October 21, 2023

From podcast: https://bengreenfieldlife.com/podcast/younggoosepodcast/

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:01:14] Who is Amitay Eshel?

[00:03:33] Why is Amitay's company called the Young Goose?

[00:05:27] Amitay's thoughts on micro-needling and derma rolling

[00:12:40] Why is the use of laser on facial skin so popular?

[00:17:57] The advantages and disadvantages of the red light therapy

[00:26:15] How to protect skin from sun exposure?

[00:32:53] The benefits of Bio-Barrier Serum

[00:37:49] NAD research and products with NAD

[00:42:06] Is ascorbic acid genotoxic?

[00:46:25] The proper order to use different skincare products

[00:52:51] Is Botox bad?

[00:54:59] The social impact of our skincare

[00:58:58] The skincare routine after the cleanser

[01:09:35] Amitay's thoughts on Wim Hof and cold thermogenesis

[01:17:08] End of Podcast

[01:17:40] Legal Disclaimer

Ben:  My name is Ben Greenfield. And, on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast.

Amitay:  EGCG, which is the main antioxidant in green tea, is a very precise antioxidant. It actually only scavenges the free radicals that are created when energy is created in our mitochondria. And, there is a problem when we blast our skin with red and near-infrared where we create a lot of energy but we're also creating free radicals. And, your body kind of gets spooked after a while and says, “I probably shouldn't create as much energy.” So, if we can eliminate those free radicals when they're being released and moving around, we can have the body be less apprehensive about energy production and improve energy production.

Ben:  Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

Well, folks, I was recently at this health event and I happened to go to a dinner and was seated with a random group of people and sometimes that's a big gulp moment because you aren't quite sure if they're going to be cool or not. And, in my case, I got lucky because I sat down next to a guy named Amitay Eshel. He proceeded to blow my mind for an hour during dinner on biohacking the skin and all of these crazy peptides and ingredients and rejuvenates to reverse aging and to allow the skin to engage in its natural rejuvenation processes.

Now, I talk to a lot of people about skincare. I mean, I've done podcasts on peptides and hair growth and hair restoration and skin health and I learned a ton; so much during that dinner, I'm like, “Dude, I wish I had my podcast microphone on right now because I would love to have recorded all of this stuff that basically nobody's talking about that I know of in the skincare industry that I really wanted to fill you in, my listener, my dear listener so that you too can look like you're 8 years old,” because since you and I talked to that dinner Amitay, you graciously sent me some stuff to try. And dude, me and my wife have been hooked on this stuff.

And so, by the way, if you're listening right now, Amitay actually has a company. It's the world's first biohacking skincare company. It's called Young Goose. He's the CEO of it and I may actually want to ask you in a second here Amitay where the heck the name Young Goose comes from. But, Amitay also has a crazy history like Israeli special forces and he, like me, is really geeked out on the Torah, which has been one of my favorite things to study over the past year. He sent me a beautiful edition of the Torah and so, so many interesting things that this guy is up to.

So, anyway, Amitay, I'll shut up here and welcome you to the show.

Amitay:  Thank you so much. It's a pleasure being here. And, we've been on parallel paths for, I feel like, for so long. It was a pleasure meeting you back then and obviously talking to you now.

Ben:  Yeah, for sure. And, I want to hear about your history in the special forces and some of the things that you got up to that got you interested in skincare. But, I got to ask, got to address the elephant in the room first. Why the heck do you have a biohacking skincare company called Young Goose?

Amitay:  Well, it's all made out of geese. No, I'm kidding.

Ben:  That in pate, right? Goose liver pate in your skin care products.

Amitay:  Well, I mean, cholesterol is really good for the skin. But anyway, no, so the reason is that I guess we'll get to talking about NAD later on. But, when we were researching NAD for the skin and bypassing the skin, the lab that we worked out of the mascot where the geese outside was a longevity lab in the Weitzman Institute, which is like MIT in Israel, I guess.

Ben:  Oh, yeah.

Amitay:  Yeah. So, the Weitzman Institute is the place with the most amount of noble laureates under the same roof, proverbial roof of a lot of roofs. And, when we were researching there, basically we found out that geese reach maturity, they're about two years old, one and a half years old, and then they look the same until they die. So, that was the mascot of the lab. And, to make a long story short, we actually trademark the word “hormesis” for “cosmetics.” So, we owned the trademark for the word “hormesis” but we found out that it's tricky to use it because there are so many other companies that are called hormesis in different fields. And, you don't want to get conflated, so we had to think on the spot and we said, “You know what, let's commemorate those geese.” So, we called it Young Goose. That was the reasoning behind it. So, it's a quirky name. We're quirky people. Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah. Hey I got to ask you about the hormesis thing because I've kind of wondered this and I didn't plan on addressing this early in the podcast, but there seems to be a little bit of controversy around this idea of microneedling and derma rolling whether it causes excessive skin damage by tearing up the skin with all these tiny needles or whether there is some kind of a cellular resilience inducing hormetic effect from something like wounding the skin basically and then typically applying something to it afterwards or as some people do, using infrared light afterwards. What's your take on this idea of microneedling and derma rolling?

Amitay:  I'm a big proponent of it. I wouldn't necessarily classify it under hormesis because only for the educational reason. I prefer people look at hormesis as the body inferring stress. So, things that don't actually cause damage but are more stressing the body in order to induce some resilience response. So, for that matter, it is as hormetic, I guess as working out. But, the real issue that we should talk about is balance and homeostasis. And, I know it's a lot to kind of jump into off the get-go but you can think of everything that we're doing for skin rejuvenation is mostly falling under the umbrella of optimal performance right now, which if you think about sports, if you think about anything, there is a Venn diagram between longevity and optimal performance at the moment. And, what we're trying to do whether it's biohacking or straight-up looking good now and later is trying to find things that cause both; make us look good now and in the long run.

And, when we're doing something like microneedling and we're exacerbating it or we're not supporting it with the right molecules, which we can talk about, what we're doing is we're causing a lot of demand but not supporting repair. So, we can cause increased senescence, it can cause shortening of telomeres or we can even cause scarring because if we're an older individual and our epigenetics are not dialed in, we are not actually making collagen in the optimal way and we're going to create keloids and scarring.

And, there is a very, very, very famous biohacker that recently did some kind of live and talked about radiofrequency. And, that's one of the things that I think is the most, I would say, misunderstood or dangerous field within microneedling because most radiofrequency nowadays is being done with micro needles at the same time. And, that is so strong that people are only getting results because of swelling and scarring.

Ben:  What radiofrequency?

Amitay:  Radiofrequency is a way to heat up only the subdermal layers of the skin. So, you get radio waves. So, each and every wave gets absorbed somewhere else in our body, in the skin. That's why infrared is so positive because it only gets absorbed in one photo acceptor in the mitochondria, but radiofrequency gets absorbed about 3 centimeters into the skin and basically creates damage there, which swells up the skin, creates scarring. But obviously, you can understand how this is a finite process that you can't do over and over and over again.

No judgment here, but if someone wanted to do plastic surgery later on or anything else, you're creating a skin that is really hard to deal with, hard to work with.

Ben:  So, is that the same as, I think, a term I've heard before called ablation? Is radiofrequency like ablation?

Amitay:  Yes, it's ablatory. Normally when we talk about ablation, we're talking about laser. And, laser ablation is when we're creating damage closer to the surface. So, most of the time, it's in the dermis and epidermis; whereas, radiofrequency is more dermis and hypodermis, which is the innermost layers of the skin.

Ben:  Okay. I don't know if you were talking about this particular biohacker, but I had a guy named Bryan Johnson on my show and he had a lot of little red marks all over his face and his neck. He almost looked like avatar creature or something. And, he said he' just gotten done with the protocol and I think it involved a laser. Are you familiar with what he's doing?

Amitay:  Yeah. I wasn't talking about Bryan, but I am familiar with what he's doing. And, I believe that obviously, he's canary in the coal mine. I appreciate what he's doing for the community as a whole, a whole lot really. Within what he's doing to his skin specifically, my opinion would be that he is doing a lot of demand for immediate repair. And, that has actually nothing to do with longevity, actually quite the opposite because it is only promoting the appearance of youth. We can think of Botox. We can think about things that are–you can think of a filter someone's going to do on social media like they have a filter. They may look younger but it has nothing to do with their actual skin's biological age. And, laser is somewhat like that. There's no actual impact long-term as far as skin health or the impact is extremely limited. It's with skin thickening and things like that. But, if you do it consistently, you're actually causing more damage than good.

Ben:  And, is the youthfulness that's induced by something like a laser because the skin gets almost inflamed and puffy, similar to how bodybuilder might look like, they have big muscles from tearing up the muscles, and because of that it makes the skin look more firm or toned short-term?

Amitay:  A very small part of it might be that, but mainly what you're doing is you're demanding repair. Basically, you're creating the same repair you would demand when you do tear your muscles in micro-tearing your muscles. But, the problem there is that you are causing repair that your body has never really evolved to deal with. So, it is sacrificing things like basal cells, for example, of the skin's stem cells, it's sacrificing basically telomere length. Every time we are asking for cellular turnover in any place in the body, we're increasing senescence as a byproduct, we're increasing oxidative stress as a byproduct. And, that is something that obviously is correlated with aging rather than longevity.

Ben:  So, why would people do it? I'm not talking about infrared light, of course, maybe you could explain the difference but why does it seem like this concept of using lasers on the face is so popular?

Amitay:  So, that would be the same question someone would ask if we were talking about doping in sports. So, you have a goal that is the most important goal. And, that is to perform optimally right now. And, in the case of beauty and aesthetics, it's to look your best right now. Unfortunately, that is in contrast with longevity of the skin. And, we can actually see it talking about something else rather than lasers. We can see medical skincare, classical medical skincare of 20 years ago looking at a lot of glycolic acids AHAs or BHA, which are acids that make basically the skin exfoliate. And, that done in abundance or done too much did create great results short term. But, what we can see with people who are doing it for 20 years now is a much more frail skin, thinner skin, skin that is bruised much more easily, and skin that cannot, again, catch up with the amount of damage it's accumulating.

Ben:  Huh. So, how would you stillman that though because obviously when I interviewed Bryan Johnson, for example, it seems he has his whole team of researchers who are choosing the best protocols for longevity including skin enhancement and lasering the skin seems like it's kind of a core part of his protocol? Is it true that he's just going to get short-term gains but then he's going to look like the grandma from “Something About Mary” in 10 years doing that?

Amitay:  It's not going to be that he's going to look like grandma, but the skin is definitely going to be more thin and less pliable. And, as far as the ways that you can kind of support that, first and foremost, it's actually vitamin C because vitamin C is the co-enzyme for collagen production. So, you could think of the opposite of it as people getting scurvy, if anyone's listening is a pirate, they're going to know what I'm talking about. But, obviously, when you are at sea and you don't have a lot of vitamin C, you're starting to basically fall apart. And, that's because of impaired collagen production. So, vitamin C is probably the most important thing. After that, it's vitamin A, which these two things can be applied topically. They can be ingested. There are better versions of both, so for the most part, people should stay away from ascorbic acid as far as vitamin C is concerned because it is genotoxic. But, aside from that, these are the two things.

By the way, ascorbic acid, I think in five years is going to be something that everyone's going to be talking about as far as a mistake people used to do in the past actually.

Ben:  Really?

Amitay:  Yeah.

Ben:  Interesting. So, it sounds to me what you're saying is that the level of damage is what's important, and if you're putting the right things on the skin to repair the skin after something like microneedling or derma rolling, there's a reasonable case to be made for that as a strategy but that lasering is just too harsh?

Amitay:  Well, it could be done but you're really running the risk. Unless you are extremely well not only optimized but also monitored, you're running a risk of causing long-term frailty or you're exacerbating your resources. Aside from everything else, we now know that heat in the skin per se is something that is not the best for the body's natural way where it's creating–especially elastin the way that it manages elastin. And, the reason is because elastin has water-interacting molecules around it which makes it. When we're younger, it makes it glide like a shear, glide on itself, skin gliding on it, et cetera. And, what heat does and also aging does, it actually inverts the polarity of those filaments and it actually causes adhesion. And, that's something that's a little bit esoteric but there are studies looking at red light therapy to reverse that, red light therapy and green tea. But, for the most part, you are creating problems where we could look at other strategies more longevity-based strategies to create similar results. But, for the most part what we're doing is we're creating damage and supporting repair. And, the better we do it, the better results we're going to have.

Ben:  Okay, that's interesting that you said about red light. Obviously, that's different than lasering, and a lot of people are into these red light face masks or even the use of infrared sauna for improving the elastin quality on the skin. Now, I think one of the things you sent me because you just mentioned green tea is a serum, I think it has some green tea type of extract in it. I have it on top of my infrared sauna right now and based on, I think it was your information or it might even been the information on the packaging or label, it said that it was good to do prior to red light therapy. So, as far as the red light goes, how you would differentiate that from something like a laser? Obviously, there's still a little bit of warming of the tissue that's occurring and then why you would use something like green tea or what is this red light serum that you have, and how that interplays with red light.

Amitay:  Yeah, that's an amazing question and something that a lot of people haven't caught on to. So, really when we're talking about red light therapy or red and near-infrared and infrared saunas, we're actually talking about two completely different reactions in the body. And, I think it's super important to understand that near-infrared and far-infrared, which is used in saunas are completely different in the way they interact with the body. So, when we think about red light therapy and near-infrared which are the little diodes and red light therapy panels that you cannot see the light coming out of, these are of the same family. They actually have an extremely low absorption in water and what they do get absorbed in is your mitochondria or a photo acceptor in the mitochondria, a strip in the mitochondria that can absorb it. 

And, the reason we evolved to get signals from it is because also in the atmosphere, you can think of the atmosphere as something that's rich in water. And, when the sun is close to the horizon on both sides, either sunrise or sunset, a lot of the wavelengths that are not beneficial for skin rejuvenation are getting absorbed by water and we're left only with those red and near-infrared wavelengths. So, our body kind of evolved as a signal evolved to get it as a signal for repair time, basically, because these are the times where we're mainly resting or getting ready for the day, et cetera.

Far-infrared, on the other hand, has extremely high absorption in water. And, as a rule, what gets transferred into chemical energy doesn't get transformed into thermal energy and vice versa. So, the red and near-infrared light gets transformed into ATP at the end of the day or improves ATP production, which is cellular energy and that we can understand how it's amazing for our muscles to recover or our skin, et cetera, but far-infrared has significantly less benefits for ATP production or energy production but it does raise body temperature. And, in my opinion, and not only my opinion, many people's opinions, and I'm assuming you are included in that, temperature in general are one of the body's master regulators and one of the best ways that we can affect our body as far as what we want the body to do.

Ben:  Okay. So, back to the near-infrared versus the far-infrared, are you getting then more of a rejuvenating hydrating and mitochondrial benefit on the skin level from the near-infrared and then more of a heating/hormetic benefit from the far-infrared?

Amitay:  100%. And now, we're getting into, okay, so how can we biohack that? How can we improve that energy production and how can we mitigate some of the negative effects of being in an infrared sauna?

Ben:  Yeah. And, I know what you're going to say, you stick your face in a giant mug of green tea, right?

Amitay:  Something like that. So, EGCG which is the main antioxidant in green tea is a very precise antioxidant. It actually only scavenges the free radicals that are created when energy is created in our mitochondria. And, there is a problem when we blast our skin with red and near-infrared where we create a lot of energy but we're also creating free radicals. And, your body kind of gets spooked after a while and says, “I probably shouldn't create as much energy.” So, if we can eliminate those free radicals when they're being released and moving around, we can have the body be less apprehensive about energy production and improve energy production. When we talk about far-infrared, we're talking about the same free radicals actually, but it's mainly to mitigate their damage rather than improve their infrared sauna effects.

Ben:  Okay. So, that serum that you gave me for the sauna, is that basically just like I described it, just green tea extract that you put on your face before you get exposed to far-infrared light?

Amitay:  Yeah. It's basically that EGCG. Since it's so good at scavenging free radicals, it's extremely volatile. It means it can react with any oxygen molecule in the air. So, for the most part, when you get green tea and steep it in water, most of it is gone. And, what we have a proprietary ability to do is to have about 98% survive until it gets to your skin. That's number one. We also enforce it with some other things like vitamin E and hyaluronic acid with a specific size of hyaluronic acid that support that process, support that uptake of EGCG into the skin.

Ben:  So, it's one that's supposed to be combined with something like infrared light or these light-based face masks that Young Goose makes with the green tea. What's that one called?

Amitay:  Yeah. So, it's called Green Tea Phyto-Serum. I would say something about face masks like red and near-infrared face masks in general. For the most part, they are not as strong as a panel. So, if someone can stand in front of a panel, they're going to get better results out of a panel than from a mask. Not that the masks don't work, it's just if you want the best thing, it would probably be a panel.

Ben:  Okay. Yeah, my wife has one of those face masks from–actually, she stole it from me. It's technically mine. There's a company called HigherDOSE and they make these wraparound face masks. They have one for the neck and the collar and the thyroid and then they've got one for the face. And, she's been doing the Green Tea Phyto-Serum with that and it is pretty close to the face and you leave it on for about 20 minutes. It's interesting because I actually do a clay mask. I think you guys have a mask as well but it's not a clay mask. And, I use a clay mask and combine it with the infrared light and I feel it really, really helps with my skin toning and firmness. I'm curious for you as much as you know about skin health, do you actually have a sauna practice or do you use the red lights much?

Amitay:  Yes, I do both. Sauna practice for me is more to increase growth hormone, so I'll do it multiple times a day. I think you posted once about a practice where you're going to go from cold plunge to sauna. And, that's mostly what I do. So, that is what I'm going to do as far as sauna is concerned. Infrared, I do on a consistent basis but what I'm going to try and do is expose very specific areas. Going back to that checks and balances that the body has for energy production, the more of the body we expose, the less we're going to get results for a specific area. So, I'm saving it to specific areas that are either injured or need recovery rather than a full-body infrared panel.

Ben:  Okay. There's a new book out called “Get the F out of the Sunlight,” and a lot of people talking about the damaging effects of sunlight, particularly for the skin. Of course, there's the entire other camp like Dr. Mercola and Matt Maruca and Jack Kruse and guys like this who are super into being sunseekers and just ripping as many items of clothing off as possible and spending lots of time at solar noon in the sunlight. I feel there's kind of a balance between the two, but what's your take on sunlight not only in terms of proper exposure but also how would you protect the skin if you were going to spend a lot of time in the sunlight?

Amitay:  Yeah. So, for sure I agree with both camps. I think there are nuances. First of all, what do you care about most? Are you Cristiano Ronaldo, the soccer player, and all you care about is your athletic performance and that is what you want to optimize or you want to optimize your facial skin health and appearance? That's the first thing. So, both camps can be correct. And, that's actually something Mercola and I are talking about kind of half the times when we talk. But, I would say this, the further you go away from your center of mass, the less efficient you are in synthesizing the things that you want to synthesize from the sun's vitamin D, et cetera. So, that's number one.

Number two, these areas, for the most part, are the most exposed during the day to either artificial light or sunlight or light that goes through a screen and then hits you. So, these areas are probably not the optimal areas to expose to the sun to get the benefits if you're looking at you the most benefits you can get from the sun, going to be your torso, your belly button area, et cetera. If we're talking about skin health specifically, you are damaging DNA when you're exposed to UV. And, by the way, also blue light, artificial blue light. And, that is aging to the skin. That's the second most aging thing that you can have for your skin. It's more than diet, but it is less than pollution in general. So, that's something that you should be aware of, and mainly use zinc oxide-based sun blocks if you wanted to prevent sun damage to the skin.

Ben:  Do you guys make anything for specifically addressing sun damage or sun protection at Young Goose?

Amitay:  Yes. Yes. So, we make something that's called Bio-Shield SPF 40, which is actually very interesting because it uses non-nano zinc oxide. Nano-zinc oxide is just irrelevant. It doesn't really do anything, it gets absorbed to your bloodstream, affects your brain, et cetera. But, non-nano that is smooshed down, we basically flatten it. It's called micronized zinc oxide, provides amazing, amazing coverage and it doesn't look white. So, it's a great product to use. Within that product, what we care about most to be honest again is not the sun protective properties, it's the protection against free EMF, pollution, heavy metals, and glyphosate. And, that is something that we've taken about four years to develop. So, we were one of the first companies to use a protein or an amino acid called Ectoin. 

Ben:  By the way, is that E-C-T-O-I-N, Ectoin?

Amitay:  Yeah. It's actually called Ectoin Natural.

Ben:  Okay.

Amitay:  So, you'll start seeing whole skincare lines based on it, but when we started researching it, there was no information. We had to really, really try very hard. But, what it does, it really protects proteins from environmental damage, from oxidation, et cetera, and it's isolated from extremolytes which are bacteria that can survive in space or in Yellow Stone in those very, very acidic bats or in the Dead Sea in Israel. So, this protein can actually protect from the damage of EMF to the skin. It's not a Faraday cage, so it's not going to have EMF not penetrate your body but it protects the damage of EMF to the skin. It helps with, again, heavy metals or pollution damaging your skin alongside a very, very strong antioxidant that's very similar to C60 that is called Lipochroman-6. It's a more effective for the skin because C60 can get you sensitive to the skin actually. So, it has the same properties without that sun sensitivity alongside, what I mentioned, zinc oxide, there's some longevity herbs that we have there.

Ben:  Holy cow. That's a badass sunscreen. It doesn't turn your skin white?

Amitay:  It doesn't at all. And, actually something interesting, it blends into any skin type. So, whether you're pasty white or the darkest that can be, it will blend with any skin type.

Ben:  That's super cool. I love what you said about the extremophile bacteria. It's interesting how if you eat plants that are wild, they tend to allow for better endogenous antioxidant production and cellular resilience compared to heavily cared for domesticated pampered plants. And, it's so interesting that you could eat hearty stuff from nature that's been subjected to extreme conditions and it seems to pass on some of those hormetically driven benefits to the user. That's pretty cool. I didn't even know you guys had a sunscreen. And so, that's interesting.

Also, what you said about herbicides, glyphosate, et cetera, are you implying that that stuff would not just be able to damage the gut or the DNA but if it wound up on you topically that it could cause skin damage?

Amitay:  Yeah. But, first and foremost, DNA damage in the skin. The skin is extremely, extremely, extremely susceptible to DNA damage, mainly because it turns over so often. That's number one. Number two, it tends to stick on the skin and irritate the skin topically. And, we can see it from animals. Obviously, there are a lot of research done on kind of the northern, the North Pole about animals and the effects of glyphosates that condense and land in the North Pole. But obviously, we're all exposed to them on a regular basis. So, yeah.

Ben:  Huh. It's really interesting this idea of skin barrier with the sunscreen but then there was this other thing, I think it's called Bio-Barrier Serum or something like that. I'm going to ask you in a little bit about how you actually combine all this stuff the right way, but the label on this bottle you sent to me says to put it on before you go to bed at night. And, I'm operating on the assumption it's doing some kind of protection or repair on my skin while I'm asleep. But, what is it that is going on when I put on this Bio-Barrier stuff on my face before I go to bed?

Amitay:  So, actually that is something that depends on the person. They might even use twice a day. It really depends if they have like rosacea or they have what we call leaky skin. By the way, when we started talking about leaky skin, people looked at it as extremely weird but now you have industry experts like Kiran Krishnan, formerly from Microbiome Labs, and legit people talking about leaky skin. And basically, the age of your skin barrier is an amazing biomarker for your skin's biological age. And, that is because it's something that is being regenerated all the time. And, the better your skin microbiome and your skin barrier function, the more you're promoting longevity in the skin.

The problem, as I mentioned before, is that when we live in a Western world, we're going to age the most from environmental aggressors that we weren't created basically to deal with. We weren't created to deal with pollution, with artificial light, with again heavy metals. All of those things did not exist before or existed in much lower quantities. Obviously, if there is a forest fire, they did exist, but for the most part, not on a regular basis. So, the natural defenses that our skin knows to mount actually mean nothing. And, what Bio-Barrier is, these are biomimetic lipids. They are lipids that are very, very similar to the lipid makeup of your skin barrier, but they're supplemented with Lipochroman-6 which I mentioned.

Ben:  Yeah. That's the one that's C60 except better for the skin.

Amitay:  Exactly, yeah.

Ben:  Okay.

Amitay:  Yeah. And, what they do is they combat those extra factors that we weren't really supposed to deal with at all and we're fortifying the skin barrier that way.

Ben:  Okay. So, you put this stuff on before you go to sleep at night and it's essentially repairing the skin while you're asleep.

Amitay:  Correct. It more repairs the skin barrier. And, that's something I think we need to talk about just to mention. So, basically, every skin care product has something that's called vectoring. So, it basically is supposed to only reach a certain level in the skin because if we just had active ingredients, some of them are in a right size where they should absorb where we want them to absorb but some of them are too small. If they're too big, it's irrelevant. For example, NAD as a whole is just not going to absorb or collagen is not going to absorb. But, some of them are just too small, for example, essential oils or GHK-Cu is quite tiny, copper peptide. So, these things really need to be held in a certain place for them to absorb where we want them to absorb.

So, Bio-Barrier, for example, we want it to absorb more top layers of the skin. Serums that are lighter for the most part, we want them to carry ingredients that would absorb deeper in the skin. Maybe we want to affect something like senescence which we are trying to do with a different product. Maybe we want to affect collagen production. For these things, we need better absorption or deeper absorption.

Ben:  Okay. So, what I'm hearing then is when somebody hears that GHK-copper peptide, for example, that's really popular one and people say, well, it's a small enough delt in size to where it can really be absorbed well-transdermally, you're saying that the story goes farther than that and it has to have almost the proper scaffolding or ingredients mixed with it for it to be absorbed in the right place, the right layer of the skin?

Amitay:  Yes. And, I think what people are going to remember is that if anyone played with making their own skin care, you can't just have essential oils, drip them on your skin, you need to mix them, for example, in coconut oil or something like that. And, why is that? We kind of want to unify where it absorbs. So, yes, it goes more than just an active ingredient, it's an active ingredient vectored or placed in the right place or held in the right place for it to absorb correctly.

Ben:  Now, what about NAD because I thought you were a fan of NAD but you just said that it doesn't absorb well in the skin?

Amitay:  Yeah. So, NAD as a whole, as a molecule, has two challenges. First, it's about 50 times bigger than your pores, so it's not going to absorb. And, the second thing is is even if it did absorb, your skin doesn't speak the language of full NAD molecules. It never absorbed it through the skin. So, it doesn't have any idea what to do with it if it did get it. So, what we need to do is one of three things, we can take it orally, we can inject it or get an IV. So, something like or we can break it down to its precursors, to its building blocks, which are NR, NMN, nicotinamide, niacin, tryptophan, and a few more that are novel, that are new. And, these can be nanosized, these can be wrapped in a lipid layer liposomal layer that can stabilize them, again, because everything needs to be stable. And, these then can absorb into the skin and kind of slide into the correct pathway to get absorbed into cells. So, it's a little more complicated than, “Oh, we know that NAD is good for the skin, let's just apply it on the skin.” By the way, same thing with collagen.

Ben:  A lot of people say that for a proper DNA repair when taken orally that NAD needs to be combined with what's called a sirtuin like resveratrol or pterostilbene or something like that. In the NAD form that you have in your, I don't know which of your products, I think several of them have NAD in them, but you combine them with some type of a sirtuin like a resveratrol or something like that?

Amitay:  Yeah. So, we have them in what we call the C.A.R.E. line, which is C.A.R.E., Eye C.A.R.E. and a few other products. And, you're 100% correct where NAD on its own isn't going to do much. So, that's again a seven-year study that we did or a seven-year research and development to create our first product. And, what happened was that we found out that we can double the amount of NAD in the skin but the skin wouldn't look different unless there is some skin condition that the skin knows it needs to deal with. So, the skin doesn't know DNA damage is something that needs to be repaired just like that. We kind of need to stimulate it. 

And, remember that you said before about these wild plants and the way they express stress and that the way that our body kind of receives that stress and uses it, and these are those sirtuin activators. So, we actually use two, we use fermented resveratrol. So, resveratrol is actually toxic for the skin and it needs to be fermented in order for it to be bioavailable. And, we use tiliroside, which it can be from a few plants. We do it from strawberry.

Ben:  What'd you call it, tiliroside?

Amitay:  Tiliroside, yeah.

Ben:  What is that exactly?

Amitay:  Tiliroside is another hormetic compound that activates sirtuins. And, actually, a few products on the market have already started using it. One of them is Qualia. For example, they use tiliroside but this is a much more elegant molecule than resveratrol that doesn't have any toxicity. The problem with resveratrol is that it is a stressor. And, if we just apply it on the skin, the skin doesn't have the enzyme to break it down to remove that stressor after a certain amount of time like our gut does. So, you need to go through a process that makes it, first of all, much more expensive but also limits the amount that we can get in there. So, for the most part, we prefer using fermented resveratrol but within some formulations, we just cannot.

Ben:  Okay, got it.

I want to backpedal for a second because I know some people might ask about this because you dropped it kind of quickly and we didn't delve in. But, you said ascorbic acid could be, I think you said genotoxic, and that's interesting because a lot of people will tell you, especially biochemist in the nutrition industry, for example, that ascorbic acid or ascorbate is identical to whole foods vitamin C and that you really don't need to worry about it at all. So, what are the subtle differences between whole-food vitamin C and ascorbic acid or ascorbate?

Amitay:  Wow. So, first of all, ascorbate is great, the problem is ascorbic acid. So, ascorbic acid that is used in skincare, first and foremost, is synthetic. And, the problem, first, you're not getting a product that was made right now. You're getting a product. The average skincare product is sitting on the shelf for about 18 months before you get it. Yeah. So, you're getting a product that is ancient.

And, just to give you an idea, a product that says, “Oh, I'm 20% vitamin C,” the average percent you're actually going to get to your skin when you apply it is about 7%, the rest is oxidized. The problem with ascorbic acid is it's extremely, extremely, extremely reactive, extremely volatile. And, when it is improperly being introduced to the skin, which means it doesn't go through your digestive tract, it doesn't go through some checks and balances that your body has in order to get it to the skin, it excites iron molecules in the skin which then these excited iron molecules which are now free radicals actually cause DNA damage. They actually cause physical DNA damage and are genotoxic and they damage your DNA. 

So, in my opinion, that is the most toxic common skin ingredient that is out there right now, but the versions that are fat-soluble, so ascorbate forms that could be sodium ascorbate, that can be calcium ascorbate, probably the best, or THD are the best versions as far as bang for your buck.

There is a water-soluble version that is very good that's called MAP, which is magnesium ascorbyl phosphate, which is extremely good but for the most part it's very difficult to get in high amounts in skincare.

Ben:  Which one do you guys use at Young Goose?

Amitay:  We use all of them. In C.A.R.E., we use calcium ascorbate, which is the safest, okay? In ProC.A.R.E., which is our senolytic serum, we use THD. THD is the most impactful, so it's actually six times stronger or more impactful than ascorbic acid. And, in the R&D products that I sent you, the secret products that I sent you that are our first venture into incorporating NAD and spermidine, we actually opted for MAP because it plays nicer with spermidine and NAD precursors.

Ben:  Spermidine is a super popular oral anti-aging and longevity agent. Is there evidence that it could work on the skin?

Amitay:  Yes. So, there are some evidence because the company that we're researching it with has ties with the University of Grots in Austria. So, within feasibility research, we have seen effects on the skin thickening of the dermis which is again very important going back to things like microneedling. That's one of the things that we want to see in youthful skin. And, obviously, there are also visible differences when it's used. Obviously, again, like anything, more research has to be done but it looks great for now.

Ben:  Yeah, interesting.

Okay. So, I'm learning a lot about skincare as I get older. I still get confused by the order in which to do everything because I used to be, gosh, I'd smell Vaseline on my face or sometimes butter or I'd just be like, “Hey, if it's greasy or oily and I put it on my face, that's probably a pretty good idea.” And then, I tried to avoid toxins in certain skincare products. I'd go to the environmental working group website and try not to buy the stuff that's appear to have harmful ingredients. 

And then, I got to the point where I was using extra virgin olive oil and starting to do red light but really wasn't into using multiple products. And then, I got into using cleansers or scrubs and then eventually doing a weekly mask. But, I got to admit, smoke still comes out my ears when I walk into the bathroom and I've got five of your products on the counter, the barrier and the moisturizer and the serum, and then sometimes somebody has sent me some kind of a spray, a mist. What's the order, what's the proper order to actually use these things? Explain it to me and I don't want to be sexist, but I would imagine more of the women listening to my podcast have been better educated in this stuff than the guys, but explain it to me like a sixth grader the order in which you'd use each of these different products.

Amitay:  Yeah, that's an amazing question. And, I would assume actually most women also are not going to be well-educated just because their education normally is by someone selling them something.

Ben:  I only say that because of how many times I've had to wait for a woman in the bathroom before a date that they must be doing some really, really complex stuff in there, but that might be a faulty assumption.

Amitay:  Yeah. So, normally, it has some agenda behind it. But, for the most part, if you remember what we said about vectoring, so we want to follow that idea and go basically thin to thick. So, obviously, we need to clean our faces first. That's obviously the first thing that we want to do.

Ben:  Wait, wait, I'm going to slow you down. I'm going to slow you down. This might rabbit hole a little bit. When you're cleaning your face, you guys have a cleanser, can you use that for illustrative purposes to describe to me what you'd use to clean the face ideally?

Amitay:  Yes. So, to clean the face, ideally, we want something that can basically bind to oils. And, we don't want something that strips the oils that are closer in adhesion to the skin, we just want to remove the layer that is attached to our first layer which is the dead layer in the skin. So, we don't want to use something like sulfates or anything that we know is harmful. Surfactant it's called. But, we want to use something that can bind to oils that are on the surface of the skin and remove them. That is kind of the basic cleanser. 

What we wanted to do is also eliminate a molecule called CD38, which is again because of our obsession with high NAD levels in the skin, we wanted to eliminate the culprit of lower NAD levels, which is a molecule called CD38, an enzyme called CD38. So, our cleanser eliminates that enzyme as well as those dirt and oils that are on the top of the skin. And, we also have a compound there that removes a lot of the heavy metals that have been or pollutants that have been attached to those outer layers as well.

Ben:  Okay. And, if I'm correct, if I remember from the label on your cleanser, just go in the bathroom, put it on, leave it on for 10 seconds, and then you can rinse it off.

Amitay:  Yeah. I actually leave it longer. The longer you leave it, the better. I actually even use it as my shaving lubricant. So, that allows me to leave it longer on the skin. So, I'll even brush my teeth and do whatever I want to do.

Ben:  Is there like a good reason that you use it as a shaving lube?

Amitay: Because most of the time shaving lubricants are either very, very uncomfortable if they're natural. They stick to the razor, et cetera, or they're very, very, very unnatural. They have fragrances. A lot of them. I hate fragrances and all of the ones that I found that are good and don't stick to the knife, they're with artificial fragrance. So, this specific cleanser because it's designed to stay longer on the skin, it's quite slippery. A lot of the people that want to do Gua Sha as well and don't want to use excess oil on their skin, maybe they have oily skin. They also use the cleanser for facial cupping or Gua Sha. So, it does have that slippery ability to allow us to shave.

Ben:  Yeah. Definitely it feels like a lubricant. That Gua Sha you mentioned, that's where you use these scraping tools for realigning some of the fascial adhesions and things like that in the face?

Amitay:  Yeah. They're mainly done for lymphatic drainage. And, one of the things that a lot of people are asking me are about “What do you think about Botox?” “What do you want to do, how can you kind of behave like a biohacker if you do get Botox done?” So, a lot of it is improving lymphatic drainage because if our muscles are basically paralyzed, we have to have something else that pumps our lymphatic system because normally we rely on our muscles to do it. And, Gua Sha is a great idea because it's basically massaging your face with a contoured stone and following your lymphatic system's normal way of operation, which is kind of from the center of your face towards your ear and then going down to your neck. So, if you think of any Gua Sha kind of tutorial–but, basically what it does, realigning fascia, I would say you would probably need a professional really to apply the right amount of pressure. No, not too much, not too little. But, for the most part, it's for lymphatic drainage.

Ben:  That is something I never thought about with Botox that when you're paralyzing the muscles, you're eliminating, to a great extent, the lymph drainage. I don't know if you and I were talking about this at dinner, but initially, my concern about Botox is the idea that you're paralyzing the face and micro-expressions in the face are so important for mirroring and for mimicry and for other people reading your emotions that it might result in some type of a deleterious social effect by having Botox in your face. Am I remembering that correctly?

Amitay:  You are 100% remembering it correctly. If we backtrack a year ago when I was talking about it, people thought I'm, again, a little bit cuckoo. But, because there was a University of Southern California, USC, study in 2011 that showed that but UC Irvine released another study very, very recently this year 2023 showing that as well. So, normally when we have an emotion, when we see an emotion on someone else's face; shock, horror, smile, whatever that is, we subconsciously micro mimic that in order for us to understand what it means. It's part of the way that we perceive other people's emotions. So, when we are paralyzed, that is something that obviously inhibits that function. On the other hand, by the way, Botox has been shown to relieve some anxiety and depression kind of for the same reason because you can't do the emotions of stress, anxiety, depression, et cetera.

Ben:  Wow, that's interesting. And, by the way, if you're listening, I'll link to some of these studies and stuff. I'll make shownotes at BenGreenfieldLife.com/YoungGoosePodcast. I'll put a link to a Gua Sha scraping tutorial video too in there for those of you who want to visualize what that looks like.

I want to get back to cleansing here in a second but that discussion about Botox is kind of interesting because there was a while where I thought that caring for one's face in some of the ways that we're describing was just a pure vanity or ego play, but it seems to me that very similar height and hair that there's a definite social impact and almost a financial impact in terms of the way people judge you and their perception of your biological age possibly playing a benefit when it comes to your ability to be able to be hired or your paycheck or the way that you might resonate during a negotiation or something like that. 

It's uncomfortable for people because a lot of people hear that and they're like, “Well, my parents weren't the most attractive people and I feel like I'm ugly; therefore, I got dealt a bad deck of cards and I'm never going to be successful in life because I'm not pretty.” And, I'm not endorsing that kind of stinking thinking, but there is kind of a link between taking good care of your skin and how that might serve you in your career or in your negotiations or in situations that, isn't there?

Amitay:  Yeah. But, first and foremost, I want to say that most of the time, if someone can tackle that adversity, there is a positive result on the other end. Most of the time the shorter less impressive specimens in Special Forces turn out to be the most fierce soldiers. So, just as a caveat there but you're 100% correct. So, first of all, there has been many studies showing that there is unfortunately or fortunately, there is a correlation between the way that you look and your vibrancy, if you would, and your ability to influence people.

Having said that, I'd really like to concentrate on something else that you said, which is the way that we can infer someone's biological age from their apparent age. So, there were a few studies that showed that there is actually an amazing correlation between the way that we perceive someone's age and their biological age or as a predictor of frailty later on. So, there was a very, very, very famous study that was published in the British Medical Journal in 2009 that started this snowball, which now actually since 2015 but especially now with AI, there are numerous companies that are looking to involve AI and facial photography as a diagnostic tool to the extent that it is better diagnostic tool than blood work to know your biological age.

Ben:  Really? So, would there be something to be said then for some of these apps that are now doing self-facial scans to determine stress, biological age? I know some that based on blood flow and eye metrics are even doing things like cardiovascular health.

Amitay:  Yeah. So, blood flow is great. And obviously, yes, the blood flow part, fantastic. Unfortunately, as far as the ones that determine skin health or youthfulness with photography, unfortunately, AI has a very, very, very serious problem with shadow or light discrepancies, et cetera. So, for now, when I'm saying it “unfortunately” because we spent a fortune trying to develop something that would help users of our products and some diagnostics around it, for now, it's not there. I really hope that in the future it will be and I'm sure it would. But, for now, that's less than optimal.

Ben:  Okay, that makes sense.

So, it's interesting because we kind of started to talk about the cleanser and got off track pretty quickly, but that's only part of the equation obviously. You have the moisturizer, you have the serum, so what comes after the cleanser?

Amitay:  So, after the cleanser, classically would come the spray that you mentioned. Either we make a spray that is balancing your pH, which is called Bio-C Peptide Spray, but that's I would say a choice. If someone didn't want to use that, that's completely fine. If someone wanted to use something that is more economical such as BEAM Minerals spray.

Ben:  Oh, yeah, I have some of that BEAM Minerals stuff. I interviewed Caroline. She was actually at the event I met you at. Yeah, they have great spray on minerals.

Amitay:  Yes, that's a great spray, but it's not mandatory because, for the most part, our pH is balanced, the acidity of our skin is kind of balanced around 5.5. But, if we want to kind of make sure it is balanced, we can use a spray that balances it. Either we have Bio-C Peptide Spray, you can use BEAM Minerals spray. But, what it's going to do, it's going to make sure that the other ingredients that are formulated for that specific acidity level will penetrate correctly. If you remember our discussion about vitamin C, a lot of the reason it loses its viability is because of that interaction with the acid mantle with that protective layer of acid in our skin. So, by balancing it out, we open a portal for products to be able to penetrate well. So, that as far as Bio-C Peptide Spray or a toner or any type of spray that will help balance pH.

Ben:  Okay, got you. I'm tracking. Cleanser then toner or spray. Alright.

Amitay:  Yes. The next step and that is a step that is coming to us actually from Korea, from Korean skincare, and there are entire companies that were built on that specific product that is an Essence. And, an Essence is extremely, extremely, extremely liquid nutrient-dense product. For the most part, it was built to enhance hydration. But, what we did, we designed a product that's called Amplifying Essence that has a few ingredients. It has an ingredient that improves ATP production or the way that your mitochondria can use oxygen. And, the other thing that it has, it is actually a proprietary NAD precursor that is very similar to nicotinamide. And, it is not a precursor that we want to use in every product because it gets metabolized extremely quickly. But, for a product that comes first before our entire treatment routine and that we want to make sure that our skin uses whatever ingredients we're supplying it afterwards in the best way, we want to have this extremely quickly absorbed NAD precursor. So, that is an Essence.

Ben:  Okay. And, is an Essence different than the spray-on toner thing or is that in the same category?

Amitay:  Yeah. So, if you think of a cleanser and a toner, they're of the family of cleansing, of preparing, of cleaning out things and preparing the skin for treatment. Essence is the first step of the treatment of the skin, but I would say it's kind of an added step. So, we can bypass both the spray and an Essence and go from a cleanser to a serum.

Ben:  Okay.

Amitay:  And, serums are really the way that we can give our routine a direction because they can be the most rich in active ingredients. And again, if we talk about vectoring, they will be absorbing the deepest into the skin.

Ben:  Now, you guys have a serum, right? I'm curious what's in it.

Amitay:  We have actually five.

Ben:  Okay. Maybe that's why I was confused because I have a few different ones that say serum. So, why dude, why five? I'm getting confused.

Amitay:  I know, but it's like asking, “Why do we have a million peptides that we can buy?” Or, we can think of other examples, but really the serums they give direction to the routine. Most of the other products, we have only one cleanser, only one Essence, only one spray, only one moisturizer, only one mask, but the serum is your way to customize your routine. The one that I like the most is called ProC.A.R.E. because it eliminates senescent cells, it eliminates zombie cells in the skin, it mimics things like rapamycin and metformin. And again, it has that special very, very, very potent type of vitamin C. And, that is normally a serum that we're going to use in the morning to create a more resilient skin. And, in the evening, for the most part, we want to use a vitamin A-based serum, which is a retinol-based serum.

Ben:  Okay. So, I could use something like the ProC.A.R.E. in the morning, and then in the evening, I'd want to use the one with vitamin A in it, and what's that one called?

Amitay:  It's called Bio-Retinol. So, that's a proprietary retinol that is again biomimetic. It mimics how your body expresses vitamin A. 

Ben:  Is that one in the Bio-Barrier serum we talked about I've been using?

Amitay:  No. So, Bio in our products refers to the fact that it's biomimetic that it mimics a process in the skin. Bio-Retinol is not Bio-Barrier, it is its own product. It actually uses the same biomimetic lipids, but it combines with them that retinol, that vitamin A instead of Lipochroman-6, which is similar to C60.

Ben:  So, would you use then two products in the evening before you get to bed like a vitamin A serum and then a barrier skin repair serum?

Amitay:  Yeah, 100%.

Ben:  Okay. I haven't been doing that. Okay, so that's helpful. So, I do the one with the vitamin A and then the Bio-Barrier before I go to bed at night. In the morning, I've got the cleanser, I've got the spray on or the Essence as an option, then I move on to the serum.

Amitay:  Yes. And then, you will use–

Ben:  That's not all.

Amitay:  And, we have more. Then, you will use the C.A.R.E. NAD Boosting Moisturizer. So, the challenge here is we want to create a product that has a very slow-release type of ingredients. So, ingredients such as the NAD precursors that are patented, the fermented resveratrol that is patented. We also have there if anyone knows about different peptides that are positive for the skin, what we call procollagen peptides, we have a peptide called Matrixyl 3000, which is a peptide that elevates the amount of collagen your skin can make and the quality of collagen your skin can make. But, that in general is something to support hydration and support overall function.

Ben:  Okay.

Amitay:  Yeah. So, that would be a routine. That would be a full routine.

Ben:  Okay. By the way, what's the name of the morning serum that you guys make and then the name of the evening serum?

Amitay:  So, ProC.A.R.E. Senolytic Serum would be the serum for the morning. And, for the evening, I recommend Bio-Retinol. And, you can definitely follow it up with Bio-Barrier as well.

Ben:  This is so helpful. Okay, I know what to do. And then, once you do the moisturizer, that's it, you're good.

Amitay:  You're good, but there is something that we developed over many, many years, and actually in a lot of facilities that made us famous, which is called the Hyperbaric Mask. I think we sent you that one. If not, we have to rectify that. But, the Hyperbaric Mask is our number one seller and it mimics the skin rejuvenating effect of being in a hyperbaric chamber for your skin.

Ben:  Could you use it when you're in the hyperbaric chamber?

Amitay:  The first version was for a very, very affluent individual that had a 150k hyperbaric chamber in his house and he wasn't getting the skin rejuvenation effects that he would have liked. And, the reason is because similar to what I said about red light therapy before, you are capped by your mitochondria with the amount of energy you can produce. If you're not producing energy well, you're going to do it even more poorly when you're doing red light therapy or hyperbaric chamber or anything that requires energy production. 

So, we created a product that will improve energy production in the mitochondria, but translating it to a mass-produced product, we know that most people don't have a hyperbaric chamber in their house. So, we created a product that mimics the hyperoxic-hypoxic paradox, which means that if you have a lot of oxygen and then a very low amount of oxygen, your body actually react in a very positive way as far as rejuvenation. Activating sirtuins. Again, that's a product where we have tiliroside instead of enhanced resveratrol. And, we also use moringin, which is out of moringa. It's a sulfur compound to activate a pathway called Nrf2 to elevate detoxification and to elevate glutathione in the skin.

Ben:  That whole hypoxic-hyperoxic thing must be why Wim Hof has such great skin and beard. I'm going to attribute it to that.

Amitay:  Well, God bless him. The number one question I get is, “If Wim Hof is so healthy, why does his skin not look great?” That's the number one question.

Ben:  What do you say?

Amitay:  Well, that is the essence of biohacking. To be honest with you, Wim Hof is obviously an idol of mine. But, when you subject yourself to the raw natural energy of rejuvenation and you're not stripping away the negative effects of it, you're left with some things that you wouldn't want, kind of what we had the discussion about the sunlight. So, the same thing about climbing mountains with your shorts and no shoes or exposing your skin to a lot of negative issues that even though your body is adapting to, your skin isn't.

Another thing that you might want to consider is the older we get, especially after reproductive age, especially for women after menopause, the skin becomes–I'm going to use heuristics here, but the way that your body refers to your skin is it shifts from an organ that communicates virality and sexual maturity capability to an organ that is 100% defensive and an organ that we can basically sacrifice. And, if we think of everything from what we started this discussion about, which is this radiofrequency, micro-needling, lasers, whatever that is, to everything that we're doing topically, the strategy is kind of to bypass that function of the body that lets the skin go and sacrifices every time that it protects its internal organs and to stimulate rejuvenation that the body doesn't do normally past peak reproductive age.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And, all joking aside, I feel cold soak actually really, really appears to induce some amount of blood flow and rejuvenation to the skin for obvious reasons due to the capillarization and vasoconstrictive effect. I think there's actually something to be said for cold thermogenesis and skin health.

Amitay: One million percent. But, what I see a lot now is things that–cold thermogenesis for the most part relates to the core temperature of the body. I mean, you wrote beautifully about the way that it improves the gut, the gut-brain barrier, and in general kind of resets a few processes in the brain. But, that really happens not because the brain is cold, it's because your core temperature is being lowered.

Ben:  Yeah.

Amitay:  And, what we see now within the skincare industry are products that are topically cooling a specific area down. And, that has way more negative effects than positive effects. It's much better to leave your face for the most part outside of the water and lower the core body temperature down.

Ben:  Yeah. Did you learn all this stuff in the Israeli Special Forces, by the way, Amitay?

Amitay:  Yeah. They teach you how to have good skin. The joke is that I went from fighting people to fighting wrinkles.

Ben:  You're [01:12:28] _____ hand mirror and a comb when you enroll?

Amitay:  Exactly. They do issue a comb though. But, the reason I learned it is because when I finished my military service, I did a few extra years. I ended up being the head of our Reconnaissance Department in our Special Operations Unit. And, I fell in love with team building. I think that's the coolest thing about Special Forces, whether it is American, Israeli, it's the ability to build coherent, adjustable, modular teams in order to accomplish whatever mission that is. And, that's what I fell in love with. Most of the Special Forces veterans in Israel go into the tech industry because that's really the number one export Israel has and the way to really succeed financially in Israel. It's through the tech industry. And, to me, being a contrarian, I didn't want to do what everyone else is doing, I was really in love with the ability to build teams, et cetera.

Ben:  Yeah.

Amitay:  And, after a few years, yeah, I ended up being in one of the first red light therapy companies ever. And, that's why we talk a lot about red light therapy. And, when that got sold, I invested most of the money that we had into NAD research. So, the joke is that when money meets experience, experience ends up having all the money and the money ends up having experience. So, learned it as an entrepreneur. Obviously, you met my wife, Anastasia, who's a renowned biologist and biohacker. So, through obviously being involved with her and the research that she's done, you get learn a few cool things.

Ben:  Yeah, I learned a ton from you at that dinner. And, I mean, every time since I think twice I've gotten a box to the house with all these crazy products, some of them, some of your R&D products that are the secret sexy sauces in development. But look, I know we've been going a while and we're a little bit over time, you were gracious enough to share a discount code for my audience. I know that really, really good skincare products are not inexpensive so that should help those of you listening who want to try out this–let me see. Let me review my notes. Cleanser, spray on, serum, moisturizer in the morning with the optional Hyperbaric Mask, and in the evening the serum and the Bio-Barrier, and then in the sun, the sunscreen or sunblock. Obviously, a lot of different things to try, but I have a link and a discount from Amitay I'll put in the shownotes at BenGreenfieldLife.com/YoungGoosePodcast.

I actually had wanted to ask you about some other things like some of these supplements that you consume orally that supposedly protect the skin and this whole realm of peptides because I know you have a lot of different peptides in addition to GHK-Copper that include in your strategies. But alas, we might have to save that for round two. And, in the meantime, you guys, trust me, Amitay is brutally intelligent. And, I've been really impressed with his devotion to research and what he knows. And so, it's kind of weird, I almost have appliable skin confidence when I put his stuff on because I just know. I'm using the most advanced stuff I can on my skin without actually going out and buying, I don't know, a $20,000 laser or whatever which we've established might not be the best idea anyways.

So, Amitay, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing all this with us, man.

Amitay:  Thank you, Ben. I super appreciate it. If someone is a super, super nerd and really wants to learn, spend an hour discussing vitamin A or something like that, they can look at our podcast, it's called Biohacking Beauty. But, that is obviously diving really, really deep. So, yeah.

Ben:  That's a great name for a podcast. I didn't know you had one. So, I'll put a link to that in the shownotes, too, the Gua Sha video, discounts on the Young Goose products and plenty more if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/YoungGoosePodcast. And, until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Amitay from Young Goose signing out. Have an amazing week.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh entertaining, well-informed, and often outside-the-box approach to discovering the health, and happiness, and hope that we all crave. So, I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. And, if you liked it or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel wherever that might be, and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. It means a lot.

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In a world obsessed with quick fixes, there's often profound value in taking the long road—and this certainly applies when it comes to skincare.

Through his skincare brand Young Goose, Amitay Eshel is sending out a clarion call: lasting beauty isn't about the overnight miracles, but the long-term care you invest in your skin.

Amitay isn't your typical CEO. With a history in biohacking, beauty, and business consultation, he's channeled a decade's worth of executive wisdom into a brand that is redefining skincare. As a pioneer of the world's first biohacking skincare company, Amitay is bridging performance optimization with skin health. Think of Young Goose's innovative solutions as an invitation for your skin to function at its peak.

The results? A staggering 95% of their clientele can't resist coming back, with over 90% witnessing significant results in just a matter of weeks. But it's not just the numbers; each Young Goose product is an emblem of science-backed integrity, setting a gold standard in the beauty world.

Amitay's accolades span from his influential voice in the wellness sector to his podcasting prowess on Young Goose's Biohacking Beauty podcast. If you're in that world, you might have seen him at wellness summits like the Biohacking Congress or the Ultimate Wellness Event. Beyond his entrepreneurial ventures, Amitay immerses himself in martial arts, indulges in culinary adventures, and is an insatiable history aficionado. It's this mix of passion and expertise that makes him a dynamo in the biohacking beauty space.

Now, peel back the layers with me in this episode, as Amitay and I decode the enigma of laser treatments for facial skin and weigh the pros and cons of red light therapy. We'll uncover the truth behind sun protection, discuss the age-old debate between avoiding and seeking the sun, and unravel the challenges of the much-hyped NAD molecule in skin care. And yes, the million-dollar question: is Botox really the nemesis? Get ready to step into the fusion of beauty, science, and biohacking like never before.

During our discussion, you'll discover: