The BIGGEST Causes of Fast-Aging Skin (How to Reverse Aging)

Hey everyone, welcome to the Dr. Josh Axe Show, where each and every week we dive deep into the science and principles behind how to grow in body, mind, and spirit, and take your health and your life to the next level.

What if I told you that your skincare routine isn't just about creams and serums, but about the food you eat, your stress levels, and even biohacking, like the light you have on your skin, and even your gut health?

Well, today I'm going to be uncovering the real causes of skin aging at the cellular and mitochondrial level, and share natural ways to slow the process, improve skin elasticity and rejuvenate your skin from the inside out.

And stay tuned because at the end I'm going to bring on an expert who's going to share with you all about one specific peptide that allows you to reduce wrinkles and reverse skin aging. Though before I dive in, make sure to subscribe to the channel and sign up for my weekly wellness newsletter at the link in the show notes.

And also remember that skin is a reflection of what's going on inside your body. So whether you are male or female, whether you're 18 years old or 80 years old, we want to take care of our skin because again, it's a reflection of what's going on internally. And typically, if you look younger on the outside, you're younger on the inside. You have less disease, you're going to live longer.

And so taking care of our skin isn't just about vanity, it's about longevity, and it's about us living our best life possible. And so I want to walk you through 4 of the biggest causes of aging externally, but also things that can start to age you internally. So number one is environmental factors like UV radiation and even air pollution, and up to 80% of visible skin aging is due to sun damage.

Now just pause, think about that. Up to 80% of your visible skin damage is due to sun damage. And UV rays cause direct damage, mutations of your DNA strands, and indirect damage via free radical formation, increasing the risk of skin aging and cancer. In fact, one of the top killers in when it comes to cancer is melanoma that then can spread throughout your body.

And UV exposure also speeds up something called telomere damage. And your telomeres protect your chromosomes, keeping your body from having something called cell division, which is really tied to cancer.

Now, I do want to mention, this is incredibly important, but you also do want to get vitamin D. Without sun hitting your skin directly, you're not getting vitamin D. And so I see some of the skin health people out there saying, don't get any sun. And when you're outside, make sure to lather yourself up with sunscreen.

And while I do think that there's a time and a place for zinc oxide and natural sunscreens, I also want to say I do think we need vitamin D. And I get— I see some other people, they're like, well, just, you know, never wear sunscreen. Only, you know, just get as much sun as possible and that's the best thing. Listen, I think common sense says, and ancient wisdom says, it's somewhere in between.

Okay? In fact, even the Bible, there are descriptions in the Song of Solomon where Solomon is talking about not getting too much sun because it ages your skin. So there's biblical wisdom around this, there's ancient Egyptian wisdom around this, there's modern-day science showing do not get too much sun on your skin.

But also we know we need to get some sun, it's natural for our own body's hormone production, for vitamin D, which is important for the immune system, for skin health, for bone health, for immunity. So you want to find a good balance.

So here is likely the balance is, You know, it only takes 20 minutes of sunshine a day typically to get your optimal levels of vitamin D. So I think for most people, you do want to get a little sun on your skin. You may want to get a few minutes on your face now, but then you do want to do things to protect your skin from getting too much sun.

And I do think there's a difference between your face and your body, right? So I think for a lot of women who want to optimize the anti-aging of their face, I do think getting a few minutes still on your face is ideal. But then wearing a hat, putting on sunscreen, sunglasses, there's things to protect your skin, there's wisdom there, and then maybe you get a little bit more in your body.

So again, I do think it's somewhere in between to where you do want to get a little bit, but you don't want to get a lot when it comes to anti-aging for your skin. And I also want to mention there are lots of foods that naturally protect your skin to where you can get some sun on your face and it's not going to age your skin.

So there are foods rich in vitamin C, foods rich in anthocyanins and bioflavonoids and certain types of antioxidants which reduce free radical damage and even darken your skin a little bit, which we'll get into here at the end. And so again, remember, if you want to anti-age your skin, there are foods that will keep that— will protect your skin from some of that UV radiation.

The other big thing I do want to mention is toxins and chemicals in the air increase oxidative stress and inflammation. This can lead to wrinkles and sagging of your skin. And also putting chemicals on your skin— if you're using makeup and skincare that has, uh, toxins in them like parabens and you know, you know, phthalates and all these chemicals, that's also going to age your skin.

And so you do want to use skincare that's as natural as possible. Now, the second big thing that will cause your skin to age are lifestyle causes: stress, poor sleep, and diet. These really cause your skin and your body to age more quickly. Stress raises cortisol, which actually— think about this— when cortisol goes up, your body starts— it starts breaking down collagen.

So imagine you've got this beautiful looking skin and then you get really stressed out. Your and what cortisol does, imagine it's like a fire. It starts, it's like, it's like, you know, a spark that starts a fire. Your collagen in your body immediately starts just breaking down and crumbling. Okay. Due to inflammation. So emotional stress is one of the things that age you the fastest.

I mean, I remember seeing this growing up where they showed a picture of a president. I'm trying to remember which president it was. It might've been Bill Clinton, um, or, or George Bush, but they showed them when they started their presidency versus when they ended. And you would have thought they aged 20 years, not 4 years or 8 years.

And so we see this with a lot of people, that emotional stress causes you to age far more quickly. We also see chronic stress causes skin flare-ups with psoriasis, dermatitis, rosacea, acne, also hair loss.

You know, I've taken care of thousands and thousands of women in my time, and a lot of what— every time I've had a woman who has been losing a lot of hair or getting major, major thinning of their hair, it's been due to stress. Now, whether they already had hypothyroidism or other conditions, um, that can contribute as well.

But overall, there's no doubt that emotional stress and that cortisol being raised and stress hormones causes you to age much more quickly. And another big one here is lack of sleep. I mean, think about if you, if you look at somebody and they haven't slept well for 3 days, right, you can look at them and they actually physically get, get older.

So I would say of every single thing I am mentioning here, The single biggest factor that will cause you to age more quickly is lack of sleep, and the second biggest one is stress, and the third is UV radiation. Okay, if I had to give mine in ranking order, and the fourth is going to be probably diet. Now, diet is really big long term, and so is UV radiation for your skin.

But in the short term, what really causes you to age more quickly is stress and poor sleep. And one study that was published in the Skin Research and Technology Journal found that skin hydration was significantly reduced after 1 day of sleep deprivation, and it continued to decrease.

So somebody's skin gloss, so how glowing their skin was, their skin elasticity and wrinkles were significantly aggravated after 1 single day of sleep deprivation. So if you want to anti-age your skin, getting that 8 hours of quality, especially deep sleep, that's the key. If you wear an Oura Ring like I do, which by the way, this is one of the single greatest Tracking technologies in the world.

In fact, most of the functional medicine doctors I know, the MDs, the DCs, the osteopaths, the integrative medical doctors, almost all of them wear an Oura Ring because it tracks your sleep. It tracks something called HRV, and it tracks your deep sleep.

And if you can really pay attention to what's your total sleep, what's your deep sleep, and what's your HRV, and you can work on building and growing those over time, They are some of the most important markers for longevity, for anti-aging, for just general health out there today. And so if you don't have an Oura Ring, I'd encourage you, by the way, I'm not being paid for any of this.

It's just a matter of like, this is my favorite piece of technology I've ever had is an Oura Ring. In fact, Chelsea got me a new one for Christmas. I, I upgraded to the, to the level 4. That was my, my, you know, big Christmas request this year for an Oura Ring. But again, take— Now, now, HRV stands for heart rate variability. This shows how rested you are over maybe a week period of time.

And where deep sleep shows, okay, how well you slept last night. 'Cause deep sleep is when your organs and your skin are repairing and regenerating the most. That's when your deep, deep healing is happening. Like last night, this is more than average for me. I got 2 hours of deep sleep, so I know I really slept well. My body regenerated. I feel great.

And so aiming for as much deep sleep and total sleep as possible and, and having a higher HRV. And HRV is tied to stress and sleep. It's tying those 2 together to see how well your stress and sleep are, and even can be tied to diet and other things as well.

But those are some things you want to consider when it comes to anti-aging, looking younger, actually physically being younger, is better sleep, less stress, and the next thing here is diet. Here are a few things that cause you to age. By the way, there is something that's related to oxidative stress.

Okay.

A scientific term, it's called AGEs. And this is really tied to something called glycation. And this is the breaking down of collagen, which leads to the sagging of your skin. And sugar is the number one thing that causes sagging of your skin. Here's another thing I love. So look at your HRV if you have an Oura Ring especially.

Here's the other big thing though, getting a continuous blood glucose monitor to see where your insulin is. You put that on the back of your arm, just do that for a few weeks. You will be able to see where your insulin And that's really related to sugar. So you'll see which foods affect you the most.

So if you really want to transform your health and you want to know the best thing— I get— have people ask about blood work all the time. Listen, I think blood work is great, but my favorite tests to see how healthy someone is is looking at an Oura Ring and looking at a continuous blood glucose monitor from a brand like, let's say, Levels.

Now there's several other good brands, but you can look at that. If you're monitoring your HRV and your sleep and then also your blood glucose at the same time, you've got some really amazing markers that are in real time 24/7 that can tell you how your body's healing and what you're doing. But sugar is the single greatest thing that will cause you to age more quickly dietarily.

And then after that, it's grains that are refined that break down into sugar. So really it's all about sugar. And so we know an unhealthy diet will cause these glycation products, which are called inflammaging, which is inflammation that causes your skin and your internal organs to age more quickly, which will also damage your skin. Um, and then another big thing dietarily is collagen loss.

Collagen is the most abundant protein in your body, especially in the skin. In fact, did you know that nearly 90% of your skin is made of collagen? So the single greatest thing you can do to protect your skin is make sure it is producing and has plenty of collagen as a resource.

And after the age of 25 years old, collagen production declines by 1% per year, according to the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology. So you want to do everything you can to protect your skin from aging. And so one way to do that is by getting more collagen in your diet. That's why bone broth is one of the most healing foods of all time.

So drinking more bone broth, taking a collagen peptide supplement, these are great ways to protect your skin. And so I would recommend about 20 to 30 grams of collagen a day for most people. That could be a bone broth protein, could be a stem cell protein, could be a collagen product.

But doing those along with drinking bone broth and eating skin of fish, skin of chicken is very healing for your skin. And outside of that, there's other foods I'm going to get into in just a moment. I also do want to mention, as we're talking about this, um, you know, here's another big thing.

And I know, listen, the, the watchers of the show here and listeners of the podcast, less than 1% of you do this, but we all know smoking and tobacco absolutely destroys the skin, whether it's smoking marijuana or smoking tobacco. It causes your skin to age more quickly. So smoking Creates free radicals. Don't do it.

I don't need to, I don't need to, you know, linger here anymore because my listeners of the show, you guys are so educated, you rarely would ever do this. But again, the study— have you ever seen anybody who's been a smoker, uh, once they reach 50 or 60? I mean, it is the single biggest thing that will cause somebody to look older.

In fact, have you ever seen anybody in their late 30s and they look like they're in their 60s because they were a chronic smoker? I mean, so smoking, which is a form of pollution, this is why air pollution is so bad as well. That's why you wanna live in a place where you've got a lot of fresh air or be filtering out your air.

This is why things like mold even, but those internal toxins that affect your lungs in Chinese medicine, it affects your lung qi. When your body doesn't have oxygen, it can't repair and heal.

You know, when I had my spinal infection and I almost died a few years ago and I didn't walk for a year, This one of the single biggest treatment I did along with stem cell therapy was getting in a hyperbaric chamber. I got in a hard chamber, and what it does, it drives oxygen deep into your cells and tissues, which is— which helps you to age more slowly.

So if you want to do an amazing anti-aging therapy, get in a hyperbaric chamber. But, but again, my point there is with hyperbaric chambers or certain forms of exercise cause you to age more slowly. Well, smoking does the exact opposite. It weakens your lung qi. Which causes you to age much, much more quickly. Again, sometimes 20 years faster.

Whereas hyperbaric chamber or exercising without oxygen or exercising at altitude or just generally building up your body's what's called your VO2 max, where you can take really deep breaths and have strong lungs and lung qi, that's one— those are some of the greatest things you could do for anti-aging. Outside of that, I want to mention a few other things for collagen that help heal your body.

And, and I mentioned this thing earlier, this glycation. It actually— it's, it's actually an acronym. It's called AGEs. It stands for advanced glycation end products. This happens when you have a high-sugar diet, and it contributes to the breakdown of collagen. In addition to getting collagen, you also want to make sure you have plenty of zinc, copper, and vitamin C, okay?

And certain B vitamins like biotin. These nutrients slow aging, protect the skin, protect the gut microbiome, and support the immune system, which reduces the inflammaging related to these advanced glycation end products.

So remember, if you want to anti-age your skin, here's what you need: collagen, zinc, copper, vitamin C, biotin, and then lots and lots of antioxidants from fruits, especially pomegranates, figs, and berries, certain types of vegetables like carrots and spinach, D, and then a lot of vitamin A that you'd get from things like liver and organ meats.

These are what's going to cause your skin to age the most slowly. I also want to mention, in part of keeping your skin hydrated— this is also key— the more hydrated your skin, the slower it will age. You want to hydrate it with electrolytes and H2O. You also want to hydrate your skin with healthy fats and oils.

So from a hydration standpoint, celery, coconut water, watermelon, and just general fruits, whether it be apples and pears or berries or figs. These are going to help your skin age more slowly. And then healthy fatty acids from things like extra virgin olive oil is probably number one.

It also contains a polyphenol, a unique polyphenol, which, like, like in hydroxytyrosol, a compound that causes your skin to age more slowly. Think about a lot of the people you'd see, these Mediterranean, these beautiful bronze skin.

A lot of them also consume— and it's part of a Mediterranean diet— very high levels of extra virgin olive oil and very high levels of wild-caught fish, which are high in omega-3 fatty acids. So the top fats you could consume for anti-aging your skin are EPA and DHA from fatty fish. That's number one. Number 2 is going to be extra virgin olive oil.

And then after that, it's probably going to be things like avocado, I would say certain nuts and seeds, probably walnuts would be at the top of that list, flaxseeds and hemp seeds. And then we're going to also look at things like coconut. These are— and then tallow, doing actually a little bit of animal fat like tallow or duck fat are going to be very, very good for your skin.

By the way, duck fat is probably the best, or eating duck. In Chinese medicine, it's known as a yin-producing food, very hydrating for your skin and organs.

And if women are going through menopause, And their skin is starting to dry out, getting more healthy fats from things like avocados, but also duck is actually a really unique set sort of protein that a lot of people don't get, or fats that actually really help hydrate the skin and boost something called yin in the body.

And if you are going through menopause and your skin is starting to be affected, look up something in Chinese medicine. It's called yin, yin-producing foods, and this will help your skin to age more slowly. Some of the top foods would be duck. Sweet potatoes or yams are very high on the list.

Flaxseeds and flax oil, wild-caught fish like salmon, avocado, extra virgin olive oil, and yogurt and coconut milk and products. Those are things going to be very, very hydrating to your skin and help your skin age more slowly.

Now, the last thing I want to talk about in terms of what is causing your skin to age more quickly is cellular senescence, which is also tied to, as the last section was, on inflammaging. And over time, environmental exposure to things that damage your DNA causes your body and your skin and your— actually, your cells internally to age more quickly. It accelerates aging.

And senescent cells are also called zombie cells. And these are cells that have basically replicated over and over, let's say 50 times, to where they get to the point where they can't replicate anymore. So now, in your body, they're non-functioning. So imagine your body is acting like a city, okay? There are cars driving, there are bikes, there are people moving.

Well, senescent cells are like a car that's broke down in the middle of a road, okay? And then it just sits there. And so other cars can't get where they should. And also over time, maybe the wheel falls off, that gets into an area, maybe even there's toxins that are leaking from the car, you know, gasoline and oil onto the ground. That's what a senescent cell is in your body.

It is something that just sits there creating toxins, these inflammatory chemicals that accelerate aging of the other cells that are close by it. Or imagine you have somebody in your life that's really toxic. Okay, have you ever been in a toxic relationship with a friend or a family member or even a loved one? And that person is just so toxic, it's literally causing you to age.

They're stressing you out. They're— that's what these senescent zombie cells are. They make the other cells that might even be healthy next to them age more quickly, they stress them out, they're toxic to them. That's what a senescent cell is, and they call it a zombie cell. Here's the result of it: more wrinkles, loss of skin elasticity, thinning skin, thinning hair.

It causes you to age more quickly, and they're inflammatory, just like an inflammatory person is. They're inflammatory to your skin and your gut, causing collagen breakdown and skin damage. So some of the biggest causes of cellular senescence are oxidative stress, air pollution, sugar, chronic stress, and poor sleep.

Okay, it's a lot of the things we talked about, but these will cause cellular senescence. And it also greatly contributes to medical conditions like Lyme disease, long COVID, chronic infections, and fatigue are a big part. And cancer, major driver of cancer are these senescent cells. So you want to do everything you can to stop cellular senescence.

And there are key compounds that help do that, but especially antioxidant-rich foods. One of my favorites is pomegranate. It contains a compound called ellagic acid. And if you also have a healthy gut microbiome, it turns into something called urolithin A or urolithin A through E, which also slows that aging process.

So you want to do everything you can to combat this cellular senescence the right way and create something in your body called autophagy.

Now, autophagy.

Helps clear up senescent cells and helps recycle new and healthy cells. And you can do that through doing fasting or restricted eating. Here's the thing though, I'm not a fan of doing really aggressive fasting. I recommend just basically trying to close your eating window into about 10 hours. So you could eat at 8:00 AM, eat again at noon, eat again at early dinner at 5:00, okay?

A 10-hour, at least a 12-hour eating window to where you're fasting for 12 hours a day. I'm not recommending anything aggressive like a 6 or 4-hour window especially. But I think if you could do that more, that 10-11 hour window, that's optimal for anti-aging. And I also want to talk about some of the most important nutrients and cover those again that we talked about.

Remember, you want to get collagen, you want zinc, copper, selenium is an antioxidant that's very important also for thyroid function, anti-aging, iron, fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin A, D, and E, antioxidants that we've talked about, and omega-3 fatty acids. These are some of the most important for slowing the aging process.

And one in particular we talked about is vitamin C. Remember, most foods function as a mechanism to where they need each other in order to help you age more quickly.

So while I love supplements, if you're going to buy a supplement, it should be a food-based supplement to where it has not only an extract of an isolated calcium, it should have all the other nutrients in it like magnesium and boron and phosphorus and K2. And D, right?

So, so if you're taking an antioxidant supplement, rather than taking a resveratrol, you're much better off taking a superfood powder that has the full food, like let's say blueberries and acai and maca berry and pomegranate, and those actual foods in there. So if you want to take a longevity superfood supplement, don't just take the extract, take the entire food. You're much better off for it.

You know, green tea extract is another amazing one. I mean, Japan is the longest lifespan of any country. You know the number one herb they consume in all of Japan? Green tea. Whether it be matcha or sencha, some form of a high-quality green tea.

And there's a medical study out— actually, there's not one, there's like 50— that show that taking green tea or green tea extract reduces the aging of your skin, improves skin hydration, actually protects your skin against UV radiation. Now, some of the other things we talked about— omega-3 fatty acids, especially eating wild-caught fish like salmon, sardines, trout, halibut, mackerel.

Also walnuts, chia seeds, flaxseeds, and cod liver oil. By the way, I love the classic, just cod liver oil. There's a lot of fish oil supplements out there and a lot of them are great, but if you want to just go with the surest bet, take a very, very high-quality pristine cod liver oil. By the way, cod liver oil also has vitamin A and vitamin D in it along with the omegas that slow aging.

It's more of a food-based, typically less processed form of fish oil. And of course, we talked about a lot of the fats you want. I would really pay particular attention to, along with the wild-caught fish, Extra virgin olive oil should be your biggest go-to. It's even better than avocado oil. It's better than coconut oil. It's better than tallow when it comes to anti-aging of your skin.

Olive oil is the single best oil along with those omega-3 fatty acids. And listen, I do like whole avocados. I do like whole nuts like walnuts and, and, um, and some of those other seeds as well, like black sesame has some anti-aging benefits, um, there as we've talked about. And then again, we've talked about bone broth, right?

Try— just use more bone broth in your recipes if you're doing chicken or soups. Buy chicken broth, it's probably the single best out there. And bone broth is really unique in it contains proline and glycine, or proline, which is really crucial for that skin repair, but also glycine, which improves your sleep and liver detoxification. So loads and loads of benefits.

Listen, every single day you should either drink bone broth or have a collagen supplement or some sort of protein that has collagen, like a bone broth protein or stem cell protein. So you want to make sure that you are getting plenty of collagen in your diet every single day.

And the other thing I want to mention here in terms of— I want to talk to you about the organ system that is most closely connected to your skin health and shows you what's going on internally, and that is your gut health, the gut microbiome. There's actually something called the gut-skin or the gut-skin axis. And probiotics have the biggest impact on the health of your skin.

My favorite probiotics are spore-based probiotics known as soil-based organisms like Bacillus subtilis. Specifically look for one called AB22. That soil-based probiotics in medical studies reduces skin inflammation, also helps detoxify your body of glyphosate. And, um, supports anti-aging.

So again, soil-based organisms that you're going to find, especially in doing very high dose— I would look for a probiotic that has very high levels, at least 100 billion if not 1 trillion probiotics. Higher doses if you know you also have gut issues like IBD, that's going to be the most healing and regenerative. Or autoimmune disease, you also want to do very high doses.

And then after that, there is a yeast called Saccharomyces boulardii, and in medical studies, the most effective bacteria against acne and skin issues is Saccharomyces boulardii. Okay, that is a unique probiotic that was discovered about 100 years ago. And then also Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium.

But again, I would say the spore-based probiotics and the Saccharomyces are the most healing for the gut. Now I want to talk about Ayurveda. That, as a medical practice, paid very, very close attention to the health of the skin, okay? And there are 3 doshas you want to keep balanced in Ayurveda called Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. And this is basically like, imagine a personality profile.

Now Chinese medicine has their version called the 5 elements, which is kind of like the Big 5 that you're going to see in psychology today. Or, you know, there's Enneagram, which has 9 types. Well, in Ayurveda, they broke it down into 3 different types of personalities and body types. And this is really connected to how to keep your skin healthy.

And so different body types have different skin issues, like Vata imbalances are dryness and wrinkles. Pitta, and by the way, I'm a Vata, okay, more lean. I'm a Vata meets Pitta. So Vata are more lanky, lean, skinny people naturally, harder time putting on body weight. That's Vata. So my issue is more I need to try and keep my body hydrated.

Pitta is connected to inflammation and too much heat in the body and sensitivity. So what you need to do, if you're more of a linebacker body type, or you're kind of in the middle, you can put on weight easily but you can also lose it easily, you kind of go back and forth a lot, you're susceptible to inflammation. So you want to do your absolute best to keep inflammation down.

And so that's going to be a lot of anti-inflammatory foods like fruits. It could be figs, pineapple, pomegranate, kiwi, you know, a lot of those omega-3s, a lot of cooling foods like cucumber and celery and yogurt, you know, keeping that body cool is that body type. And then kapha, this is imbalances lead to result in dull and oily skin, okay?

This is people that, you know, you have a harder time losing weight, you tend to be more round, sometimes a little bit bigger boned, and you put on weight more easily. Well, for that type, you need to really make sure that you can do everything you can to not get your skin too oily and inflamed. And so really a lot of drying foods, like bitter foods.

It could be arugula, can be artichoke, it can be green leafy vegetables, dandelion. Making sure your body is getting rid of some of the excess oil can be really important as well there. But again, it's a lot of vegetables, a lot of bitter foods, a lot of lean meat. Things like that are going to help your body type the most, and making sure your insulin is balanced is really big there.

In Chinese medicine, the most healing herbs for the skin are a combination of ashwagandha, shatavari, and triphala, which is an herb blend, or amla berry. Okay, those have anti-aging and antioxidant properties. They also support collagen production. And by the way, amla berry is maybe the most vitamin C-rich food on the planet.

So ashwagandha lowers cortisol and boosts something called kidney qi and yang. Shatavari, kidney qi and yin. And then amla berry really supports that vitamin C, which is going to work with collagen, especially if you're drinking bone broth, to help your skin anti-age more quickly.

And then in Ayurveda, the top skin healing spices and oils are— and especially if you have inflammation— turmeric is great for if you've got, you know, you have skin inflammation, there's redness, there's acne, turmeric is great. Saffron, also if you know you're stressed, that brightens and causes glowing skin and also helps you sleep better. And then neem is an anti— natural antibiotic.

If you know you've also got infections in your body, neem helps detoxify and clear out bad bacteria and yeast, which is also powerful for anti-aging your skin as well. And then cooling foods that I mentioned earlier, cucumber, celery, aloe vera, and coconut. Help reduce heat in the body, and that can contribute to inflammation and dryness.

Also things that can nourish your body internally, ghee, sesame oil are also good. And then herbs for anti-aging, tulsi and licorice were frequently used in Ayurvedic medicine as well. And then another big thing in Ayurveda was stress, right? Yoga, certain types of meditation, certain types of deep breathing were used in Ayurvedic medicine to slow and prevent aging.

Now, there's also other forms of this in other practices. We know in Chinese medicine they did qigong, which was similar, and tai chi, different types of movements and deep breathing.

We know in Christian practices, in ancient Judeo-Christian practices, humming while, while, um, while, while meditating, also meditation, also prayer, also spending time worshiping God with your hands up, these these are all ways of reducing stress to help your body heal more quickly and to reduce aging of your body.

I do want to mention, as I was talking about Chinese medicine, there are a few foods that are really known to support hydration and anti-aging of the skin. The first one is goji berries. Goji berries, also known as lyceum or wolfberry, brings moisture to the skin. It's that, it's that beautiful reddish-orange color which is very building of the blood.

So goji berries, what I do is my wife Chelsea and I both put a tablespoon of goji berry powder in our morning breakfast smoothie or do a superfruit or a longevity superfruit powder that has those in it every single morning. So goji berry is very good and used for this in Chinese medicine. A mushroom called snow fungus or tremella was known to actually boost hyaluronic acid in the body.

So that's used in Chinese medicine. Pears, especially Asian pear, radishes are known to be good for this as well. But a lot of berries, a lot of pomegranate, a lot of goji berry, and mushrooms like that tremella are very good according to Chinese medicine for supporting the skin. And then herbs that support the adrenals are very important. Rehmannia in particular is very good.

And of course, in Chinese medicine, they recommended drinking a lot of bone broth. I mean, bone broth for most of your meals. With things like, you know, carrots and celery and sweet potato and those sort of things. Ginger herbal tea to detox, to lower inflammation, was also recommended to slow the aging of your body.

And herbs in Chinese medicine— ginseng was recommended for men for anti-aging, and then black cohosh and dong quai and wild yam for women for slowing that aging process as well. One other berry I do want to mention that was used in Chinese medicine for anti-aging up there with goji berry was schisandra berry. Schisandra berry has been shown to detoxify the liver.

It's also been shown to cause the skin to age more slowly. So if you're looking about those top berries in Chinese medicine, it's going to be goji berries and schisandra, both incredibly powerful for slowing the aging process. And then I want to move into a little bit of the biohacking here. You know, I mentioned the sun earlier. The sun is the, is is an anti-ager if you don't get too much of it.

Okay, a little bit a day. It's like the Bible talks about with honey— get a little bit but not too much. Okay, that's the wisdom there with the sun. Well, red light therapy is a way of harnessing some of those rays from the sun without getting the ones that will damage your skin. So doing about 10 to 20 minutes daily of a red light panel directly on your skin is a great way to anti-age.

Now I'll do this— I have an infrared sauna by Sunlight, and I'll use that, and that'll help my skin. I'll also use those infrared light panels I actually have one in the back corner here if you're watching here online. That's a Sunlighten infrared light panel. And so my wife and I will do this regularly. It's best to do it when the sun's coming up and when it's going down.

Any time of day is fine, but I'll tend to do it before bed is sort of when I tend to do that red light therapy. And then again, sauna sessions, as I mentioned, are also great, especially if you get an infrared sauna. You're getting both benefits there at the same time. And then of course, exercise. If you want to support your skin, you want more oxygen. Again, exercise will do that.

Now, you also don't want to overdo it. If you're doing long-distance cardio, like long-distance triathlons, cycling for more than 1 hour, I remember reading this study in college when I was studying physiology. I think it's around a 40-minute mark is when you really, it starts aging you, okay?

So if you're doing cardio intensely more than 45 minutes-ish, that's when it tends to start aging your body more. And it's even better if during that cardio it's not the same the whole time, if you're going up and down, Yeah. Easy and hard, or working on your VO2 max. So I would say if you want to optimize anti-aging, you don't want to do more than 1 hour of cardio at a time.

Okay, for the most part, you're going to start aging yourself doing— if you're running, training for marathons or those sort of things. But you can go and do ideally like 20 minutes of some HIIT training or VO2 max training or just even steady-state cardio. But you tend not to want to go over— I'd kind of throw out there that 45-minute mark. Regularly, kind of consistently all the time.

Now listen, if once a week or once a month you go for a 2-hour bike ride, that's okay. But it's when you're doing that consistently with that training, it is aging you more quickly. So this is where you want to do a combination of weight training to build strength, doing things for your balance to support stability, and then doing things to support your stamina like VO2 max training.

What that might look like is going, you know, really hard for 1 minute and easy for a minute. Doing those sort of intervals are ideal. And I do want to mention, if you're VO2 max training, it's probably going more like hard for 2 to 3 minutes and then taking maybe half that amount of time off or equal amount of time, something like that.

For that, it's a little— it's gonna be longer than 1 minute, but, but that's— but 1 minute is good too. But basically, it's, you know, really training your lungs to be able to take in a lot of oxygen. And then I do want to talk about peptides for a minute. There's one peptide in particular.

If you are familiar with peptide therapy, now you could do this subcutaneously, like with an insulin shot in your adipose, your fat cells, and it's absorbed in the highest levels in that way. There's nasal sprays and you can also do this internally in a capsule. But there is a peptide that's probably the most healing for your skin of all peptides. It's called GHK-Cu.

It is a peptide that supports copper absorption and utilization in your body. And there was a study done on this peptide, a 12-week study, assessing collagen production in women, and they did this as a topical application on the thigh skin.

Their findings were 70% of participants showed improved collagen production with GHK-Cu peptide, compared to 50% improvement was observed with the vitamin C cream and 40% with the retinoic acid cream. So you're seeing here, this peptide was more powerful than vitamin C, was more powerful than other forms of antioxidant creams when it came to anti-aging of the skin.

And so I think that this is a really good option, is looking at peptides like GHK-Cu. Also, BPC-157 is also going to be great for the skin as well. But those are some skin peptides, and there are other peptides that are incredibly powerful at healing the skin.

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Now, I wanted to bring on somebody as we were talking about skin and I wanted to close here with peptides. I wanted to find someone that was an expert in peptides for skin health.

And there is a brand called OneSkin that I'm actually going to bring on, and they wanted to actually even sponsor this episode so they can give you a discount at the end here if you are interested in learning more about their product.

But OneSkin is what's called an OS-01 peptide, and it is the first ingredient scientifically proven to reduce skin's biological age by targeting and reducing senescent cells. Remember we talked about that earlier, these senescent cells or zombie cells that speed up the aging of the skin. And these senescent cells, what they do is they basically signal the spreading of aging of your skin.

And this product reduces inflammation, shuts down pro-aging factors that cause that skin breakdown and deterioration. And also this peptide supports collagen production, keratin, and hyaluronic acid production, which improves your skin firmness, your elasticity, your hydration.

And in one 12-week study with this peptide, people saw a visible, noticeable difference in reducing wrinkles, strengthening their skin barrier, and improving their skin texture. And some noticed it much faster than that 12-week period of time.

And again, and here's something that this peptide does, this unique new peptide: it reduces the spread of senescent cells, increases collagen production, and basically makes your skin look younger and more healthy. All right, now I'm going to bring on the longevity scientist and founder of OneSkin.

Her name is Carolina Ruiz-Oliviera, and she studied stem cell biology and tissue engineering and has a doctorate in immunology. Okay, so I brought on literally the world's leading expert in peptides health for skin because peptides are a growing area of longevity medicine. And if you want to do the absolute most impactful things for your skin, I want to bring on the best in the world.

And so, Carolina, Welcome to the show. Well, Caroline, I'm incredibly excited to talk about peptides today in skincare because we know that peptides are the future of functional and cellular medicine. This is something, you know, I've used peptides myself to help me heal internally.

I had a spinal infection, didn't walk for a year, needed to regenerate my spine, and I used TB-500 and BPC-157 and another one sometimes used for skin, GHK-CU. And I know that these peptides have an incredibly powerful benefit on helping regeneration and longevity And you've tapped into an incredible peptide that's incredible for skin health.

And so I'd love for you to— and by the way, I love your background. I mean, you know, you've got a, you know, you've got a doctorate in immunology. You've really studied peptides and how it can help our body heal. And I know there's a lot of women who want to— wanting to look younger and actually physically be younger.

So walk us through how you discovered this peptide and some of what it's able to do for helping anti-aging and longevity of the skin.

Yeah, um, so OneSkin actually started as a research company based on our expertise of growing skins in the lab. We started by testing products that were in the market, anti-aging products, to measure if they could actually reverse the age of the skin. And what, what we found was really interesting and shocking at the same time.

Some of these products didn't work, didn't reverse the age of the skin at the cellular level, but a lot of them were actually causing damage and harming the skin because they had a lot of toxic ingredients. So at that point, we had a very unique vantage point.

We knew that the science of aging and longevity has evolved so much in the past, like 10, 15 years, and all of these products that were in the market trying to reverse the age of the skin were missing the mark. They were not addressing aging itself. They were addressing the symptoms of aging, mainly the fine lines and wrinkles, but only at the surface level.

And when we studied about aging and we understood, like, the main drivers that were causing aging at the cellular level, we saw that this accumulation of old cells, primarily called senescent or zombie cells, was one of the main drivers of aging, not only in our skin but in our whole body.

And so we decided to search for new molecules, more specifically peptides, that would be able to target specifically those senescent cells and reduce their accumulation in the skin. And when we do that, what happens is that if you have fewer of those aging cells, You can allow the healthy and young skin cells to replicate. They produce more collagen again.

So, basically, they rejuvenate the skin from within, not only on the surface level. And so, your skin not only looks younger but behaves like younger skin. It's functional, more resilient, and healthier skin.

I love it. And, I love that you are getting into the research here. And, I'm, I'm actually writing a book right now on the power of longevity and talking about cellular senescence because it's such an important thing for us to slow the aging process, even in certain cases reverse that aging process with some people.

And people will notice when they start changing their diet, when they start using peptides topically as you're sharing, that they will look younger. I mean, it really is amazing there, um, when we're talking about this. I mean, talk to me a little bit more about, just for everybody listening here, What is cellular senescence exactly, and how does this peptide start to reverse and fight senescence?

So basically, senescent cells are old cells, cells that have accumulated a lot of damage, and eventually they stop, like, dividing, they stop functioning well, but they stick around and they secrete inflammatory molecules that induce the cells around to become senescent as well.

So the best analogy that we have is compare the senescent cells to a rotten apple in bunch of good apples, that senescent cells is spoiling the healthy cells. And then eventually you have a whole bunch of rotten apples, or, you know, aging cells in your skin that do not produce collagen, that cannot support your skin barrier.

And so if we can remove that bad apple, or if we can prevent the formation of those bad apples, we can basically maintain the healthy cells in the skin And that's how our peptide works. So the peptide works in 2 main ways. So for the cells that are still what we call like early senescent state, they have a little bit of damage but not too much that they are not secreting too much inflammation.

Our peptide can increase DNA repair capacity. So that cell will not evolve to a late senescent state when the cell is very detrimental to the tissue. Tissue. So basically blocking the cell from becoming super damaged and maintaining that cell in a, you know, still functional state.

For the cells that are already very damaged and are secreting a lot of inflammation that's really causing damage to the tissue, our peptide is able to shut down the pathways that are secreting inflammation. Because the cell itself doesn't cause harm. Like, what causes harm is the secretion inflammatory markers or signals that the cells secrete.

But if we can turn this down, if the cell is not secreting inflammation, then it's not gonna contaminate or spoil the good cells around. So by doing this, the peptide— what we see in the skin is that we are, by lowering the levels of inflammation overall, we can allow the healthy skin cells to replicate again There is an increase of collagen. There is an increase of hyaluronic acid.

We see a decrease in genes associated with aging. And then in the end, we see a thicker skin epidermal layer, which leads to a stronger skin barrier. So basically, again, by reducing those aging cells, we are able to restore this skin function and structure.

You know, I think you gave such a great great metaphor for senescent cells. You know, my wife and I experience this a lot. We love— we eat a lot of berries, especially blackberries and raspberries, and they are the most prone to getting mold. And anyway, everyone's experienced this if they've ever bought berries.

You know, you go to Whole Foods or your local health food store, you bring back the berries, and that same day or the next day, one has mold or they all have mold. And it's that same thing happens in your body. If you have these senescent cells, they spread and damage other cells. So doing everything you we can to stop them is really what you want to focus on.

And that's what I love about this peptide, this OS-01 from OneSkin, is that it actually helps stop that cellular senescence that's causing your skin to age. Now, one question I do have is oftentimes in the skincare world, women buy different products based on their unique skin, right? So some people are more prone to oil, some dryness, some acne.

How does this peptide influence or impact these different types of skin that many women struggle with today?

Yeah, so basically the way that we formulated this peptide, or the whole formula of the OS-1 Face Topical Supplement, it's suitable for all skincare type— all skin types, because the formula is a moisturizer that is not too heavy. So, it can be good for oily and acne-prone skin. We also— the other ingredients in this moisturizer are non-comedogenic.

Neck.

Um, and then because the peptide and the formula is gentle, it's not gonna cause like dryness, uh, actually will help with hydration. And so we tried to develop a formula that would work for everyone because we would see that everyone would need this peptide. So what would be the most, uh, the efficient delivery method that we could develop And so that's how this, you know, formula came out.

And it works for people that are younger in their 30s, people that are older in their 50s, 60s, for men and for women. And for men, it's very simple because again, it's kind of one step and you are basically done. And so we see a lot of men in our community that stick to it because it's not super complicated. And it not— it doesn't make your skin greasy.

So it's simple, efficient, and, um, and gentle.

Yeah. Now again, I know you're the founder here of OneSkin. You're a research scientist. You've done a lot of research on peptides. In addition to peptides, okay, what are some other things people can do to reverse the aging of their skin, slow the aging of their skin, in terms of lifestyle habits, habits, diet. What are some of the other top things you recommend?

You know, again, having your doctorate and studying these types of things, what are some other things that people can do in order to reverse that aging process?

Yeah, so when you, you think about what's causing aging and what's driving this damage and, you know, the, the accumulation of senescent cells, we have a direct impact from, for example, UV exposure. This can cause direct damage in, in So avoiding UV exposure or being at least protected when you are in situations that you have a high index UV, it's important.

So my main advice is like avoid sunburn at all costs because that's definitely gonna— it's gonna cause some damage. Other things that also cause like the production of free radicals So other environmental stressors, pollution, even this, you know, blue light that comes from our screens. So everything that can counteract like the free radicals, and this can be from your diet, right?

Like all, all of the antioxidants that you can have in your diet, omega-3s, the good fats are good for your skin. The amino acids that will help your skin to produce collagen. Collagen. So some people like supplementing with collagen, but if you have also like a very diverse and rich diet in amino acids and proteins, this can already support your skin.

Hydration, sleep, exercise, and primarily now in the winter, make sure that you are not in extreme dry environments, you know, with heaters So be mindful of like hot showers, using a lot of heaters. So use also a humidifier during this time of the year.

When applying your products, you can damp your skin and then apply the moisturizer that will help like hold the water, and then you can absorb more water into your skin. It makes it, you know, easier to absorb more water. Yeah. And again, And the SPF, the sunscreen, that's important if you are out there with a lot of sun exposure. I use on a daily basis.

I'm someone that really enjoys the sun, but I don't want to, you know, compromise my skin health. So I— and also, I don't think this is going to compromise my vitamin D. I think there is evidence showing that even if you are using sunscreen, you can still produce vitamin D if you have good sun exposure.

Yeah, I think it's great advice. And so there, you know, these are a lot of the things that I covered on the show before bringing you on and talking about the senescent cells, how important that is in terms of, you know, this senescent cell creation is one of those 12 hallmarks of aging.

You know, if we— if you want to age more quickly, then you're going to produce a lot of senescent cells, versus if you want to slow aging, really targeting that's so important. And I love that there are peptides that can actually do that, and science is showing that And of course, we talked about you want to get a little sun, not too much, especially be careful with your face. Never get sunburnt.

Yeah.

That's really, really bad for your skin. And I love also the personal care tips there in terms of how to hydrate your skin before with a mist and then get your, um, your, uh, you know, get your anti-aging skincare on, like the OS-1 from OneSkin there as well. And this is great for men. Again, this is something, you know, like I got a Before I was married, I never put anything on my skin ever.

And then my wife, you know, my wife really encouraged me and said, hey, because my, my wife really goes through a very intense skincare routine. Like my wife Chelsea, um, every night, every morning goes through. And, you know, I think that my wife's a millennial. I'm more that borderline sort of Gen Xer.

But, you know, even millennials, people in their 30s now are much more conscious about, hey, I'm gonna start anti-aging now and do everything I can. And so I see people of, again, all ages, even in their mid-20s up through, of course, end of life, who are, you know, really focused on putting the right type of skincare on.

And we've seen this, is the peptides are some— probably the most impactful thing I've seen in people healing their bodies. I mean, it really is incredible, um, what peptides can do, especially a lot of these extracts that, that we get from plants today. So I'm really excited about what you're offering here with the OS-01 peptide in your One Scare products.

I want to encourage everybody, if you want to do the top-of-the-line, highest quality peptide, anti-aging peptide skincare product, I want to encourage you to check out— it's called One Skin.

So One Skin, they have a groundbreaking peptide called OS-01, and it helps reverse the skin's biological aging, helping you look younger, on your skin by, as, as Carolina went through, thickening your skin, reducing wrinkles, improving your glow overall, making your skin actually younger.

And it's good for all different types of skin, whether it be acne, too oily, too dry, which is really, really common there as well. So again, it's really an impactful and amazing peptide. And let us know a little bit, where could people check out your, uh, your product there, uh, Carolina?

Yeah, on our website, oneskin.co, we share a lot of the data behind our products, our clinical studies, all the tests that we do in the lab. It's a great source of information, not only about skin health, but about longevity as well. People can also find us on Instagram @oneskin.co and on TikTok as well. So So, I encourage people to join the community.

We want to continue to push the science forward and translate this into products that are, you know, the most effective in rejuvenating your skin without causing any side effects, without irritation, without inflammation. So, only the benefits that we all are looking to achieve for healthy skin.

Well, I encourage everybody, check out Caroline and the amazing things she's up to in creating the world's leading peptide skincare product. And again, I wanted to bring her on because she's got her doctorate in immunology. She really understands senescent cells and anti-aging and longevity. So Carolina, thanks so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom with us today.

And I just want to remind everybody to remember, your skin is a reflection of what's going on in your gut and the health of your cells. So you want to do everything you can to promote longevity, look younger.

I mean, I'll share this too, you know, I know So I had 2 people reach out to me in the past week who had melanoma, and part of it was getting too much sun, and there were things they weren't doing to take care of themselves. My own dad has had skin issues. My dad is a semi-pro water skier, and on the lake almost every day of his life, he didn't protect his skin.

So now we have him doing things peptide-related, skincare-related, diet-related to reverse some of that damage he's had on his body and skin. So listen, the earlier and the more proactive you can be about taking care of your skin and causing it to age more slowly and fight cancer. Even now, I want to encourage you to do that. Take action.

And remember, some of the best things you can do— use food as medicine. We talked about berries and figs and pomegranates. We talked about collagen. We talked about peptides, you know, both topically and internally. Use those in order to help your body age more slowly, look younger, And feel younger as well. And I want to say thanks so much for listening here to the Dr. Josh Axe Show.

Remember, every week we're diving deep into the science and principles behind how you can heal and grow physically, mentally, and spiritually. I also want to thank our special guest today, Dr. Carolina, for coming on, the founder of OneSkin. And also, hey, if you're not subscribed, make sure to subscribe, like, and share this episode.

You know, a lot of people don't know there are natural ways to take care of their And I think there's a lot of false information out there. Some people saying never see the sun, other people saying get as much sun as you want until you burn. Remember, it's that happy medium there of get a little bit of sun, but not too much.

Protect yourself and your skin both internally and externally is the way to age optimally. Hey, I can't wait to see you all on the next show.