totally. Yeah, I actually, from time to time, will use blue light devices on my desk when it's a cloudy day, because it's just like got to turn on the full spectrum rainbow blue lights and things like that, just to try and pull myself out of it.

[00:56:39] While we're on the topic of light, let's talk about different light therapies as they pertain to skin. Now there's this light, I think it's called a Sperti, that's a vitamin D light which I don't have probably because I'm in Texas and there's a lot of that already. And then, of course, the red light therapy devices.

[00:56:57] I know you're an OG in the red light space. Every week it seems like a new company pops up with red light products, and a lot of them now are wearables, like these masks and helmets for hair loss and things you can wrap around for injuries, and it's like the red light space is just totally blowing up. Do you think there's any validity to the red light masks and things like this in terms of skin repair, and the longevity of youth, and all the things?

[00:57:30] Amitay: Yeah, but the problem is I have a lot of friends who make red light therapy masks, so I don't necessarily want to hurt their business, but red light therapy masks shouldn't be your first choice, because you are with hormesis. You're dealing with stress that leads to adaptations, positive results, and masks are not very strong.

[00:57:55] Actually, some rules of thumb are, you want to have something that needs cooling, that has a vent attached to it, like a red light therapy panel, for example. If it doesn't have a event, 99% it's probable that it's not strong enough.

[00:58:18] Luke: Because you're not getting enough penetration of the light into the layers of skin?

[00:58:22] Amitay: Penetration isn't predicated necessarily on power. It could because you're dealing with the percentage that is left after a certain length that it traveled through tissue. But it is the stress per centimeter squared, per area, that you're stressing the mitochondria.

[00:58:46] Let's think about, again, the evolution. Evolution is this: the closer the sun is to the horizon, the more water it needs to travel through atmosphere, and you're getting left with wavelengths that have less friction with water, that can travel through water more easily.

[00:59:09] Well, when you see sunset and sunrise and you see red, and orange, and all of those, that is basically the wavelengths that are left. And your body, as we know, is predominantly made out of water. So we evolved to correspond with this light, not the opposite. It's not like a fluke.

[00:59:32] Animals cells evolved to correspond with this light because that's the light that's left that triggers repair. Again, we talked about the UV radiation you're going to experience now throughout the day. So we evolved for it to be a sort of photosynthesis in the fact that we create energy out of it, but we evolved to take it as a signal for repair.

[00:59:56] And we need a certain amount to trigger that signal. Same like any other drug, supplement, exercise, any stressor. We need a minimum dose, and we can do too much. Too much, by the way, with red light-- if you looked 20 years ago, there were lasers that used the same wavelengths as red light therapy.

[01:00:21] If they were so strong, they overloaded the cells and basically shut nerves down, like an analgesic type effect. We're not talking about this, but we do need a certain amount of energy to create a tipping point where your mitochondria basically releases nitric oxide, releases oxidative stress, and ramps up oxygen utilization, and energy production.

[01:00:47] And it just doesn't really happen with masks. If that's what you have, great, but they actually are not that cheap. A good mask is the price of a panel that is significantly more effective. So I really recommend panels.

[01:01:09] Wraparound devices are not necessarily bad, but again, they normally cost significantly more than panel, which you could also use for your face, but also use for your knee. You could also use for whatever. And I don't see anyone having that level of activity that they have to walk around while they get 10 minutes of exposure.

[01:01:33] Luke: Right. Well, the thing with the panels too, like I have one downstairs, and it's taller than me, so my entire body is getting it, including my face if I'm facing that way. So it makes sense if you're going to spend the same amount of time to get maximum benefit.

[01:01:49] Amitay: Yeah.

[01:01:49] Luke: I think the move, the coolest thing to me with red light therapy is either a bed, it's getting your top and bottom, or just pairing your panels, so you're in a little box and you're surrounded on all sides and having them be close enough that can both of which are very expensive.

[01:02:06] Amitay: Yeah. I have good news though. The larger area you're exposing at once, the less you're getting results per area.

[01:02:14] Luke: Oh, interesting.

[01:02:15] Amitay: So if you really were to want to take care of your knee, like you have a knee injury, cumulatively, you're going to get better results if you only expose your knee. Or talking about skin health, you're going to get better results if you only expose your face rather than your entire body.

[01:02:37] So as a maintenance term, or maintenance treatment, I'd recommend a full body if you can afford it, it's feasible, whatever. But if it's an acute thing, if you care about one thing specifically, you should actually buy a cheaper panel that is smaller that's going to actually serve you better than a full body bed or a panel.

[01:03:02] Luke: Is that because you're diluting the amount of red light entering the body through the skin by getting it all over your whole body versus just a specific area?

[01:03:13] Amitay: I wonder how scientific I can get, but I'll say this. There is a feedback loop of energy production. The body says, hey, I have a lot of waste material that I see. And that is systemic.

[01:03:30] You release it from every, again, area that is exposed to the light. So the body is going to start not creating as much energy at some point. It's going to say, well, I've created a lot of energy. I might get chased down by a lion tomorrow. I got to preserve my energy. And that is systemic.

[01:03:46] And that we can see, by the way, across the board with a lot of therapeutics. NAD, for example, is another one with many, many things. But when we lower the circumference or the area exposed, we can actually create more energy until our body starts to push back against that energy production because you're creating less waste systemically, if it makes sense.

[01:04:21] Luke: Interesting. That's so cool. I had no idea.

[01:04:24] Amitay: And a lot of other things. So you're releasing nitric oxide. You're dilating your blood vessels. That's one of the things that we can actually-- when we were talking about red light therapy 10, 15 years ago, we wanted to talk to doctors, and they literally thought it's like snake oil. Now we need to explain what works and what doesn't.

[01:04:50] No, 10, 15 years ago, people thought you were crazy if you told them a lamp is going to make them healthier or thicker, by the way. And what we did was we tested nitric oxide in the body. You can do an oral swab that shows you that you have more nitric oxide in circulation. So we show you something is happening.

[01:05:12] So if you think of nitric oxide as a vasodilator and you have just so much blood in your body, you would want the area to be smaller if you want more blood to get to that area. And if I expose my entire body, the less that it goes.

[01:05:27] Luke: That makes a lot of sense, yeah.

[01:05:29] Amitay: If someone's into really advanced recovery protocols where they do the peptides and stuff like that, or even stem cells, studies show that you can direct stem cells, direct peptides more to that area rather than systemically because of red light or support that direction with red light. So local is better if it's chronic. Systemic is better if it's maintenance or building, again, longevity and resilience rather than optimal performance.

[01:06:08] Luke: Excellent. I'm so glad we're getting into all this stuff. We have your Young Goose products sitting here, and I'm like, I have so many questions about that because when your team sent me a box, I'm looking, and I'm like, spermidine, NAD. It's all this stuff that I take.

[01:06:24] And I'm like, how does it work in the skin? So I want to get to that. For those that are still here with us, I want to encourage you guys to go to lukestorey.com/younggoose, and you can use the code LUKE10 to get 10% off these skincare products, which we will get to, but I just have so many other questions.

[01:06:42] And I don't want to start with that and turn it into a giant infomercial. I really want to provide value for the audience, which you're doing in spades. I want to go back to something with the sun because I would be remiss to skip it. We talked about your interpretation of what some people call a solar callus.

[01:07:00] And so the idea of exposing your light or your eyes, AKA your brain, to the red light in the morning and different things like that can help you become more resilient to the sun. Now, I've heard from some pretty reliable sources that there are also things that you can take internally that help you become more resilient to sun, such as retinol, which you would get from a good cod liver oil. What's the other one? Astaxanthin, the red algae extract. What's the other one I'm thinking of? Vitamin E, some of the antioxidants and things like that.

[01:07:36] Amitay: There's also a probiotics that I just can't pronounce the name of, but if someone Googles probiotic skin and sun protection, they're going to find it. It starts with a P. I just never can remember the name of.

[01:07:51] I remember I said before that, this acid, UCA, that produced SPF one, astaxanthin is SPF four. By the way, topical isn't as effective because--  it's much more effective actually when taken orally.

[01:08:13] So as far as sun protection, so are vitamin A's, like you mentioned retinol, but beta carotene from plants could be-- depends on your epigenetics and genetics. You could also view it as something that supports sun protection. Vitamin C would actually be something that is much more viable topically, as far as sun protection. But I have a very controversial view on vitamin C.

[01:08:45] Luke: I know, because you guys don't use ascorbic acid in your formula.

[01:08:49] Amitay: Yeah, ascorbic acid is, in my opinion, more toxic than anything you mentioned, like petroleum or any other skincare ingredient that is commonly used, more toxic than perfumes like fragrances, which I really hate by the way. I'm extremely sensitive to fragrances.

[01:09:13] Luke: Oh my God, me too. Have you noticed once you clear your palate and not have fake synthetic fragrances in your house or on your body, when you smell them, it's like breathing a can of gasoline? It's so nasty.

[01:09:26] Amitay: I would say in, I hope, but really, I think my opinion is that in 20 years, you will be considered obnoxious if you put up a lot of perfume. You'd be considered inconsiderate.

[01:09:40] Luke: I already think that, not 20 years. Yeah, Alyson and I were walking somewhere the other day, and a guy walked by us with this cologne on, and we were outdoors, and it got on both of us. After he was long gone, we smelled this disgusting cologne.

[01:09:56] No offense to people out there that like their perfume and cologne, but I'm with you, man. It's a violation of those who share your airspace, put it that way. Yeah, it's weird how you become so sensitive to it, cleaning products, just all that stuff.

[01:10:08] Amitay: Well, aside from your eyes, this is another direct part of your brain. It is a part of your brain that is exposed to the environment directly, your olfactory. So you are as obnoxious as shining a flashlight into my eye, in my world, if you have a perfume that is overpowering, that is overpowering me. Or take the stairs. Don't get into the elevator with me. I'm kidding. I hope it would be societally less acceptable in the future.

[01:10:52] Luke: Put it this way, if I'm in an elevator and somebody gets in, I would rather have them pass wind than be wearing cologne or perfume.

[01:10:58] Amitay: For sure.

[01:10:59] Luke: At least it's natural.

[01:11:00] Amitay: For sure. 100%.

[01:11:01] Luke: Going back to the thing, the internal sunscreen idea, another thing that came to mind was chaga tea having this melanin in it. And I've heard, and again, you hear memes in the health space, and I don't know who's done what research, but makes sense to me that if you're drinking, in the case of chaga tea or an extract of that tea, that if you're loading up your body with melanin, it would seem to make you more resilient. Have you looked into that particular one at all?

[01:11:29] Amitay: Yeah, we want to be careful when we're talking about melanin, because it's not as direct of a link. It just doesn't just travel to your skin and just sits there. We're actually stimulating melanocytes. We stimulate the cells that are responsible to create melanin for the skin.

[01:11:52] So we might give it more firepower, but we're not really creating more melanin by drinking it. We get other benefits like antioxidant benefits, which are your first line of defense against all of those environmental stressors that I mentioned, including UV, including EMF, including all of those, aside from pollution, which is, again, very special because it's very hard for us to make our body create a defense system for it. So internal to external just does not work.

[01:12:30] Luke: Right. You were saying earlier, the intrinsic is 20% of the strategy versus the--

[01:12:36] Amitay: Yeah. So as far as swallowing an antioxidant that knows to get to the skin, like astaxanthin, we're dealing with a downstream effect of a lot of the exposure that we're getting. But we're not dealing, for example, with the DNA damage, or we're not dealing with some damage that is associated with thinning of the skin or making the skin more coarse, or many of the things that are caused more upstream.

[01:13:16] Vitamin C is different because water-based vitamin C's do tend to concentrate on the stratum corneum, which is the top layer of the skin. What we think of as dead skin, it's not really that dead. It still has a lot of function, but they concentrate more there, and they are preemptively nullifying a lot of these free radicals.

[01:13:43] And they are also very interesting because they are able to suppress the uneven pigments. So we started this conversation by saying a lot of what we think of as skin beauty is back engineering what youth looks like. But water-based vitamin C, my favorite version is called MAP, Magnesium Ascorbyl Phosphate.

[01:14:06] That is a pretty accurate depiction of how beauty functions rather than looks. Mentioning vitamin C, because that's a huge discussion, if anyone wants to go to a very, very deep rabbit hole, look at the work of Dr. Royal Lee in the '70s.

[01:14:30] In what we think of as vitamin C, which is ascorbic acid-- ascorbic acid, by the way, is the name for vitamin C. And so a lot of the times, if I'm going to argue with people who are pro ascorbic acid, that's the cheapest version of vitamin C, and it's the most impressive version because you can have a very high percentage of it, because it's not that strong.

[01:14:55] What they're going to argue is, how can you argue against ascorbic acid? That is literally the name for vitamin C. But that is the name we gave synthetic vitamin C, which is just, if you look at vitamin C in nature, it has different factors, and it has minerals attached to it, like if you look at an orange.

[01:15:15] Ascorbic acid is just the outside layer of vitamin C, and it doesn't exist in nature as a sole product. And what happens when we put that in 20% concentration in the skin, not only that it's not an antioxidant, it becomes a pro-oxidant. It actually starts to create damage cumulatively and actually, again, excites iron atoms in your cells and starts to damage DNA.

[01:15:39] And a lot of the reason that we think of it is anti-cancer at very high doses is because it's actually-- a lot of the things that are good for us are good for cancer. And a lot of the things that are bad for us are bad for cancer. Think of chemo or whatever.

[01:15:53] So a lot of the reason we think of high, high dose vitamin C is anti-cancer is not necessarily good for us as a longevity strategy, especially at like high doses that people are trying to achieve with that synthetic hollow version of vitamin C. I am very much against it. And by the way, it is known as cytotoxic and genotoxic, literally is toxic for your genes and cells.

[01:16:22] Luke: That is a controversial viewpoint to hold. And over the past few years, there's been a lot of debate in the wellness scene about whole food vitamin C versus ascorbic acid, and everyone's posting, well, look at this study. No, look at this one. I'm like, I don't know, at this point, but that's pretty intriguing. That's interesting.

[01:16:40] Amitay: By the way, we had a conversation before the podcast started, and I told you, oh, skin care company is actually good. And that skin care company is actually good. So I am not one to say we have the panacea and everyone else is crap. Absolutely not. I am more explaining why we don't use it or why we use versions that make the products more expensive rather than that version, and not waving the flag of look at the incredibly high percentage that we have of ascorbic acid.

[01:17:21] Luke: Cool. Good to know. And that's also good to know about the chaga and the melanin because I think sometimes I just have a simplistic view when I study something for a minute.

[01:17:31] The way I was looking at chaga was like, all right, if I make a big batch of chaga tea, and I make it really strong, and I drink enough of it, I really would think like, I'm joking, but not really, that I would be saturating my system with so much melanin that I would be as closer to resilient as an African origin, highly melanated person, thinking I could just keep adding melanin, and then I just become so resilient to the sun that I will never burn or something.

[01:17:59] Amitay: Well, melanin looks dark.

[01:18:02] Luke: I think when I'm thinking of the chaga tea, it's like, yeah, it looks like dark skin. So I'm like, well, maybe it'll work on me the same way. It's just funny.

[01:18:10] Amitay: Yeah, I'm just saying, as a rule of thumb and maybe to finalize my point on the whole view on sun is your best strategy, speaking heuristically, to protect yourself from the sun is just be darker.

[01:18:30] If you're not darker, don't fool yourself that you're building some callus to the damaging part of the skin. If you are darker, by the way, that callus that you have built or that you're genetically blessed with would actually lead to vitamin D deficiency.

[01:18:50] The African-American community is notoriously deficient in vitamin D, not to speak about African descent people that live in climates that are colder, or subarctic, or something like that, which are in real trouble sometimes.

[01:19:07] Luke: Yeah. I know. Then you get the kidney issues and all kinds of other things downstream from the vitamin D deficiency. Yeah. It's a lot of dialysis going on.

[01:19:15] Amitay: Bone density.

[01:19:16] Luke: Okay. Last thing I want to cover on the side, and then we'll actually start talking about some of the topical treatments available because that's exciting. I've been using your stuff for about a month, and I love it. And it seems so advanced that I don't know that I'm using it right. So I'm getting a little tutorial for myself and the people that want to check it out. But one thing, back to the intrinsic sun exposure issue, is the omega-6 oils, the seed oils, all these rancid inflammatory oils.

[01:19:47] And I've noticed as many people who have been on the standard American diet and are just eating tons of these really inflammatory oils, when they get sun, or as they age, there's a lot of this lipofuscin going on, all of these, what we call sunspots. And we think, oh, that's just a normal thing that happens to white people when they get in the sun.

[01:20:05] I don't think it is normal, and I think a lot of it is, a, the blue light, never being outdoors, never getting sun, and then when you do get sun, you've got all these inflammatory rancid oils in your system. What can you tell us about the relationship between the omega-6 toxicity and lipofuscin, and age spots, and all that?

[01:20:22] Amitay: So most of pigmentation is actually inflammation driven, whether systemic or local. I think Omega-6s or seed oils, these are great things to talk about in a larger discussion of lowering our what we call like inflammaging or inflammatory load, because chronic inflammation in your body is going to create, again, unrepaired damage.

[01:21:01] It's going to create mistakes, and the appearance of sunspots is literally a mistake. It's literally an imbalance in the ability of your body to create even melanin. By the way, just giving another take on that, if you have skin tags, for example, they could be driven by a number of factors, but we know the higher C-reactive protein we have, the more skin tags we're going to have. So lowering the inflammatory load would significantly reduce the risk of or the appearance of uneven skin tone.

[01:21:45] Luke: Noted. All right. Before we get into the things that you can slather on your skin to make it youthful, what about some of the other cosmetic spa treatments like Botox, those chemical face peels, which seems really weird to me. Actually, two of these three sound weird. And the other one is microneedling.

[01:22:07] There's a lot of people in the biohack your skin space that believe if you do the microneedling on your face and then put the right nutrition on it, that it's going to penetrate and help enliven the skin. What's your take on those three cosmetic treatments?

[01:22:22] Amitay: Okay. Starting with Botox, Botox is one thing, and spoken like a true person that doesn't do it, you didn't mention fillers as well, because that's a bigger industry than Botox, and they're more problematic in my eyes, by the way. Botox as a whole, one of the benefits of it is that, I wouldn't say it's local, but it is predominantly local, and it takes a long time for your body to process it longer than people think.

[01:23:03] So normally people think, oh, it lasts a certain amount of time, but it really lasts almost double that amount of time as far as how long it takes your system to deal with it. And it mainly is being dealt with through your lymphatic system. So it is something that I wouldn't necessarily tell someone don't do it.

[01:23:27] Do I recommend it? Absolutely not. Is it good for you? No, it's not. But if that is where your ego resides, like that bothers you to the extent where Botox can fix that, or for example, Botox is amazing to relieve depression--

[01:23:50] Luke: So you can't frown?

[01:23:52] Amitay: Yes, yes.

[01:23:52] Luke: That's funny. I need to do Botox on cloudy days. Turn that frown upside down.

[01:24:02] Amitay: I'm saying, if that's what you want to do, I'm just going to talk about what you can do around it, not because I'm afraid to tackle it, because I do understand people's-- I'm in the industry of trying to have people have younger skin, so I can completely understand how someone will choose to do Botox.

[01:24:19] Classic fillers, fillers that are based on hyaluronic acid or things like that are really, really, really a different story because they chemically fuse into your skin. Sculpt gelling, they change the chemistry of not only your skin, of the tissue under the skin, the subdermal tissue.

[01:24:47] People think that fillers last, again, a few months, nine months. They last years. And they sometimes last forever. People are not aware of the amount of regret people have and the surgeries that people undergo in order to reverse fillers. And by the way, reversing fillers is a nightmare.

[01:25:13] So fillers, I'm more against. You can have fat grafts and have that as a filler, or people do like VSEL, which is type of stem cells, they inject it, and they get some filling ability. That's not what I'm talking about. That you can do. Go for it. If you have a skilled person, go for it.

[01:25:31] But the hyaluronic acid fillers are really something that people should avoid. You asked about chemical peels. So chemical peels aren't necessarily bad. And by the way, they're called chemical peels, but for the most part, they use acids that are native to us that are used in the body. For example, have you heard about the fad of putting snail mucin on your face?

[01:26:01] Luke: No.

[01:26:02] Amitay: That's a Korean thing, a Korean skincare thing. And it is now very popular with Gen Z. It's starting to take hold, but one of the major reasons why snail mucin is popular is that it has a little bit of one of those AHA. So alpha hydroxy acid or what we know as glycolic acid is one of those AHAs.

[01:26:30] And that is a very popular peel people do. The problem with that, again, is that we're focusing on reversing how you is supposed to look like. You're not really making your skin younger on cellular level. And if you want it to think of those three pillars, it's only about optimal performance, which is how do we look right now?

[01:26:51] So you're depleting a lot of reservoirs. What are you doing really? Forcing your skin to renew way faster than what it thinks it should. So it expands a lot of resources it would have liked to keep for later on. And you actually biologically are older, even though you look younger. That's true for a lot of treatments, for example, lasers, a lot of those things.

[01:27:17] I'm also not opposed to those. You really want to do them really, really, really spaced out. A laser resurfacing, which is a peel done with a laser, you could do, but every five years, not every month. We talked about Hollywood there. Sometimes people get my number.

[01:27:38] Really, sometimes someone important calls someone, and they are like, well, they're important enough. Amitay's going to want to talk to them. And suddenly, someone famous or whatever calls me, and I have a question for you, and they start from the middle of the conversation, just shooting the question.

[01:27:57] And a lot of them are asking about my opinions, which I've voiced in the past about radio frequency, for example, or energy-based machines that's supposed to rejuvenate your skin. And those things, not only are depleting reservoirs, they're also creating scarring under your skin.

[01:28:25] So a lot of the machines that you see, for example, like people like Bryan Johnson use, or people like that that you see them talking, well, I have this machine and this machine, it doesn't really matter how they call the machine. It is energy directed below your skin to create an injury.

[01:28:40] And that injury is basically calling for collagen production or anything like that. But the problem is that you're creating an injury that your body, at an older age, really knows how to deal with only in one way, which is scarring.

[01:28:57] It is not like a youthful five-year-old collagen, like if you're a five-year-old person. No, it is literal scarring. It's fusing of tissues together. Anyone knows that if they had a c-section, it's harder for them to have natural birth later on. Most people know that. That is because of that tissue being fused together by the surgeon. And now it's harder for that tissue to act normally later on. It might burst.

[01:29:20] It doesn't behave like a normal tissue. Well, that happens naturally when you do those therapies that everyone is doing now, everyone. By the way, the professionals, even an esthetician, has a license to do those because the companies that own those technologies are so wealthy, they push legislation that allows everyone with a few months of training, six months of training, to create permanent damage below your skin.

[01:29:49] That scar tissue has almost no vascularity, no blood supply, so you're creating something that is inhuman. You're carrying something else that is not human, and finish that gloomy little tirade by saying, that tissue is, it's irreversible, or it's very hard to reverse.

[01:30:20] It's going to be harder to be operated later on if you did want to do plastic surgery, all of that. But also, you're creating a new type-- so in 2022, in a summit in Copenhagen, they inaugurated five more hallmarks of aging, and one of them is mechanical aging, the mechanical changes that are irreversible. So you're literally imbuing aging into your body, which is crazy to think about. Yeah, so I'm really much against them. Microneedling is good though.

[01:31:04] Luke: One out of four.

[01:31:05] Amitay: Yeah. Microneedling is something that also is a very large name, or a name for a very large array of tools and treatments. What you asked about is an adjunct microneedling. Microneedling on its own, it's almost like exercise for the skin. I have extremely fine needles that go in and out of my skin, and they are creating damage that my skin knows how to repair, and it's kind of outside in, so our skin is used to that.

[01:31:37] Our skin knows that it's going to get bruised and scraped, et cetera. So the mechanisms are there to deal with it as opposed to those energy devices that only create damage where the tissue is only really damaged if it's an extremely dangerous injury that requires scarring.

[01:31:56] I recommend two things: either professional, going to a professional and doing it, or doing what we call a derma stamping, which is just like a stamp going up and down, because the rollers, they enter in an angle that's not 90 degrees, and they kind roll a little bit, and they exit the skin in an angle that's not 90 degrees.

[01:32:19] They bore into the skin a little bit, so it's not as clean. And some people that are more radical than myself will say it's actually not good for you. I actually think that if that's what you have and you want to do it, go ahead. But it's suboptimal. So derma stamping is a better way to do it.

[01:32:38] Now, what you asked is about products that follow it. And that actually is true because, again, we talked about the outer layer of your skin. One of the things that is happening there is something called the acid mantle. So you have this little layer that is supposed to nullify a lot of pathogens or bad stuff that are coming into your skin, and you're disabling it.

[01:33:05] It's like shooting at a Star Wars ship. You're damaging its defense, and then you can enter the ship, or whatever. So then products can actually absorb better. Not because of the micro holes you created per se, because that would be a very simplified way to look at it.

[01:33:28] I had 200 needles, but we didn't pierce the entire skin. You didn't shave off the entire top layer, but you're actually nullifying that protective layer of the skin. Still, for that, I recommend professional treatments and professionally do really cool stuff like exosomes, stem cells, PRP together with it. It's pretty cool. Make sure you're doing it with someone that is very clean physically that doesn't contaminate you.

[01:33:59] Luke: Well, you just intuited my next and final question around this particular area of exploration, and that was stem cells, and exosomes, and things like that. Years ago, I did a podcast with Dr. Harry Adelson and Amy Killen out in Utah at the Docere Clinic. Great people, great organization, and they did a whole body thing, and one of the things they did while I was under anesthesia, thankfully, was some sort of, I think they called it a vampire facial or something.

[01:34:28] And so I came out of it, my face is all red, and bloody, and puffy. And they basically slathered my face with a bunch of stem cells. I don't know. You never know how you would have looked had you not done it, so I can't say, oh, it improved things or not, but maybe I would have aged faster in the face had I not done that. But you think going to someone who's obviously a professional and qualified and doing it the right way that there is some efficacy to the stem cells and exosomes topically?

[01:34:54] Amitay: There is, and the reason you're puffy, etc., is actually because you need to create an injury. Your skin doesn't know a wrinkle is an issue. It doesn't. It doesn't know pigmentation is an issue. It doesn't know laxity is an issue, because there's no inflammation associated with that.

[01:35:13] The language of the body for repair is associated inflammation. Again, there are legit pathways that are triggered by inflammation that trigger repair on a DNA level. And it doesn't exist when we just apply exosomes or stem cells on the skin. Nothing will happen if you don't have inflammation associated with it.

[01:35:39] And that's, by the way, one of the things that we discovered when we thought we had this panacea. We started researching skin repair in 2015, and we said, oh, we have this way to double the amount of NAD, the molecule of life in the skin. And we put it, we did a study, and people didn't change much.

[01:36:03] And we realized through research that we just didn't ask the skin-- well, what we realized is people that had issues, even atopic dermatitis, that improved. Or other issues that did have inflammation associated with them did improve. But people who just came in and they wanted to look younger and they had nothing wrong with them, actually, the healthier they were, the less it worked on its own.

[01:36:38] And after a lot more research, we realized that you need to associate inflammation with it. Whatever you want your body to repair, you need to be in a Goldilocks zone where your body has the ability to repair it. And it doesn't just throw scarring over it or gets out of whack and creates a hyperpigmented area.

[01:37:03] Luke: Is there any benefit to one consuming copious amounts of, say, collagen, protein, or gelatin?

[01:37:13] Amitay: Absolutely. Yeah. But it's more about what we've already covered. I think it's a great question. And the reason I'm enthusiastically answering is mainly for your gut health. Anything elastic in your body requires collagen, and elastin, and hyaluronic acid.

[01:37:35] But your body isn't very good at taking a molecule the way you ingested it and then just shuttling it around. I think we said it about, for example, chaga. It normally breaks it down to whatever is the minimal, the lowest form of that molecule, shuttles it around, and it knows how to build it if it needs it in a certain cell.

[01:38:00] It also is much better at allocating resources that way, because collagen is not one amino acid. So maybe I need it somewhere else. Maybe I need it, by the way, to relax or to get out of fight or flight. There are many things that I need glycine for, which is the predominant amino acid in collagen. So what you're doing is you're giving ammunition to your body, you're allowing rather than instructing.

[01:38:32] Luke: So like with chaga, eating a bunch of collagen is not a one for one. The way I think about it in my simplistic, sometimes brain is like, oh, I'll take a couple of big old scoops of collagen. Then I assimilate that, and it turns into new skin. Your skin's made of collagen and gelatin, amino acids, etc., so I just think, oh, I eat a bunch of that, and it just turns into new young skin.

[01:38:56] Amitay: I wish it was like that. Actually, the gene that is maybe the most dominant player in using collagen in your skin is not a collagen producing gene. The gene is called LUM, and it creates lumicans, which are-- if you think of collagen as the bricks, it is the brick layer.

[01:39:29] Luke: Oh, interesting.

[01:39:30] Amitay: Yeah. Or the spackle. I don't know. It is the connection and the thing that builds collagen as a unit with other factors as well, rather than more collagen. And by the way, again, we're getting to scarring. Less LUM expression and more collagen expression gets you scarring.

[01:39:59] So there is one study, I'm not going to bash the company, again, cited by someone very famous, I mentioned earlier, where they showed that if you use this device that pulses light into your skin, the skin behaves like younger skin.

[01:40:20] And this study actually was presented at the American Academy for Anti-Aging for American Academy for Dermatology, AAD, I believe two years ago, but what it was presented was by the amazing ability to measure not the results they got. The measurement was the cool thing about it.

[01:40:44] The results they got wasn't that impressive because there are many ways if I just scratched to you, that area is going to behave like younger skin than before. The gene is expressing more collagen or whatever. It's going to be more active. But you're not going to have the correct function like younger skin, if you would, the balance between-- and the symphony is what's important. It's not if the violin is playing stronger or weaker.

[01:41:12] Luke: Got it. Well, dude, you know a lot about skin. I've done a few shows on beauty, and cosmetics, and things. I'm like, dude, you have this down, which I knew you did, which is why I wanted to have you on, but that begs the question, knowing all you know, it's a perfect segue into you giving me the download on your company, Young Goose, and some of the things that you've come up with.

[01:41:39] Because as I said, when I first got it, first thing I'm going to do when I get something in the mail is make sure there's nothing toxic in it. It's just easier to have parabens and weird stuff. No, check.

[01:41:49] But then again, I'm looking at the ingredient deck on the different products, and I'm going, this is stuff that you eat. And we know this is a popular concept, don't put anything on your skin that you wouldn't eat.

[01:42:01] But I think there's a difference that you might be able to elucidate for us between what someone might think is clean skincare, organic ingredients, versus where you guys have gone as far as I can tell is far beyond that and more of a pharmaceutical grade effectiveness and safety, so it's just a given that there's no toxins in it. That's like low-hanging fruit.

[01:42:23] Amitay: Yeah.

[01:42:23] Luke: But you're putting stuff in that is really moving the needle. I don't know how we how you want to do it. I have a bunch of your products here. If you want to just give us an overview of your philosophy, maybe, and then I'd like to get granular and really talk about some of the different formulas you have, how you use them, and all that. And I'll just let you lay it out as you best see fit.

[01:42:43] Amitay: The first question you had is probably the best question because the same way, in my head, I'm fighting a war against ascorbic acid, I'm also fighting a war in my head against clean skin care because 99% is what I call clean washing, which means if I assign something the word clean, a lot of it is unregulated.

[01:43:04] I can just omit things from the formula and no one ever is going to check me, ever, ever, ever. So that's the first problem, is just insincerity. Number two is I would not ascribe evil on a person or a company, but I would ascribe callousness. So because this is a formula that is in a liquid form, if left alone, bacteria will form.

[01:43:42] Whether you call it a preservative or not, I think it's just a triggering word, you have to have something that keeps the formula from, a, not developing bacteria, and the second is not to change chemically. There was people dropping dead from electronic cigarettes, I don't know, a few years ago.

[01:44:11] And they found out it was the vitamin E in the electronic cigarettes when heated up became toxic. Well, when we talked about how inconvenient it is to go outside in the middle of the summer in Austin, if it's an ingredient or formulas outside of your door for a day, midsummer, the temperature is very high, very high. So a lot of things can change chemically if you didn't do good chemistry to stabilize the formula.

[01:44:49] So what we decided to do is first of all, make sure that these two things don't happen. And then we went ahead and tested for homeostatic skincare. I shy away from the word clean or anything like that. I'm looking not to disrupt homeostasis in your system, in your body.

[01:45:16] I'm looking for to make sure I don't accumulate in your brain like chemical sunscreens, for example. We can see chemical sunscreen traces even 10 years after people use them topically. We can see them in the brain.

[01:45:27] Luke: Yikes.

[01:45:28] Amitay: Yes. Yeah. 10 years.

[01:45:29] Luke: Brutal.

[01:45:30] Amitay: Yeah. I want to make sure I don't disrupt your endocrine system. That is what we're checking. We're don't care if the ingredient has a good name or a bad name. We care a little bit because, at the end of the day, we don't want to trigger anyone, but we care more about what's the end results for you after this was sitting on our shelf for three months and we ship it to you. The last thing I'm going to say is, normally, the skincare product you're getting in your hands is over two years old.

[01:45:57] Luke: Wow.

[01:45:58] Amitay: Uh-huh. Yes. So I wouldn't eat it anyway, even if it just said avocado. Because you wouldn't eat an avocado after it was two years on a shelf.

[01:46:08] Luke: Two days your avocados--

[01:46:12] Amitay: That was not a good example.

[01:46:14] Luke: No, I get it. I just have a resentment toward avocados because I love them and I can rarely eat them in time.

[01:46:21] Amitay: That's the meme. Not yet. Not yet. Too late.

[01:46:25] Luke: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[01:46:26] Amitay: Actually, my wife keeps avocados in water in the fridge, and they're always good.

[01:46:31] Luke: Really?

[01:46:32] Amitay: Yeah.

[01:46:33] Luke: Okay. I'm on it. The whole podcast was worth it. That's a wrap. Jared, we're good. Is that a real thing?

[01:46:39] Amitay: Yes. Yeah, yeah.

[01:46:41] Luke: Oh my God. What if I named the episode like Avocados--

[01:46:42] Amitay: Avocados in the Fridge.

[01:46:44] Luke:  Yeah, Avocados in the Fridge. It works.

[01:46:47] Amitay: So that's the first thing, which the Hippocratic Oath, first do no harm. But how did Young Goose start? Young Goose started not as a skincare product. We were just after like a small exit. We had money. Again, telling you my life story a little bit before the podcast. I have no value for money whatsoever. I have no idea what to do with it, whether I have it or not.

[01:47:15] So we were doing NAD IVs. I loved them. And I was like, I want to do them every week. But back then, 2014, 2015, they cost least $1,000 dollars each. I was like, oh my God, a normal person that I would like to feel what I feel, who can afford like four or five, six grand a month for the rest of their lives?

[01:47:40] So we found this research team out of the Weizmann Institute, which is like MIT, in Israel. They created this incredible system to get NAD precursors, so the building blocks, which we said your body likes better than just a full molecule, get them in a formula that could be in a bottle.

[01:48:09] That was where they were. And what we wanted to do is basically create transdermal applications like you would have today for testosterone or hormone replacement therapy creams. And it didn't work. It just didn't work. It was a failure because we didn't know it back then. But when we looked into it, we understood that the skin needs it so badly.

[01:48:33] The more you can give it, the more it's just going to keep on using. You can really not top it off. So we double the amount that your skin has, but it still didn't share with the rest of the body. Now going back to allocation of resources past our reproductive prime, your body just doesn't allocate an NAD to your skin very well, which is, again, the molecule of life.

[01:48:58] It's involved in any repair process, over 600 that we know of that are in your skin and your body. So we basically made lemonade out of lemons. We said, well, it's great for your skin. Let's make a skincare company out of it. And then that's the study I told you about, that we solved the issues that we didn't want to solve.

[01:49:18] We wanted the skincare product that people could use every day and see results. We didn't want to create a medical treatment. Actually, that's the last thing we wanted to do, is to have medical claims. That's not the field that we want to engage in. So what we did was we researched, if I make the skin behave younger, if I can make it functionally-- I also don't like the phrase biological age.

[01:49:43] So if I make it functionally younger, how can I capitalize on it and make it appear younger as well? Not as a standalone, artificial object, but how can I trigger mechanisms that rewind time? And that is literally the company. The company is the balance between having your skin behave functionally younger, and trigger the mechanisms that you're interested in the most.

[01:50:08] Because you can't have everything. If you want to have your skin naturally more hydrated, holding on to more and more sure and feeling more hydrated on a cellular level, on a DNA level, I can't also solve your pigmentation at the same time. There's a limit of what you can apply on your skin. So we created systems that could be very simple.

[01:50:32] It could be just a couple of products, or it could be very, very, very intricate and have 10 products that tackle all the signs of aging or all the functions of what aging means in your skin, but to varying degree. Depends on what I call your budget and your attention budget. How long do you want to spend in front of your mirror applying creams? Because I don't have a very large attention budget.

[01:51:04] Luke: Me either. Not for that.

[01:51:06] Amitay: Exactly. Talking to you, yes.

[01:51:10] Luke: I can pay attention to someone speaking for three hours, obviously, but yeah.

[01:51:13] Amitay: Yeah.

[01:51:14] Luke: When I got this product from you guys, I was looking at it, and the first thing I did was I looked at the cleanser, and I was like, I don't need a cleanser, and I gave it to my wife. She's been using it. But then when I was studying for this podcast, I realized how shit the cleanser is actually an important part of the process. So I'm excited to learn about the different levels.

[01:51:39] And I like the way you're framing it as it's a buffet. So depending on what you can afford, obviously, because your stuff's not cheap, because it's super scientific and awesome. And then your attention to creating a regimen that you won't fail at, in other words.

[01:51:55] I feel like I have enough attention where I'm pretty good at my morning and evening routines. I like to save time by not reinventing the wheel every day, so I just do the same exact thing every night, every morning. So I feel like I could. But anyway, carry on.

[01:52:09] Amitay: First of all, I agree and disagree with you. You don't need a cleanser all the time. So washing your face with a cleanser once a day is enough.

[01:52:18] Luke: I'm going to admit to something that's embarrassing. I straight up never wash my face with any kind of soap or anything. Hot water in the shower, and every once in a while, some Dr. Bronner soap on the beard just because it's probably gross to not do it. But I don't know why I've never just been someone that washes my face.

[01:52:35] Amitay: I remind you that you're a person that has organized their life not to have a toxic environment. And one of the things that is happening is something that is called sticky skin. Sticky skin is a skin that is out of balance chemically, to some extent, and that builds up toxins that are layered on it and are starting to create damage.

[01:53:05] And, by the way, heavy metals and pollution are one of the things that adhere to the skin the most. And they're not really in the skin, but they slowly start to leach into the skin, and they create oxidative stress and free radical that is not oxygen-based, nitrogen-based, carbon- based, that is not innately in nature, that is very difficult for us to deal with.

[01:53:34] So one of the things that you want to do is have a cleanser. Having a cleanser also helps you negate that, but have a cleanser that can prevent sticky skin. It's challenging. We're not the only ones doing it. Look for red algae in your cleanser, and then once a day, washing your face. Probably at night is better if we're talking about a once a day washing, and then in the morning washing with water or not. It's up to the person.

[01:54:05] One of the people that is famous called me and said, I want to get up in the morning and run out of the house. I told them, okay, no problem. Just wash your face in the evening. So what is interesting about our clients-- I just want to give you the two faces of the coin, the two sides of the coin.

[01:54:31] We have a challenge because we want to give you really crazy advanced longevity, anti-aging molecules, but we also want you to innately know how to use it. So a cleanser is something you innately know how to use. If I gave you goop and I said, here you go, you wouldn't even start to understand where it's incorporated in your life.

[01:54:57] So that's one side, the side that is longevity molecules that you're applying on your skin. The other one is making it coherent. So the cleanser, aside from solving or fortifying you against the sticky skin, it also eliminate something called CD 38. CD38 is NAD Pac Man. It eats NAD.

[01:55:22] Luke: Really?

[01:55:23] Amitay: Yeah. And it raises with age.

[01:55:24] Luke: It's on the surface of your skin?

[01:55:26] Amitay: It's in every cell, but we use a special type of chamomile extracts that is rich in apigenin and a few other molecules, and it eliminates CD38. So that's a really cool aspect that I don't get to talk about a lot, but that's something that the cleanser does.

[01:55:48] So it does have some longevity benefits aside from the fact that it cleans your skin. If anyone shaves, it also can be like the shaving lubricant because they are almost as a whole toxic, shaving creams and care stuff.

[01:56:02] Luke: Shaving creams and stuff? Oh God. I haven't shaved in years.

[01:56:04] Amitay: And they're also always scented with horrible scents.

[01:56:06] Luke: I know. Yeah, like that old spice like grandpa's cologne smell. Yeah, they are very foul.

[01:56:14] Amitay: Or it's a gel that somehow morphs into a foam. You're like, ah, what is this stuff?

[01:56:17] Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:56:19] Amitay: So you could use that. After that, the classic way you would look at a regimen is like cleanser, serum, moisturizer, and then what I call post moisturizer, which normally is sunblock if you go outside. And again, we want to expose areas that are normally not exposed, or at night, there are other things you can do, but that's the regimen, a four-step regimen. You wash your face.

[01:56:48] A serum is what I said before, is the direction that cue for repair that you want to give your skin for the most part. That's where you're going to choose any serum. So that's the way we've designed our serums as a clear understanding of what you would like to repair in your skin, whether it is pigmentation.

[01:57:11] And we literally have systems. You can have a minimal system, which is a Minimal Biohack Aging, Biohack Pigmentation, Biohack Hydration, pretty simple. It's the same moisturizer, but the serum is different depending on what you want to tackle. And more advanced systems just cover more bases.

[01:57:29] So the serum that you have here is our newest launch because we are the first company that ever had NAD precursors in their skincare. And now we're the first company that has spermidine in their skincare. And spermidine is basically triggering. It's a fasting mimetic.

[01:57:49] So it mimics fasting. It is a cue for repair in the body. So autophagy normally is regarded as recycling, but it's really supports repair. So that is basically a cue for repair in your skin. And it has other really cool things. I mentioned MAP, that vitamin C that sits on top and can protect you a little bit from the sun.

[01:58:17] It also has a proprietary complex of peptides, like copper peptides, which are-- peptides are like keys to a mechanism. So they unlock or start a certain mechanism. So copper peptides start the mechanism of renewal of collagen, elastin, all of the things that we were talking about. So this serum is called Youth Reset, and like its name, it supercharges and triggers renewal in your skin.

[01:58:53] Luke: So I've been gross and not washing my face ever, least of which being with your cleanser. But without doing any studying, it sounds like I might be on track because I've been using the serum first after getting out of the shower with an unwashed face and then doing this one here, which is, yeah, the Youth Daily Moisturizing Cream. So am I getting that order right? Okay, cool.

[01:59:19] Amitay: Yeah.

[01:59:19] Luke: I think I just guessed that because the serum, you absorb it super fast. It takes a tiny little bit. Your whole face feels all wet, and then two seconds later, it's dry, and you feel like, oh, well, I could put some of this on now, and you're not walking out with a slathering, greasy face.

[01:59:37] Amitay:  Exactly. By the way, this penetrates to a place where-- another very nerdy point about skincare, skincare has what we call a vector, which is where it's held in your skin, and that's where it gets absorbed, because cells take it slowly, get ushered in slowly. So the serum penetrates deeper than the cream anyway. So you want to apply it first because you don't want to block it from absorbing.

[02:00:11] Luke: Ah, okay. So just like your skin has layers, what we're using topically with the Young Goose is scientifically and intelligently designed to also work in layers.

[02:00:19] Amitay: Yeah.

[02:00:21] Luke: And that's why it's not just a one and done, like, here's a magic cream. It's a few different products truly in the sense of a system.

[02:00:28] Amitay: That's the problem with products that are trying to say we have all the solutions, and all you need is this one product. And look at me, I'm 70, and I look 20. It doesn't work like that. Because if we want to trigger more collagen, that is a little bit deeper than supporting that collagen with hydration. By the way, this is a hot take. You cannot really hydrate your skin from the outside. Hydration comes from the inside.

[02:01:02] Luke: Really?

[02:01:02] Amitay: Yes. It is supplied to your skin. It is not even generated by your skin. It is supplied to your skin. And it comes from the inside, from deeper layers. What you can do is prevent the escape of that hydration.

[02:01:20] Luke: When you experience dry skin, like when I go to Colorado in the summer, it's really dry, high altitude, just no moisture in the air. What feels like it's happening to me is that the dry air is evaporating my skin from the outside. So what you're saying is it's more of an internal dehydration and you just see the manifestation of that superficially.

[02:01:39] Amitay: No, no. What you're experiencing is 100% correct. There is a gradient. Your skin is a certain level of moisture for that matter. The air is another. And you just get a balancing of the two. So it escapes your skin basically. It's called transepidermal water loss. A good moisturizer is going to prevent that. The feeling of hydration is fleeting.

[02:02:06] It is irrelevant. You're going to put a moisturizer on, it's going to "absorb". You're going to wash your face. Your face is going to be as dry as before you apply that moisturizer. So moisturizer has a protective aspect more than a nourishing aspect as far as hydration is concerned. What we use in order to correct hydration is a protein that's called ectoine. Have you ever heard about water bears?

[02:02:38] Luke: No. I like them already though.

[02:02:42] Amitay: Yeah. They're very cute. They're microscopic.

[02:02:45] Luke: Oh, really?

[02:02:46] Amitay: Yes. And these are little creatures, microscopic creatures that live in extreme climates. They're called extremolytes. They are also called space bears.

[02:02:58] Luke: I've been called that before by my wife.

[02:03:00] Amitay: Uh-huh. Exactly. So everyone that's in the space is an extremolyte. But they can live in extreme environments, whether it is acidity or temperature. Or even their claims to be able to survive on the outside of spaceships. When the spaceship comes back, they're still alive.

[02:03:21] And the reason they can do it is because they have this protein that's called, the commercial name for it is [Inaudible]. And it literally builds easy water, builds structured water around proteins and doesn't let them get damaged.

[02:03:43] Luke: Wow.

[02:03:44] Amitay: It's really cool.

[02:03:45] Luke: That is dope. We've talked a lot about the exclusions on water over the years on this show, so my people will be familiar with that.

[02:03:53] Amitay: But in general, it's just building a buffer zone between the environment and proteins for those extremolytes, for those water bears. When you use it in skincare, and we're not the only ones using it, even though it's very hard to get it in concentrations that are therapeutic, a therapeutic concentration, it actually has an 11-day carryover. So remember I told you, if you wash it off, for 11 days, you're more hydrated.

[02:04:34] Luke: Wow. That's bananas.

[02:03:57] Amitay: Yes. So that's one way we do it. Another way is, again, we have a serum. So the serum that you have, it covers a lot of bases. We have a serum that is one of the more famous products that we have, because it's the only product that is a proven senolytic. It eliminates senescent in humans.

[02:05:00] Study showing that when you apply it on your skin, you're going to get elimination of senescent cells rather than like in a petri dish, because there are a few other companies that can show it in single cells. So we show it in humans, and that serum, it's called Procare, can actually upregulate the gene that creates hyaluronic acid.

[02:05:25] So it upregulates 14 different genes, collagen genes, hyaluronic acid genes, elastin genes, LUM. So LUM, that's lumican that I told you about, it upregulates it on average by 72%. And again, these are studies from living humans, which is extremely more difficult than doing it in a lab in a petri dish.

[02:05:48] Luke: Much more expensive.

[02:05:50] Amitay: Yeah. That's why we did it with 40 people.

[02:05:53] Luke: Anything to bring humans into a study, you get more accurate results, but you got to have the pockets for it.

[02:05:57] Amitay: Yeah, exactly. So we didn't send you the sunscreen because Bailey said you wouldn't use it.

[02:06:06] Luke: She's right. But in light of some of our earlier conversation, one thing I thought about is like, I could probably wear hats more when I'm out in the sun. Because I like the feeling of the sun on my face, but I do notice sometimes I'm a little cherry faced afterwards.

[02:06:22] Amitay:  So I just do it earlier.

[02:06:23] Luke: Yeah.

[02:06:24] Amitay: So the sunscreen doesn't only protect you from the sun. So after you applied your moisturizer daytime, I recommend applying Bio-Shield. And the reason we're calling it a Bio-Shield, because it protects you from EMF pollution, heavy metals, glyphosates, blue light, artificial blue light, and the sun.

[02:06:44] Luke: Ooh, so that would be good for long days of computer work. And also thinking about a sunscreen in the way that you're describing it, which is not the classical cancer-causing slop that most people think of a sunscreen, but of course, I'm self-referential too much sometimes.

[02:07:04] And so I'm like, I don't need sunscreen. But a lot of people listening are going to be fair skinned, or gingers, or people whose lifestyle or work prevents them from getting the morning sunlight and the sunset sunlight. So I think having a sunscreen-esque product is really important for a lot of people, even though it's not something that I would naturally gravitate toward.

[02:07:24] Amitay: Or maybe they just live in Manhattan or work in Manhattan.

[02:07:29] Luke: Shift workers, here's what you do. Go to lukestorey.com/younggoose. Get 10% off the very effective and safe sunscreen with the code LUKE10. There we go, bro.

[02:07:41] Amitay: Yeah. So that is like a post moisturizer product. It has ectoine. Two things I want to say about sunscreen in general, sunblocks, sunscreen, whatever. As far as labels are concerned, you can actually say mineral sunscreen, and it doesn't have to be 100% mineral. So I can have a blend of chemical and mineral and still call it mineral.

[02:08:07] Luke: Oh, sneaky. Like pasture-raised eggs or whatever. It's like 10 legal definitions of that, and we don't really know what they each mean.

[02:08:18] Amitay: Yeah.

[02:08:19] Luke: I like that term you gave earlier, clean washing too, because there's a lot of shenanigans. When I first started becoming aware of putting things on your body, well, not when I first did, but some years into that, there's an app called Think Dirty. I don't know if you know that app.

[02:08:34] And basically, you can go into the body care section at health food store, and you can scan the QR on different products, and it gives you a rating and tells you what's in it, which is super useful, I think, for corporate, big brands, so you can tell who the bad actors are.

[02:08:52] But still, it's good, but still in the clean washing realm because there's going to be things that pass snuff there because they're just passing regulations. As you described, it can be ambiguous and easy to slip around.

[02:09:07] Amitay: And there are other ones that are rated badly like retinol, not because they're bad for you per se. By the way, essential oils are other ones that literally have the worst scores, but they're regarded as single ingredients. If I put just a lemon essential oil on my skin without anything else, it's not healthy for you. It's damaging your skin, but 0.1% in a formula, it's great

[02:09:40] Retinol, same thing. If you apply retinol alone on your skin-- you see people who use treatments for acne that are based on vitamin A's, on retinoids, and they peel, and it's obviously really bad for them, dries out their skin completely, but not in the levels that we talk about.

[02:09:59]  In the levels that we talk about, it's extremely positive. It's actually one of the best, most healthy ingredients you can use on your skin. Not only as far as appearance, but actual longevity and anti-aging. So sometimes even those apps are not nuanced. But as a rule of thumb, great thing to use.

[02:10:29] The other post, moisturizer-- so the moisturizer, just to mention, our moisturizers, they are more longevity products. They're rather than trying to treat something specifically right now. I'm fueling that. If you think about the serum is like a gas pedal for repair, whatever that is, whatever results you want to get.

[02:10:51] The moisturizer is the fuel. It has a lot of supporting ingredients. Still going to have the NAD, but their NAD is going to be maybe longer release, not absorbed as quickly. Or resveratrol. We didn't even talk about resveratrol. It's very special as far as how you use it in your skin, but that's the moisturizer. Still, if someone had a very short attention span, I would still use only the moisturizer because that's the one that covers the most on a basis.

[02:11:24] Luke: Or if someone has budgetary limitations, would that be the go-to then if they go on your site and they're like, oh, I got my 10% off code and they start shopping around, filling up their cart and then go, oops, shit, sticker shocks of any one of the moisturizers?

[02:11:36] Amitay: Yeah.

[02:11:37] Luke: Okay.

[02:11:38] Amitay: We have two. We have entry levels called Care.

[02:11:40] Luke: Okay.

[02:11:40] Amitay: Not ProCare, the serum.

[02:11:42] Luke: I have the pro one.

[02:11:44] Amitay: But Care and Youth Daily is the more advanced version. It's new. We have the spermidine there. Again, we're not a low-ticket item company. I actually recommend using other brands that you like if the budget doesn't allow you to use only Young Goose exclusively.

[02:12:05] That is why I like the fact that we're not the only company in the world, because I prefer people have a full routine rather than just give up immediately and not use anything because they can't afford 11 Young Goose products. So if you wanted to use one product, it would be one of our moisturizer, whether it is Care, which is a entry level one or use daily.

[02:12:28] The magic really happens in the post moisturizer. Again, we mentioned the sunblock. The other thing for the night, and that's what we sent you, is the hyperbaric mask.

[02:12:37] Luke: I was going to ask you about that one. I like the name because I love hyperbaric treatments, and I was curious to learn how that works.

[02:12:46] Amitay: So it actually activates one to one, the same pathways that would be activated in your skin if you were in a hyperbaric chamber. We want it to be slow released. It doesn't have to, but I really recommend applying it over a moisturizer and leaving it overnight. You could do it like a classic mask where you're putting cucumbers on your eyes and listening to binaural beats for 20 minutes and washing it off, but--

[02:13:10] Luke: How'd you know my nightly routine?

[02:13:14] Amitay: But for the most part, after your moisturizer, you apply it on, you leave it overnight. The more, the better. It lasts forever. If you want it to do it every night, go ahead and do it. But it activates these incredible pathways, whether it is Nrf2, which is what creates glutathione and is a detox pathway.

[02:13:36] It activates sirtuins, which are like your youth police in your DNA. It has a very unique peptide that increases collagen production quite dramatically. And it also creates that very long carryover of hydration. So it is a magical product, but it reinforces other products more than just working on its own.

[02:14:07] So a lot of people ask, well, if I use my heavy hitters like a retinol, because we have a retinol that's called Bio-Retinol that mimics actually how your body creates vitamin A, or I use another prescription, whatever that is. Use the hyperbaric mask in those nights specifically because it works better. It's a synergistic product rather than a single do-it-all product.

[02:14:35] Luke: How is traditional hyperbaric oxygen therapy good for the skin? It has so many benefits that I'm aware of and have celebrated myself. But I've never thought about or heard anything about it being good for skin health.

[02:14:49] Amitay: Yeah, it's very good. Well, first of all, one of the only things that you can get reimbursement for as far as medical reimbursement insurance is for non-healing wounds. So let's start there, that it is incredibly good in supporting healing.

[02:15:07] Luke: Oh, right. People have diabetic ulcers and this kind of stuff. That's the best treatment for that.

[02:15:12] Amitay: Yeah. By the way, not only that, after plastic surgery. So nowadays, there is a boom in the hyperbaric world with plastic surgeons. Plastic surgeons are now the lowest-hanging fruit for any hyperbaric company. And the reason is because it improves the healing of the tissue post surgery, any tissue, whether you're diabetic or not.

[02:15:41] You're not five years old that you fell off your bike. I have a two-month-old son. He'll grab a face full of skin and just scrunch it up, creates a scratch on his skin, a day later it's gone. We're not two months old, so don't grab your face. Therefore, we heal in a very different fashion.

[02:16:05] And if you remember what I said before about scarring, your skin gets overwhelmed faster as you age, and it just defaults to scarring way more quickly. The older it behaves, functionally, the more scarring it produces as far as healing. So in general, if we can reduce that, it is a positive thing.

[02:16:30] And hyperbarics, they do that. What is interesting about hyperbaric oxygen therapy as far as the skin is concerned is that there's something called the hyperoxic, hypoxic paradox, which means that most of the benefits you experience holistically from hyperbarics are from hormesis, are from stress.

[02:16:57] What is the stress? We load our tissue with oxygen, but then we stop doing it, and that basically tricks the body to think that it's hypoxic, that it doesn't have oxygen.

[02:17:14] Luke: Right. I forgot about that. That's very interesting.

[02:17:16] Amitay: So you activate a lot of anti-aging pathways, survival pathways, but you have all the oxygen from before, so you turbo charge them. It's like, stretching a band basically and releasing it. What's really cool about your skin, it actually enjoys both.

[02:17:35] Both are beneficial. Both the loading of oxygen and the lack of oxygen, that hormetic stress. Whereas your body really responds only to the second one unless you have an injury, TBI, whatever that is that you have lack of oxygen somewhere in the tissue.

[02:17:52] And the mask really mimics both things. So first and foremost, it was born, it was formulated for a specific, very famous person. Actually, he's not that famous. He's very wealthy. Had a hyperbaric in his house, a hard shell, 250k hyperbaric chamber in his house. He only bought it to look younger, and it wasn't making him to appear any younger.

[02:18:21] So picks up the phone, calls basically the person that does everything for him. Find a solution for me. She finds us. And he basically pays a lot of money to have a custom formula for him. We hate doing that, so don't ask us to do that, but we did it because it was a lot of money and we were a very young company at the time.

[02:18:45] And when that worked really well, I'm going to explain in a second why, we literally asked him if we can make a product out of it, and he didn't mind, so we did. And that's already the second iteration, and the third one is coming in about a year. But the first thing that it does, it lowers the cost-- so it's not pushing oxygen into your skin per se.

[02:19:01] It lowers the cost of oxygen or energy production of oxygen utilization. Do you remember in the beginning I said that there is a feedback loop in energy production with red light therapy, etc.? So the first thing that is problematic with hyperbarics is if your mitochondria is super dysfunctional and it costs a lot of energy to create energy, you actually get adverse results with hyperbarics, and it's known.

[02:19:38] And the skin, again, as it gets older, it is more starved of these youthful behaviors or models. So we need to back engineer it. So we have a very unique isolate out of yeast that is basically the way that yeast utilizes energy. So it's a rudimentary version of mitochondria.

[02:20:10] And we couple it to your mitochondria. So it increases the ability of the mitochondria to create energy. And you can create way more energy in your skin than you could without the mask. And it's momentarily. You wash the mask off, you can't create as much energy. But for the time that you're using it, you're creating a lot of energy.

[02:20:31] And that's one of the signals for repair in the skin. So even in a circadian rhythm level, between 10:00 PM to midnight, your skin absorbs more oxygen, uses more oxygen, and this is the golden hour of your skin for repair. By the way, if you want good skin, go to sleep 10:00 to midnight. So this turbo charges that. That's number one.

[02:21:00] Luke: Ah, this is why you recommend using it at night. Because I saw that on the bottle, and I was like, eh, I don't want to put something on. I've been using it in the morning. Okay.

[02:21:07] Amitay: You could. Especially, by the way, if you're flying, anything like that is really stressful for the skin. It's really good for that.

[02:21:12] Luke: Right. Thinking about the EMF on an airplane. You go ahead. I interrupted you. Finish that thought before you lose it, and I'll remember mine.

[02:21:25] Amitay: That's basically it. So that's the poster child of what the mask does, more energy, but really it has significantly more benefits. All these pathways that we activate with different players here. Moringin out of Moringa is one of them. It's a sulfur compound. It increases glutathione. So, really, really cool thing that a mask does that you really can't get anywhere else.

[02:21:52] Luke: I'm so glad to learn about that because, to be honest, when I read the name of it, I was like, ah, it sounds gimmicky. How's it going to do what a chamber does? Chamber's $150,000.

[02:22:02] Amitay: I agree, but it's only a moment. Not momentarily, but when you have it on, you need it as slow released as possible. So that's why we want it to be applied over your moisturizer, and it's only on the area that you're putting it, and we actually tell you, try to create some stimulation before. So it really is very well defined, but within those definitions, you get the same effects as you would get--

[02:22:29] Luke: Next level.

[02:22:31] Amitay: Yeah.

[02:22:31] Luke: What I was going to ask was, are there any bonus hacks and optimization in terms of using the Young Goose products before taking a sauna, or ice bath, or doing red light therapy, or lasers or any of the other technological things that we've discussed?

[02:22:52] Amitay: Yeah. So my favorite thing to talk about is what we call prejuvenation. So all of the things that you're expecting to get anti-aging effects from-- by the way, infrared sauna is one of them. It's not red light therapy, but it is also an elastic band type reaction where I'm increasing oxidative load when I'm in the sauna, and your body freaks out and starts fighting oxidative stress afterwards.

[02:23:19] All of those rejuvenation things rely on youthful behavior from your skin. They're all signals. They are not the-- it's like going to the gym. The weight isn't the thing that makes you stronger. It is the trigger for your body to reinforce itself.

[02:23:19] Everything that you would do that you expect to get better results from, or you don't want to get adverse effects from, using Young Goose before and continuously, by the way, like a month before, two months before, is where the real magic is at. It's not like a day before you have your son's wedding and you want to look amazing.

[02:24:03] It is that reinforced pattern, this habit that really creates magic, and that's what we're known for, for those long-term effects, and not a weekly effect that you feel like you need to replace. So one of the things that I don't know if you're aware of, but people who are addicted to skincare, they think they should completely change their skincare routine every three months.

[02:24:30] Every three months, they go to a different brand. And that is because normal brands use chemistry to fake the appearance of youth, if anything. And your skin gets used to and doesn't want to do that anymore. So you need to use a different one. We don't use those molecules, which are normally not really good for you, but we don't use those molecules in general because this is not our MO.

[02:24:55] Luke: One of the things I've noticed, using your products, even though, thankfully, I didn't pay for them, which is one of the benefits of having this job sometimes, I'll use it in the morning, and then I don't want to waste it, so when I do my ice bath, one of the things I usually do at the end is dip my face in and hold my breath, and then I dip the top of my head in there because I don't like just going under the water.

[02:25:18] I feel like I'm drowning or getting waterboarded or something. But I stopped doing that because I don't want to waste the product and have it rinse off after I just put it on when I got out of the shower or something.

[02:25:28] Amitay: But it's more systemic. So you can just do it after. It's not more systemic. It's more the accumulation of good habits rather than this. So it's more having these molecules constantly in your skin. Go clean skin.

[02:25:40] Luke: And that brings me to what I think is almost my last question for you, sir. Thank you for the generosity of time and your wealth of information. I'm like, man, these show notes are going to be a beast.

[02:25:51] By the way, I'll remind everyone, show notes will be at lukestorey.com/, I think we used your name, Amitay. Is that how you pronounce it? Amitay, A-M-I-T-A-Y. When I do ice bath, which is in Texas all day long, many times a day usually, when it's warm, I feel like it tightens up my skin.

[02:26:11] When I put my face in there, it feels like I'm getting a facelift. That's not why I'm doing it. It just feels good. Is there any known benefit to just full body or face skin health from getting it cold as hell?

[02:26:23] Amitay: Yes and no, because the misconception that is floating around is that it is some kind of treatment. And it's more of an effect. So you'll find people saying, well, if you cannot do-- and I'm sorry. I have friends who say that, so I feel bad, but they say if you can't be in an ice bath or you don't want to have a cold shower or whatever, dip your face in ice water. It doesn't really work that way as far as mimicking core body temperature.

[02:26:59] So that, I wouldn't necessarily do if I wanted health benefits, longevity benefits. But it is doing something really, really cool, where it constricts blood vessels and then expands them. So that on its own is an incredible thing to do. So a few things that you can do that way is balance sodium, which can depuff, or something like that.

[02:27:27] Again, it can significantly help with lymphatic drainage. So another thing that would balance out puffiness and stuff like that. I'm hypothesizing, because I don't think you have a lot of lymphatic issues. So what I'm assuming is happening is actually that rush of blood looks plump, looks good, looks like there is some tightening.

[02:27:54] That effect is momentarily, but the other effects, which are like lymphatic drainage and things like that, is great. That's one of the things that I highly recommend. I'll even say that about maybe 15 years ago, 20, let's say, two decades ago, there were about a bunch of aesthetic and anti-aging doctors that got their license revoked because they prescribed, for skin health reasons, a heart medication that expanded blood vessels, because you've got more blood into your skin, and with blood become nutrients.

[02:28:35] So getting more blood into your skin is positive. A lot of the benefits of red light therapy, which we mentioned before is release of nitric oxide from your mitochondria and blood vessels expanding.

[02:28:49] Luke: All right, cool. Good to know. Last question for you, sir, and then we can get out of here and go get something to eat. I'm starving. I forgot to eat breakfast this morning, as is often the case. I do pretty good till about, what is it, 6:00? Yeah, it's time for breakfast. Who have been three teachers or teachings that have influenced your life that you'd like to share with us?

[02:29:13] Amitay: I really like The Happiness Hypothesis. The author's name is Haidt. And he also wrote Coddling of the American Mind. He has a new book. He deals a lot with the way that we raise our next generation, Jonathan Haidt. But earlier books that he has, which is called The Happiness Hypothesis, is looking at really celebrated teachers throughout our recorded history, whether it is Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Aristotle, whoever these are, and finds commonalities in their teaching.

[02:30:02] And to me, honestly, it's my favorite book. I love rereading it. So that's number one. Number two is I can name specific people, no one's going to know them, so I'm just going to say, in general, Jiu jitsu, I think Jiu jitsu, which I'm obsessed with. By the way, that is something I prioritize optimal performance. I want to be the best I can be, not longevity, because you get injuries.

[02:30:32] Jiu jitsu is like the best teacher that I've had in my life because you get humbled by people that outside of that circle are not someone you would rank high in the hierarchy, but within those confines on the mat, you will get crushed. And there are a lot of mental games that you are going through as a person on the jujitsu mat. It's body chess, let me call it, I think. It's one of my passions.

[02:31:17] Luke:  It's funny you said that one because I've never done it and likely never will, but it's not one that people are just into. People are into Brazilian jujitsu. They're all in, and it's like their life, or else they're oblivious to it like me. I haven't met anyone that's lukewarm on that particular martial art.

[02:31:38] Amitay: Yeah, for sure. By the way, Adam Wagner from Element Health, CBD company, is one of my--  we don't train together anymore because he moved, but he was one of my favorite training partners for years.

[02:31:55] Luke: Oh, cool. Great guy and a great friend. Yeah. And someone I would not personally choose to tussle with.

[02:32:02] Amitay: Absolutely not. I can tell you from not only experience, but also shared experiences, that's not something you want--

[02:32:08] Luke: He's not particularly a big guy, but when he walks in the room, you're like, he could kick my ass for sure. Just his energy speaks to that. And he's very kind and gentle. You can tell he's not a guy to fuck with.

[02:32:17] Amitay: Yeah. And also his tattoos. He has so many tattoos. You're like, I bet you are--  anyway, a shout out to Adam. So jujitsu is number two. And I think one of the things that I like about the two things that I mentioned is that every time you revisit this teacher, whether it is the happiness hypothesis book or jujitsu, you are a different person experiencing it even by a little bit, so you get something new out of it.

[02:32:50] And the third thing is my wife, Anastasia. She's such a completely different person than I am. Celebrated researcher of liver fibrosis and cancer, biologist, co-founder of Young Goose. And she's such a pragmatic person, which I am not.

[02:33:17] I'm the embodiment of ADHD. And the person that lives in the most amount of integrity I've met. So normally, when I tell a story, people look at her, and like, that's what happened? That's what happened? And everyone's like, oh, well, we can't argue with that. So Anastasia, definitely, is the third one, probably the most important one, but is the third.

[02:33:51] Luke: Beautiful. Thank you. I share that too. My wife would definitely be on my three. Absolutely. Well, hot damn, dude, this was amazing. What a great wealth of information. And as I said, sometimes I'm surprised when I think I'm going to talk about a fairly niche topic.

[02:34:07] I think, man, how am I going to make this interesting? And you made that super easy because you're such a geek with all the information you have, and the products you've created are fantastic. So those listening, again, if you want to check it out, I highly recommend that you do, lukestorey.com/younggoose. And again, the code is LUKE10.

[02:34:23] Thank you for putting so much care into what you produce, man. Especially in the skincare and supplement realm, it's very hard to impress people listening to the show and myself. There's just so much noise out there, and everyone wants to make a buck.

[02:34:40] So when somebody comes along and they're doing something very innovative and with high integrity and efficacy, it's definitely noteworthy. Thank you. Thank you for being the geek you are and going the extra mile.

[02:34:51] Amitay:  Thank you. I would say, if anyone is really an inert, really wants to super dive deep into how many minutes you need to stay in an ice bath and what hour of the day to get the best benefits for your skin, or three hours on vitamin C, or anything like that, we have a podcast called Biohacking Beauty.

[02:35:19] This is for people who are really into it, not necessarily about products by the way, but everything that we talked about today. Just hours spent on that specific topic. So if anyone's interested--

[02:35:36] Luke:  I'm glad you mentioned that because it was in my notes, but I didn't scroll down far enough, and I wanted to give you a podcast to plug. I haven't listened to it yet, but I certainly will. And there's going to be a lot of people listening, I'm sure, that we'll enjoy it, because I'm sure a demographic of our listenership likes to get into the weeds. So thank you, sir. Thanks for coming out.

[02:35:53] Amitay: Thank you.