My favorite superfood mushroom coffee company, Four Sigmatic, launched a skincare line that is so clean you can actually eat them! I’ve asked Four Sigmatic founder Tero Isokauppila to come back and tell us everything he knows about natural skin care today, from products to diet to superfoods that nourish skin from the inside out.
This should be a great conversation since I’ve also been researching natural personal care pretty intensely to develop my own toothpaste and shampoo formulas.
Bonus for everyone listening (or reading): this episode will go beyond skin deep and really get into how the things that are good for skin health support immunity also. Something we all want to know right now!
Episode Highlights With Tero from Four Sigmatic
- How Tero created a line of skin products so clean you can eat it!
- 10 functions of the skin, our largest organ, and how they give us a clue to how to care for it
- Why ingestible skincare is the next big thing for the beauty industry
- How to respect and nourish the skin microbiome (and why you should)
- The connection between gut health and skin conditions like acne, psoriasis, and premature aging
- Medicinal mushrooms that help immunity
- Prebiotics, beta-D-glucans, and other natural substances that strengthen our natural protection against viruses and disease
- Which mushroom to consume with vitamin C for a strong immune system boost
- Why Tero puts Four Sigmatic body butter in his coffee!
- And more!
Resources We Mention
More From Wellness Mama
- 587: Naomi Whittel on Malnourished Skin and Why the Body Holds the Answer
- 546: Dr. Trevor Cates on Hormones, Skin Health and Aging Gracefully
What do you use for skin care? Have you noticed an improvement in your skin with diet or supplements? Please drop a comment below or leave a review on iTunes to let us know. We value knowing what you think and this helps other moms find the podcast as well.
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Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.
I am so excited to finally be able to share a top secret project I’ve been working on for years…this episode is sponsored by Wellnesse… a new company I co-founded to create safe, natural and obsessively tested products for families. You’ve heard that much of what you put on your body gets absorbed and goes into your body. We turned this idea on its head, creating products that aren’t just safe to put on your hair, skin and in your mouth, but that are beneficial. We started with the toughest first, creating the first of its kind natural toothpaste that is free of fluoride and glycerin and that contains ingredients like green tea, neem and hydroxyapatite to support the mouth. Our haircare is free of harmful ingredients and contains ingredients like lavender and nettle to support healthy hair! Be the first to try it at Wellnesse.com
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Katie: Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and wellnesse.com, that’s W-E-L-L-N-E-S-S-E.com. It’s my new personal care line that is EWG safe and totally natural. And this episode, I am here with a good friend of mine, Tero Isokauppila, who is a true fun guy, pun intended. So, Tero’s roots, or mycelium in his words, if you will, are in Finland where he grew up foraging for mushrooms and other wild foods on his family farm that they’ve owned since 1619. He later earned a degree in chemistry, business and a certificate in plant-based nutrition from Cornell University. In 2012, he founded Four Sigmatic, which is one of my favorite companies. It’s a company devoted to elevating our daily routines by making every day magical through using revolutionary mushroom-based products, like mushroom coffee, edible skincare, etc.
He’s an expert in all things related to mushrooms, adaptogens, health, startups and punny dad jokes. He’s also the author of two bestselling books, “Healing Mushrooms” and “Santa Sold Shrooms,” which is a children’s book. In this episode, in light of everything going on currently, we go deep not just about natural skincare and how what you put on your body goes into your body, but also about the immune system and how we can support our bodies from the inside out and the outside in, in stressful times and make sure that we are optimally set up to handle whatever life throws at us. So, without further ado, let’s jump right in with Tero.
Tero, welcome, thank you for being here again.
Tero: Thanks for having me on. It’s always a pleasure, especially now in these wild, wild times that we’re living in.
Katie: It has gotten a little wild. I definitely know we both want to talk about that a little bit today and there’s certainly a lot that you can share on a lot of different aspects of this. But to start off, what I was originally bringing you on to talk about today before things got a little wild throughout the country is you have recently launched a skincare line through Four Sigmatic and I’ve also been in development in the personal care world for my toothpaste and shampoo and have done a lot of research in this world over the last year, and so that’s a really important topic to cover. And I know that we will actually tie this into immunity and to some other topics that are very top of mind today. But to start, I’d love to hear about what went into the development of your skincare products, and to the point that, from my understanding, they are actually even not just okay to eat but actually fully edible. So talk about that and how that came about.
Tero: Yeah, we launched our skincare line earlier this year and it’s been a wild ride. It came about a lot through consumer feedback, so a lot of our customers and community was asking for skincare products. They read in my book and other sources how mushrooms and adaptogens can help with skin and they’d seen it in other skincare products more that use mushrooms or adaptogens that otherwise might have not been quite as clean. And so a lot of consumer feedback and just learning from, particularly, the Korean and Japanese cultures, beauty worlds, and how some of these mushrooms can help improve skin quality.
And the problem with me was that I don’t really use skincare and I use like ultra-pure personal care products as well that were hard to find and there’s not a product on the market that fit my personal quality standards. And I wanted more transparency, I wanted more of real food ingredients and that kind of inspired us to launch our first skincare products that are also fully edible. So a face mask that is also hot chocolate using really simple ingredients like cacao, spices, mushrooms, adaptogens but you can also put it in your skin.
Katie: I love that. I am very much on the same page with you about that and I think most people have a passing understanding that what we put on our bodies gets into our bodies to some degree but I think people don’t necessarily always realize the extent to which when we put harmful things on our skin, a lot of that does actually enter the bloodstream, it does enter our body, and also changes our skin microbiome and can impact even through that our gut microbiome and all kinds of things down the road. So let’s talk about some of the common things people need to know and avoid when it comes to traditional skincare products.
Tero: Yeah, just to build off of that, I think a lot of people, like, vaguely know that what gets put in your skin gets into your bloodstream, but like you said, they don’t realize the extent, which to me is a little surprising because when we buy a nicotine patch or something, the nicotine does go into our bloodstream. So we don’t think that these plastics and other harsh chemicals will enter our bloodstream as well, that’s kind of, to me, a little surprising. So one is just getting real good understanding is that a huge part of things that we put in our skin will enter our bloodstream to the extent that if you swim in beer, you get drunk. If you take a bath with magnesium or Epsom salt, you will get that into your bloodstream and relax. And we just don’t take that into account. And a lot of people say that, well, it’s just a small amount, but that small amount every day multiple times builds up so when you use a toothpaste or a skincare serum on a daily basis, if not twice a day, then that’s going to have a big, kind of, compounding effect. So that’s obviously a great starting point.
The other thing is I think understanding the industry is really valuable. We buy really expensive skincare products and also personal care products, realizing how much does it actually cost to make them? And this is all public information but if you go to L’Oreal and Estee Lauder’s website, you realize that they spend 3% to 4% of their sales on the actual product. So it’s very common that you buy a $100 skincare product where it only costs $1 what’s inside the bottle and then $2 to $4 on packaging and the rest is just margin. All those fancy ads that they do and models they pay and luxurious lifestyle, that’s paid by selling you $1 of value for $100 of cost, and I think that’s also pretty sad and frustrating. So those might be two good things to think about when you generally approach skincare and other, kind of, beauty and luxury products.
Katie: I agree, and what I found really interesting as I started researching this world as well is that you’re right, people don’t really acknowledge just how much can enter our body from the outside, but at the same time often will look at any kind of skin problem as a purely external problem. So if it’s acne, they think they need to treat it just with something topical on the skin and they don’t think through the fact that…and we now know from the research so much of that is actually internal. Any skin problem is originating in the body somewhere and we’re just seeing it on the skin as an outward expression of that. So let’s also talk about the nutrition and internal side of how we can improve our skin from the inside out as well.
Tero: Yes. So yes, it would start with what skin is and what does it do? So skin is our largest organ and it’s built from cells like anything else. So if you live healthy or unhealthy and what’s the quality of your mitochondria and your cells will impact including your skin. It’s just a difference between topical skincare and ingestible skincare, ingestible beauty is the time frame. Skin doesn’t rejuvenate itself every day. Depending on how old you are, it could take anywhere from 20 to 40 days, or even longer if you’re older. So when you eat for beauty and have a healthy diet, that really helps you long-term versus topical skincare can solve a problem today, and like many other forms of health, we’re often drawn to the immediate quick fix, right, and that’s kind of a bummer.
But topical skincare can help with, I would say, the symptoms, but if you want to work on the cause, you want to have a healthy body, healthy cells. That also means that when you have a healthy body, healthy cells, healthy skin, you need less product and the product works better. So eating for skin is so so important, and there are specific nutrients that are particularly good for the skin if you think of what the skin does. I think you already partially touched upon it, but the aesthetic element of the skin is just one of pretty much, I would say, 7, 8 functions of the skin, you can even extend it to 10 different functions the skin does, and the aesthetic part is just one.
Our skin will touch, it will protect us from temperature changes, it will protect our absorption of nutrients, even oxygen. People don’t know but the skin absorbs oxygen. But the big thing, I think, to me, is protection. So there’s immunity on our skin. Besides being the first barrier against pathogens, it’s also where a lot of our immunity lives. We’ll always have bacteria, so if you are scared of bacteria, it’s just good to know that no matter how much you scrub your skin with this coronavirus, with soap or others, there will always be bacteria on your skin. you can never out-scrub your bacteria. And wherever there’s bacteria, there’s also going to be mushrooms.
You know, you have your microbiome, also which is your mushroom biome, and not just your gut biome. So both your gut and your skin will always have bacteria and always have mushrooms. It’s just the question becomes what kind of bacteria and what kind of mushrooms does your skin have and are they supporting your immunity and your aesthetic function or are they hurting your immunity and aesthetic function? So it’s just very important to know that topical skincare can help short-term but in order to have long-term good skin, you need this ingestible beauty and you needed to know that no matter how much you scrub your skin, there will always be bacteria and mushrooms in it and that with certain types of nutrients, you can help your skin also internally as well as externally.
Katie: Yeah, absolutely. I think, at the end of the day, that’s the key, it’s not either/or, it’s both and always. And I think that I noticed that when I was a teenager and I struggled with acne, I tried to treat it topically for a long time and it wasn’t until I addressed things like gut health and all the internal factors related to health did that fully resolve itself. So I’m curious, both on a personal level and I know that you do a lot of research in this area for your products, what should we be consuming for good, skin what should we be avoiding for the sake of our skin and our overall health, and how does that work, like what does your actual routine look like for that?
Tero: Yeah, I mean the bad news is that you have to take a lot of things into consideration. The good news is that the same things that you take into consideration to having beautiful skin are also the things you take into consideration to have general longevity, have immunity, have strong cognitive function. So all of these are very much connected. I mentioned one of the things that you have to take into consideration is your gut biome and your microbiome. So your gut health, that’s incredibly important. And this can go both ways. This can be removing things from your diet that might be harmful for your gut as well as adding things like probiotics, prebiotics, good bacteria, good mushrooms into your diet. So gut health is definitely one major factor in skin health.
The other one is inflammation, and I would even say inflammation/stress. Your skin can be all kinds of…have inflammation/stress infections, rashes, and calming down the body overall is really valuable. At the end of the day, probably the best thing you can do for your skin is sleep. The best thing for anything in your health is probably sleep. So just maintaining healthy stress levels and kind of fighting off inflammation, and the gut health is obviously very connected to that inflammation, as you well know. The second one would be stress. It’s very valuable.
And then finally, any types of antioxidants, particularly certain types of polyphenols that you can…and certain color pigments are particularly good for the skin. So we can deep dive on what would be those foods that would be really good for your skin. But to summarize, gut health, stress management/inflammation, and antioxidants, those would be just three, kind of, key things I would keep in mind when eating for your skin.
Katie: Got it. I love that. And yeah, we can definitely go into more specifics within each of those categories. And I think this dovetails perfectly with an area that I want to talk about and I’m so glad I get to talk about with you, which goes along hand-in-hand with this, and that’s immunity. And anybody listening to this, I know there’s a lot of talk about that right now and there’s a lot of, I think, probably overwhelmed and some fear going on. And you’re one of my favorite people to talk to about this because I know that you come from a very level-headed place and a well-researched place and that you’re not going to buy-in to all of the fear, but you’re also probably taking a very practical and research-backed approach. So I’d love to kind of dovetail this now into the area of immunity and how we can all use certain functional foods and products to support our immune systems during this time.
Tero: Yeah, again, taking the 10,000 food perspective first is that immunity, unfortunately, is not top of mind for a lot of people, even really healthy people. They say that nobody buys an umbrella unless it’s raining and that same goes for immunity as well. So very few people focus on immunity unless it’s the “immune season,” which means the flu season. So a lot of people are focused on the flu season. And let’s be honest, a lot of people die of the flu every single year. But the immunity doesn’t take breaks. The immunity doesn’t know that there’s an immune season. It’s just something you should take into consideration all the time and not just because of staying healthy but also because the immune function is so much connected with other areas of our life, including the skin and cognitive function.
But back to the immune function, you will have this internal protection system that starts with your skin. But you will have these internal security officers in your body, natural killer cells, cytokines, white blood cells, and they’re there to protect you. And make no doubt about it, every day there will be intruders in your body. There is no way to, like, protect yourself even if you’re in quarantine of all pathogens. Like, there will always be pathogens trying to enter your body and every day your body is fighting off, that never ends. Sure, at times, those intruders might be stronger and might require more of resistance from your body, and if your internal protection is low, you might get the flu or a cough or prolonged in people with poor immune systems and they might be a little more sensitive to things like cancer.
There’s also another element of this is that if your immune system is hyperactive versus passive, it means that your body is so actively trying to fight off that it can’t even fight off healthy cells and things that are not intruders. This is when allergies and autoimmune disorders can really build up. So our immune system is quite complicated and intelligent but at times it’s either passive or hyperactive and that’s when the daily fight against these pathogens can get really difficult. So, therefore, you should be feeding your immune system on an ongoing basis with good stuff. I mentioned gut health being quite vital for it and for that reason, like not being afraid of bacteria on mushrooms but understanding that those will always be part of yourself and just having good bacteria mushrooms, which kind of takes us to the solutions.
Like, what can you do to improve immunity? Well, again, it’s what you don’t do and what you do. What you don’t do is probably feed off your body with processed foods, sugars, and common allergens. Those might not be the best thing for your body versus what is amazing is things that feed the immune system. And obviously, my big passion is mushrooms and these mushrooms have these particular types of polysaccharides, particularly these beta-D-glucans that are among the most studied things for immunity and they have these immunomodulatory benefits that are able to modulate the immune system either more active or more passive depending on your body is at need. You can also find these beta-D-glucans in small amounts in things like oats and certain berries like goji berries but they are the most prevalent in these mushrooms.
And then the other thing is prebiotics, so good fibers into your body will feed off in your gut, the good types of bacteria and fungi. So adding fibers and prebiotics and adding these mushroom extracts into your diet is one of the best ways. On top of that, there’s more seasonal solutions that you might want to consider if you know that you’re likely to get, in the flu season, hit a little harder such as high dose of vitamin C, certain minerals such as zinc. But you got to be careful with certain nutrients that are promoted for immune function such as echinacea, even garlic. If you consume them on an ongoing basis, they are immunostimulants, they stimulate the immune system, but if you use them on a prolonged basis, your immune system might get overstimulated. So you want to look for both seasonal solutions that might work great for a few months of the year. You also want to be mindful, which one of those you want to use year-round, and mushrooms are great just because these reishi mushrooms, and shiitakes, and chagas, you can consume year-round.
Katie: That’s a great point. Yeah, I’m a big fan of cycling most supplements for that reason of not letting the body ever adapt to it and because then they can have opposite consequences, like you said, at some point and I love that mushrooms are one of the ones that we can safely consume every day, and I certainly do. I know that you do as well as. Are there any specific recommendations when it comes to mushrooms that you’re especially focused on right now just in the interest of supporting your body and your immune system?
Tero: Yeah, I would look at these mushroom polysaccharides and beta-D-glucans like chlorophyll. You probably want to consume chlorophyll on a daily basis into your body, but it doesn’t mean you eat spinach every day. You probably want to have arugula, you probably want to have nettle or dandelion. You want to, kind of, rotate the types of chlorophylls that you’re consuming the same way you want to probably rotate a little bit of these mushrooms. But for the sake of immunity purposes alone, all the top mushrooms have these beta-D-glucans for immunomodulatory purposes, but if there is one superstar for immunity particularly, it’s the chaga mushroom, C-H-A-G-A, and it’s getting a lot of attention now considering where the world is on just the unique functions that that chaga mushroom has and then its ability to support the immune system.
So if people are looking for solutions for immunity, I either recommend a blend of multiple mushrooms, you know, anywhere from like 5 to 10 of the top mushrooms in extract form, so try to find products that have a fruiting body, that are extracted, and they’re organic, those would be the three quality factors, and taking a blend of 5 to 10 mushrooms daily. Or if you really want to have a bazooka effect for immune system, then I would really look for chaga mushroom particularly, like a high dose, over 1000 mg of wildcrafted chaga extract would probably be a solution I would consider, and combining that with a high dose of vitamin C, both for absorption of the actives in the mushroom but also general immune support. So that would be my recommended protocol.
Katie: I love it. And I know also that you live a very holistic life and focus on a lot of other factors as well. So separate of just foods and supplements and things that we should definitely all be focused on, I’m curious if there’s any other things you are changing or optimizing right now? For instance, I’m making sure that we’re spending time outdoors and getting movement every day, which we do anyway, but making sure that’s a focus, same with sunlight, proper hydration, sauna use, which of course, I know that you’re also a big fan of. Are there other things that you’re ramping up or implementing right now?
Tero: Yeah, I think this is a great point. I think when we travel, for example, we often don’t adjust our behavior even though our external world is changing. So we have this thing where a lot of us don’t have a seasonal routine. We always kind of try to live year-round in a similar way, and I don’t think that’s really the ideal. Obviously, you visited Finland, you see how the differences in the winter and summer. So we have to live seasonally and I look at this is a beautiful thing even if I don’t have to today. So I try to look at the external world and also my internal schedule is like, how is my internal schedule and how do I need to adjust my behavior? And right now, obviously, the external world has gone upside down and things like immunity are at a higher value. So I’m trying to adjust my behavior to more be in line with where the world is right now and how is my daily routine?
So there’s certain things I do all the time such as resting to making sure that I’m not overly stressing my body anyway, so maybe extra sleep or a nap is something very valuable right now not to…If you push your body too hard, you are also putting your immunity in jeopardy more. So extra rest is something I’m mindful of. You mentioned the other one, which is sweating in the form of movement and in the form of sauna is also quite, quite valuable right now. So that’s another way how you can remove toxins but also support the body with this beautiful kind of soft hormetic stressors. So that’s something I would be more mindful of now. People love to stay indoors in this current situation, which makes sense, but just so you know that even the cleanest indoor air will not be better than outside air. So having maybe your windows open, doors open, going for a walk, whatever you can do to get fresh air is particularly valuable. So even well-purified indoor air will probably always lose to outside air. So those are things that I definitely keep in mind.
The other thing that I’ve been really ramping up is spices. I think spices are some of the most underrated things in health and wellness, plus they often taste great. They’re something that everybody can afford, whatever your budget is, take high amounts of spices. They’re good for your gut health. They also contain these like quite immune-supporting benefits. So ramping up ginger, turmeric, cinnamon, cardamon, clove, they’re quite protective of the body, and finding ways how you can start adding spices to daily life is one of the easiest ways. And right now, in the winter, I anyway add more spices but given the situation, I’m just like doubling down on more and more spices and various peppers might be something fun to experiment with. If you want to kind of get crazy, various kind of spicy, hot peppers might be something worth exploring.
And then yeah, I’m just doubling down on my adaptogen mushroom usage right now on top of that. But having that seasonal outlook in life, in general, is probably going to serve you well, not trying to live all the time the same way and having courage to go over normal dosages. So whatever is your dosage in vitamin D or vitamin C, this might be a time when you go over those normal recommendations and having the courage…especially with those water-soluble vitamins, having the courage to take higher dosages.
Katie: Yeah, I absolutely agree. Even things like vitamin D, I know normally, I would recommend getting that tested, which might be difficult to do with all of the current things going on, or there might be a delay in getting tested but we know from the research, for instance, that if you have low vitamin D levels in your body, you’re actually more at risk for respiratory complications and all kinds of problems. And so that’s one that I’ve been giving my family just to make sure all of our vitamin D levels are in good ranges because right now, we’re not getting as much sun as we would be in the summer months. Like you said, same with vitamin C, there’s some really strong data on that for the immune system and that’s something that’s water-soluble that we can all increase at times like this.
I also love that you’ve touched on the mindset side because I think that is an area that hopefully we are all working to optimize our diets and our sleep is a huge one, like you said, things like that. But if we’re also living in a state of sympathetic nervous system because we’re overwhelmed and fearful and panicking, that’s also really not good for the immune system and I think that’s one thing that’s on my mind so much right now is just the idea, that encouragement of taking a deep breath, still having gratitude, still finding calm, still focusing on those that we love and community and mindset even if the next few weeks continue to get a little bit crazy but keeping those things, supporting each other within whatever way we’re able to at this point, and just still focusing on the gratitude and the good. And I know that’s often your mindset as well and that you continue to remain in a positive mindset through this as well. Any mindset tips as we face all this uncertainty right now?
Tero: Yeah, actually, a friend of mine was asking like, “How are you so calm in this whole situation?” Like, I’m going to get to the massages at some Asian massage place, and he was like, “How are you so calm about it?” And I was saying, well, A, I take care of my immunity all the time so I feel pretty confident about that part. The other part is I know that like the importance of your mind and how that also impacts your physiology, for example, your endocrine system if you’re constantly in a mode of fear, in fight or flight, how that actually decreases sleep quality, hurts your immunity. So there’s a compounding effect of the mind that impacts our stress, sleep, and immunity, so that’s why I think it’s so, so valuable.
And just to make it ultra-specific is, for example, people are right now obsessed with washing their hands and particularly hand sanitizers. And I think this can potentially backfire if you overdo this. Not to say that good hygiene is not important, it is, but if you’re constantly sanitizing your hands with harsh alcohol or hand sanitizers, it can have a pretty big impact on your skin and your biome on your skin, and that’s why I think, like, soap is so amazing because of those, kind of, like, friendlier fats to our skin and using fats, in general, is a good tip in these difficult times. Just the constant worry about washing your hands will double down on cortisol that will further then hurt your sleep quality, and poor sleep quality will lower your immunity. It’s a vicious circle.
So I think this moment is a great opportunity to practice your Zen behavior and practice things like gratitude becomes even more important. So when things are crazy and seems like it’s been a rough 2020 so far, what can you do to be grateful, what can you be grateful of? And finding those moments of beauty in your life right now, and then if you’re really stressed, adding practice like meditation, or what I love is cold exposure and breathwork. So maybe a breathwork session can actually help mitigate some of that stress that you have. But just so you know is that taking precautions is smart but stressing about it is going to hurt you more than helps you.
So this is a great time to find gratitude and joy and beauty around you and not to dwell on fear that much. And it’s obviously easier said than done and there’s a lot of concerns about us, our health, and our loved ones, but knowing that control what you can control and you don’t always control what happens around you but you control the reaction it has on you. That’s just something both will help, and also happiness, it’s good to be mindful and meditate a little bit on.
Katie: I absolutely agree. I am a big fan of a lot of the stoic philosophers and a phrase that comes up a lot with them is “amor fati,” which means basically love your fate or love what is, and I think that’s easy to do when things are easy or good or prosperous or times are easy, and I think that’s even more important to do at times like this when things are uncertain or seem crazy or out of control. And so that’s been something I’ve tried to focus on. I love your tips about breathing and meditation and cold exposure. Certainly, I know not everyone has access to saunas or cold plunges but you can do a lot of that at home in your shower and your bathtub, and breathing we can all do everywhere.
And just like you said, focus on keeping stress levels down and keeping focus on the positive. I think that goes such a long way toward staying healthy and not panicking and realizing that for many people who even if we get the virus, hopefully, it may be very uncomfortable but our immune system will be able to handle it, especially if we can optimize all these factors. Like you said, rest, get sunlight, get ways to support our immune system. Until then, I know that even as a company, you guys are making sure that you’re keeping up with products and getting things out to people, all of these immune-supporting products that you guys carry. So for anyone who’s new to you guys or to your products, where would you recommend them starting, especially right now with all of this going on, with trying mushroom products?
Tero: Yeah. So for me, the big thing has always been compliance. Health and wellness, both you and I probably do 17 things every hour for our health, right? I know when you travel, you’re a little pharmacy yourself with all these supplements. And if somebody who’s new to it looks at that, that can feel very overwhelming, you’re like, “Wow, that’s a lot of things you do,” and it doesn’t have to be complicated. So there is an 80-20 rule to health and wellness as well and we do the rest because we live the lifestyle, we enjoy it. But if there’s some things where you start…I always recommend first upgrading an existing ritual versus trying to invent a new ritual, and it’s just a more sustainable way of improving and upgrading your health and wellness.
So for us, a big part of where most people start is our coffee products that also include, by the way, the chaga mushroom that I mentioned for immunity. So taking a mushroom coffee, either an instant coffee or ground coffee format is probably where most people start. The mushroom coffee gives you a normal coffee experience that tastes similar to your cup of coffee but it doesn’t give you the jitters or the heartburn. It’s kind of more comfortable for your gut. And then on top of it, without even thinking about it, you get this immune support on top of the deal. If you don’t drink coffee, we also make things like hot chocolate, that might be a good starting point.
And we just try and take things like skincare, protein powders, other things that you might already be doing for your health and try to find ways how to make it cleaner and better for you, you know, not that different from what you are building on the personal care side. It’s like, okay, you’re going to brush your teeth anyway, let’s make sure that you’re doing that in a conscious way, and the same what we’re doing with coffee, tea, cocoa, protein, skincare is just trying to upgrade your existing products and rituals by containing the world’s most nutrient-dense, you know, ingredients and none of the harmful, bad things that often get included in these products that are not necessary. So that’s, kind of, it. So coffee is, for most people, the starting point or something like a morning smoothie with our protein powder.
Katie: I love it. And I should have mentioned it earlier in the episode, but I do have a special landing page with you guys at foursigmatic.com/wellnessmama and I know you’ve also graciously given us a discount code, wellnessmama, to save 15%. And like I mentioned, these are products that are very much part of my daily routine and part of my life and my family’s life regularly so I’m a big fan of the lion’s mane coffee in the morning and I do that many mornings, or your matcha, and then throughout the day, especially right now, I’m loading up on the chaga and cordyceps and lion’s mane, and then almost every evening before bed, my husband I drink reishi together.
So I feel like not just are we friends but you are, through your company, so, so much a part of my daily life and I’m grateful to have access to these products, right now especially, with the added focus on immune support.
I am so excited to finally be able to share a top secret project I’ve been working on for years…this episode is sponsored by Wellnesse… a new company I co-founded to create safe, natural and obsessively tested products for families. You’ve heard that much of what you put on your body gets absorbed and goes into your body. We turned this idea on its head, creating products that aren’t just safe to put on your hair, skin and in your mouth, but that are beneficial. We started with the toughest first, creating the first of its kind natural toothpaste that is free of fluoride and glycerin and that contains ingredients like green tea, neem and hydroxyapatite to support the mouth. Our haircare is free of harmful ingredients and contains ingredients like lavender and nettle to support healthy hair! Be the first to try it at Wellnesse.com
This podcast is sponsored by XPT. You might have seen me mention this on Instagram as it’s something I’ve been implementing lately…here’s why. If you’re like most people you set a New Year’s resolution to be healthier, go on a diet or to start working out. We do things like lift weights, run, bike, hike, and watch what we eat. But, MOST of us will overlook the most basic activity of all, BREATHING. Validated by top fitness experts, performance breathing is the most overlooked activity that can do more to help you get active, perform and recover. And I’ve got the easy solution for you in just 5 to 10 minutes per day! It’s the XPT Life app and it will blow your mind.
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Let’s loop back to the skincare just a little bit before we wrap up because I know a lot of people that these are new products for you guys, a lot of people may not have tried them yet. So just walk us through the products that you have and how they work.
Tero: Yeah, so we launched our first three products. We have a superfood serum that gives you additional glow. We use real fruits that are anyway good for skin internally and externally such as olive oil and avocado oil. So again, fats are your friend both internally and topically. So if you want to get that, you know, island skin, avocado is a great source, that Mediterranean skin, olive has been used for a long time, and then we add good oils such a grapefruit, frankincense, and there’s no preservatives so we use natural things like honeysuckle and the frankincense to provide stability to the product. So a serum, which is a pretty affordable organic serum, $55 for a bottle, and it comes in Miron glass, all our products come in Miron glass. If you’re not familiar with Miron glass, it’s like the best possible glass to prevent sunlight from entering it. So when you use these good oils, it’s important to make sure that sunlight doesn’t penetrate or oxidize those. But the serum is probably where most people start on the skincare side.
We also have a face mask that I mentioned, but it also doubles as a hot chocolate. It’s a powdered face mask that purifies the skin. It contains these mushrooms like chaga and reishi, adaptogens like ashwagandha and gotu kola, and it comes in these convenient individual packets, you can just easily travel with them or on the go, just add a little bit of water, put it on your face. And you can also eat it and it tastes like brownie batter. But it’s full of amazing cleansing things like ashwagandha, reishi, but also bentonite clay that is kind of cooling yet cleansing for the skin.
And then we have a body butter, which is the Swiss army knife of our skincare products at this point. So you can use that on your nails and your hair. Again, it comes in Miron glass and it uses things like cacao, like kind of organic plant butters and oils, so just cacao butter. It has organic mango seed butter, which is amazing. Again, olive oil, walnut oil, so these healthy fatty acids is something your skin can use and what’s cool about the body butter is that you can also…I use it when I travel to make a butter coffee. So I just take a little bit of my body butter and put in a cup and profit. So these are really so clean that you can eat them. They’re meant topically but if you want to put them in your body, they’re made out of food.
Katie: I love it. I love that. I’ve tried them all and they’re awesome and I definitely would recommend them. I’m, like you, a big fan of not putting anything on your body that you wouldn’t be willing to eat or put in your body, and that was my focus with the toothpaste and hair care as well. So I will make sure there are links to everything we’ve talked about in the show notes at wellnesmama.fm. And of course, if you’re listening, the link will be there but also make sure to check out foursigmatic.com/wellnessmama to get the discount on any of these products. I just stocked majorly up on several months’ worth of all of them in case we need extra, and it’s hard to get them so I’m well stocked and I would encourage you guys too as well. But Tero, thank you for the time today and for all the work you put into these products and into education and into just spreading positivity in the world.
Tero: Thanks, Katie, and thanks for having me on, and thanks for also doing the education work you do. I come across people all the time who follow you and said you’ve made an impact on their life and obviously, it’s a very difficult and stressful time so taking a common sense approach to health, wellness, and immunity is so valuable. So thanks for the work you do as well.
Katie: Well, thank you. And thanks to all of you for listening and for joining us today. We’re so grateful that you did and we’re grateful for you sharing your most valuable asset, which is your time, and I hope that you all stay healthy and safe and calm during this crazy time and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the “Wellness Mama” podcast.
If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.
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