644: Secrets to Longevity and Healthy Skin with Alessandra Zonari of OneSkin

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

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Katie: Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama Podcast. I’m Katie from WellnessMama.com, and this episode is all about longevity and especially skin health and longevity and stopping aging. Or it could be titled how to have skin that is 15 years younger than your actual age, because that is what today’s guests have. I’m here with Alessandro Zanari, who is the PhD. Co-founder and chief scientific officer of a company called One Skin, and she has done a lot of research in that area. She graduated from the University of Minas Gerais in Brazil, and her expertise is in skin regeneration, stem cell differentiation, and tissue engineering. And she has done a lot of research into this area, specifically and especially with active ingredients that benefit the skin from the outside in.

I love that approach because I took a similar approach with Wellnesse in developing oral care and hair care products. Of course we should avoid the toxic stuff on our skin, but knowing that our skin is one of our body’s largest organs, how can we then use that to our advantage with beneficial ingredients? And that’s what she’s doing in the aging realm. So we talk about how her biological age is 15 years younger than her actual age and what she attributes that to. She talks about hydration tips for both internally and for keeping your skin barriers strong. She goes to get another reason, as if we needed more to avoid sugar for the sake of the skin and how excess sugar can break down collagen fibers and age the skin. We go deep on why skin aging happens in some ways that we can slow or stop the process, talk about what inflammaging is and the biggest drivers of skin aging, things we can do internally that help reduce signs of aging and inflammation. The difference between things that just make your skin look younger but can actually harm it in the long term versus things that actually make the skin younger at a cellular level.

She said a tip is to clean your skin at night, but not to cleanse with cleanser again in the morning to help protect the skin barrier. We talk about the root causes of skin aging, and then we talk about a proprietary peptide that they call OS One and how it addresses the root cause of aging. So if you are interested in aging and skin health, this is a fact packed episode. She was very fun to talk to. So let’s join Dr. Alessandra. Alessandra, welcome. And thanks for being here.

Alessandra: Thanks, Katie. I’m very excited for our conversation. Thanks for the invite.

Katie: I am also very excited for our conversation, and we’re going to talk a lot about aging and skin health. But on that note, and before we jump into just the skin side, I have from your bio that your biological age is 20 years old, and then you are the same age as me, 35. So I would love to hear more about what you attribute that to, because I feel like longevity and aging is a big topic for a lot of people, and that is a big difference with your biological age, which is very impressive. So kudos to you, but what do you attribute that to?

Alessandra: Yeah, I mean, a lot of friends are jealous when I show my biological age. And I first measured two years ago. I’m very, like, naturally a very active person. So I was expecting that I would have like, a younger biological age, but not that young, actually how I feel 20 years old, to be honest. But I think what I attribute that is a lot of my lifestyle. So I take care a lot of my sleep. I do meditations early morning. I exercise every day, and I have a balanced diet, like mostly plant based diet. And I made a lot of those changes on my healthy styles in 2018. So I don’t know how was my biological age before. I only measured in 2020 for the first time, but I think all those things that I added to my routine, daily routine, I think they are contributing to have a lower biological age.

Katie: I love it. I think you are walking proof, for one, but you hit the nail on the head with those factors of sleep being hugely important. We all, I would say of all the over 600 people on this podcast, nobody disagrees that sleep is super important and very beneficial. But I love that you also mentioned meditation and movement. I think those are huge topics as well. And you are definitely, like I said, walking proof that it works. My biological age is also younger than my actual age, not quite as young as yours. I think I’m about 24. But I think, also, like you, I made a lot of those changes as an adult. And so it’s very encouraging to know that we do have so much active control over that process and that changes we make, especially habit changes, can really, really make a big difference there, which I love.

Alessandra: Yes, I totally agree. And the most important and beauty part of this is that you can start the changes any time in your life and you can see the benefits and start, like, slowing down this process of aging.

Katie: Yes, absolutely. And probably like you, I feel more energetic and younger now than I actually felt when I was in my 20s.

Alessandra: Exactly the same. I feel like, oh my God, living the best of my life.

Katie: I love it. And if for anybody not watching the video, you also look like you’re about 20, your skin is glowing, which is one of the things I’m also going to be very excited to learn from you today about. But to start off broad, maybe walk us through people maybe heard that the skin is our body’s largest organ, which I would say maybe as a tie between muscle and skin is the body’s two largest organs, both very important. But talk to us about how skin health is connected to overall health and how with the skin being such a large organ, it can tell us a lot about what’s going on.

Alessandra: Yeah, absolutely. We always like we think about the vital organs on our body, we think about heart, we think about kidney, lungs, and we don’t think that much about the skin. But the skin has a huge role in our health. It protects, it’s the main protective barrier that we have against the external environment. It controls our body temperature, our hydration. So if you have like a healthy skin, a strong skin, you’re keeping, you are like securing the health of your inner body. And if you’re having disfunction on the skin, because of the size of the skin, it will be communicating with our body and can have a huge influence. It can be contributing to add to your health and eventually like the appearance of other diseases and dysfunction in other organs of our body.

Katie: Yeah, absolutely. And it seems like hydration is a huge key for skin health and obviously also for the health of our entire body. Is any tip on that? Because I feel like people sometimes, for one, just aren’t getting enough water to begin with. But also it seems like electrolytes and minerals come into play in a big way when we’re hydrating as well. Any tips personally or from your research on hydration?

Alessandra: Yeah, on hydration, actually having drinking water is one of the first things like eating vegetables that are reaching water, like cucumber, for instance, can also help on hydration, but especially like protecting, having your skin barrier protected. So like using products that will increase the resilience of your skin barrier, this will help you to not lose the water that you are intaking and keep the hydration of your body.

Katie: That makes sense. And I feel like you touched on a key point with the water containing foods. And not only, of course, you mentioned you eat a lot of plant foods, but those foods have water in a different form than we get from just drinking water. So it’s exceptionally beneficial and also are such a good source of micronutrients. So just another check in the box for eating a wide variety of plant foods and fruits and vegetables being so important.

And I also, you mentioned the skin barrier. Let’s talk a little bit more about that because that might be a new term for a lot of people. And I know that this goes far beyond just putting lotion on when you get out of the shower. From what I’ve read, we have a whole microbiome on our skin, but there’s also that whole balance of hydration and that barrier that’s protective. So we’re not losing hydration through our skin.

Alessandra: Yes. So the skin barrier is like most of the outmost layer of your skin is what is really like, creating the barrier that protects our body from the outside. So the skin barrier is formed by caroteno sites that are the cells from the epidermal layer that they stratified and they form this barrier. So there are two things that can happen. One is, like, if there is, like, an aging process happening inside your skin, if there is inflammation happening on your skin, it will affect on how your skin barrier is being formed. So we are always renewing our skin barrier. So every like 28 days, we have a new skin barrier.

And then if your skin from the inside is not functioning correctly, probably you will also have a dysfunction on your skin barrier. Using lotions can help, like, you to create that layer on top of your skin that adds the protection. But if there’s something, like, not happening from the inside, you will still have, like, a dysfunction on the skin barrier that will make you lose more water and be more susceptible to pathogens, can create more inflammation, more redness on your skin.

Katie: Yeah, I love that we got to get into that because I feel like that part is not talked about very much. And for me personally, I did a deep dive for a long time into oral health, which there’s some similarities, like oral microbiome, skin microbiome, and just like with the skin, I feel like when it comes to oral health, people think of like, oh, it’s just about what you put on your teeth. It’s if you put sugar in your mouth, if you put toothpaste on your teeth. But just like you’re saying with the skin, there’s a whole other layer, which is, are you getting enough of the right fat soluble vitamins and nutrients through your diet to actually support healthy saliva and healthy production of enamel in your mouth? And that part doesn’t get talked about enough. Just like with the skin side, people often think of like, oh, I have a skin problem, I’m just going to only address putting something on top of it on the outside. But, like you’re saying, there’s this whole balance of what’s going in the body, not just on the body.

Alessandra: Yeah. And you said something like about eating sugar in the oral health, this also is related with the skin. So sugar, when we eat a lot of sugar, it’s actually processed sugar and we spike the glucose levels of sugar on our body. This excess of sugar can bind on the collagen of our skin and this creates like advanced glycation end products. This makes what this means, this makes your collagen fibers to not function perfectly and start to degrading. So what you are eating is actually very connected to your skin health as well. So it’s not only what you put on top of your skin, but what you are eating can also affect your skin health.

Katie: That’s such an important thing to realize as well. Let’s also talk about how skin aging happens and maybe also bring in senescent cells because I feel like aging is such a huge industry and such a huge topic, but it seems like there’s so much misinformation floating around.

Alessandra: There is a lot. So aging is a process that’s happening continuously throughout all our body and it’s like mainly a loss of the integrity of the function of the cells of our body. So this starts happening and the thing is, when you have dysfunction on your tissue and you start accumulating this, your body is not functioning properly and gets more susceptible to have like chronic related diseases. That’s why when we get to 65 years old, the chances that we will develop Alzheimer, that we will develop a cancer, diabetes, they start growing exponentially. This is because we got to a point that there is dysfunction at the cellular level on our tissues that’s like generating this environment that’s more susceptible to diseases.

So this happens in all our body and this happens of course on our skin as well. And we know now in the science community that they’re like before was nine. This year was updated twelve hallmarks of aging, like twelve dysfunctions at the cellular level that leads to aging. One of them is the accumulation of what you said, senescent cells that we can call to be easier to understand as damaged cells. So when we are aging, we are like receiving, we are being especially on the skin, we are being exposed to UV radiation, we are being exposed to different light and these are causing damage on our cells. And if the cell is not able to repair this damage, it gets to a point that the cell starts not functioning as a young cell anymore, start having like a dysfunction. And usually when it’s damaged cell, they secrete inflammation.

So these cells start to secrete inflammation. And this is a normal process that in the beginning tells your body okay, here’s a damaged cell, let’s remove it. And our immune system cleared the cells out. With aging, like what happened is that our immune system also do not respond anymore as well as when we are young and these cells start accumulating in our body and they are secreting inflammation. So we like the analogy to say that they are acting like a bad apple in a basket. So they are spoiling the healthy tissue like they are secreting this bad like signaling that’s inflammation. So if you have and you continue having the senescent cell there, you will start like creating dysfunction on the tissue.

And then on our skin. When you start accumulating senescent cells this starts like leading to degradation of collagen of extracellular matrix which leads to sagging of the skin and this also like impair the renewal of the epidermal layer and the production of the skin barrier so you have not strong less strong skin barrier and then coming back to the overall health like what I was saying before, because the skin is the largest organ, the inflammation that we are accumulating on the skin, it’s also like sending the signaling to our inner body. So if you have a skin that’s accumulating too much senescent cells that’s being damaged, that’s not protecting your body, you’re signaling to inside your body like inflammation and this can be driving other chronic diseases inside of your body.

That’s why we believe it’s very important to maintain the skin health. To maintain, like a proper skin barrier, reduce this accumulation of damaged cells on the skin, so the skin can act as a young skin. Producing what it needs to produce protecting our body and not like creating this excessive of inflammation that’s even now, like when we are aging there’s a term called inflammaging, the inflammation that accumulates with aging.

Katie: That makes sense. So basically inflammation sort of speeds up the process of skin aging.

Alessandra: Yes, exactly. So what we want to do is, like, to reduce this excess of inflammation. So you’re like healthy skins, they don’t get, like, contaminated, because the inflammation can act on a healthy cell, transforming the cell to also become senescent, to also start secreting inflammation. And then when you have a lot of inflammation on your skin, you do not produce, like, a proper skin barrier. And it’s very interesting because we are able to really reproduce this in the lab.

So in our lab we build 3D skin models and the way we do this is like having the two main skin cells fibroblast and keratinocytes. The fibroblast, they go on a layer of collagen that forms like the derms of the skin and on top of this we put the keratinocytes that produce the skin barrier. So if you have cells from a 30 years old donor and you build the skin, you usually get a very beautiful stratification in a skin barrier. If I induce damage on the fibroblast before and the cells are secreting inflammation, when I try to build the skin, the skin barrier is completely compromised. So this shows like how the inflammation that’s accumulating on the skin is kind of like unbalancing the healthy state of the skin.

Katie: And in a minute I want to go deep on ways we can undo that inflammation. But I want to learn a little bit more about this because I know you guys measure skin aging also in your lab and we talked about your biological age at the beginning. You also do biological age of skin, right? So can you walk us through how you measure skin aging and maybe just some of the information you gathered from that research?

Alessandra: Yes, of course. So we all know and it’s easy to understand the concept of chronological age these days that like, we are born the Earth go around the sun, one year, two years, we are all like, aging on the same speed. Everyone that was born April 3, 1987, will turn 36 years old this year.

But the way our body is aging, the way our cells are responding, this depends a lot on each person’s lifestyle and how they are treating their body. So our organs, our cells, they can be aging in different speed even if we have the same chronological age. So we are able now to measure this biological age. This means we look to the DNA and we can determine the age of that skin. And that age can be very close to the chronological age, can be like advanced, meaning that the skin is behaving as an older skin or it can be like younger, meaning that skin is behaving as a younger skin.

So we have developed a specific algorithm to measure the skin biological age because, like the different tissues of our body, they age differently. And because we were very specific, learning like the aging process of the skin for us was important to understand this more nuances that can happen on the skin that if you measure through a saliva sample or through a blood, maybe you will not get exactly what’s going on on the skin.

So we built an algorithm that reads the DNA of the skin and is able like to determine if a skin the biological, what we say the true age of the skin. And with these two, we are now able to see if any interference made on that skin using a top product or like when we are searching for a new active, if they are really, like targeting, aging and reversing the biological age of the skin or if they are only treating the symptoms that makes the skin look younger but not yet functioning as a younger skin.

Katie: Yeah, I feel like you guys are really pioneering this. Like, a lot of companies claim to fight aging, but you’re actually measuring tangibly if it’s actually working or not. And I would guess there are probably just like we talked about with dental health and skin health. There are some internal factors that come into play here as well. And I know we’ll talk about the topical ones that you guys have really done the research on as well.

But I would love to hear what are some of the kind of worst offenders that we can do internally or lifestyle factors that are going to increase skin aging and inflammation and or what are some of the best ways we can improve that from the inside out. And then we’ll talk about the outside products we can use too.

Alessandra: Yeah. So from the inside, as I was mentioning before, there are several what you’re eating, sugar is really like, excess of sugar is really bad to your skin because it can really bind to collagen. Water, like hydration. Vegetables that are rich in water are also very good for your skin aging. And the other thing when we’re talking about like how because a lot of people think about their skin and that’s also okay as their appearance, right, we associate a lot with the aesthetics. We want to look good. I’m talking about the skin health, I’m talking about the skin functioning as a young tissue.

So a lot of times to make your skin look younger, there are several very aggressive, intense procedures that you can do that may harm your skin. So a lot of like deep peeling if you think about you’re exposing your skin to more like the environment so you can be increasing the inflammation of the skin. So there is like a combination that we need to think about. If you’re trying to get a better appearance of your skin, think of like combining also, like on treating your skin to not only look younger but actually function younger. So you are like helping your body and not only like just masking some symptoms of the aging process.

Katie: That makes sense. Another check for hydration and avoiding excess sugar, which are other definite themes among podcast guests for general health as well. These are things that, like you said, they’re going to benefit many aspects of bodily health. And I know that you guys have done specific research into some things that can be used topically that sound like they actually improve the skin from the internal side as well and sort of help reverse that process. Can you walk us through what those are and how you found them?

Alessandra: Yeah. So what we are able to do is we created a platform where we replicate the aging process in vitro. And then with this platform, we are able to measure the biomarkers, markers that are associated with aging on the skin. So markers that will tell me if I have more like, inflammation in my skin, if I having more like this senescent damage cells on the skin. And I also can look to the structure and see how the skin barrier, if it’s strong or if it’s being disrupted. So these two allow us to test different topical products and also like to find and identify new actives.

So when we started our research, what we noticed was that the products that we were testing, they do not target the markers of aging. So they can sometimes make your skin produce more collagen, which will plump your skin, which will create a better appearance of your skin. But you’re still accumulating damaged cells on your skin. So it’s a young looking skin that has steering the inside accumulated damage.

So what we did in our research when we realized that and saw this opportunity was to build a screening platform that would target the accumulation of damaged cells on the skin. So we were looking for new peptides that could reduce the accumulation of these damaged cells. And with that, you were able to allow the young cells of your tissue to function properly and to produce like a healthy skin. So using this platform that we identify our proprietary molecule that we call OS One.

Katie: Yeah, and then from what I understand, it’s a peptide like you said. And I feel like these are just now really hitting the mainstream when people are excited about peptides, but I haven’t heard as much about them from the skin side. So I love that you guys are really pioneering that. I think people may have heard of people using injectable peptides, for instance, for all kinds of different things within the body, but this one is very specific to the skin and unlike some of the others, you’re not having to inject this. It can actually be used topically, right, to get the same benefit.

Alessandra: Yes, and it’s very important because we have this platform, we are also able to measure and to ensure that the peptide can penetrate the layers of the skin. So there is a lot of product sometimes that has like components that they say, they claim they have some molecules that they don’t act, they are not doing anything to your skin because they are not able to penetrate. So we are able to use in our platform, mark the peptide and we guarantee that the peptide is able to penetrate the skin. And then you can see the benefits of the action of the peptides on the skin.

Katie: And I’ve seen some really impressive before and after photos from people with you guys. I know you’re measuring this in the lab. Are people seeing in general a reduction in their skin age from this and how long does that process take? People are probably listening, how do I do that and how long does it take?

Alessandra: Yeah, so for us first was the reverse side. We started on the lab and we were seeing like the benefits when we treat the skins with the peptide. And then came the question like when we apply we will be able to see because I cannot be measuring the cellular level all the time, so will I be able to see improvement on our skin? And then we formulated and we got to formulas that we are able to truly see.

We ran clinical studies, so on our clinical studies, after six weeks of continuous use, you do see a better appearance of your skin. And we measured this skin barrier on the clinical study, that was what we were seeing very extensively in the lab. We were able to see the improvement on the skin barrier function after six weeks of use. So we are right in the market for two years. There’s a lot of people using some people claim like, results faster than that. Like after two weeks, they already seen the results, the benefits, especially first, it’s like the hydration that happens, but the deep result comes with time. And because we are aging all the time and we are being exposed to damage all the time, we treat our product as a topical supplement. It’s something that you will continuously use to help you slow down the aging process and to help you keep your skin on the healthy state.

Katie: Yeah, I think it’s very synergistic to how I think as well. And I mentioned the oral health side, and I formulated products especially in the oral health world, and that was my thought as well. It seems to me that the absolute baseline should be we avoid anything really harmful in our products, even though there are many products that do contain harmful ingredients. To me, that should be the bare minimum. But also if we know that the skin is the body’s largest organ, or that the mouth, anything that enters the mouth enters the body, for instance, my thought was, how do we then put beneficial things? How do we make use of that in a good way? And you guys are doing this with skin care in the way that I’m trying to do it with oral care and hair care. And I love I feel like the more companies we have like this, it’s going to help shift the market, which desperately, I think needs to be shifted.

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And we’ve talked about the skin barrier quite a bit, which I think is so fascinating to understand at a deeper level. And just based on what you said, I’m guessing that there are some other things we can be aware of to help make sure we’re not breaking down that skin barrier. So you guys have this topical supplement that is basically an advanced form of skin care, but are there other things people need to be aware of either avoiding or doing to help support the skin barrier? Like, I would guess maybe really harsh cleansers and detergent based cleansers can break that down by pulling out oils. But are there other things we need to be aware of? Yes.

Alessandra: So, yeah, as you were talking, like, cleaning the skin can harm your skin barrier. If you do excessively, especially exfoliation of your skin, you can disrupt the skin barrier. There are several assets that are used to treat the skin that can also create that peeling effect, that can also disrupt the skin barrier. So you need to be careful with using those type of treatments and cream. Using sunscreen is also like the first number one way of protecting your skin because excessive sun exposure can also disrupt the skin barrier.

Katie: Got it. And it seemed like, yeah, everything in the right dose. I mentioned morning sunlight a lot because of the health benefits for sleep and for everything else. But it’s always within that like the dose makes the poison. Like light is important, too much can be harmful, etc.

Alessandra: Exactly. The sun is super important because it helps our skin to produce vitamin D. But we cannot be overexposed to the sun because then the sun can start to damage a lot our skin.

Katie: Makes sense. And so then also would choosing like gentler cleansers also be a good thing? Or I know some people like the oil cleansing method where you’re using natural oils. What do you think of things like that as more protective of the skin barrier or what do you do for cleansing?

Alessandra: Yeah, the oil-based cleansers, they are like, by nature more protective of the skin barrier. But the way that they clean and how you feel is a little bit personal. I don’t deal very well with oil-based cleansers because I feel that my skin gets too oily and I’m not like really removing, I don’t like the way my skin feels at the end. There are like a lot of like, but they do not disrupt the skin barrier. This is true. So this is positive.

So there are other daily cleansers that are able to remove your impurities and makeup and leftover without disrupting, without having harmful ingredients that can destroy your skin. But one tip that we give as well is like to always clean your skin at night because you went through the day you had sunscreen, sometimes make up. So it’s very important to clean your skin at night. But if you clean your skin and just go to bed when you wake up, if you’re not doing anything, you don’t need to clean again with a cleanser. Just like washing with water is already enough and you can add your moisturizer on top. There’s no need to be like using daily cleansers twice if you just had a night of sleep and you didn’t pass anything on your skin or didn’t went out or things like that. So a way of trying to avoid stripping that much the skin.

Katie: That’s great to know because that actually saves people time and saves people work. Yeah, that’s great. Are there any other things we can do to prevent skin aging? I know the peptide is a huge one, but are there other things we can do to help slow it?

Alessandra: Yeah, as I was saying, like sunscreen, like protecting from excessive sun is the number one to prevent skin aging. Having, always like your skin moisturize it and especially like if you have as our product, like a peptide that can really target the causes of aging. It’s important because it decreases the inflammation and taking care of hydration of what you are eating. Also sleep. Like when we have a bad night of sleep, you can see it on your skin. Right. The skin tells a lot when we are too anxious. So taking care of your mental health, taking care of all your holistic health will help on your skin health as well.

Katie: Awesome. And then any other worst offender, beauty products or things that you want people to avoid, I would guess even really just like a lot of thick makeup over time could probably be not great for the skin barrier as well.

Alessandra: Yeah, makeup, like, if you use and you remove it at night, it can be okay. But look into your products that you’re using. Avoiding parabens, fragrance, it’s not good for your skin as well, alcohol. So avoiding some harmful ingredients is also beneficial to your skin.

Katie: Got it. And I have also in the show notes, I often ask, if you were going to give a Ted Talk in a week, what would you give it on? And I loved your answer because you said it would be about losing the fear of aging and the secret to longevity and healthy skin. So I would love to just hear if there’s anything else under that umbrella that you want to share with the listeners today.

Alessandra: Yeah, I feel like my mindset changed it so much since I started researching this field of longevity seven years ago, because when I was growing up, I was really afraid of getting older. If you ask to me, like, how do you want to live until 80 years old, that’s the maximum. I don’t want to get older because getting older, it’s related with having diseases, getting Alzheimer, I will be in bed. I don’t want that. And then, like, learning and studying aging. Now, I know that most of our way of aging is determined more from our lifestyle choices, what we are doing today, than our genetics. So we are in control of the way that we age.

And if we age, if we are able to increase, to use science, to use your knowledge of the choices that you’re taking on your life, you will get to 80 years old feeling healthy, like, moving, like communicating, having a good time with your family. And if you’re living in a good health, you probably like, you will not be afraid of being old. You will definitely even want to live longer. So the science of aging and understanding the mechanism of aging, even, like, how skin can be playing an important role there, made me lose the fear of getting older and made me embrace even more the life.

Katie: I love it. What is the saying, like, don’t fear aging, it is a privilege denied to so many.

Alessandra: Exactly. It’s everything, like, on our mindset and how we look to life and how we take actions, because everything that I’m saying, the basics. They’re not new to anyone. We know that we need to have a balanced diet, we know that we need to exercise, we know that we need to take care of our sleep but we don’t do that. Why?

So we need to be responsible for our own aging process, take like responsibility and start making the changes because later on those changes they become a habit and you’re just like, you’re this new person that exercise every day and if you don’t you miss. So it’s not that it’s hard for me to wake up and go to the gym. I’m like I wake up, yeah, it’s a good thing for my body. I feel better when I do it. So it’s a change that it takes a little bit in the beginning but the benefits it’s to the long term and I really like believing that at least I don’t have fear anymore of aging.

Katie: I love it. And I never missed the chance when I given one, to say I say this so often on here, that we’re each our own primary healthcare provider, because at the end of the day, we’re the one putting those inputs in our body every day and choosing our daily habits. That, like you said, those really are what determine how we age in the course of our life and whether or not we might get a disease or not. There’s so much we actually do have control over and it’s not at all just genetics and there’s even identical twin studies that really illustrate that because they have the same DNA and based on their lifestyle choices they’ll have a completely different expression of that happening as they age.

And so I think that’s actually, like you said, very encouraging because it means there is so much within our control without our own power to change. I feel like things like this, this is like one more layer that helps really tie all those pieces in together and brings the skin into it which I love.

Alessandra: Exactly. Yeah I totally agree with everything you said.

Katie: Well, and we’ve mentioned your products a couple of times. I want to make sure I’ll of course link to them in the show notes but just walk people through the products you guys do have that you formulated around this specific peptide.

Alessandra: Yeah so during our research and the beginning of the company where we were just like trying to understand aging and our first goal was to have this platform that would evaluate the efficacy of like molecules. We identify that there was nothing targeting root causes of aging and that’s how as I said, as I explained we did a screening to find a new molecule that is our proprietary peptide OS one that’s the main hero active in all our formulas. So with that, peptide we start formulating products to use first on your face was our first product. That’s the most exposed area of our body, but also, like, a body lotion that’s able to treat your whole body, like, and decrease this inflammation that’s happening with aging, especially when we are later ages in our life, that we can reduce this inflammation and keep, like, a healthy skin on your whole body.

We also developed like a daily cleanser that’s very like gentle enable just like to remove the imperatives and prepare your skin to adapt absorption of our peptide we showed in our lab that if you combine both products you’re able to duplicate almost double the amount of peptide that can penetrate and the benefits of our products when using the cleanser. So we are now like going to launch at the end of February an eye cream where we specifically use skin from the eyelid. We use this skin in the lab. The skin is way more like thin and more like it can be induced damage easier because it’s a thinner skin so we use this and it will sag easily. So we use the skin to adapt to the specific amount of peptide for this type of the skin and we developed an eye cream and our goal this year is still to launch our sunscreen and with that have this kind of almost minimalist basic steps to promote skin health that you can associate with other therapies other treatments. But see it’s already like a good combo to protect your skin.

Katie: That makes sense with the eyes too because that’s often where people get wrinkles first is around the eyes where the skin is thinner.

Alessandra: Yes, exactly.

Katie: Yeah well I got to try an early release of the eye product and I love it so definitely recommend your guys’ product. The lotion is amazing as well. Before we started recording, I was saying I was coaching a track meet for 13 hours on Saturday, and it was freezing cold and really sunny and really windy. And so I had a lot of sun, wind, cold damage on my skin. And when I put the lotion on, it felt like it was just like drinking it. And it felt so much better instantly. So I will definitely link to the products in the show nodes at WellnessMama.FM for you guys listening and I think there’s a special page just for Wellness Mama listeners so that will be there.

A few questions I love to ask toward the end of interviews. The first being if there is a book or a number of books that have profoundly influenced your life and if so, what they are and why.

Alessandra: Yeah there is one book called A New Earth from Eckhart Tolle. I always like I say his name is hard for me to pronounce. But this book, A New Earth, I read it in 2018 and was like, when I was starting the research, like, I was two years researching aging. And it really was a book that grounded me to my inner self and the understanding of, like, how I react and respond to things that are not under my control and, like, to be more grounded and more centered. On being grateful to the things that I have on hand and how I deal with the things that are, like, not under my control. So I also have a lot of like anxiety a little bit and because we suffer a lot from imagination and not from reality. This is also a quote from Seneca that I’m also like very into storytelling nowadays. But this book A New Earth was the first beginning of this. Kind of like me going more deep on my spirituality and, like, my connection with my inner self. And even, like, when I started to meditate as well was like coincidentally after this book and it really liked it a lot of like what is our ego and how we are dealing to our lives, how we look to everything around us and even like how we behave and behave towards others. So this was a good book for me.

Katie: Definitely second year recommendation. I loved that book as well. And lastly, any parting advice for the listeners today that could be related to skin health and everything we’ve talked about or entirely unrelated life advice?

Alessandra: For skin health, I have said a lot of different things. So another advice like this is a lifestyle advice that I give to myself every day is to everyday be grounded to the present and always try your best. Whatever is the task that you’re going to do, just always try to do your best and be present at that moment. Because the things that we learn every day, they are the things that no one will ever take from us. So we can switch jobs later on, we can something change our relationship. But what we learned this will take with us and this will help us on ways, that maybe now I don’t know why I’m learning this, if it will be helpful or not, but eventually you can be using the learnings on another different task. So being present in every task that you commit to do and trying your best and always learning, it’s always my reminder to always try my best every day and continue learning because learning what I learned will take out of me. It will take forever with me.

Katie: I love it. I think that’s a beautiful place to wrap up for today. Thank you so much for your time and for being here and for sharing today.

Alessandra: Thank you so much Katie. I enjoyed a lot this conversation, I hope everyone enjoyed as well. Thank you all for listening.

Katie: Yeah and as she said, thanks to all of you for listening, sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did 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.