The Crackin' Backs Podcast

The Dark Side of Skincare: Dr. Jessica Kado on Overrated Trends and Hidden Gems

• Dr. Terry Weyman and Dr. Spencer Baron

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This week, we're thrilled to have the esteemed Dr. Jessica Kado, a board-certified dermatologist and fellowship-trained Mohs surgeon, join us. With over 17 years of diverse experience in dermatology, Dr. Kado has an impressive background, including her surgical training at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and her tenure as Chief Resident at Wayne State University School of Medicine.

In this episode, we delve into the hot-button issues surrounding skincare and dermatology. Dr. Kado tackles the growing debate over the safety and efficacy of sunscreens, especially concerning ingredients like oxybenzone. She shares her professional stance and how she addresses patient concerns about these products.

We also explore the impact of influencers and marketing in the beauty industry. Dr. Kado offers invaluable advice on distinguishing between genuinely effective skincare products and those that are simply well-promoted. She highlights overrated trends and recommends standout natural products with fewer harmful chemicals.

Additionally, Dr. Kado provides her expert insights on the effectiveness and science behind popular skincare ingredients like hyaluronic acid. She discusses holistic and natural approaches to anti-aging, including facial exercises, acupuncture, and light therapy.

Understanding the vital link between diet and skin health, Dr. Kado shares her dietary recommendations for maintaining youthful, glowing skin. She also gives practical tips for dealing with aging and dry skin without relying heavily on lotions.

Join us for a thought-provoking conversation that blends medical expertise with practical skincare advice, aiming to empower you to make informed decisions about your skin health.

Tune in to the Crackin Backs Podcast with Dr. Jessica Kado and uncover the secrets to radiant, healthy skin!

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Dr. Spencer Baron:

Jessica, welcome to the cracking bags podcast. Since we're in the heart of the summer sun, we have an eye opening episode with renowned Dermatologist, Dr Jessica Cato. We'll dive into the hot debate on sunscreen, safety, the truth behind the beauty industry marketing, and uncover which skincare products are truly effective versus those that are just a bunch of hype. Plus, Dr cater will share insights on hyaluronic acid, natural aging methods and vital link between diet and skin health. Stay tuned for the expert tips on maintaining youthful, glowing skin without relying on excessive lotions. You won't want to miss this. Well, good day, Dr Cato, we are so happy to have you on because we have so many questions and trying to find, you know, a dermatologist that you know, we could ask these questions to is, is, really, is? This is going to be a good show today. So thank you for being on.

Dr. Jessica Kado:

I'm excited to be here.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

We also thank you for being on, because we understand that you're ready to give birth at any given time, right now, right?

Dr. Jessica Kado:

I'm on the countdown a couple of weeks. Yes. Well, thank

Dr. Spencer Baron:

you. Thank you. It would be an honor if you went into labor right now. But anyway, all right, moving right along. I mean, I'm just going to jump into some questions here. If you see a tail wagging behind me, it's my dog. It's not my tail. But anyway, the DR Cato, there's been some there's been so much debate, especially in South Florida, where I'm at here about sunscreens, the efficacy of sunscreens. And you know that there's so many to choose from out there, and some of them had, some have some pretty scary chemicals in them. And what's, what's your feeling on, on finding the right kind of sunscreen, especially for those who are, you know, like to bask in the sun, or just have to labor in the sun, things like that. What's your stance on that? Yeah,

Dr. Jessica Kado:

so the party line is the best sunscreen is the one that you'll use. So, you know it comp compliance is important. So if you don't like it and you're not going to use it, it doesn't matter if it's$30 or $250 and it has to be something that you want to put on. When a dermatologist talks about active lifestyle, we try not to just say sunscreen. The word that we'll use is photo protection, because it's multi modality, right? So it's unrealistic to expect somebody to put sunscreen on themselves if they're going to go around running, jogging, sweating, swimming, and then interrupt themselves and then reapply all over again in two hours or every time they towel off. So then you incorporate other things, like a hat, sun, protective clothing. But I do agree with you, there are a lot of choices, and it is very overwhelming when you go to the drugstore, let alone if you search online for something. So I think knowing your skin, if it's sensitive, if you're using it as a daily protection, or if you're going to be out all day and active, those are important things to know. So you may actually need a couple of them so that you can appropriately use ones that will protect you long term, versus just a daily sunscreen that you're going to put on before you get ready for the day. Isn't

Dr. Spencer Baron:

some of them have ingredients. I think there's a oxy bed zone or something like that. The FDA says there's a safety limit in the blood. I mean, you know, one one smear can, you know, some people are very sensitive or very concerned about some of these the chemicals in there is that something that you would want to look on a label before buying a protection.

Dr. Jessica Kado:

So, you know, the thing that irks me as a doctor is when people say all sunscreens are safe all the time, and everyone should use it every day everywhere. You know, those kind of superlative comments aren't helpful to help people understand what is good for them and what fits their lifestyle. The controversy with sunscreen is picking up a lot of pace. I think in general, in the post covid world, the consumer is more educated. There's a lot more questions being asked with the relationship between consumers and products, which is good we should answer those questions instead of shutting them down. But a lot of the controversy started with the coral bleaching issue. So even though we've been using these products for decades and they were generally recognized as safe, this coral bleaching issue came up. And then everything started getting re evaluated. And then the FDA decided, hey, you know what we don't. Actually have these safety studies that we would like to have on these specific, what we call photo activated sunscreens. And so then they asked the industry, who's creating them, we would like those, and they haven't provided them yet. So then they removed they were generally recognized as safe. And so that was confusing to the consumer, because there wasn't actually something that came out and said it was dangerous. It was just our our institutions, which we rely on. We want them to review these things. Occasionally said, you know, there's this new concern. We would like more information about it, and so hopefully they provide that information so that, as a doctor, we can reassure the patients that it is, in fact, okay. But the reality is, I can't tell somebody what the long term consequence of having absorption of this specific sunscreen is in your bloodstream, if you do it from the age of 60 versus age of 20 from putting it on a two year old. So we don't have those we don't have those hard studies. But to say that something's been used for decades and done well and has made a clinical impact is also important. There's plenty of things in medicine that we use off label that are not bad for you, and that don't have necessarily the most robust study behind it, but we have good clinical results from it. And you know, the risk factor for somebody is different. If you're coming from a family where three people have melanoma, somebody got basal cell at 40 carcinoma, you're going to want to be more proactive than somebody who has all of skin and they've never heard of skin cancer because it's never affected anyone that they know or love. And so I think what ends up being the nuances you have to really take your individual risk assessment and say, What am I comfortable doing? Behavioral modification wise, what am I comfortable putting on my skin that is tried and true versus what? How can I take advantage of this new technology so that I incorporate it into my lifestyle, if that's what you want to do. But the nice thing is, you have a lot of options. It just depends on your comfort level and also your risk. Those are the two things that I think are going to help customize for that individual what they should do as far as protection long term.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

So the idea of having, you know that vitamin D as an important factor in one's health, and it's you know, synthesized when you're out in the sun. It wasn't too long ago that I understood that most of the receptor sites to vitamin D are on the chest or on the back. And are you? Are you actually blocking with what's obviously sunblock? Are you blocking the that synthesis from happening to gain, you know, you know, to get vitamin D into the system.

Dr. Jessica Kado:

So scientifically, they've used patients using considerable amounts of sunscreen, and they haven't shown a vitamin D issue as far as being able to synthesize it. The other thing is, you know, the FDA doesn't allow you to have the words sunblock, because it doesn't really block the sun. It screens it at best. So you're just, you're you're still absorbing sun, you're just absorbing less. And so all of us have experienced that, meaning you put it on and you might still get a little bit of a sunburn, or you put it on and you get, you know, color in your skin later, that's obviously not getting completely blocked. So the way that people use sunscreen is not compatible with saying you're going to prevent vitamin D synthesis. I don't necessarily agree when dermatologists try to dismiss that concern from patients and say, Oh, just take a vitamin D supplement. You know what if you don't want to take a supplement. But the reality is, that's not a concern that I think people should be worried about, between the amount of sun exposure we get, the way that we dress, the vacations that we take, how we incorrectly use sunscreen. Actually, you know, all of those things are going to help us do just fine with vitamin D. More than anything, is where we live in the world is going to affect how much vitamin D we have in our system, not necessarily sunscreen use.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

I got a question. You know, being the system in California, we get a lot of people there, hardcore natural. You know, everything has to be natural, natural, natural. And so do you see? And there's a lot of people talking about natural sunscreen. So you mentioned something. A lot of people don't know how to apply it. So I'd love to hear your you. Or instructions how to apply it. But the other question I have is, you know, in food, we tell patients, if you can't understand the word in the label of ingredients, don't eat it. What about sunscreen? If you can't pronounce half these words in the ingredients, do you not apply it?

Dr. Jessica Kado:

So they've removed some of the sunscreen photochemicals. So there's terminology that people like to use, inorganic and organic, and it's confusing, because the mineral sunscreens that get labeled natural also are labeled inorganic. So they kind of it doesn't really cohe Like, it doesn't sound cohesive to somebody who's looking for a natural remedy. But then the organic sunscreens get called Chemical sunscreens, and they get absorbed into your skin. And that's how they work, is they get absorbed into your skin, and then they need time before they can scatter some of that energy, or absorb the energy and then not allow it to destroy the DNA in the skin. So I don't think then saying the chemical name would work. It's more of the philosophy. If you don't want any of the photo activating or chemical sunscreens, then you already know you're only going to be using the mineral ones, which are either titanium or zinc. So it's pretty simple. You're either going to use purely mineral sunscreens, or you're going to go for an elegant antioxidant, you know, etc, etc, sunscreen that has the ability to be put on over makeup or not make you have that white mask effect when you use it. The interesting thing about sunscreen, it was also in controversy, like in the 90s or the early 2000s with the mineral part of it, because they decreased the molecule size. So they were calling it, you know, nanoparticles. And that was, you know, a firestorm of itself. What about this? What about that? And, you know, what about these nanoparticles? Can we clear them? And so that was its own controversy. In the end, they decided, you know, based on the studies, that it was fine, but that's also being brought up by these, you know, patients who are really concerned about, how is their body going to process the sunscreen when the molecule is so small? And I think, you know, every time we have a technology upgrade, you know the science, it takes a little bit of time to catch up, so it's great, but then you also have to make sure you realize we don't actually know sometimes the answer. And so what's the tried and true is like the 1940s sailor sink, you know, the lifeguard white nose, but that's also not the easiest to use. Yeah,

Dr. Terry Weyman:

right. Wait, wait, I got one thing. What about you mentioned 1940s the zinc What about the 1940s using baby oil

Unknown:

I was gonna bring,

Dr. Terry Weyman:

I mean, the copper tone, and using the reflector shields. Totally gonna bring

Dr. Jessica Kado:

that up. So I actually take care of skin cancer patients all the time who tell me they did the beta, dine, baby oil. I personally missed that window of time, but we're still dealing with the consequence of it, for sure.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

That feels funny. I was gonna bring that up. I'm gonna add friends of mine that would sit with them, that foil, that trifold foil, and I go, What are you doing? And big oil and iodine was like the big thing in my era. Yeah, that's crazy. But

Dr. Jessica Kado:

like their SPF of two, SPF of two bottle. And I just would laugh when I saw that, because what good is the point? Right? Right?

Dr. Spencer Baron:

So, my my question in regards to that is, you know, it's easy to put sunscreen on in the front, but you know, and maybe the shoulders is there. Do you have a solution about how you get to the you know, your back, because walking around or hiking without a shirt? Well, not that you would walk around without a shirt on, but, I mean, if I would walk around with that shirt on, it would get it would burn. So how? So,

Dr. Jessica Kado:

this is my like, this is my recommendation for people who are active. We want you to be active. We want you to be outdoors. Yeah, even if you put on sunscreen on your back, you have the greatest girlfriend, wife, boyfriend for you, it's gonna sweat off, right? Yeah. So what's the point? Just put on one of the protective shirts. The technology behind them are so nice now, between being light weight, having great breathability, being quick drying, all that athletic wear stuff, you know, besides giving mom yoga pants, has translated into, you know, nice clothing for sun protection, so you can still go out there, and it's not like you're in a scuba suit anymore. When I first, first started doing dermatology, which was actually, you know, it's been quite a while. I mean, there was only those wetsuit like shirts, right? I mean, nobody's gonna use that. Now it's. Amazing. There's so many. There's, like, golf shirts, there's, you know, Sunday dresses, there's just the Columbia hikers, you know, or Patagonia, they all have the hiker shirt that has you UV protection of about 50 in there. Then just put it on. You're done, you know. And that's the end of it. I wouldn't and then you're protecting yourself from other things like poison ivy and contact issues. So for me, if you're an outdoorsman, or you're in the ocean all day long, or you're at the beach, or you have outdoor work, it's worthwhile investment, and it's better now used to be like you have to put an additive to your laundry, and then it would only last so many washes, but these things are lasting much longer, and they're much more usable super

Dr. Spencer Baron:

so we'll shift a little bit off of sunscreens and into more of what we're seeing a lot now on Instagram And Facebook is these influencers pushing and marketing the beauty industry. And you know what? You know, creams and lotions and potions that they can use to make them look younger. And you got the baby boomers that are really, you know, concerned about looking beautiful or maintaining anti aging. How in the world can can a lay person, or even us, you know, understand what's genuinely effective skin care versus something that's just simply well promoted?

Dr. Jessica Kado:

So interestingly enough, kind of merging between the photo protection versus sunblock and anti aging is the concept of inflammaging, right, which is really big on the west coast. So it's kind of penetrating slowly across the country of you know, we want to reduce inflammation, which is, in the end, contributing to an aged look. And it takes a long time. But, you know, you think about somebody who smokes, they're not going to look old the first two years they smoke, but for sure, you know, you're 20, you can pick them out of a room like that. They were a smoker, and then they quit, right? So anything that has inflammation, kind of low lying, whether it's a medical problem like diabetes or hypertension or obesity, is going to contribute to inflammation. So the first of all, the best beauty product is to be healthy, because healthy skin is come it makes you look good, right? So the healthy lifestyle choices are going to pay over time. They're going to pay immediately. Being obese, fat is very inflammatory, so you're fighting yourself all the time between fatigue, of carrying the extra weight, between feeding those inflammatory signals, your best bet is to lose weight if you want to look good, versus any beauty product. So that's just like my doctor part, right? Yeah. But the but, the cool thing is, is that we have supplements now, and one of my favorite is nicotinamide. And the brand, you know, it's like supplements are always dangerous, because you got to really know the brand that you're getting them from. So the one that I kind of stand behind is called Helio care, and it has a plant in addition to the nicotinamide that provides extra support to fight inflammation in your body. So it's good for cardiovascular health. It's good for neural health. It's good for skin health, because your skin and your gut, which are what most people complain about when they have problems, are just the first to be hit. But over time, it's your heart in your brain, right? So if you have good skin, that's a good sign that everything else is going well. The supplement is a good supplement to take for general health, but it's really great for your skin, because when you get that UV light, you collect over time, DNA mutations, and so if you think about it like splatter paint, you go out, you get your sunburn, you've got, you know, a bunch of DNA mutations just hanging out. Now, your body tries to fix them with its own repair mechanisms. When you take a supplement like this, it's more effective at doing that. Now, as we age, we lose the ability to fix our damage ourself efficiently, and so taking that supplement helps us keep that machinery alive, so that we have less bad stuff to deal with, which translate into hopefully less skin cancers. So in an area like Australia, when you take the supplement twice a day, you reduce the likelihood of a skin cancer on your skin by 30%

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Wow, wow. You're talking about the nicotinamide,

Dr. Jessica Kado:

right? Yeah. So you you take an at risk population, and when you see those kind of results on the skin, you can only think, like, how can you show them on other organ systems? Right? Like, besides lower blood. Pressure or increased memory, things like that. Those are hard to quantify and follow over time because there's so many variables. But with the skin, it's nice, because you can see this person is an at risk person. They have a lot of damage. They're in a part of the world that they weren't necessarily built for, with getting a lot of UV exposure, and this is a definite tool that's going to help them avoid skin cancer. I

Dr. Spencer Baron:

take nicotinamide. Thank you for bringing that up. Let me ask you, you mentioned a cool word, inflammaging. Is that what you I've never heard I've never heard it, but I have always felt strongly about inflammation being such a component that if we can control that, we can control a lot of our aging and other, you know, other conditions that seem to arise from inflammation depending on energy.

Dr. Jessica Kado:

You know, inflammation is important. It's a signal in our body that we have to have, right? So you get an injury, you get inflammation. That's part of the healing process, but it's inflammation chronically over a long period of time that's bad for us. So when you get your, you know, sports injury, and you get inflammation to that spot, that's what's bringing the party to fix stuff, right? But we don't want it to go out of control, and we that should be a time limited feature of healing. It's when you get chronic inflammation, that's from lifestyle choices or from genetics. Unfortunately, sometimes for individuals, that will cause that secondary problem, where it's either you're dealing with a cancer or you're dealing with a decreased longevity or decreased mobility or decreased quality of life. So inflammation, if we can control it, for most people, it's through diet, which, I mean, that's also going to just make your skin look good, and that's where you get the rainbow diet and stuff. So it's interesting, because a lot of the esthetics for dermatology, you know, I do all the lasers, the fillers, the Botox, and they just look at these people. And if you're gonna invest money, eat healthy, right? Or, like, don't drink as much alcohol, or use the sunscreen that you're comfortable using. If you don't want to use the chemical one, use the mineral one. But like, at least help us. Help you, right? Because you're making this investment, you may as well enjoy it.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

You're starting to sound like a chiropractor. No, that's great. I'm glad you're bringing that up, because food can be medicine and it could be lethal. You know, it's people's diets are unfortunate. They are contributors to a lot of the inflammation that they don't realize. I'd like to go back to ask you the do you i You probably cringe when you see some of these, these, what do you call influencers that are promoting certain things? Obviously, they have a special interest in making money from it. But is there anything you could tell our listening audience and our viewing audience on how they can be careful of being hooked. Thank you for bringing

Dr. Jessica Kado:

me back to that, because I actually wanted to bring this up. It's a serious issue with E commerce. Yeah, it's kind of the wild west of you know, going back to the 1800s where people used to sell snake oil, and everybody had a remedy for something. And so then you're thinking, Well, I'm going to look at the reviews. Well, with AI, the reviews are robots. Who knows if the reviews are real people, right? So what they did a study in 2019 where they took lightning products. So lightning skin agents are one of the biggest beauty industry sellers across the world. Over 50% of them had mercury in them. Whoa.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Okay, wow. And then,

Dr. Jessica Kado:

you know, it being around Prime Day, we were just talking about this, you have no verification when you go through a third party seller that you're getting the product that's listed, meaning the FDA actually did a study where they took personal, personal beauty products, so they categorized them into technology, like a hair curling iron, for example, or something you would use for personal care that required Technology. Then they had cosmetics as one section, and they had other sections. The cosmetic sections, zero out of the 13 that they randomly selected were authentic. They were all counterfeit products. So they print the logo, which, again, you can print anything now, and you stick it on a bottle and you're getting it from a third party seller. Not only that, but then they put on there the disclaimer that says, the photo may not represent the product, so you could see your your friend has this really great something, and you like it, and you're you look at the picture, you're all that's the same one, and you buy it, and then you get something totally different. There was actually a woman. This is not. A beauty product, but it was a hemorrhoid product, and she wanted to use a natural remedy, and she bought it from E commerce, and she actually died because it had lead in it, and she absorbed it, and she went to liver failure. And my my goal is not to shock people or be like, you know, bring her bad news, but what you have to do is you have to buy from the primary source, because you I'm like a, you know, again, going back to the supplements and the beauty products, it's the same thing, you know, they have preservatives in them, and we have regulations, and in America and the EU that are tight, and it makes it hard to get new stuff through, but it's our protection. So if you go through a primary seller and then most of the secondary sellers, that's your first layer of protection. My second layer of protection is you really should look where your product is manufactured, because even if the company is a US company, that doesn't mean it's manufactured in the US. So I actually have my own skincare line full disclosure, and it went I went through such an educational process because my son had eczema, and I thought to myself, well, I'm going to figure out a better way to treat this, because it's just so frustrating to go through all these medications. So then I started sourcing ingredients, and I found out that a lot of the preservatives, a lot of the chemicals, they're just added because it's manufactured overseas, and it's got to make it across a six month cargo ship without rats, you know, destroying it. It's not actually beneficial to anybody. It's just to protect the product shelf life and protect it from mold and parasites. So when you buy the product in the US, I don't have to do that, because I'm selling it to the US consumers. So manufacturer in the US, and then all of a sudden, I'm able to avoid a ton of ingredients that cause allergy reactions and irritations that are in a lot of products that we use. And so that's when you get the beauty products, and then somebody says they have an allergic reaction to it, and then we have to patch test them, and we find it's a preservative. And they don't even need the preservative in the product, but they have to, because they're making it in such a huge bulk. So the influencers, I just I don't recommend following their advice if you're interested in a product that they do recommend, because it seems too good to be true, it usually is, you know, just like old mantras. But the easiest thing to do is say, Okay, it looks promising. Where do they make it? If it's made in the US and you want to try it out, I think that's a reasonable you know, because we have certain protections. You can't manufacture in this country and have any kind of level of toxicities, right? So it may not make you beautiful, but it at least is safe. And then you can see if you like it, if you want to get another round of it.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

You know, I think you're you brought up a really good point that I kind of want to emphasize, because so many people will go to dermatologists or go somewhere, and they'll get a sunscreen or something. And it works well, instead of going back to the doctor, they just take a picture of it, they go online, and they just go to an E commerce company, we all know which one we're talking about, and and they order it, and look, I got even cheaper than the doctor was charging me. And they just get it on auto ship, and, you know, like, it's

Dr. Jessica Kado:

not even the same thing, but they don't realize it, or they until they get an adverse reaction to it, and then they finally understand that, or it oxidizes, or something, and they wonder what happened to the product. But that also is, is, like, a big concern, because it's a it's like a mafia stronghold, so you have to pay the E commerce company to screen out your counterfeits if you want them to.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

On a even more sinister note,

Dr. Jessica Kado:

like, that's just strong arming the person, the little guy, right? Yeah,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

yeah. On a more sinister note, there was a, you know, argon, am I saying it Craig Argan oil for your hair, you know. So I started instead. I started using that years ago, and it started getting very popular and expensive, and ordered it through, I believe, target or somewhere, because I found it a little bit little bit cheaper, and I received it, and it was packaged perfectly, and all that I opened it up. But something was a little peculiar, because it just opened up. It a little easier. It was baby oil. It smelled like baby oil, and everything and I, and I, I had not finished using the the one that I had beforehand. So it was about two or three weeks before I opened up the new one, and when I tried to return it, they said, Oh, no, it's been too long. You've had it for too long. And I thought, how did that get past you to be able to sell? So it was, baby, I can imagine what you know other unfortunately,

Dr. Jessica Kado:

there's counterfeit all. Oil, right? You can't get, like, Chanel perfume online. It's you can't find it right, because it's not authentic. So it's like, how are you going to get a health supplement? And you just go with it without knowing that you're going to the actual brand store, which is the primary seller. So if it's like a virtual version of the store itself, which is what these companies are essentially forced to do, is do business on that platform, that way. Otherwise, there's actually a skin brand. It's called SkinCeuticals. They are not on on a specific e commerce platform. They're not like partners with them, and they have to put it all over their website that they are not because on the actual website, if you put their product name, which is one of the top of vitamin C effective. I love it. I recommend it. Products, you will find labels that have the same font, the same color, like one letter off, and you would never know if you're just a regular consumer, except for the fact that the actual company on their own website say, we do not sell here. We are not affiliates of this. These are the only companies we are. We have affiliates with. Otherwise, you know, buying it through here is the only place. So I think having a trusted source for your product, whether it's a local nutrition person that you trust and you have a relationship with or a local medical provider that you trust and vet their products before they carry them at their own office or going to the primary source of the manufacturer. Those are really the best ways to keep yourself safe. But it is the renaissance of antioxidants, meaning 10 years ago, when my patients used to ask me, you know, Should I, should I get this product? Or this is like, no, because the antioxidants aren't really absorbing anyway. You know, you're just putting them on your skin, but they're not really doing anything. But the technology has evolved a lot where now we call them biologically active antioxidants, so they are effective at doing their job, which is that DNA repair. So it is, it is exciting, like rosemary oil, right for your hair, it's good. It's real. That's real science. It really works. But how do you get the one that's real?

Dr. Terry Weyman:

Yeah, you know, dyke, you brought up a good point. And I think it's the way the human brain works. We are so we pay attention to fake. You know, we always hear about China doing, you know, copying and trademark copying, and is it real? Is it not when it comes to products? Yet our brain seems to stop when it comes to something we can tangibly hold. Is it, you know, like motorcycles, you can get a Honda, but you can get a knockoff in China for half the price. And people, I'm like, a dude that's not safe yet, we'll jump online to get something that's for health and our skin. And it's kind of weird how our the dichotomy of our brain, doesn't think, oh, they can be fake across the board. Thank you.

Dr. Jessica Kado:

I think it's a I think it's the prioritization of your health in general, like, you know, some people do prioritize their car more than their blood pressure. Or, you know, it's like, this is your you. There's a saying. It's like, the health is the crown. Only the sick can see you don't know you. You have your health until it's gone, right? So it's not in our culture to protect it. It's not in our culture that if you're already not sick to actively be healthy. It's always a reactive process for us. For example, again, when I have a patient coming in with skin cancer, that's the first time they're asking me about, how can they prevent more skin cancers, when really should have been a conversation when they were 10, yeah, and they're learning to do everything else that they do for their self care, like how to eat healthy or how to exercise, and your skin is built for sun exposure. We are humans who can't live without the sun. We need it. It's integral to our our daily health, but you can't abuse things. There's a balance to it. So, you know, think about the way that we dress ourselves now, think about the way we take vacations. Like your grandfather didn't take vacations to the Caribbean. No, he didn't get a bliss he still got a blistering sunburn somewhere. You know that everybody goes through those experiences, but these differences in our cultural experience of growing up now, we have to do a better job of counseling younger people how to get through it.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

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Dr. Terry Weyman:

You know, on that note, can you give us your best tips to simplify everything and cut through the noise, cut through the mud? What would be your best tips for natural, healthy besides the shirt for your facial creams, your your skin? Care and your sunscreen.

Dr. Jessica Kado:

The number one thing is to never go in a tanning bed. That's the number one thing. So I I'm in my 40s, and the reality is that my generation of women and men are essentially dealing with what the former generation dealt with with cigarettes, right? So they smoked for however many years before they decided to tell us that it causes lung cancer. And people had tanning beds from the time they were 14. You got to college. You know, when you went to college, you got a little card for a discount so you could get your three times a week tanning package, yeah, where I'm from, the Midwest, no one wants to look pasty in the winter time. We're just gonna go, you know, all winter to the tanning salon, and then you're 35 with skin cancer. You're supposed to get that when you're 70. You know, if you get it at all, like, why are you walking in at 35 Well, now we're figuring out that those tanning beds were really, really bad, and that's where there's a lot of legislation where they forbid anyone from under 18 using it now, but it's still around. So my first thing is, never use a tanning bed. The second thing is, when you use a cleanser or when you use a cream product, it should really complement your own skin. So if you have oily skin, you don't actually need a moisturizer, right? But if you have really dry skin, you should probably use one, so that you don't get so red and irritated and have that chafing on your skin from, you know, winter air or or the sun. So it's hard to say, because there's not a one size fit all approach, but I always say less is more. There's no reason for a 10 year old to have a 10 step skincare routine. That's something. Have you seen the influencers, right? Like, come with me on my skincare journey? Oh, yeah. And they're in the bathroom putting on like, seven products, and they're nine years old, yeah, very good. You're just like, what's going on? He has that much time.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

I think, I think there's a movie called American Psycho, and he's sitting there on in the mirror, going through his skincare routine and putting on masks, yeah, on that, on the tanning bed thing. I'm gonna enter into Spencer's world a little bit bodybuilding. And we see these bodybuilders put in tan, like their skin, they dye their skin so they look good on stage. What's your thoughts on on all these bodybuilders? I have a friend of mines, a bodybuilder. He went from a paisley guy, and now he's like, he looks African American with all the stuff he's put on to get on stage. What's your thoughts? So

Dr. Jessica Kado:

this is actually, so it's actually interesting, of all the things, right? Really, talking about sunscreen, and yes, it's detected in your bloodstream, but we don't know what that means, but that's alarming to people. It's like these tanning these tanning sprays and tanning lotions. Are those going in your bloodstream? Nobody knows where those are going. I mean, it's covering your entire skin surface area. We don't recommend to put anything in, cut entirely on your skin surface area, even if it's lidocaine, right? Like, you know, there's an absorption rate for it. So when people do things like that, I think the harm comes in the longevity of doing it. Because if you did it for two years, let's say you got into bodybuilding and you're doing it for two years, I don't know how much harm you could commit to yourself in two years, but if you're going to do it for a longer period of time, that's where you wonder, what are the chronic changes that you're going to get from that? Are your lymph nodes going to absorb those, you know, and then it's going to deposit some pigment there? We don't know. No one's actually studied it, but there is something that's crazy. There's, um, it's totally illegal, meaning, not authorized for use, but you can buy it, of course, is like a nasal spray that will stimulate your own body to produce melanin, yeah. And to me, as a dermatologist, I'm thinking, Wait a minute, stimulating a cell to make melanin. Is your melanocyte stimulating your melanocyte in what way like are you actually going to give some people melanoma, if they are genetically predisposed, and then all of a sudden you activate these melanocytes, or are they just going to make pigment? And it's harmless, right? But it's an actual hormone that you put as a nasal spray, and it can increase the pigment of your skin without needing to go to a tanning bed or put tanning lotions on. And there are young women, there are muscle builders, there are people who want to be tan all the time, who are using it right now. And I'm sure you know, in years down the road, we'll find out if it actually is harmful, but it's technically illegal right now, in

Dr. Spencer Baron:

defense of some of the bodybuilders, including myself, you know, first of all, I think it's called triceralan, or something like that, that the nasal spread, but it used to be a oral and it would stimulate the line of that because I remember, I remember the era. Of bodybuilding back in the 80s and 90s and so on. But you know, again, in defense of the bodybuilders, that the ones that use the spray tank, it's only like once or twice or three times a year for that day before a competition. It's not, I don't know who your who your patient is, Dr Terry, but if he's he's like that perennially, then that might be a problem.

Dr. Jessica Kado:

You brought up something interesting, not to interrupt you, but no, no, go back to sunscreens and these tanning sprays. And then there's also the sunscreen powders. We don't know what happens when you inhale those.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

I never even heard about that stuff, no,

Dr. Jessica Kado:

because nobody studied it. But at the same time, you're somebody down the, you know, pool is spraying themselves, and then you taste it. You're essentially eating everything. You spray it like this. There

Dr. Terry Weyman:

you go, Doc, in defense, in the body,

Dr. Jessica Kado:

being like, if you want to be the hardcore natural or you have that person walk into your door. Yeah, you know, the sprays and the powders are off the table too, then, because we don't actually know how what happens if you, I mean, think about talk powder, right? That's natural. That's actually an ingredient from the earth. It's not like we're making it as a human, but our body doesn't like it, just like silica and other things. If it's small enough, and we inhale it, our body doesn't like it. So just because it's titanium or zinc, I don't know if that's makes it better, but most of the sprays are the chemical sunscreens. Are not the mineral ones, but still, it's like, if you're gonna spray the sunscreen, you should spray it in your hand and then, like, you know, rub it on and doing this isn't, you know, going to do anything, right? But do I recommend it sometimes? Yes. You know who I recommend it to a golfer who's not going to use anything else, and they need to protect their legs and their arms. I'm just like, okay, just, you know, we've done surgery 10 times. I don't want to keep doing surgery on you. Just at least, will you do this one version of sunscreen? So it's kind of like you choose the devil, you know, right? Because I know it's easy to use, and you can just put it in his bag, and it's at least some protection for this guy, versus nothing. And if he agrees to it and he gets a benefit, I think that's worth it in his situation. So that's the caveat of not, like, you know, denouncing everything. There's always somebody it's good for, but is it good for everybody? Probably not.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

I never thought of that, because you'll see, you know, I surf, and you'll see these guys getting ready to go on the water, and they just take that sunscreen spray, and they're like, and they're spray, and all they do is they do this over their eyes, and then they spray all of their face, all their body, and there's this cloud of mist. And then you're, you're or you're water skiing, and they're in the boat, and they're and they're spraying their kids, and the boat's stagnant, and there's this cloud, and I would think about the breathing in part, yeah,

Dr. Jessica Kado:

it's funny, because you always see moms, moms are always nervous about their kids, right? We don't even tell you put sunscreen on a baby. We say they shouldn't even be in the sun until they're about one, and then when they do, put the sunscreen on the kids. It's cute. The mom's like, hold your breath, and she sprays them, and they turn around. She's like, run away from the cloud, right? So inherently, the mom has those concerns, and she doesn't have to be in medicine. She doesn't want her kid breathing in that cloud that you see, right? But it's just one of those things. The technology is there, so convenient. It's in aerosol. It makes it so nice to use, yeah, and then the research will come later.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

So, so I use, I've used the tanners and bodybuilding. So, Dr, Terry, confess you've, you've sprayed yourself with sunscreen, that sunscreen before surfing. Okay, just want to make sure, all right, at a level the playing field here,

Dr. Terry Weyman:

both gonna die.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Same, same problem, different reasons. Yeah, but, but I, before I ask, before I ask Dr Cato about Botox, I want to tell I have one more confession to make, that she'll probably give birth after this story. But there was a buddy of mine that I trained with back in the 80s who spent time in California at the Venice Beach gym, and he learned from like Arnold and other guys. He comes back to South Florida, and he trained, helps me train for Mr. Florida competition. And he goes, All right, listen, I know you've been laying out in the sun, but I want you to go to the hardware store. This is how long ago was, before there was a Home Depot. I want you to go to the hardware store down the block and get some, you ready, walnut wood stain, wow. And get some gloves. Get some, you know, dishwashing gloves and a sponge. And I go, Whoa, what are you going to do with that? And he goes, Man, that's what I learned on California. It makes makes white guys look like they're black. And it was honestly one of the coolest tans I've ever had in my life, but toxic beyond.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

Do you're dying so far so earlier than I am.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

I need to get my brain examined anyway. All right. Dr Cato, Botox. You know, we especially in South Florida, probably California and all that. You know, we hear about it all the time for sometimes clinical reasons. Other times, like people that have hyper, hyper, you know, perspiration of the hands, they inject that Botox, which I can understand clinically, but for obvious beauty reasons that you, you know, you can have Botox parties. Can you talk to us about what you feel about Botox? And you know, it is a neurotoxin, and it always one. I always wondered about that.

Dr. Jessica Kado:

It's interesting. You mentioned it. It's totally generational. I will have, um, baby boomers who will come in and say, I'll get fillers, I'll get lasers, but I won't get Botox. That's poison. And then I have 20 year olds who say, I want Botox at 20, right? So for me, Botox is great as far as an esthetic modifier, it's not a standalone product. Again, going back to counterfeits, you have people doing crazy things like trying to do Botox at home and getting what they think is some discount version, and then having a terrible, you know, dangerous effect. And so there's been a lot of consumer education about don't get Botox on the line, you know, from China, because you don't actually know what you're getting. As far as Botox parties, I've seen, of course, the worst because of the triaging to the doctor's office afterwards. I'm sure a lot of people do fine, but I see the bad ones, of course. So I'm not a fan of Botox basement parties, but I think in the end, it's a it's a useful modality. It's interesting. We use it in medicine. We use it for Raynaud's. Raynaud's is when you know, you get the nasal clamping. Can be autoimmune or primary, and so we help the spasming decrease. We use it for hyperhidrosis. Like you said, people use it for initially. It was created for blepharospasm, so you know, people who had eye muscle contractions. So that's where it came from, the ophthalmology world, and it extended into dermatology for wrinkles. After that, when they realized those people looked good, they don't get wrinkles around their eyes, and then they started extending it towards that. Is there too much? Sure. Do people look scary when they get it wrong? Yes, but I think for the most part, it's a it's a useful tool that's in the right hands. Very safe and easy to do.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

I graduated with absolutely one of the most beautiful women who was such a she ended up marrying a was he, I don't think he was a dermatologist. He was like a plastic surgeon or something like that. And he did, he did fill her and Botox to her. Must have got a bad batch. It was actually published in mainstream media how she turned into like a gargoyle. It because she became so inflamed, actually, uh, she went blind in one eye, stayed home and confined herself to her bedroom for a year before her daughter said, Please, please, come on. No surgeon wanted to take her on or anything. It's scary, and this is a doctor that got the wrong stuff.

Dr. Jessica Kado:

So, yeah, I mean, it's interesting. The Botox mania is to the point where if there's a girl who's nursing or breastfeeding, you would think, Okay, well, the last thing you want to do is accidentally get any into the lactation circulation and give it to a baby. But it's so in demand that there are people who will either discontinue nursing to get it number one or number two, they will do it anyway and say the baby was fine. And in Europe, they have studies that show, like, you can be pregnant and get Botox. But so I'm saying it's like, um, it's a very in demand product for certain groups of people, and then other groups of people say it's just completely poison, and it's a toxin I don't want it in my body. Why would I ever do that? So it's a preference, I think, more than a science issue. Oh,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

fantastic. Hyaluronic Acid, common ingredient and a lot of facial products. Can you give some thoughts on on that skincare.

Dr. Jessica Kado:

So hyaluronic acid and collagen is funny. I my patients asked me a lot about those two specifically. And I tell them, you can't eat your collagen if you're going to eat your collagen for an actual you know, like at Costco, they have the powder stuff like, that's essentially baby formula. I don't know. It's like amino acids. It's not really collagen. By the time your GI tract digests it, right? And so they go into these peptides, and they get digested into something that's not collagen anymore. And there's no benefit to that. And same thing with hyaluronic acid, there is a benefit to eating a diet that has, you know, like, um. Uh, I in historically Mongolian diet, right? Like they would take the bone and they would boil it, and then you you have the broth where it has, like, the tendons, ligaments, all of that stuff in it, yeah, a lifetime of that is going to actually affect your health, your general health, and that translates into having beautiful skin. So there'll be reports of in history, like these amazing skin and teeth and bones from these societies that didn't have modern medicine because they had calcium and they had, you know, all of the benefits of the ligaments and the cartilage broken down and they were absorbing it, but over a lifetime. So if you're like 55 and they used randomly by, you know collagen supplements, to take them, I don't it's not going to make your skin look better. But for hyaluronic acid, the interesting thing is, the compound is is created for filler, which is the main ingredient for a lot of the products that you hear about, volumizing the face. And then it's also used as a topical product, and it's a natural it's a natural element in our own skin, and it's important for our health. So again, this is a situation where, prior to recently, it wasn't helpful, because the way that it was sold, the molecule was too big to be helpful in a cosmetic sense, but it was still sold and marketed a lot. It just wasn't clinically impressive. And then recently, they've again, with this whole nanotechnology movement, where they can, you know, make these really tiny particles that can absorb into your skin. It's been a game changer. So you can deliver the hyaluronic acid topically, or micro, channel it in in a really nice way that gives you some hydration and that kind of plumpness back to that top layer of skin. So there's, you know, if you get a hyaluronic acid product, there's only a couple that I normally will stand behind, because I know the technology is small enough to actually absorb. The rest of them are just kind of bigger, and they just sit on your skin as a almost like a moisturizer. They're not really doing anything.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

I'm loving all this information here, and I know that some of my patients are going to be so curious about all this skincare stuff. But let me ask you about, you know, there's also the popularity of acupuncture, red light therapy. I had a patient just the other day talk about Gua Sha the the tool for, I mean, oh my gosh. Anyway, we use it on musculoskeletal conditions and we dig in there. So I can't imagine using on your face and and some facial exercises. What are your thoughts on that some of those things for anti aging.

Dr. Jessica Kado:

So it's really interesting. The lasers and the red light are, we call them fight photo, bodge, photo, bio modulation, right? So it's doing something. It's real. And the best science behind the red light, or the low level laser lights is with hair currently, and hair, again, is like we talked about hair, skin, gut, right? Like it's the first cells, because of how quickly they turn over, where you can see something tangible with your eyes. So we know that if you use those low level red light caps, that you get a photobiomodulation effect, meaning you get increased hair growth. I mean, you see it with your eyes. You can feel it with your patients. We can deliver micronutrients or channel in PRP, right? You can do lasers. On top of that, all of that's modulating the local environment of that follicle to encourage blood flow, nutrients, uh, growth factors, and then you get hair growth as a result of it. You do have to maintain the treatment for the benefit, it's not like you do it and then you jump, but it's biologically helping your skin behave younger than its chronological age. My one concern with red light on the face and neck, for wrinkles and spots, is, it's really probably skin type dependent. So in dermatology, we talk about skin types. The crude way to look at it is the color of the person's skin, but really it's the behavior of the person's skin, the behavior of, do you burn easily? Do you tan easily? Does your skin pigment quickly, or does it just always burn and then go back to pale? So the photobiomodulation effects of red light and blue light are going to be impacted by your skin type. And so that's where I hesitate when people, besides the whole counterfeit issue of like, you know you're not really getting the laser light that you think you're getting is the long term effect on someone's skin type? We don't know, and the best example is radiation for acne, right? So radiation for acne was like a game changer, a miracle thing. It was amazing. It wasn't until years later that people had. Thyroid issues, or decades later that they had basal cell carcinomas in the area that they had treated for acne, right? So you saw this like immediate improvement, and it was a miracle treatment that it took three decades to figure out had long term consequences to it, and we learned from and so whenever energy is delivered to the skin. Part of it, to me is, well, how long are you doing it for? What's the consistency you're doing it for? What's your baseline risk? You know, Are you, are you darker skin type and already less likely to have skin issues? Or are you or a super outdoors person? And we're going to unmask a problem that you were going to have 10 years later, but now is earlier on. But the but the coolest thing about the energy devices, and this is more for in office treatments, is that we are able to stimulate the stem cells to replace those DNA damage cells that are just hanging out. And so those are through resurfacing. So I have women who come in and they don't like their freckles, or they don't like their lines, and at the end of summer, we do those treatments, but now we're treating their husbands because even though it's not for cosmetic reasons, it's to resurface the skin to have it behave younger than it actually is, and get rid of that damage. So it's almost like power washing the skin. We're getting rid of all the bad stuff that's just hanging out. And then on top of it, your body is forced to make new cells to replace it that are not DNA damage. So then over time, your incidence of skin cancers are reduced sometimes by 50% so there's no other intervention in all of any type of medicine where I could say we can reduce the likelihood of this cancer by 50% but you can with lasers now. And this is, this is non melanoma, skin cancer. So squamous cell or basal cell, which places in California and Florida. It's like an epidemic, and you've got all these little ones. And so there's treatments where people are trying to figure out, how can we take care of these skin cancer, since it's an epidemic, there's over 7 million cases a year now, and they're trying to figure out, how can we take care of this without surgery? Because first of all, the government doesn't want to pay for it to come pay for it. It costs a lot of money. Second of all, the patients don't want to get caught unnecessarily. It's traumatic. They get scars. They don't like, you know, if they're multiple cancer person, they don't like getting multiple surgeries. And unfortunately, some of some of the therapies are directed around radiation, when really we have a much better option with the lasers to modify and augment somebody's own body's capability to repair and fix themselves.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Wow. You know, we're nearing the end of the show, and then we have a favorite part of it called the rapid fire questions. But, my gosh, I have, I have more questions about what you were just referring to, maybe, maybe on another show. Dr Terry, whatever you think. But this was, this was some great, juicy stuff that is, you know, usable information. Our rapid fire questions are a series of five questions. You're, you're a smart gown, probably quick on your feet and be able to to answer their fun questions. Wait, I

Dr. Terry Weyman:

don't know how quick she is right now. She's pregnant.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

If she went into labor, she'd be pretty quick right now, but all right, right, right. All right. Now, let me share with you the the answer. Your answer could be real concise and brief, but these are, these are fun questions that you already have the answers to, but if you're ready for question number one, are you ready? Okay? Do you have any hobbies or habits that your friends or your patients would be surprised to know about.

Dr. Jessica Kado:

No, I'm pretty boring. I just like hanging out with my kids.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

That works. We do too. Mom, I'm

Dr. Jessica Kado:

like, I don't do Oh,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

I doubt it, but All right. Question number two, what piece of advice have you gotten in your life that that still guides you to this day?

Dr. Jessica Kado:

There's no person better to invest in than yourself.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Yeah, like that. Good job that love question number three, what is your favorite thing to do to unwind after a hectic day?

Dr. Jessica Kado:

Probably watch f1 racing with family. All right,

Dr. Terry Weyman:

I'm a Red Bull guy. My wife's a Lando guy, a gal, and she likes Lando and Charles, who's your team?

Dr. Jessica Kado:

I'm Max all the way. I've been max for, like. Like before, you know, when he five years ago, when he was the underdog, just chasing everybody down shark so fun to watch. Yes, yes, he's a little bit crazy. And yeah, you know, I really love him is because when they interviewed him, I think he was 16 years old, and I see it as a commonality between a lot of amazing, great athletes. They asked him who's his hero? And he picked his dad, who's never won a championship, and he was an f1 racer, but, like, it's the Tiger Woods phenomenon. You know, where, when they have that primary role model, they you accomplish this amazing he didn't, he didn't pick like Mario Andretti, or he didn't pick Michael Schumacher like everybody else. It was a really personal choice room, so he must have a good head on his shoulders, even though crazy. All

Dr. Terry Weyman:

right, go ahead, special. I could talk about this forever. I'm a huge Jeff,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

so it's great. I laugh about that. That's cool. All right. Question number four, what time do you get up on Mondays. And what is the first thing you do after waking up and that? And what kick starts your week

Dr. Jessica Kado:

630 and the first thing I do is get the kids on the piano. What really so the kids play piano, and it's nice for me to hear it, so I just hear it, and then we start our routine, you know, get the other kids up, but at least one of them is playing, and then when they're done, the next one goes on. So we've got at least 35 or 40 minutes of piano in the morning, and everybody's kind of waking up mentally from it. So it's nice, very, very

Dr. Spencer Baron:

unique. Thank you for sharing that. That's cool. And finally, question number five, when it comes to aging and dealing with like dry or problematic skin. What's your best tip that help with this condition without, without using a lot of lotion or anything like that? What are you what are your thoughts?

Dr. Jessica Kado:

My go to is glycolic, 10% cleanser, and it can be used as like a wash, or it can be left on, you know, for a few hours on your skin, and it just really helps, kind of slough off any of that top stuff that you don't want to look at, whether it's dry skin or just skin that needs to go and so that you look fresh, and it's gentle enough that you're not going to have an irritation from it, but it's just a nice go to that you can do in 10 minutes and feel freshened up from,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

oh, absolutely fantastic. Well, you have great skin as well, so that is a plus. And you, you know, live, live, live your your you walk your talk. And I want to thank you. I want to thank you so much for being on with us today. We really appreciate your insight and valuable information. So thank you. Thank you very much.

Dr. Jessica Kado:

My pleasure. You're

Dr. Terry Weyman:

fantastic and good luck with your the birth of your child, and we look forward to talking to you in the future.

Dr. Jessica Kado:

Thank you YouTube,

Dr. Terry Weyman:

take care.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Thank you for listening to today's episode of The cracking backs podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you follow us on Instagram, at crack and backs podcast, catch new episodes every Monday. See you next time you.