Red Light Therapy, Lasers and What Actually Works For Your Skin | Dr Michael

0:00Got you. Okay. But if you're sitting in the beam. I would personally probably. Yeah. I mean, if you're there for 30 minutes, it's going to be low because glass filters some UV out actually. But the glass matters, whether it's laminated, whether it's tempered glass, if it has a film applied to it. And right. Yeah. Instead of like, oh, it just blocks out UVB. And no, it's actually not all equivalent. Okay. So what about if you're on a plane and you're up? and disaster. You should have it shut down. You should have it, the window pulled down. And if you don't have it pulled down, you should wear sunscreen.

0:35Absolutely. I've made a big mistake there. Yeah. Okay. I like to have it a lot. What about if you're sat under an umbrella, like at a beach or whatever, you know, when you're kind of getting your chairs and there's an umbrella there, should you be wearing sunscreen? Yes, absolutely. Reflective light, 100 and what color is sand right so sand is going to be mostly light and color and it's reflecting uv uh i don't people are like i'm sitting in the shade i'm not gonna i know you you are still getting uv which sucks there's a company and i don't work for any company uh blue lizard they had a bottle that their bottle would turn blue uh and it would show you if uv light was hitting it and it doesn't change from heat it would just change so the the the plastic was made with some polymer that would allow it to change color doesn't change the sunscreen color but it changes the case that's holding the sunscreen to show you hey there's uv light in this area and i move that i move that around all the time to say okay i'm underneath the canopy why is it blue you know and then if you put it in direct light blue blue blue so uh yeah gosh that would be amazing if all sunscreens did that because it would just be like your visual cue to be like i need to put on they'd also make way more money that is a very good yeah people would reapply consumer exactly you'd reapply then you have to buy more yeah um yeah i guess you have to figure out the safety profile of a a color changing uh cream that you're putting on your body yeah that goes that turns like green or blue to say, Hey, is that harmful or is that safe?

2:13I have no idea. I know. I always think about that with sweets, like what are these colors doing to my body? It's minimal. Have a couple of Skittles. You're going to be fine. See the dose matters. It matters, right? It's like walking outside and worrying about for, so if I walk outside for two minutes and I didn't have sunscreen on, I am not worried about it and nor should you, right? Having a couple Skittles, if there's a little bit of dye in it, it's okay. Now having straight lining into your vein, that's probably a different story there when it comes to red dye or something. We're going to become a smurf if that happens.

2:52It's possible. It is very possible. Okay. I can't leave this without talking about beauty and appearance because as much as skin cancer is the most important thing when it comes to health, people are vain. And we all want to look good. And so I think this also is a really important thing. Now, I've had Brian Johnson on the show. I've had Kate Tolo on the show. I've also had a son, Talmadge, on the show. They are obviously doing extreme protocols of longevity. And I sent you a clip, actually, recently of Kate saying that she is reversing her skin age. I can't remember what it's down to now, maybe like 21.

3:31I'm probably quoting that incorrectly. I think from what I listened to her, that's what she said. She said 21. it was around that. So she's reversing her skin age. Now, what are the things that we can do that are scientifically proven that is going to help reverse my skin age? So I'm in my mid thirties. What should I be thinking about to keep my skin young and plump? So great. And I just, the reverse skin aging is, and I watched her video. I thought they were interesting. But reverse skin aging is a misnomer. To me, it is you are making your skin look more youthful than your actual age. Is that reducing your skin age itself?

4:16Like saying, hey, you have the skin of somebody who is, you know, the same metabolics of somebody who's 20 or 30. It is not. But you absolutely can make your skin look much more youthful. So it can look youthful, but it isn't actually in itself youthful it's the same age it's like the whole idea behind weight right yeah so like i work out i still am very physically fit and but my muscles are not the same when as i was 20 as i am as in my 40s they're they're different but aesthetically they still look very similar to how they look then um and that's because the volume is still there right and that is where when you look at these modalities of what they do.

4:59So the number one thing that is going to age your skin is UV light. Number one thing. So if you want to low hanging fruit here, reduce your risk of photo aging your skin, thinning the dermis, which is the middle portion of your skin, making the top layer of the skin, the epidermis become atrophic, you need to wear sunscreen. Depending on your skin complexion and tone, some people actually just by sitting in front of a light, sitting in front of a computer or blue screen. I'm surrounded by lights right now. I know. I know. The light looks good though. It looks nice and even. So it's okay. It's going to make me look younger.

5:37Yeah, it is. Yes. It's going to block out any line. But it's killing me at the same time. Correct. But looking at visible light, that can actually create photo aging on the skin. So pigmentation change within the skin it can increase some vascularity to it but so sunscreen one tinted sunscreen with ferrous oxides or iron oxides is important for reducing the skin pigmentation but then so that's the lowest hanging fruit possible end of story what about things like lasers and things correct that everyone's doing i'm gonna go through these stepwise with you and tell you like personally what I do myself.

6:18So going from there, the next step is using a retinoid. And I think that in that video, she takes isotretinoin or Accutane, which is an oral form of a retinoid, but that is very different than how the retinoids work on top of the skin. The oral retinoids are not going to give you the same benefit when it comes to collagen becoming thicker and more plump within the skin. And that is important to know. Oral retinoids like Accutane or isotretinoin help reduce the sebaceous site or the SIBO sites, which are the sebaceous glands. And it shrinks those, so it keeps pores very small. It reduces oil production.

6:56But that is a very different process than putting retinoic acid, which retin-A is the most common form that people utilize. That is extremely helpful at keeping your skin very youthful. So if you want to keep your skin looking how it is now and add two decades to you, you're going to wear sunscreen. You're going to use a topical retinoid, preferably, you know, a tretinoin, a tazeratine, a dappoline, something in that line over a retinol. Those are the over-the-counter products. And we have good studies on this where they did biopsies on skin, humans on their skin not animal models between looking at retinol and retinoic acid which is tretinoin and showing the difference between the amount of pro collagen that's produced the thickness of the the dermis and on top of that the thickness of the epidermis so initially people get wary of using a retinoid because your skin gets dry red and flaky when you first start it and the skin becomes more sensitive but over time the top layer of the skin actually becomes thicker So that will, volume is something we lose, unfortunately, in our face and in our body in general.

8:11And by using the retinoid, you can restore some of that volume. So that is the two low-hanging fruits everybody should be on. Only caveat is if there's any pregnancy, no retinoid has to be stopped. Okay. Then three is it's looking at laser modalities. And that's personally what I do for my own skin. So I will do partially ablative lasers, ablative laser. That helps with resurfacing. It creates these microthermic zones inside of the skin that make collagen produce. And they're pretty low-risk procedures. I'm not talking about doing like CO2 laser, which is much more aggressive. It's beneficial in the right individual.

8:56Like your skin from this video, obviously, it's not an exam or no advice, but it does not look like you have any deep lines it looks like you have your sin is very good very few lines in general at all and so you would not be somebody like hey go get a co2 laser but in uh somebody in their in their 30s there are lasers that um creates uh they're called microscopic epidural necrotic debris men's and they create little pores and channels in the top layer of the skin that help the skin look nice, shiny, and creates dermal growth. So it makes it thicker with very little downtime. So I do recommend that for to reduce the aging face, which I do myself.

9:41I mean, I've not tried a laser, but I'm very interested to try them. So that is my next, that's my next one. The other one that I want to ask is there's two things. Do collagen supplements work and do red light therapy masks work because everyone's walking around with red light kind of on their face um is that does that help and do collagen to collagen supplements help they're the two things i think i'm interested in yeah so the data on the collagen supplementation is very very very weak um i do but do i actually take it i do but i don't really take it so much for my skin i have taken it since for my joints yeah there was a study done i think it was 2011 11.

10:20Um, and I've taken it really ever since, uh, and it was looking at gelatin in general, uh, which is when you're taking collagen, uh, that is the broken down form, right? You're getting collagen from gelatin. And, uh, I've taken it ever since my joints honestly have felt pretty good. Um, the skin data I think is very, very weak. There was some increase in water content when they did biopsies on it. I would say that it is low. It's cheap. It's low risk. So if you're going to do something that's cheap and low risk, I think it's okay. But I wouldn't be selling it to you to try to make, to say, hey, look, this is going to do what tretinoin does.

11:01It will not do it. So tretinoin is going to make you develop more collagen in your skin. We don't have the data for taking collagen for that. And then red light therapy, I think that it actually has a benefit. The problem is the dosometry is wild. So when you get a red light device, you think, okay, I'm getting something that's going to be, say, 686 nanometers, and that is going to help. In this study, it's going to help my skin have less lines, less wrinkles, develop more collagen. but the dosing is off. It's not the same for every device. How frequently do you use it? I think we need more data personally on that.

11:48I think it's low risk in general, but I think we need actually good data. If somebody has, say, radiation, we have 1A and 1B level data to show that if somebody has a breast radiation or they had a neck radiation, so they had a cancer there, that it reduces radiation dermatitis significantly. And that is amazing. Like every radiation oncologist should know about that study and should recommend it to their patients so that it can help reduce it. But it has to be the appropriate dose. The dose, like if you're going to go stand in red light and be like, it's going to increase my mood and it's going to make my muscles bigger and it's going to make me less fatigued and it's going to make my hair grow and my skin, uh, you know, uh, look beautiful.

12:37The dose matters, right? Too much could be harmful, um, to where you're not getting the poison. Yes, correct. Um, or too much. You're not getting activation of the appropriate pathways to get benefit. So, um, but you know, I would go with brands that have actual science behind them and not brands that piggyback off of other companies work, because that means they didn't prove it i know that's one of the amazing things the thing that i like when i use i do use a red um light mask that actually makes me meditate because i can't do anything and i have to close my eyes so actually i just think it gives me benefits of mindfulness because it kind of forces me to be mindful i love it i feel like that's proper that's a good health outcome in itself so i always think about those things obviously if it's not harmful and it's making you relax yeah you know you don't kind of walk around i hope people don't walk around kind of like on the phone when they're on the red light because it's so bright in your eyes.

13:31You know, I kind of think the secondary effect actually also works as well. So I like it for that benefit. Whether it's improving my skin yet or after I just started using one. Yeah, I think over time. It's almost like, so I use something for my hair. I use a laser cap. The caps, yeah. Yeah, and so back in 2013, I used to tell people, nah, don't do it. You know, they had trichograms looking at hair follicles and it showed that there was increased hair density, but there was no clinical benefit. But now, 13 years later, I started using one in like 2022. Wow. You know, and so to me, I think it's very low hanging fruit.

14:14The data is good. Go with a company who has done the research before you just buy any laser hats or red light hats. But I think it's beneficial.