How to Improve Skin Health & Appearance

When people supplement with anywhere from 5-15 grams... of hydrolyzed collagen per day, in particular in combination with vitamin C, it doesn't have to be a lot of vitamin C, one can observe... some visible improvements in skin composition, meaning less wrinkles, even some reversal of wrinkles, less skin sagging, more youthful appearance, more kind of, let's just call it, rebound elasticity of the skin.

When taken twice per day at a dosage of 500 mg per dose for a total of 1 gram or 1,000 mg per day... niacinamide supplementation can increase the production of ceramides, which relate to the lipids in skin that improve the moisture in skin. And, by the way, moisture in skin is a key component of the youthfulness or plump appearance of that skin.

Excessive sun exposure can increase the propensity for certain skin cancers. I want to go on record by saying I believe that.

Even if you wear sunscreen or a physical barrier when you get outside into the sun, it can still have a positive effect on your vitamin D levels.

Mineral-based sunscreens, meaning sunscreens that tend to include either zinc oxide or titanium dioxide or both in some cases, are generally thought to be safe up to concentrations of 25%.

There is some, again, some concern about the chemicals within chemical, AKA organic, sunscreens as potential endocrine disruptors. So, disrupting things like testosterone synthesis, estrogen synthesis, and other hormones.

If you have a pimple-like lesion, or you have any kind of spot on your skin that seems like it's an acne that's lasted more than a month, or you have an area that's seeping something that might look like plasma or puss or blood, and it persists over a long period of time, like a month or more, absolutely get that checked out by a dermatologist. Okay, don't wait longer than a month. Get it checked out.

Phototherapy that involves long wavelengths of light, so red light plus near-infrared light, typically, at a distance of about a foot to two feet from the light source... done for anywhere from 10-15 minutes 5-7 days per week on a consistent basis does seem, on average, to lead to improvements in the youthfulness appearance of skin.

Sun exposure will disrupt the collagen and elastin, but mostly the collagen composition of your skin, in a way that makes it appear as if you're aging faster. Okay, so sun exposure, yes, ages the skin.

Every single dermatologist that I spoke to said that some sun exposure is good for us, but that too much sun exposure will accelerate the appearance of aging in our skin.

The skin cancers that sun exposure causes, while they can be serious and should be taken seriously, they should be treated, those generally are not the most deadly of the skin cancers.

When the sun is low in the sky, that's generally a safe time to get sun exposure. It's that midday sun, typically between the hours of, you know, 11 AM, or even 10 AM, depending on time of year and where you're at, and 2 or 3 or 4 PM that the sun is overhead and at its greatest intensity and where the UV index can be very high.

Does sunburn cause skin cancer? There's no direct relationship between sunburn and skin cancer except the fact that sunburn reflects excessive sunlight exposure. And yes, as I mentioned before, it's conclusive that excessive UV sun exposure to the skin can cause certain mutations in skin cells that give rise to certain skin cancers.

It is advised that on children younger than six months of age you do not use chemical-based sunscreens.

Getting sun exposure makes people feel good. When people feel good they tend to be lower stress. When people are feeling good and they have energy... they tend to exercise more, walk more. And, of course, if you're outside exercising more... you're also going to get more sun exposure. And we know that exercise is strongly related to improved or extended life expectancy.

When people supplement with collagen powders... and then measures are taken as to skin appearance, skin elasticity... you often will find studies that show statistically significant improvements in collagen composition and skin appearance and even the appearance of reduction in wrinkles and so forth.

The dermatologists that I spoke to were really bullish about the fact that, believe it or not, they felt that people starting in their 20s could very well, as long as they're not pregnant or lactating or planning to get pregnant, could take Retin-A or things similar to it in order to stimulate the production of more skin and look more youthful now.

Most everybody out there seems to accept the idea that excessive sun exposure can cause certain cancers of the skin.

There is clear evidence that sunlight can cause skin cancers.

I'm a big believer in sunlight, in the power of sunlight, for health, but I am not what is called a sunscreen truther. Okay, I'm not somebody who thinks that sunscreen has no value. In fact, quite the opposite under certain conditions and certain sunscreens.

A physical barrier can provide, in some cases, very good protection from the sun, and I don't think there's any controversy whatsoever as to whether or not the composition of the physical barrier is having negative effects on the skin.

You don't need a sunburn for the sun to accelerate the aging appearance of your skin. You don't need a sunburn to induce the kind of mutation that may... give rise to a skin cancer.

It's highly recommended that you go in and you get your moles checked by a dermatologist, and frankly that you get all of your skin checked by a dermatologist, at least once per year.

We know from animal models that BPC-157 increases angiogenesis, the growth of capillaries and blood vessels. We know this. It can accelerate wound healing by virtue of increasing fibroblasts motility. For this reason, it's used post-injury in sports. It's used by people who want to build more muscle...

Copper has been shown to play a key role in DNA repair, which is a critical component of the turnover of collagen and other proteins in skin. It has been shown to reduce so-called reactive oxygen species, so it serves as a so-called antioxidant ... But too much copper is a problem.

What we think of as skin, while it may have a designated set of layers that have particular names, can vary tremendously in terms of its overall thickness—and therefore its vulnerability to things like sunlight.

You also have a skin microbiome. That is, the existence of microbiota on the outside of your skin that serve as a barrier to infections but that also provide things that are nourishing to the skin and give it that vibrant look that most people want.

It's well-accepted that UV light, when it penetrates mostly that epidermal layer of the skin, that outermost layer, it can cause changes in the way that DNA functions.

UV light can disrupt which DNA are expressed and how they are expressed, in some cases leading to over-production of too many cells or disruptions in the functions of cells, and that's why people link UV light to skin cancer.

Organic components with inorganic sunscreens—again, sometimes called chemical sunscreens—are designed to absorb UV light; mineral-based sunscreen, so-called inorganic sunscreens, containing things like zinc oxide or titanium dioxide are designed to reflect back UV light.

Approximately 80-90% of melanomas, which are skin cancers, and they are very serious skin cancers that can indeed be very deadly, arise in what's called de novo skin. De novo skin is non-mole skin.

Non-smokers who avoided sun exposure had a life expectancy similar to smokers in the highest sun exposure group.

It does appear that getting sun exposure is correlated with longer life expectancy.

Phototherapy can indeed improve the appearance of skin in conditions like acne. It can accelerate woundhealing. It can improve the youthfulness appearance of skin. But these effects tend to be somewhat mild to moderate when they occur...

Vascularization due to be BPC-57, even if it's injected locally into a given tissue, is likely to occur globally throughout the body.