Brian Johnson's Anti-Aging Skincare Routine: Analysis and Reaction

so Brian Johnson put out a video two days ago detailing his over-the-top anti-aging skincare routine and you guys want me to react to it so let&#39;s go skin is the largest organ of our [Music] bodies as a kid I kind of destroyed mine I was in the sun all the time no sunscreen and now I&#39;m in my 40s I&#39;m paying the price when we started blueprint we had the goal measure every organ of the body including skin and slow the speed of aging and then reverse the aging damage I had a lot of skin age damage and what we&#39;ve done is we&#39;ve used various Technologies to measure my skin damage and my age I&#39;m going to show you three things today I&#39;m going to start with the cream then I&#39;m going to show you lasers or devices and then I&#39;m going to tell you what you should do on a daily basis I wake up I wash my face with cave it&#39;s got some uh salicylic acid which is like just enough to keep my face uh blemish free I also micro do Accutane so I currently take two pills a week each one&#39;s 40 milligrams which has really been great I do a few anti-aging therapies that have a side effect of acne for example rapy which is one of the most promising anti-aging drugs it&#39;s used for people who are doing organ transplants it suppresses the immune system kind of counterintuitive the do I&#39;m taking has acne side effects so this is really great for some acne control all right so a few things here first of all the salicilic acid cleanser in the morning great option as an over-the-counter acne treatment to control bright outs not going to be enough for everyone with acne they may need additional treatments but it&#39;s definitely a great starting point but using a salicylic acid cleanser also has other benefits it can help improve um the appearance of dark spots sun damage smooth the skin surface exfoliate the pore help with things like blackheads and white heads second thing micro doing Accutane all right I actually have an older video All About lowd do acutane for anti-aging purposes Accutane is the brand name of isotretinoin a retinoid given by mouth to treat acne it works because it is a chotic meaning it dissolves blackheads and white heads and it also is sibo supressive it reduces the output of oil but we also know that isotretinoin can help to suppress um activation of enzymes that destroy collagen in the deeper layers of the skin and isotron is also associated with an improvement in collagen levels as well as elastin so there is some interest in lowd dose isotretinoin for an anti-aging effect does taking lowd dose or micro doing isotretinoin really do all that much for anti-aging the research is sparse and somewhat conflicting there are some small studies that show an improvement in what&#39;s called solar elastosis basically the histologic AKA biopsy manifestation of sun damage in the deeper layers of the skin as well as an improvement in wrinkle depth and overall skin color but one study actually showed no difference in people taking isotretinoin plus sunscreen Plus moisturizer compared to people just using sunscreen and moisturizer so again the data are small limited conflicting and as it stands now there&#39;s not enough research to support taking lowd dose isotretinoin for an anti-aging effect per se although there is some logic behind doing so the main issue are you&#39;re exposing yourself to the potential side effects from isot Tre know and so blood work is needed to monitor for those um it is an overall safe drug but there are potential risks such as elevation of the liver enzymes abnormalities in the blood lipids and of course it can be super drying for your lips for your eyes so there&#39;s insufficient evidence to recommend taking isotretinoin over just using a topical retinoid like tro or a cosmetic form of vitamin A like retinol or retin aldhy which as a side note I saw a lot of comments in his comment section asking why no retinol why no troin what are your thoughts on retinol what are your thoughts on tretinoin I would assume he&#39;s not using those things because he is on lowd dose isot tretinoin doing the same exact thing as the topicals would so it would be redundant unnecessary and if he&#39;s experiencing dryness from the isotretinoin that may make it much worse but he&#39;s also taking it along with using the salicylic acid cleanser for acne control because because this is the next Point um he&#39;s taking a medication that comes with the risk side effect which maybe he&#39;s been experiencing of acne he is taking um rrap sense so this is a drug that is actually an immunosuppressant meaning it lowers the immune system and because of that it&#39;s given to patients who have had an organ transplant to prevent them from rejecting the transplanted organ it also has some other beneficial properties for certain indications it is anti-proliferative and it has anti-angiogenesis properties meaning it kind of suppresses new blood vessel formation so it turns out it ends up in a lot of cases being really helpful for treating certain birth marks where you have a problem with abnormal blood vessel development now why is he taking it so there is some enthusiasm for this drug for anti-aging purposes um perhaps it influences some metabolic parameters associated with longevity and slowing down the aging process activating certain Pathways like autophagy that are important for uh recycling of damaged organel so on and so forth but but the majority of that research is what we call preclinical meaning it&#39;s largely been done in animals mice insects um some M Alan models so that&#39;s where the bulk of the research supporting it for an anti-aging effect lies there are some actual studies and people looking at these drugs for um improving immune function in older adults so there is some promising research in that regard however there&#39;s not a ton of research out there on just taking it and otherwise healthy people for ant anti-aging so it&#39;s kind of taking a big leap of faith there um and again it&#39;s a drug it does have side effects acne like you mentioned um also rosacea really painful mouth sores um you can also develop skin infections pretty readily on this medication foliculitis I have lots of videos on foliculitis it&#39;s an infection of the hair follicle you&#39;re more susceptible to um different fungal infections like ringworm uh toenail fungus jock itch foot fungus and if you had chicken box as a child you take this medication it increases the risk the chickenpox virus wakes up and causes a very painful rash that is commonly referred to as shingles shingles is not fun because it suppresses the immune system it also delays wound healing so if you get a cut or you have to have a surgery you may have problems healing efficiently properly and plus on top of that you&#39;re at an increased risk for infection it also can cause some weird side effects with your nails make them very brittle peely I&#39;ve had patients develop hair loss on this hair shedding most cases as well as a change in the texture of their hair when it comes to medications it&#39;s not the poison it&#39;s the dose he says he&#39;s taking a low dose but you know you can develop side effects out a low dose sounds like you know he&#39;s able to control the side effects that he&#39;s had so I mean this is something that he&#39;s willing to experiment with he&#39;s not necessarily telling you to do this I just applied this at of poo cream uh we&#39;ve been trying this now for 3 weeks like we do with every cream we&#39;re motivated to see does this work by the markers we can measure so this is basically feeding fat cells in my face because I&#39;m trying to rejuvenate the volume of my face this so Ado cream volum fill in these are topical moisturizers that allegedly stimulate um fat cells to regenerate and replace lost volume in the face pretty big claim check out my video reviewing volue Fillin I go over their study it&#39;s not like a peer-reviewed study per say but what they did on their end I discussed the limitations of it um I&#39;m highly skeptical the mechanism here it just doesn&#39;t make a whole lot of sense that a cream applied to the skin would actually stimulate healthy fat cell growth um in areas of volume loss and you also would have to question like how is this going to strategically replace loss volume exactly where you want it and not give abent fat growth in the form of fatty tumors like lipomas um so I&#39;m skeptical I think at the end of the day these products are pretty much just moisturizing the skin but we&#39;ll he says he&#39;s measuring some kind of marker I&#39;m curious to know what that is maybe he&#39;s doing like an ultrasound or something of that sort is supposed to help but again we&#39;re 2 weeks in and it could be in the case that in a week or two weeks or four weeks from now it&#39;s in kind of like the cream graveyard on my counter well we&#39;re not doing it anymore because it&#39;s got to prove that it&#39;s worthy of existence in the protocol otherwise it&#39;s out what we&#39;ve basically found is that creams don&#39;t move the a needle on data like if you&#39;re trying to really address the crow&#39;s feet or you&#39;re trying to reduce the UV damage which you can&#39;t see with your eye it&#39;s on a machine using multi-spectral Imaging uh you really need to use devices like lasers and other things IPL which I will show you in a minute you know a cream is not going to actually in the most in most cases it&#39;s not actually going to take away a wrinkle sure retinol has the ability to improve collagen and lessen wrinkle depth but things like creams ser ums they&#39;re not really going to take away a lot of the visible signs of aging they can improve them things like dark spots um uneven skin tone rough coarse skin texture all that to say though using it using skincare products and then taking these measurements you may be missing a bigger picture benefit of using skincare products in that a lot of them because they are moisturizing they help improve barrier function ultimately when barrier function is improved your skin is better able to protect you from environmental aggressors some skin care products have um antioxidants in them which you know I&#39;ve talked about those the limitations of topical antioxidants they&#39;re not perfect there&#39;s a lot of gaps in knowledge it&#39;s not simply a matter of oh put an antioxidant on my skin it&#39;s going to help um it has to be at the right place the right time the right dose the right antioxidant lots of areas where we don&#39;t know but all that to say I&#39;m not really sure that the measurements that he&#39;s going to be taking are necessarily going to reflect that those things could be having small but meaningful benefit on the skin over time by helping to reduce lipid peroxidation in Skin&#39;s outermost layer say when you go out and are exposed to environmental aggressor not only ultraviolet radiation but pollution infrared radiation visible light uh basically in summary the routine is very simple I wash with this in the morning I put this cream on I just dab it on again trial we&#39;ll see if it works and then I put sunscreen on Ela MD I wear sunscreen because the Sun causes damage it ages the skin and causing agent damage so I try to spend my time in the sun in the early mornings or in the evenings when the UV index is low otherwise I stay out of the Sun but when I am in the sun I do have sun shreen on this is a great morning skincare routine cleanse moisturize sunscreen I mean nothing extraneous I&#39;ve said this before keep the routine simple and that&#39;s easy to stick with less risk of irritation so I really like this routine and this advice around sun protection wearing sunscreen and protecting your skin from the Sun is also going to allow for these treatments that he&#39;s going to talk about in a moment to work best because so long as you are continuing to have unprotected sun exposure your Skin&#39;s ability to go in there and utilize the tools that you&#39;re giving it to repair damage it&#39;s going to be limited because you have that constant immunosuppressive effect from the UV you have that constant inflammatory milu that upregulation of collagen destroying enzymes so it&#39;s taking you several steps back you need the sun protection to prevent but also to reverse welcome to the clinic here is kind of how we understand reality with blueprint it&#39;s like food where we&#39;ve constructed a diet for my 2,250 calories where every calorie has to fight for its life so we have these ideal markers of where we want the organs to be and we have the food and if the food does not deliver the marker that we expect it to it&#39;s out the same is kind of true with the clinic where we have these markers for example with skincare like UV damage pore size Reds Browns Etc if we don&#39;t hit the markers the technology is out and so let me show you how we do these Baseline measurements to get us orientation of where my starting point is this device here is a clinical grade system that&#39;s typically in dermatology offices it&#39;s called multi-spectral Imaging and it gives you this dashboard of I think eight to 10 different biomarkers when I started it was pretty terrifying I look like a zombie face you see all the damage what was interesting is my son talage I had a surprise birthday party for him all the friends came up here was really kind of cool like 16 17 year olds and their skin is just beautiful they put their faces in here and then they see their zombie face and they&#39;re like wait a second but my skin looks so great I&#39;ve wore sunscreen my whole life they&#39;re just unaware that they&#39;ve had so much sun damage especially living in Southern California so multispectral Imaging is a tool that basically allows for collecting spectral Imaging and spatial data kind of all at once and essentially what it&#39;s doing is reading information from various chromophores in your skin mostly melanin as well as oxy and deoxyhemoglobin collagen water so it really gives the to the technology information that kind of gives you some insight into things like hyperpigmentation dark spots moles now the technology has its limits it doesn&#39;t give you all the information you might be looking for which is is key so for example talking about lost fat in the face probably not going to gather that kind of information necessarily from this reading but um it is going to give you some picture of the sun damage on your face to a certain extent so this is an exilus device this is for the face this is a radio frequency technology this tip here warms up and you kind of roll it over the skin and it&#39;s used for collagen production and for tightening the skin so as you age you lose f nness of the skin and less collagen so we&#39;re trying to revolumize and that was in particular a problem with me because in the beginning of blueprint I lost a lot of facial volume due to my caloric restriction I&#39;ve since increased my my caloric intake but we&#39;ve tried to increase volume if you see my pictures from a year ago to now it&#39;s a big difference I&#39;ve revolumize quite a bit so the exis device is a monopolar radio frequency device with ultra sound and basically what it does is it can be used on the face on the neck and in the Jou are area for like you said skin tightening improving laxity and wrinkles basically it targets the deeper layers of the skin with radio frequency and ultrasound energy to cause remodeling of the collagen and stimulate new healthy collagen to be produced so you get Improvement in tightness and a reduction in overall laxity radio frequency is also used um on like the body for example to Target stubborn fat and to have the outcome of skin tightening so we did this for a protocol we&#39;ve paused this because we&#39;re a little bit worried about it being potentially a cause for fat loss so we have a device uh that measures heat we stay at exactly 40 to 42c anything above is used for fat burning but anything below uh should be restorative but just out of precaution because we&#39;re trying to rejuvenate volume we&#39;ve paused this device so it&#39;s pending future analysis in the hands of someone who knows how to operate the device and the correct settings definitely not a concern but yeah ultimately it could cause problems with the fat if the wrong settings the wrong hand piece was used on the face for sure also we pause this because we&#39;ve become very recently uh positive on a technology called tixel we don&#39;t yet own the device we&#39;re buying it now but that uses thermal mechanical oblation so it uses a titanium tip and it delivers these these intense pulses of heat and we found it is safe so we&#39;ve used laser we use RF and they all have these pros and cons there&#39;s always some nuances with the technology tixel refining is safe it&#39;s efficacious it does the same things like uh firmness and collagen production so I&#39;m now three Therapies in we like the results so far Again by using the multi-spectral imaging technology to measure the markers so tixel just like he says it delivers short bursts of thermal energy to the top part of the scan it&#39;s actually approved here in the US for treating crow&#39;s feet like wrinkles around the eyes which um you know that area can actually be kind of challenging to treat because the skin there is very delicate very thin and it um Heats in a very precise way creating these little channels of injury so that stimulates new healthy collagen production we also have things like this device it measures Advanced glycated M products so basically junk build up in the skin you put your arm on this thing and it measures it so adjacent to the face on skin you&#39;re looking at the whole body and so this particular reader you can see here you can find age on the bottom on the x- axis here and the result is your y- axis so for example if you&#39;re 20 years old you want to have you&#39;ll be right here on the result for normal one line below standard deviation is better than normal the one is above I was my first measurements were in the red like I was really bad and so this again is looking at cardiovascular health for the skin so whether you&#39;re looking at UV damage or or Browns or Reds or por size uh we&#39;re looking at the the skin Health across the entire body body Advanced glycation and products so basically these are modified lipids or proteins that have essentially a sugar attached to them glycation and they um form as a natural consequence of the aging process like they&#39;re unavoidable but they&#39;re are certain things that really hasten their formation lead to you know accumulation of these and they can be really damaging to the blood vessels so that&#39;s kind of what he&#39;s talking about with the cardiovascular health um specifically they form in a large amount in a hyperglycemic environment so diabetics have a higher load of these it&#39;s probably a lot of what contributes to microvascular disease in diabetics but it also plays a big role in skin aging check out my video on the worst foods for collagen because I talk about dietary sources of advanced glycation and products that contribute to premature skin Aging in that video it&#39;s not even just the food itself but importantly how it&#39;s prepared and there are also food preparation strategies that lessen um Advanced glycation and product formation now the tool he is um talking about is an age reader and basically this um works by measuring fluorescence uh my understanding is it&#39;s kind of helpful and maybe a research setting but it definitely has its limitations and it&#39;s not necessarily the best tool for truly quantifying these but does give you some information we started using this device this is BBL also known as IPL intense pulse light and there&#39;s different wavelengths there&#39;s 515 695 800 640 and we started doing full body treatments there was a small study at Stanford that showed that it changed the genetic expression of skin to be dramatically younger it wasn&#39;t a big enough study to gave us a huge amount of confidence but enough where we&#39;re like you know what let&#39;s play with this so we started doing whole body and it was basically effective at eliminating a bunch of the skin damage because I never had a shirt on when I was growing up as a kid I&#39;ve always burned and tanned on my upper body and so I had a lot of skin damage on my face and my upper body and so I basically got my skin back to the majority of that skin damage being gone intense pulse light or Broadband light however you want to call it it is useful for improving hyperpigmentation redness uh tasas otherwise commonly referred to as broken capillaries on the face I have a video all about that um definitely can improve the appearance of those depending on the settings now you got to be careful if you have a deeper skin tone with this because it does have the risk of burning deeper skin tones causing hyperpigmentation all these tools they do have the potential to damage not something to just play around with so I want to make sure that person doing it has the training the expertise and how to use it now there is some evidence that IPL can improve papillary dermal collagen uh however that&#39;s kind of mixed some studies don&#39;t really support that so it&#39;s a little up in the air as to whether or not it improves collagen but like he said um it sounds like he got some improvement in the visible signs of sun damage on the body maybe things like dark spots redness uneven skin tone possibly coarse skin texture the Stanford study that he&#39;s talking about um is interesting I I I looked at it very small like he said um and basically they were they sought out to see if there were any changes on the molecular level you know we can see histologically maybe there&#39;s some improvement and sun damage and visible signs of aging either with our eyes or you know under the microscope but they actually want to see are there any differences in the genes that are being expressed and and like he says it kind of the research kind of suggested that with intense pulse light you get genes being expressed that are more characteristic of like a younger skin so it kind of does suggest some degree of you know molecular Rejuvenation but again more research is needed um intense pulse light can certainly be helpful and he he didn&#39;t say how frequently he&#39;s doing this but sounds like he&#39;s gotten some good results another device which we&#39;ve used which is kind of like it&#39;s con in out of our protocol is saluma pro it&#39;s a bit expensive it&#39;s $1,500 for this so it&#39;s kind of a big buy uh but I did this for a while it has both red and blue light and red is for collagen production and healing skin Health uh blue is for uh acne so I did this for a bit for blenders control when I was having side effects from some of the medic I was taking but I no longer uh do it so um it kind of comes in and out of the protocol but it&#39;s kind of hard to pinpoint because the effect is so subtle and the devices we use have such a big effect like the tixel system or BBL so you have red light and blue light I&#39;ve got videos on this as a side note red light is like you said going to be helpful for improving collagen production it has anti-inflammatory effects and the blue light is specifically helpful for calming down acne now um this definitely can be certainly beneficial uh in in terms of either acne or wrinkles so it&#39;s not BS logical thing to try um and you can buy these masks I&#39;ve used one myself now the results that you get are very subtle like you said not as significant as what you would get maybe from an in-office treatment um only as good as you are at using it so you have to keep using it to maintain those results and then finally let me walk over here and show you this we have uh St red therapy we weren&#39;t certain whether it Justified the time I do this uh three times a week uh for 12 minutes so it&#39;s a total of uh 36 minutes a week and it uses both red light and near infrared uh but I stand right here in between them it&#39;s kind of a a hacky setup and uh it&#39;s good for skin health for healing for uh mitochondrial Health it even how red light therapy has been shown to be useful for depression when it&#39;s exposed the forehead so there&#39;s all kinds of things that just has General Health benefits and because I do work out quite a bit I&#39;m pretty active uh giving a little boost to my recovery so this one we feel like the evidence is there to support doing this even though we can&#39;t directly measure its effect because it&#39;s compounded upon other things we do so it sounds like he&#39;s being more consistent with this um total body red light system that he has you know to what extent that&#39;s going to get the face you know probably not as much as that mask that he was using but like he said red light you know is anti-inflammatory um so it sounds like that&#39;s kind of in line with what he&#39;s pursuing it for and that&#39;s the basic tour of the the clinic you get an idea of how fast we move the things we try uh I&#39;m very happy with the progress we&#39;ve made looking at my damage I think when I started I was in like a 98 percentile U my skin age was like 64 on one of the markers and I&#39;m back on my recent measurement I was I think to between 37 and 42 so had significant improvements in the measurement okay okay welcome to the kitchen you&#39;re really weird this is the exciting part I have a few things that are a little unconventional okay I&#39;m kind of unconventional but on my windows I have really big ones all over the house and I get a lot of sun in the morning at night and so to control the environment we have a tint on here that knocks out like 99.9% of UV I get a lot of comments about my pel skin I&#39;m a vampire that&#39;s what I&#39;m trying to do okay but really Sun causes damage it ages your skin it makes you look older so you don&#39;t want that and what the objective of blue blint is not to adhere to cultural norms of a tan the the objective is slowing my speed of aging and reversing aging damage that includes sun damage so I try to control what comes in my window when I go outside I&#39;ll walk to the cafe close by I will take an umbrella with me and I&#39;ll have the umbrella above my head that is weird in the United States of America in other places of the world it&#39;s very common and very normal so just to be aware that other people do have skin practices that are useful yeah those are great points you know first of all one thing I&#39;m sure he gets a lot of comments about um are people probably annoyed complaining that oh this is just you know for vanity sake and truthfully that&#39;s kind of sad because skin is an organ and it&#39;s a blessing and a curse in that people will be more motivated to take care of it for aesthetic reasons and then that trickles down to health benefits for them but really viewing your skin as an organ system is very important because keeping it healthy as long as possible and doing things to optimize skin Health namely protecting your skin from the sun it&#39;s going to pay off in your older adult years because you don&#39;t want to have very thin brittle fragile Sun damaged skin that is prone to tears easy bruising poor healing and skin infections we call that dermatoporosis just like you wouldn&#39;t want to do things to accelerate and increase the severity of osteoporosis bone thinning why would you want to do the same thing or be okay with doing the same things for your skin yes sun does come through window glass UVA rays specifically most window glass will block out UVB the Rays that burn the skin but UVA does come through window glass now your exposure to that is going to vary depending on the time of the day where you live and how close you&#39;re sitting to the window but he has some pretty big Windows lives in a very sunny climate so yeah overtime that is quite a bit of UVA um enough to you know if you spend a lot of time in that room maybe you&#39;d want to be wearing sunscreen indoors for sure but he has taken it to another level in terms of getting some kind of film on the windows to block out the UV I also really like the advice of carrying an umbrella with you I would add a hat Sun protective hat also can go a long way try to avoid damaging your skin this happens when there&#39;s High UV and that means so between 10:00 a.m. and 400 p.m. every day roughly in that window of time it&#39;s higher UV there&#39;s more damage it&#39;s higher in the summer than it is the winter the most effective thing to do is avoid the damage if you&#39;re going to be outside wear sunscreen ltmd is a good option it&#39;s on the blueprint website uh or if you can avoid it all together even better but really uh for the basics we can all agree upon let&#39;s try to stop the damage have a good diet and we&#39;ll be off to a good starting point I actually really like the ending message there something for everyone that can incorporate into our lives it&#39;s very doable very actionable it&#39;s in line with what I say on this channel what you know you can find on any professional dermatologic um information Source American Academy of Dermatology Etc protecting your skin from the Sun is like the most proactive thing that you can do to keep your skin healthy long term and I like throwing in the aspect of a healthy diet I would also add you know making sure that you&#39;re getting good sleep um exercise which sounds like he does these are all things that we know we&#39;re supposed to to do for General Health it pays off dividends for our skin I like the fact that the skincare routine is very basic simple sustainable cleanse moisturized sunscreen I mean that&#39;s really that&#39;s really what you need now the other things that he&#39;s doing you know certainly are way above and beyond what is necessary for skin health and to what extent they&#39;re actually going to make a huge difference it&#39;s kind of the point of the channel like right to see he&#39;s almost like doing his own little self- experiment not really pushing you to do them just kind of watch and see what happens I guess approach so use discretion hopefully this video of me responding pointing out some of the potential risks of some of these things and what they can and cannot do you know gives you a little bit more background also this is very cost prohibitive for the majority of people out there I can&#39;t imagine how much money all this cost yeah it&#39;ll be interesting to see what happens let me know in the comments though what do you think of this extreme skincare routine but if you guys enjoyed this video give it a thumbs up share it with your friends and as always don&#39;t forget sunscreen And subscribe I&#39;ll talk to you guys tomorrow [Music] bye

so Brian Johnson put out a video two days ago detailing his over-the-top anti-aging skincare routine and you guys want me to react to it so let&amp;#39;s go skin is the largest organ of our [Music] bodies as a kid I kind of destroyed mine I was in the sun all the time no sunscreen and now I&amp;#39;m in my 40s I&amp;#39;m paying the price when we started blueprint we had the goal measure every organ of the body including skin and slow the speed of aging and then reverse the aging damage I had a lot of skin age damage and what we&amp;#39;ve done is we&amp;#39;ve used various Technologies to measure my skin damage and my age I&amp;#39;m going to show you three things today I&amp;#39;m going to start with the cream then I&amp;#39;m going to show you lasers or devices and then I&amp;#39;m going to tell you what you should do on a daily basis I wake up I wash my face with cave it&amp;#39;s got some uh salicylic acid which is like just enough to keep my face uh blemish free I also micro do Accutane so I currently take two pills a week each one&amp;#39;s 40 milligrams which has really been great I do a few anti-aging therapies that have a side effect of acne for example rapy which is one of the most promising anti-aging drugs it&amp;#39;s used for people who are doing organ transplants it suppresses the immune system kind of counterintuitive the do I&amp;#39;m taking has acne side effects so this is really great for some acne control all right so a few things here first of all the salicilic acid cleanser in the morning great option as an over-the-counter acne treatment to control bright outs not going to be enough for everyone with acne they may need additional treatments but it&amp;#39;s definitely a great starting point but using a salicylic acid cleanser also has other benefits it can help improve um the appearance of dark spots sun damage smooth the skin surface exfoliate the pore help with things like blackheads and white heads second thing micro doing Accutane all right I actually have an older video All About lowd do acutane for anti-aging purposes Accutane is the brand name of isotretinoin a retinoid given by mouth to treat acne it works because it is a chotic meaning it dissolves blackheads and white heads and it also is sibo supressive it reduces the output of oil but we also know that isotretinoin can help to suppress um activation of enzymes that destroy collagen in the deeper layers of the skin and isotron is also associated with an improvement in collagen levels as well as elastin so there is some interest in lowd dose isotretinoin for an anti-aging effect does taking lowd dose or micro doing isotretinoin really do all that much for anti-aging the research is sparse and somewhat conflicting there are some small studies that show an improvement in what&amp;#39;s called solar elastosis basically the histologic AKA biopsy manifestation of sun damage in the deeper layers of the skin as well as an improvement in wrinkle depth and overall skin color but one study actually showed no difference in people taking isotretinoin plus sunscreen Plus moisturizer compared to people just using sunscreen and moisturizer so again the data are small limited conflicting and as it stands now there&amp;#39;s not enough research to support taking lowd dose isotretinoin for an anti-aging effect per se although there is some logic behind doing so the main issue are you&amp;#39;re exposing yourself to the potential side effects from isot Tre know and so blood work is needed to monitor for those um it is an overall safe drug but there are potential risks such as elevation of the liver enzymes abnormalities in the blood lipids and of course it can be super drying for your lips for your eyes so there&amp;#39;s insufficient evidence to recommend taking isotretinoin over just using a topical retinoid like tro or a cosmetic form of vitamin A like retinol or retin aldhy which as a side note I saw a lot of comments in his comment section asking why no retinol why no troin what are your thoughts on retinol what are your thoughts on tretinoin I would assume he&amp;#39;s not using those things because he is on lowd dose isot tretinoin doing the same exact thing as the topicals would so it would be redundant unnecessary and if he&amp;#39;s experiencing dryness from the isotretinoin that may make it much worse but he&amp;#39;s also taking it along with using the salicylic acid cleanser for acne control because because this is the next Point um he&amp;#39;s taking a medication that comes with the risk side effect which maybe he&amp;#39;s been experiencing of acne he is taking um rrap sense so this is a drug that is actually an immunosuppressant meaning it lowers the immune system and because of that it&amp;#39;s given to patients who have had an organ transplant to prevent them from rejecting the transplanted organ it also has some other beneficial properties for certain indications it is anti-proliferative and it has anti-angiogenesis properties meaning it kind of suppresses new blood vessel formation so it turns out it ends up in a lot of cases being really helpful for treating certain birth marks where you have a problem with abnormal blood vessel development now why is he taking it so there is some enthusiasm for this drug for anti-aging purposes um perhaps it influences some metabolic parameters associated with longevity and slowing down the aging process activating certain Pathways like autophagy that are important for uh recycling of damaged organel so on and so forth but but the majority of that research is what we call preclinical meaning it&amp;#39;s largely been done in animals mice insects um some M Alan models so that&amp;#39;s where the bulk of the research supporting it for an anti-aging effect lies there are some actual studies and people looking at these drugs for um improving immune function in older adults so there is some promising research in that regard however there&amp;#39;s not a ton of research out there on just taking it and otherwise healthy people for ant anti-aging so it&amp;#39;s kind of taking a big leap of faith there um and again it&amp;#39;s a drug it does have side effects acne like you mentioned um also rosacea really painful mouth sores um you can also develop skin infections pretty readily on this medication foliculitis I have lots of videos on foliculitis it&amp;#39;s an infection of the hair follicle you&amp;#39;re more susceptible to um different fungal infections like ringworm uh toenail fungus jock itch foot fungus and if you had chicken box as a child you take this medication it increases the risk the chickenpox virus wakes up and causes a very painful rash that is commonly referred to as shingles shingles is not fun because it suppresses the immune system it also delays wound healing so if you get a cut or you have to have a surgery you may have problems healing efficiently properly and plus on top of that you&amp;#39;re at an increased risk for infection it also can cause some weird side effects with your nails make them very brittle peely I&amp;#39;ve had patients develop hair loss on this hair shedding most cases as well as a change in the texture of their hair when it comes to medications it&amp;#39;s not the poison it&amp;#39;s the dose he says he&amp;#39;s taking a low dose but you know you can develop side effects out a low dose sounds like you know he&amp;#39;s able to control the side effects that he&amp;#39;s had so I mean this is something that he&amp;#39;s willing to experiment with he&amp;#39;s not necessarily telling you to do this I just applied this at of poo cream uh we&amp;#39;ve been trying this now for 3 weeks like we do with every cream we&amp;#39;re motivated to see does this work by the markers we can measure so this is basically feeding fat cells in my face because I&amp;#39;m trying to rejuvenate the volume of my face this so Ado cream volum fill in these are topical moisturizers that allegedly stimulate um fat cells to regenerate and replace lost volume in the face pretty big claim check out my video reviewing volue Fillin I go over their study it&amp;#39;s not like a peer-reviewed study per say but what they did on their end I discussed the limitations of it um I&amp;#39;m highly skeptical the mechanism here it just doesn&amp;#39;t make a whole lot of sense that a cream applied to the skin would actually stimulate healthy fat cell growth um in areas of volume loss and you also would have to question like how is this going to strategically replace loss volume exactly where you want it and not give abent fat growth in the form of fatty tumors like lipomas um so I&amp;#39;m skeptical I think at the end of the day these products are pretty much just moisturizing the skin but we&amp;#39;ll he says he&amp;#39;s measuring some kind of marker I&amp;#39;m curious to know what that is maybe he&amp;#39;s doing like an ultrasound or something of that sort is supposed to help but again we&amp;#39;re 2 weeks in and it could be in the case that in a week or two weeks or four weeks from now it&amp;#39;s in kind of like the cream graveyard on my counter well we&amp;#39;re not doing it anymore because it&amp;#39;s got to prove that it&amp;#39;s worthy of existence in the protocol otherwise it&amp;#39;s out what we&amp;#39;ve basically found is that creams don&amp;#39;t move the a needle on data like if you&amp;#39;re trying to really address the crow&amp;#39;s feet or you&amp;#39;re trying to reduce the UV damage which you can&amp;#39;t see with your eye it&amp;#39;s on a machine using multi-spectral Imaging uh you really need to use devices like lasers and other things IPL which I will show you in a minute you know a cream is not going to actually in the most in most cases it&amp;#39;s not actually going to take away a wrinkle sure retinol has the ability to improve collagen and lessen wrinkle depth but things like creams ser ums they&amp;#39;re not really going to take away a lot of the visible signs of aging they can improve them things like dark spots um uneven skin tone rough coarse skin texture all that to say though using it using skincare products and then taking these measurements you may be missing a bigger picture benefit of using skincare products in that a lot of them because they are moisturizing they help improve barrier function ultimately when barrier function is improved your skin is better able to protect you from environmental aggressors some skin care products have um antioxidants in them which you know I&amp;#39;ve talked about those the limitations of topical antioxidants they&amp;#39;re not perfect there&amp;#39;s a lot of gaps in knowledge it&amp;#39;s not simply a matter of oh put an antioxidant on my skin it&amp;#39;s going to help um it has to be at the right place the right time the right dose the right antioxidant lots of areas where we don&amp;#39;t know but all that to say I&amp;#39;m not really sure that the measurements that he&amp;#39;s going to be taking are necessarily going to reflect that those things could be having small but meaningful benefit on the skin over time by helping to reduce lipid peroxidation in Skin&amp;#39;s outermost layer say when you go out and are exposed to environmental aggressor not only ultraviolet radiation but pollution infrared radiation visible light uh basically in summary the routine is very simple I wash with this in the morning I put this cream on I just dab it on again trial we&amp;#39;ll see if it works and then I put sunscreen on Ela MD I wear sunscreen because the Sun causes damage it ages the skin and causing agent damage so I try to spend my time in the sun in the early mornings or in the evenings when the UV index is low otherwise I stay out of the Sun but when I am in the sun I do have sun shreen on this is a great morning skincare routine cleanse moisturize sunscreen I mean nothing extraneous I&amp;#39;ve said this before keep the routine simple and that&amp;#39;s easy to stick with less risk of irritation so I really like this routine and this advice around sun protection wearing sunscreen and protecting your skin from the Sun is also going to allow for these treatments that he&amp;#39;s going to talk about in a moment to work best because so long as you are continuing to have unprotected sun exposure your Skin&amp;#39;s ability to go in there and utilize the tools that you&amp;#39;re giving it to repair damage it&amp;#39;s going to be limited because you have that constant immunosuppressive effect from the UV you have that constant inflammatory milu that upregulation of collagen destroying enzymes so it&amp;#39;s taking you several steps back you need the sun protection to prevent but also to reverse welcome to the clinic here is kind of how we understand reality with blueprint it&amp;#39;s like food where we&amp;#39;ve constructed a diet for my 2,250 calories where every calorie has to fight for its life so we have these ideal markers of where we want the organs to be and we have the food and if the food does not deliver the marker that we expect it to it&amp;#39;s out the same is kind of true with the clinic where we have these markers for example with skincare like UV damage pore size Reds Browns Etc if we don&amp;#39;t hit the markers the technology is out and so let me show you how we do these Baseline measurements to get us orientation of where my starting point is this device here is a clinical grade system that&amp;#39;s typically in dermatology offices it&amp;#39;s called multi-spectral Imaging and it gives you this dashboard of I think eight to 10 different biomarkers when I started it was pretty terrifying I look like a zombie face you see all the damage what was interesting is my son talage I had a surprise birthday party for him all the friends came up here was really kind of cool like 16 17 year olds and their skin is just beautiful they put their faces in here and then they see their zombie face and they&amp;#39;re like wait a second but my skin looks so great I&amp;#39;ve wore sunscreen my whole life they&amp;#39;re just unaware that they&amp;#39;ve had so much sun damage especially living in Southern California so multispectral Imaging is a tool that basically allows for collecting spectral Imaging and spatial data kind of all at once and essentially what it&amp;#39;s doing is reading information from various chromophores in your skin mostly melanin as well as oxy and deoxyhemoglobin collagen water so it really gives the to the technology information that kind of gives you some insight into things like hyperpigmentation dark spots moles now the technology has its limits it doesn&amp;#39;t give you all the information you might be looking for which is is key so for example talking about lost fat in the face probably not going to gather that kind of information necessarily from this reading but um it is going to give you some picture of the sun damage on your face to a certain extent so this is an exilus device this is for the face this is a radio frequency technology this tip here warms up and you kind of roll it over the skin and it&amp;#39;s used for collagen production and for tightening the skin so as you age you lose f nness of the skin and less collagen so we&amp;#39;re trying to revolumize and that was in particular a problem with me because in the beginning of blueprint I lost a lot of facial volume due to my caloric restriction I&amp;#39;ve since increased my my caloric intake but we&amp;#39;ve tried to increase volume if you see my pictures from a year ago to now it&amp;#39;s a big difference I&amp;#39;ve revolumize quite a bit so the exis device is a monopolar radio frequency device with ultra sound and basically what it does is it can be used on the face on the neck and in the Jou are area for like you said skin tightening improving laxity and wrinkles basically it targets the deeper layers of the skin with radio frequency and ultrasound energy to cause remodeling of the collagen and stimulate new healthy collagen to be produced so you get Improvement in tightness and a reduction in overall laxity radio frequency is also used um on like the body for example to Target stubborn fat and to have the outcome of skin tightening so we did this for a protocol we&amp;#39;ve paused this because we&amp;#39;re a little bit worried about it being potentially a cause for fat loss so we have a device uh that measures heat we stay at exactly 40 to 42c anything above is used for fat burning but anything below uh should be restorative but just out of precaution because we&amp;#39;re trying to rejuvenate volume we&amp;#39;ve paused this device so it&amp;#39;s pending future analysis in the hands of someone who knows how to operate the device and the correct settings definitely not a concern but yeah ultimately it could cause problems with the fat if the wrong settings the wrong hand piece was used on the face for sure also we pause this because we&amp;#39;ve become very recently uh positive on a technology called tixel we don&amp;#39;t yet own the device we&amp;#39;re buying it now but that uses thermal mechanical oblation so it uses a titanium tip and it delivers these these intense pulses of heat and we found it is safe so we&amp;#39;ve used laser we use RF and they all have these pros and cons there&amp;#39;s always some nuances with the technology tixel refining is safe it&amp;#39;s efficacious it does the same things like uh firmness and collagen production so I&amp;#39;m now three Therapies in we like the results so far Again by using the multi-spectral imaging technology to measure the markers so tixel just like he says it delivers short bursts of thermal energy to the top part of the scan it&amp;#39;s actually approved here in the US for treating crow&amp;#39;s feet like wrinkles around the eyes which um you know that area can actually be kind of challenging to treat because the skin there is very delicate very thin and it um Heats in a very precise way creating these little channels of injury so that stimulates new healthy collagen production we also have things like this device it measures Advanced glycated M products so basically junk build up in the skin you put your arm on this thing and it measures it so adjacent to the face on skin you&amp;#39;re looking at the whole body and so this particular reader you can see here you can find age on the bottom on the x- axis here and the result is your y- axis so for example if you&amp;#39;re 20 years old you want to have you&amp;#39;ll be right here on the result for normal one line below standard deviation is better than normal the one is above I was my first measurements were in the red like I was really bad and so this again is looking at cardiovascular health for the skin so whether you&amp;#39;re looking at UV damage or or Browns or Reds or por size uh we&amp;#39;re looking at the the skin Health across the entire body body Advanced glycation and products so basically these are modified lipids or proteins that have essentially a sugar attached to them glycation and they um form as a natural consequence of the aging process like they&amp;#39;re unavoidable but they&amp;#39;re are certain things that really hasten their formation lead to you know accumulation of these and they can be really damaging to the blood vessels so that&amp;#39;s kind of what he&amp;#39;s talking about with the cardiovascular health um specifically they form in a large amount in a hyperglycemic environment so diabetics have a higher load of these it&amp;#39;s probably a lot of what contributes to microvascular disease in diabetics but it also plays a big role in skin aging check out my video on the worst foods for collagen because I talk about dietary sources of advanced glycation and products that contribute to premature skin Aging in that video it&amp;#39;s not even just the food itself but importantly how it&amp;#39;s prepared and there are also food preparation strategies that lessen um Advanced glycation and product formation now the tool he is um talking about is an age reader and basically this um works by measuring fluorescence uh my understanding is it&amp;#39;s kind of helpful and maybe a research setting but it definitely has its limitations and it&amp;#39;s not necessarily the best tool for truly quantifying these but does give you some information we started using this device this is BBL also known as IPL intense pulse light and there&amp;#39;s different wavelengths there&amp;#39;s 515 695 800 640 and we started doing full body treatments there was a small study at Stanford that showed that it changed the genetic expression of skin to be dramatically younger it wasn&amp;#39;t a big enough study to gave us a huge amount of confidence but enough where we&amp;#39;re like you know what let&amp;#39;s play with this so we started doing whole body and it was basically effective at eliminating a bunch of the skin damage because I never had a shirt on when I was growing up as a kid I&amp;#39;ve always burned and tanned on my upper body and so I had a lot of skin damage on my face and my upper body and so I basically got my skin back to the majority of that skin damage being gone intense pulse light or Broadband light however you want to call it it is useful for improving hyperpigmentation redness uh tasas otherwise commonly referred to as broken capillaries on the face I have a video all about that um definitely can improve the appearance of those depending on the settings now you got to be careful if you have a deeper skin tone with this because it does have the risk of burning deeper skin tones causing hyperpigmentation all these tools they do have the potential to damage not something to just play around with so I want to make sure that person doing it has the training the expertise and how to use it now there is some evidence that IPL can improve papillary dermal collagen uh however that&amp;#39;s kind of mixed some studies don&amp;#39;t really support that so it&amp;#39;s a little up in the air as to whether or not it improves collagen but like he said um it sounds like he got some improvement in the visible signs of sun damage on the body maybe things like dark spots redness uneven skin tone possibly coarse skin texture the Stanford study that he&amp;#39;s talking about um is interesting I I I looked at it very small like he said um and basically they were they sought out to see if there were any changes on the molecular level you know we can see histologically maybe there&amp;#39;s some improvement and sun damage and visible signs of aging either with our eyes or you know under the microscope but they actually want to see are there any differences in the genes that are being expressed and and like he says it kind of the research kind of suggested that with intense pulse light you get genes being expressed that are more characteristic of like a younger skin so it kind of does suggest some degree of you know molecular Rejuvenation but again more research is needed um intense pulse light can certainly be helpful and he he didn&amp;#39;t say how frequently he&amp;#39;s doing this but sounds like he&amp;#39;s gotten some good results another device which we&amp;#39;ve used which is kind of like it&amp;#39;s con in out of our protocol is saluma pro it&amp;#39;s a bit expensive it&amp;#39;s $1,500 for this so it&amp;#39;s kind of a big buy uh but I did this for a while it has both red and blue light and red is for collagen production and healing skin Health uh blue is for uh acne so I did this for a bit for blenders control when I was having side effects from some of the medic I was taking but I no longer uh do it so um it kind of comes in and out of the protocol but it&amp;#39;s kind of hard to pinpoint because the effect is so subtle and the devices we use have such a big effect like the tixel system or BBL so you have red light and blue light I&amp;#39;ve got videos on this as a side note red light is like you said going to be helpful for improving collagen production it has anti-inflammatory effects and the blue light is specifically helpful for calming down acne now um this definitely can be certainly beneficial uh in in terms of either acne or wrinkles so it&amp;#39;s not BS logical thing to try um and you can buy these masks I&amp;#39;ve used one myself now the results that you get are very subtle like you said not as significant as what you would get maybe from an in-office treatment um only as good as you are at using it so you have to keep using it to maintain those results and then finally let me walk over here and show you this we have uh St red therapy we weren&amp;#39;t certain whether it Justified the time I do this uh three times a week uh for 12 minutes so it&amp;#39;s a total of uh 36 minutes a week and it uses both red light and near infrared uh but I stand right here in between them it&amp;#39;s kind of a a hacky setup and uh it&amp;#39;s good for skin health for healing for uh mitochondrial Health it even how red light therapy has been shown to be useful for depression when it&amp;#39;s exposed the forehead so there&amp;#39;s all kinds of things that just has General Health benefits and because I do work out quite a bit I&amp;#39;m pretty active uh giving a little boost to my recovery so this one we feel like the evidence is there to support doing this even though we can&amp;#39;t directly measure its effect because it&amp;#39;s compounded upon other things we do so it sounds like he&amp;#39;s being more consistent with this um total body red light system that he has you know to what extent that&amp;#39;s going to get the face you know probably not as much as that mask that he was using but like he said red light you know is anti-inflammatory um so it sounds like that&amp;#39;s kind of in line with what he&amp;#39;s pursuing it for and that&amp;#39;s the basic tour of the the clinic you get an idea of how fast we move the things we try uh I&amp;#39;m very happy with the progress we&amp;#39;ve made looking at my damage I think when I started I was in like a 98 percentile U my skin age was like 64 on one of the markers and I&amp;#39;m back on my recent measurement I was I think to between 37 and 42 so had significant improvements in the measurement okay okay welcome to the kitchen you&amp;#39;re really weird this is the exciting part I have a few things that are a little unconventional okay I&amp;#39;m kind of unconventional but on my windows I have really big ones all over the house and I get a lot of sun in the morning at night and so to control the environment we have a tint on here that knocks out like 99.9% of UV I get a lot of comments about my pel skin I&amp;#39;m a vampire that&amp;#39;s what I&amp;#39;m trying to do okay but really Sun causes damage it ages your skin it makes you look older so you don&amp;#39;t want that and what the objective of blue blint is not to adhere to cultural norms of a tan the the objective is slowing my speed of aging and reversing aging damage that includes sun damage so I try to control what comes in my window when I go outside I&amp;#39;ll walk to the cafe close by I will take an umbrella with me and I&amp;#39;ll have the umbrella above my head that is weird in the United States of America in other places of the world it&amp;#39;s very common and very normal so just to be aware that other people do have skin practices that are useful yeah those are great points you know first of all one thing I&amp;#39;m sure he gets a lot of comments about um are people probably annoyed complaining that oh this is just you know for vanity sake and truthfully that&amp;#39;s kind of sad because skin is an organ and it&amp;#39;s a blessing and a curse in that people will be more motivated to take care of it for aesthetic reasons and then that trickles down to health benefits for them but really viewing your skin as an organ system is very important because keeping it healthy as long as possible and doing things to optimize skin Health namely protecting your skin from the sun it&amp;#39;s going to pay off in your older adult years because you don&amp;#39;t want to have very thin brittle fragile Sun damaged skin that is prone to tears easy bruising poor healing and skin infections we call that dermatoporosis just like you wouldn&amp;#39;t want to do things to accelerate and increase the severity of osteoporosis bone thinning why would you want to do the same thing or be okay with doing the same things for your skin yes sun does come through window glass UVA rays specifically most window glass will block out UVB the Rays that burn the skin but UVA does come through window glass now your exposure to that is going to vary depending on the time of the day where you live and how close you&amp;#39;re sitting to the window but he has some pretty big Windows lives in a very sunny climate so yeah overtime that is quite a bit of UVA um enough to you know if you spend a lot of time in that room maybe you&amp;#39;d want to be wearing sunscreen indoors for sure but he has taken it to another level in terms of getting some kind of film on the windows to block out the UV I also really like the advice of carrying an umbrella with you I would add a hat Sun protective hat also can go a long way try to avoid damaging your skin this happens when there&amp;#39;s High UV and that means so between 10:00 a.m. and 400 p.m. every day roughly in that window of time it&amp;#39;s higher UV there&amp;#39;s more damage it&amp;#39;s higher in the summer than it is the winter the most effective thing to do is avoid the damage if you&amp;#39;re going to be outside wear sunscreen ltmd is a good option it&amp;#39;s on the blueprint website uh or if you can avoid it all together even better but really uh for the basics we can all agree upon let&amp;#39;s try to stop the damage have a good diet and we&amp;#39;ll be off to a good starting point I actually really like the ending message there something for everyone that can incorporate into our lives it&amp;#39;s very doable very actionable it&amp;#39;s in line with what I say on this channel what you know you can find on any professional dermatologic um information Source American Academy of Dermatology Etc protecting your skin from the Sun is like the most proactive thing that you can do to keep your skin healthy long term and I like throwing in the aspect of a healthy diet I would also add you know making sure that you&amp;#39;re getting good sleep um exercise which sounds like he does these are all things that we know we&amp;#39;re supposed to to do for General Health it pays off dividends for our skin I like the fact that the skincare routine is very basic simple sustainable cleanse moisturized sunscreen I mean that&amp;#39;s really that&amp;#39;s really what you need now the other things that he&amp;#39;s doing you know certainly are way above and beyond what is necessary for skin health and to what extent they&amp;#39;re actually going to make a huge difference it&amp;#39;s kind of the point of the channel like right to see he&amp;#39;s almost like doing his own little self- experiment not really pushing you to do them just kind of watch and see what happens I guess approach so use discretion hopefully this video of me responding pointing out some of the potential risks of some of these things and what they can and cannot do you know gives you a little bit more background also this is very cost prohibitive for the majority of people out there I can&amp;#39;t imagine how much money all this cost yeah it&amp;#39;ll be interesting to see what happens let me know in the comments though what do you think of this extreme skincare routine but if you guys enjoyed this video give it a thumbs up share it with your friends and as always don&amp;#39;t forget sunscreen And subscribe I&amp;#39;ll talk to you guys tomorrow [Music] bye

Transcript for:Brian Johnson's Anti-Aging Skincare Routine: Analysis and Reaction

Transcript for:
Brian Johnson's Anti-Aging Skincare Routine: Analysis and Reaction