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Alex Brooks 00:19
Welcome to Dr. Natasha Cook, a dermatologist who knows a lot about the skin you're in.
If you hang around the internet long enough, you're going to learn about longevity and the hallmarks of aging and reversing aging. So today we're going to use Natasha's very big brain to talk about those things.
Natasha Cook 00:39
Well, thank you, Alex, for having me on this podcast. I'm really excited to talk about this because I'm inundated about all these questions, not just on my social media profile, but also
being an active clinical dermatologist who has a subspecial interest in science, longevity, living longer, looking better, feeling better, which I also term as increasing your skin span.
Alex Brooks 01:01
So, Tash, if ageing isn't a disease, do we need to spend money to live longer?
Natasha Cook 01:07
Well, to a point, yes, but it's not just spending money, it's also our choices every day of how we live. We now know, since about 2010, the power of the epigenome that 80 % of how we age is actually related to how we live and only 20 % is pre-determined by our inherited DNA. That's right. So we can't keep blaming mum and dad…
Alex Brooks 01:32
But the epigenetics aren't just our mum and dad, right? It can be our grandparents, our great-grandparents
Natasha Cook 01:37
Yes, but it's more so epigenetics is a dynamic state of our lifestyle factors. Everything from sleep, stress, what we eat, exercise, et cetera, et cetera, and the power of this kind of dynamic state that surrounds our inherent in DNA that can selectively turn bits of those DNA on or off, pretty much outside of the fact of whether you inherit brown or blue eyes. So when our parents are conceiving how they're, what they're doing at that time can determine what gets turned on and off in the sperm and the egg.
Alex Brooks 02:05
I hate to think about all my parents are doing.
Natasha Cook 02:10
I know, but I think the nice take home point is we have control that we can reverse a lot of the activity of what parts of our DNA get activated and what parts of our DNA no longer activated. So what parts of that spirally chain of fabulous genetic information actually gets exposed so it can be active within a cell versus it gets hidden so it's inactive in the cell.
Alex Brooks 02:32
So without getting too sciency, effectively you're saying 80 % of the way we age is completely controllable?
Natasha Cook 02:38
To a point, yes. Unless we've got hardcore, highly inheritable disease risk, but even then, we can moderate that by choices.
Alex Brooks 02:50
Okay, but first like the most obvious and visible sign of ageing, right? It's my face melting towards my neck. Yes.
Natasha Cook 02:56
Skin, yes, fabulous skin.
Alex Brooks 02:57
No, my sag is a drag Natasha. Why does this happen?
Natasha Cook 03:02
Well, unfortunately every single one of us on the planet – despite how much we invest in preventative treatments and skin rejuvenation, etc – ultimately if they really want to fix the ultimate sag, it is fundamentally a surgical procedure.
So there are a lot of non-surgical things we can do and lifestyle factors, and definitely having high functional, good quality skin, which is avoiding sun, et cetera, et cetera, will set you up to have a stronger perception of looking younger and having a perception of youth. But sagging is extraordinarily hard to address, otherwise outside of the good old nip and tuck.
And I think generally now, even with the whole filler fatigue thing, you know, fillers can be helpful in certain areas, but they don't necessarily lift the skin nor stop these inevitable signs of sagging.
And there's these two big camps of discussion in my area of practising – these surgical people in the deep-plane facelift versus the non-surgical and what can we achieve, super, super sensible in a summary.
For good skin, it's how you live: it's staying out of the environment, it's protecting it, it's having a healthy diet, good sleep, great skincare, maybe a few early intervention laser treatments definitely help. A smidge of botox, if you're super orientated to not get wrinkles in your upper face. But after that, when the sagging hits in, it really is using surgical procedures to replace all those ligaments that have stretched over time from the power of gravity to put them back into place and bring back the jawline, and the neckline.
Natasha Cook 04:39
Yeah – that's if we're that's that's if you're motivated enough around that. You know a lot of these things that are skin tightening and energy-based devices – they really can only do so much.
And certainly with my fantastic peers in the US are very progressive and some of the best deep-plane surgical plastic surgeon facelift people in the world and, being around them, that kind of is the solution.
Natasha Cook 05:00
BUT keeping a stable weight, not trying to put on excess weight, right? Maintaining an active lifestyle, anti-inflammatory foods, eating really well, yes, most of the answers are in food.
Staying out of the sun, protecting your skin, a good skincare routine, plus or minus, tweaky treatments with your lasers and your energy-based devices that can up-regulate the elastin and collagen levels will set you up better with less sagging.
Alex Brooks 05:27
Okay, okay, now you've spoken to me before about your butt theory around ageing. It's like a ‘derriere diagnosis’ of how kind of saggy or what your biomarkers are really saying about how old you are, 'cause there's been lots of interesting research around the hallmarks of ageing, right?
Natasha Cook 05:44
Yes, there's 13 of them, which is a very academic paper which took me 10 hours to read the first time, so yes.
Alex Brooks 5:51
But there is lots, that's a big new area of research, isn't it, the hallmarks of ageing?
Natasha Cook 05:53
Well, the PhD scientists have known this in excess of a decade. I think it's now filtering into the mainstream conversation piece. So it's not new-news, but it's collective data that's come around for the past 30 years of academic research in multiple PhD-driven labs that are all pointing to very similar things that we have a group consensus on what these 13 hallmarks of cellular ageing actually are. And then from understanding this, we can then adapt this to our lifestyles, whether it's food, sleep, exercise, treatments, et cetera, to moderate the hallmarks so the cell has a longer lifespan and also, more importantly, a longer health span.
Alex Brooks 06:33
Okay. But let's go back to this cheeky approach you've got. Just sussing out your little butt to really work out how old you are. Well, what will my rear reveal about my years?
Natasha Cook 06:44
Well, I guess that's if your butt doesn't see sun – unless you're a naked sunbaker, that could be a different kind of niche group.
Alex Brooks 06:51
That was what my parents were doing a long time ago…
Natasha Cook 06:52
However, in general, I do say to patients and whatever, who sometimes just are absolutely astounded at the level of degradation, particularly in Australia, called the ‘V T -shirt mark’, which I think we have the best V signs in the world, we are number one at pretty bad skin. We're champions, world champions, gold medals to us, just not in the swimming pool.
That's also why 'cause we spend too much time in the swimming pool, let alone the beach and we take it for granted.
Natasha Cook 07:17
That if you look at the skin on your bottom and obviously having done lots of skin cancer checks, et cetera, in my professional lifetime, you actually realise that intrinsic ageing is not that bad. So the quality of that skin and the intrinsic, no external factors – no sun, no environment – the quality of that skin looks like it does belong to somebody in their 20s and 30s and European scientists… and I have gone to seminars in Paris talking to these people because I quite love those labby science people because there's so much BS in the marketing world, it's really good to go and speak to people that actually work with the fibroblasts and the keratinocytes and look at collagen and elastin for a living –
Natasha Cook 07:58
… intrinsic deterioration of elastin fibres in collagen, and we all know that they're the things that make our skin tight and buoyant, is quite slow. And I think if you look at your butt skin, which basically traditionally does not see any sun, you can see what that would be like if the rest of us didn't get so much environmental exposure. It is not that bad.
Alex Brooks 08:19
So your butt cheek is the true sign of how old you are?
Natasha Cook 08: 24
To a point, yes, skin age, skin age. But then that doesn't take in the fact that we get a thing called sarcopenia, which is basically we atrophy with our muscles, which is why doing weight training and wrist resistance training is super important, particularly starting at least in your 30s. And obviously you've also got a little bit of volume loss and fat loss as well in that area.
Natasha Cook 08:41
So it's not about the sagging, it's about the skin quality and how the intrinsic ageing of the skin is not that bad. And the majority of skin ageing is how we live. Back to the power of the epigenome again.
Alex Brooks 08:54
Okay, but is there an age where the sun damage really shows up to say surprise?
Natasha Cook
Yes, so what you do in your first 20 years of life will pretty much detect what happens in the next 60, unless you all of a sudden decide to be some sunbaker at 30 or 40, and then you'll probably show up when you're about 80. So there is a delayed onset of us seeing the deterioration signs of your UV exposure, generally from your misspent youth.
And why do we do that now, youth? We are, it is misspent. We are less educated. We think we're gonna live and be like that forever. We don't value our bodies as much as we should. And we've got a lot of free time. So we're not working with mortgages or in offices and paying all bills with our responsibilities, we're out and about having a great time and with long holidays.
Alex Brooks 09:41
But also it's about our parents putting sunscreen on us when we were little kids, right?
Natasha Cook 09:43
Education, yes. Education, totally.
Alex Brooks 09:45
So yeah,sunscreen wasn't a big deal in my childhood. You know, that was when you had factor 4 and factor 6 and that was considered sun protection back in those days.
Natasha Cook 09:55
Yes, that you can still tan with, which is kind of like, well why are you wearing the SPF when it's 4, that's kind of what a t -shirt gives you. No, I totally agree, but there are trends again and still the whole essence that you look better with a tan, I don't think has left it. At least people seem to be more motivated by fake tans 'cause faking is better than baking. However, every time I'm sort of around that Bondi and beachy kind of areas, I don't see much change in human behaviour.
Alex Brooks 10:24
Well, not all of those people are maybe listening to their mum telling them to put sunscreen on, right?
Natasha Cook 10:28
Yes, or perhaps reading a book.
Alex Brooks 10:29
Yes, correct, correct. All right, now let's talk about this very big sort of scientific term, senescence. And you know, are my sleeping cells-
Natasha Cook 10:38
A marketer's dream, senescence, and senolytics, because lots of things are senolytics, including exercise and intermittent fasting.
Alex Brooks 10:47
Is senolytics the opposite of senescence?
Natasha Cook 10:48
Senolytic, lytic, or lysis, as to destroy so things that get rid of the sleepy cells. So let's talk about ‘what is cellular senescence?’. So first of all, cellular senescence is actually a natural defence mechanism of the body to stop a cell growing into a cancer cell. So the body's immune system picks up, this cell might have some abnormal DNA and the cell switches itself off, becomes dormant, it doesn't mass produce cancer cells and it goes sleepy. And then the immune system, which is part of what we call the autophagy or the ‘housekeeping’, which cleans up all the junk in your cells and your body, gets rid of it.
So to a certain degree, senescent cells are good and they're protective. The problem is what happens in the first 30 years of life, thereafter the second stage is, all our mechanisms to get rid of these senescent or sleepy cells deteriorate. So our housekeeping mechanisms go down and we get more junk, right?
Natasha Cook 11:42
But there are ways we can mitigate, again, through lifestyle, to increase our cellular cleaning mechanisms and increase autophagy, which is eating up the junk, and reduce senescent cells.
Natasha Cook 11:51
The second problem with senescent cells is not just you have sleepy junk in there that takes up space that healthy cells need to be in, and then we get organ dysfunction. The second thing about these sleepy cells is they produce substances known as a secretome, which are inflammatory mediators that create increased inflammation and we know that inflammation is at the core of every disease process – whether it's cancer, Alzheimer's or cardiovascular disease.
So two things taking up space useless creating junk secondly secreting stuff that creates more inflamageing.
Alex Brooks 12:26
But is there just a way I can make these sleepy lazy cells go faster?
Natasha Cook 12:30
Well they're not going fast just want to get rid of them. Remember they're not bad, but they over accumulate, which is what then creates things like Alzheimer's, lots of junk, of protonation substances, that secrete bad things, and that take up areas of your brain that you need. So what can we do?
Alex Brooks 12:42
Right, so should I just sip my Diet Coke to digest that for a minute?
Natasha Cook 12:44
Yeah, I'm not gonna comment on the Diet Coke, which is one form of addiction in one way, and the artificial sweeteners are just as bad as real sugar. But you know what, you're my friend, I love you. And I will endorse you in your choices.
So what can you do to get rid of sleepy senescence cells that's not necessarily in a cream or a jar and that is going to be the next big marketing craze which we can talk about later. You can exercise.
Natasha Cook 13:08
So exercise increases the process known as autophagy which eats the junk up and makes cleaner bodies, cleaner cells. You can do intermittent fasting – what is better is time restricted eating. Intermittent fasting versus time-restricted eating , time-restricted eating wins every time.
That's literally having a window and these great scientists have proven collectively around the world, not just one paper, but many smart people coming together, very important. 'Cause one smart person might be a flawed person, right? So you want groups of people before you start listening to anybody.
So these smart groups of people have come together and said 16 hours. So what the time-restricted eating does, It basically makes all your cells hungry so that makes all these natural mechanisms upregulate. They get a little bit stressed – not too much stress, just the right stress – so those natural mechanisms get better again like you're a young person. So then they clean out the junk clean out the senescent cells and your autophagy process goes on.
Natasha Cook 14:06
So exercise can do that, time restricting eating can do that, the types of food that you eat can do that, things like olive oil can do that. So again, this all comes back to the power is in our lifestyle choices. 90% of the answers are in how we live.
Alex Brooks 14:20
So it's not about necessarily buying one amazing thing that's gonna change the way you age, right?
Natasha Cook 14:25
Well, let's talk about, there are some things that'll be good, like things like, you know, fish oil, olive oil, all those kinds of things, but then they're really about food. But some of those are hard to get in our diet, particularly when we're busy, so there are certain things I believe in. But let's talk about something like very topical, collagen supplements.
Natasha Cook 14:42
Collagen supplements. So basically, collagen supplements are from some animal called fish or whatever, then we don't know where they're sourced. And as we know, a lot of these fish sources are high in mercury and mercury is very bad for you, right? And so these aren't very well, let's put it this way, FTA and TGA aren't interested and not very well regulated. So you're eating tons and tons and tons of something that may be a source that's toxic.
Natasha Cook 15:07
Secondly, they just basically, all collagen is, is a big long protein chain of amino acids, like eating a steak, like eating real fish.
Alex Brooks 15:11
Is it like a protein powder that you put in a spoon?
Natasha Cook 15:14
Well, even then, like the answers are probably better in food, high quality food, right? So they're chopped up into amino acids. The collagen's not going in the stomach and the collagen doesn't magically get out of the intestine into the bloodstream and implant into your skin.
I mean unicorns might exist and donkeys may fly. They may. I don't know in your dreams But certainly not with that and if we think about I think this is a really powerful metaphor or Captain Cook, right, on the boat. What happened that disease starts with two syllables, scurvy. So what was scurvy from – a lack of vitamin C – and why was it a problem with bruising skin and bleeding gums because you lost your collagen because the essential co-factor to make collagen is vitamin C. Not collagen supplements.
Alex Brooks 16:01
Oh, okay. So I didn't realise this. So really, all those collagen supplements...
Natasha Cook 16:03
Yes, yes. The answers are always in science. They're there if we look. I mean, in history, if we look too. I mean, if we want to learn.
Alex Brooks 16:09
So if we pay, you know, 20, 30 bucks for a bottle of collagen supplements, you're just basically saying we're making expensive wee and poo.
Natasha Cook 16:18
Yes, potentially. Now, if you're deficient in certain amino acids and whatever, could it be beneficial? Look, probably yes, but there is absolutely no foolproof scientific research and evidence to show that that makes more collagen in your skin, but the marketing and the perception and understanding of the knowledge of the general public, they're making an assumption.
Nastaha Cook 16:36
Never make an assumption. Okay. Making assumptions leads us down bad choices, bad pathways.
Alex Brooks 16:40
And that's just really about engaging your brain to think through a few things.
Natasha Cook 16:48
Yeah, but the art of critical thinking is probably not something that we're encouraging in our society nowadays with 6 seconds needing to give people all the answers of life.
Alex Brooks 16:55
Yeah, and the brain and brain health is a big worry when you get over 50. You know, a lot of us might be looking after older parents -
Natasha Cook 17:02
I dispute that. I just think it's part of disuse atrophy. I also think it's about like fitness and getting thin, just don't get fat, right? I think it's, and obviously there are some metabolic individuals where despite doing everything, they do have issues with weight gain. But I think we, and this is where traditional medicine has failed really badly. We are reactive and treat disease rather than be proactive and preventative and not getting it in the first place. And this is where I see the future.
Alex Brooks 17:31
Okay, so, but back to brain health, are you saying that as our brains age, we don't have to inevitably get poor brain health?
Natasha Cook 17:42
No, and I wanna reframe ageing as time on the planet because we now know that, and we can measure this, there is a different between chronological, i.e. how old I am in birthday years, versus biological, what my functional age is. So there are many people on this planet that would be, and I've had some of these measured on myself, because I've sort of been really interested when I met a nutritionist back in about 2010 and thought about supplements and nutrition, all this way before it was trendy, via my horse actually, who's stabled at Centennial Park.
Natasha Cook 18:12
And anyway, Rocky, Rocky was the great introducer of many people. Genius horse. Yes,
genius horse, the unicorn, white Arabian. Anyway, and so, and having spent some time with her and some simple messaging around the answers line, increasing nutritional support, reducing inflammation. Think about, fast forward now, what is it, 14 years plus later, that's where we're going. So I believe that we really are should be focusing on prevention, ageing prevention disease and being and preventative medicine, rather than, oh my God, now you've got cancer, what are we gonna do?
Natasha Cook 18:44
So how do we live every day? And so at the same with the brain, I have a 93-year-old patient who is as sharp as a 40-year-old. And so I can't look at her and say she's got a 90-year-old brain. But then I've got some 55, 65-year-old patients who literally are not as sharp as my 93-year-old.
Alex Brooks 19:02
Is that 'cause I drink Diet Coke?
Natasha Cook 19:02
I don't know what it is. I think it's multifactorial. I think it's far more complex and there's lots of cohort or surrounding factors. However, I do believe that saying just because I'm this age means I'm at this level of life or I get mopped into this bucket is wrong.
Alex Brooks 19:17
Okay. That's good to know.
Natasha Cook 19:18
I think it's wrong. So I think keeping stable body weight, I think lean muscle mass, I think environmentally protecting yourself, your skin – pollution is really important.
There's a lot of problems with diseases increasing in China, particularly all directly related to pollution. I think using your brain, you know, like, I mean, I use my brain clearly all the time. It's my day job, it's my life, and I'm active, and I don't really see myself ever not working or doing something because I'm a curious person.
Natasha Cook 19:47
I think it's like the Sudoku puzzles. And I think it's a bit like, don't use it, you do lose it. In all aspects.
Alex Brooks 19:53
I can't do Sudoku.
Natasha Cook 19:54
I've never tried it because I’ve got other things to do. Not to say that I might like it, but I just have other things to do. So I do think a lot of these things are literally -
Alex Brooks 20:03
Use it or lose it?
Natasha Cook 20:04
Totally. And I think that we're still stuck on old school beliefs and beliefs aren't truth. They're beliefs. They're not truth, they're just beliefs.
Alex Brooks 20:12
So what I'm hearing you say though, is age is not about the date you were born or the year you were born. - 100% - It's about how well you live - Yes - And you've got to use it or lose it, right? Right, from our protein, our muscle mass, our brains -
Natasha Cook 20:28
How you eat, what you eat, when you eat, sleep, exercise, stress management, and intellectual stimulation, and community.
Alex Brooks 20:37
Okay, and so let's just go back to that time restricted eating. What are some of the best eating windows that we can do?
Natasha Cook 20:47
The magic number, it doesn't matter when you do it or what time of the day is, but there are some debates about that, is 16 hours, right?
So that's literally either finishing early, you know, and then, and then having breakfast and whatever, or starting later. So I sort of try, so what do I do? I mean, and also, I don't believe in rules like I don't believe in diets, I believe in general lifestyle choices, right? And I always, I think it's an 80 /20 rule, I think there's 20% you might just you know like eat things that may not be perfect for you, but you enjoy them anyway. Because if we do an 80 /20 way of living we're more likely to stick to the 80 and then embrace the 20, and so we get this thing called balanc. Because I think that's really important. Balance so you know, as you know, I love French champagne. I'm not gonna give it up, but you know, I eat really well.
Natasha Cook 21:37
So it's 16 hours. So some people will still have breakfast, but then they might finish at 3 pm or 4pm, whereas other people start around 11 and finish by 7. So, and then that gives the body time to digest, but then also it starts telling ourselves, well, we're in a bit of scarcity, right? Which is how we used to live, 'cause we now live in too much abundance. We were never designed to live with 3 meals a day and anything in our fingertips.
We weren't even necessarily designed to have berries every day, although I do, because we lived off the land and we lived in seasons, right? And then we went through times where we were eating a lot less calories because we didn't have any food and we probably didn't eat 3 meals a day. So we've gotten into this point of gluttony and therefore that's where the excess weight and all these other modern diseases have escalated.
Alex Brooks 22:25
And so what you're saying is 16 hours is when you, that's how long you should not eat for?
Natasha Cook 22:29
Yeah, look, you might have eight Yeah, look, you might have tea or coffee or you might have, you know, or hopefully coffee not at night because it's too much of a stimulant and water and whatnot, but yes, that's the magic window. And if you can do that at least, say, 3 times a week, it's amazing. If you can do it every day, even better. But there's always going to be moments where you're not and you're going to be out, you're going to be on holidays. And sometimes I wake up and I, you know, I usually try and when I'm in the clinic just by default because I'm so busy, I forget to eat some mornings, but I have nuts and berries around about 11, I have 3 to 5 cups of green tea, like one cup of green tea is one of the most powerful antioxidants you can possibly ingest. I'll then have lunch.
Alex Brooks 23:06
Better than collagen?
Natasha Cook 23:07
Yes, but guess what? It's cheaper than it too. Like this is the problem with the food aspect, right? Is that most of the answers and things like olive oil and whatnot are in food, but you can't make mass money out of food, can you? Like Pharma can out of a collagen supplement.
Natasha Cook 23:22
They're a billion dollar industry so you've always got to ask yourself, turn on that little critical thinking. Is the evidence in this really outweigh the fact of taking it versus not taking it?
And if you can't be really clear that there is a definitive and scientific studies, I don't want to see photographs of people. I don't want to see before and afters that can be doctored. I want to see biopsies. I want to see controls on what people ate, how they slept. And then if they were on college and supplements and everybody's on the same goddamn diet and then 3 months later, they biopsy one side of the area of the face and then three months they biopsy opposite and you see up regulation of collagen 1 and 3, which are the main collagen in your skin. None of that has been done. And if you can't do that, you cannot unequivocally say that it's gonna benefit your skin. You just can't.
Alex Brooks 24:03
Okay, well let's go back to just being a bit more shallow and less sciencey. Regenerative medicine, like stem cell therapies – what can they do for us?
Natasha Cook 24:14
Well, not as much as we thought. That's the first take home. So I do have a friend who's PhD, several actually PhDs in stem cell research. So I picked their brains 'cause it's great going to smart people to find out smart things, right? 'Cause usually smart people will tell you the thing called ‘the truth’. Sometimes lacking in this modern day era.
So we all thought that we'd get stem cells and stem cells are in our blood. They're in our fat and they're in skin and they are also in the bulge of the hair follicle, and they're also in our bone marrow – they're some of the prime reservoirs of stem cells in the human body. And they're also in animals, which probably don't really help us. Okay, because they should be stuck in animals But we thought we'd pull the stem cells out of bone marrow, right? Yeah, right.
So they're cells that just basically don't have any real differentiation of any cell type and we thought if we put these kind of stem cells that can reproduce and we thought they could change into any cell of the body we thought they could change into brain cell we thought they could change into spinal cord cell we thought they could change and potentially help make limbs etc then we shut them in people that had spinal injuries etc when we were all excited about it and all these fantastic biotic companies and their share prices were going through the roof, but - didn't happen.
Natasha Cook 25:30
So what we have realized though is these stem cells, this particularly came up in a lot of COVID research at the time as well, where they were putting them down, people's lungs with COVID, et cetera. The key benefit of them was the fact that they produced powerful anti-inflammatory mediators. So they were great for chronic lung diseases. They may be really helpful down the track for things like MS and those kind of things.
Alex Brooks 25:52
So they wake up your sleepy cells or is that the wrong way to think about it?
Natasha Cook 25:55
Well, they reduce inflammation and they work on all different other complex cellular pathways. So they're not necessarily gonna regenerate things. Now, biogenic medicine, so that's stem cells, right? And so where we're going, which is probably more accessible to say the general public and research around this, it's not gonna be in a jar, it's not in a cream. I mean, honestly, we work with stem cells and growth factors in a form of PRP, platelet-rich plasma, collecting it with a very, very sophisticated technology made by a group called [unknown], one of the best in the world, that have done a lot and they've got millions of cases and database in science in regenerative stuff for joints, right, musculoskeletal.
Alex Brooks 26:35
Because like my knees – they pop like a bucket of popcorn now that I’m older.
Natasha Cook 26:36
They've got tremendous data, right. And now a lot of that data we're swapping over to use in regenerative as far as facial aesthetics and so the Europeans and the Australians have been focusing more on that data and research whereas the Americans with MSI research has focused more on musculoskeletal but now what's trending in the aesthetic market is bio-regenerative medicine and how much we can use of our own growth factors, not exosomes that come from something else or whatever.
If you can get 12 billion plus growth factors out of 60 mils of blood that you spin around, collect the platelet-rich plasma, infuse into your scalp for hair growth, infuse into your fat pads to sustain volumisation and maybe get less sag if you start early enough, which is where we're starting to do research. And certainly I've started to invest in that. I always like to think if I'm going to invest in doing this in my patients, we must all try it ourselves to understand it, right?
Natasha Cook 27:30
It's really promising, and it's gone beyond the old ‘vampire facial’ where they just kind of shoved it with needles like Kim Kardashian, which looks visually spectacular but biologically disappointing. - Oh, okay - Visually spectacular, biologically disappointing, but putting it like we would use filler-based substances in fat pads, like we do in joints, seems to be really good at tissue preservation and fixing skin, like acne, which we're going to look at doing a trial.
[Missing]
Natasha Cook 28:25
Certain brands have more efficient and effective collective membranes, which is where the IPs
than others. So the one that I really love, and then we did all the research, and it's quite outstanding in that, is the M-site technology. So we've started introducing it to the clinic and I'm quite excited that this will be something that, so people don't get so codependent on fillers, and we know there are things like filler fatigue, and then which starts making distortion, and people's as of how they did look and should look, start getting a little bit cuckoo. We’re all susceptible to it, it’s true.
Natasha Cook 28:51
And maybe fillers can't do everything we thought they did and I don't think they can.
Alex Brooks 28:54
And they kind of fall down people's faces.
Natasha Cook 28:57
Well, they can stretch the supporting ligaments. And I'm like, as I said, we must always go back to first principles and match pathology with the right technology to get correction.
Alex Brooks 29:008
Okay, and just to be clear, platelet-rich plasma is a way of getting this plasma growth factor that we all have in our blood out of our blood?
Natasha Cook 29:16
Yes, our platelets make billions and trillions of growth factors and natural exosomes, which are cellular communicators, which benefit our skin health and cellular health and rejuvenation as a
whole. So it's literally pulling out some blood, concentrating that component down, which is not a lot when you take 60 mils or 120 mils, then re-infusing that into the tissue planes.
Alex Brooks 29:38
You mean injecting it.
Natasha Cook 29:39
Yes, very fine needles, small risk of bruising doesn't actually hurt that much, can put on some numbing cream, snd here's your own biology working with your biology to make it better - Okay, right? I think I get that - and I was I was skeptical, but then largely because the technology in the science and the research wasn't there yet.
Secondly, we were putting it onto skin, which doesn't really get through, even if you make channels with laser devices that punch little tiny microscopic holes in. But really now, what we're doing with it is putting it directly under the skin into the subcutaneous or fat pad areas, the same as with scalps, and there is definitely a benefit.
So using you to make you better… And stay like you for longer. That's quite good, isn't it?
Alex Brooks 30:29
Now, there are a lot of, you know, scientists, researchers, and there's this guy called Bryan Johnson who sells his own bottles -
Natasha Cook 30:38
I have a one degree of separation from Bryan Johnson…
Alex Brooks 30:40
Ah, interesting. - Yes. - But he sells his extra virgin olive oil for like US 37 bucks a bottle. And I can get it at Aldi for like, I don't know, eight, nine bucks.
Natasha Cook 30:50
Well, did you know some of the best extra virgin olive oil is manufactured in Australia?
Alex Brooks 30:53
No, I did not know this. - It is, yes. - But I do like Cobram Estate extra virgin olive oil.
Natasha Cook 30:57
Good choice, Alex.
Alex Brooks 31:00
It's available at Aldi and I always buy it.
Natasha Cook 31:04
We love Aldi, yes.
Alex Brooks 31:04
But why extra virgin olive oil and not just regular old olive oil? What's the difference, right?
Natasha Cook 31:13
It's got to do with the cold press and the manufacturing mechanism, okay?
Alex Brooks 31:15
So that it's- It's again the extraction process.
Natasha Cook 31:16
Exactly, exactly. So you've got very low inflammatory olive oil. The active ingredient olive oil is a polyphenol known as oleic acid. Oleic acid has multiple anti-inflammatory antioxidant potential and also directly works on the 3 key enzymic regulators for cellular age and longevity which is known as the sirtuins pathway, the AMP kinase pathway and the CD38 pathway.
So basically all you need to know about that is it helps with cleaning up your cells, reducing inflammation, and increasing health span. Okay.
And probably make your hair grow as well, right? So and it's an antioxidant as well. So yes, olive oil is great. Bryan Johnson's probably isn't necessary. Bryan Johnson apparently having met a biotech researcher for a hedge fund in LA recently who is a fabulous MIT graduate, plus Wharton Healthcare MBA graduate, so she’s kind of clever and kind of pretty good at critical thinking.
And she had the pleasure of literally going to Bryan's place where they all walked in with a group of Asian investors, I think. They all walked in and took a skull of olive oil and they had a vegan-based thing. And it was pretty much, in her words, she said, "He looks 47. Just a very thin one. She said so and I tend to agree with that and sometimes these people and I know when you're a very finely-built person, getting too thin is not good for you. And I think plant -based diets, there is definitely a lot of support – more plant, less animal protein is good, but I think that it can be at a risk of like you lose too much weight and you get facial atrophy, you start to look a little bit hectic, which means too thin.
Again, there's a balance. There's a balance, yeah.
Alex Brooks 33:00
But there are so many acronyms, right? So there's this EVOO for extra virgin olive oil. And then there's like this thing called, there's NMN and NMD and like, what does that all mean?
Natasha Cook 33:11
Well, so the, okay, okay, let's, so the complex is a long topic, which if people like this, we can actually break down these into little topics about the supplements and etc, but as this is an intro pilot, we're canvassing a lot to see if this is interesting or not. So extra virgin olive oil is good and cold press are the two key things to look for – Australia made better because in the transportation – I learned this from my other patients who run pubs and restaurants – in the transportation process the heat etc and all of that damages the olive oil so locally made is better right.
Natasha Cook 33:46
And there's actually an amazing olive oil – and I should get paid for this – but I don't get paid, I'm totally unsponsored, which is why I have to work very hard in several day jobs.
C60 olive oil has a very high potent antioxidant anti-inflammatory and you can buy that online and it's Australian. You can take like a tablespoon a day, don't like the taste of it, squeeze lemon juice – lemon juice is also very good for your gut biome, we can talk about that that's not the topic as well.
Alex Brooks 34:08
Okay and Choice do test extra virgin olive oils because some are fraudulent. Particularly the ones coming in from overseas.
Natasha Cook 34:15
Totally, everything's fraudulent until proven otherwise, as far as I'm concerned.
Yes, we reward fraud for living in the global economy.
Natasha Cook 34:21
So, EVO, cold press, Australian made, they're the key take-homes, right?
Let's talk about NM, NMN, RMN, all these things, which is actually David Sinclair, you know, which is NAD. So, the bottom line is our cells, every cell in our body, contains a little manufacturing unit, which is the energy powerhouse to all our cells called mitochondria. Mitochondria needs-
Alex Brooks 34:45
That's from our mum, right?
Natasha Cook 34:46
No, not necessarily, I don't think so. Anyway, I'm not sure about that. I'll cross-reference it, but that's not totally my area of expertise. So mitochondria creates all the energy, right, for our bodies in the cells, and it needs an energy supply and its fuel is NAD, right? Which is a molecule inside the cells. Now, mitochondria functioning and NAD levels go down. More time on the planet, okay?
Alex Brooks 33:14
Right, one of the hallmarks of ageing.
Natasha Cook 35:15
So then this whole thing, let's just put NAD into bodies and they will be fine.
Well, that's not necessarily true and not totally proven. So for example, IV, NAD plus infusions don't get through the endothelial lining because there's no receptors for you, so that's probably a [ba-bow] and anything IV I'd be very dubious.
Natasha Cook 35:32
Okay, that sounds good If it sounds too good to be true, it possibly is so critical thinking, people! NMM, which I have researched all of this and I did take NMM supplements – and there was an argument between the riboside versus the mononucleosis version of niacinamide – well, they're just different formats. They're all they're all B3, and B3 is niacinamide.
What we now know is NMN and the ribocyte version, whatever it is, may not work at all. Because the person behind the pioneering research has just been forced to step down from the Harvard
Institute of Cellular Aging. And a lot of these publications may be pulled and discredited.
Natasha Cook 36:15
So, but what we do know is niacinamide, which is B3, a vitamin.
Alex Brooks 36:16
And that's in our Weetbix too, right?
Natasha Cook 36:20
Well, I'm not sure I'd ever eat Weetbix, but thank you. Nothing bad against Weetbix, but it's also in mushrooms, in chicken, in certain vegetable types, in fish, and in good multi-B vitamin supplements, right? So niacinamide will make your NAD as well as tryptophan – so do we really need these other things which may not actually get converted to NAD? And they say 1, 2 molecules of NMN apparently make 1 of NAD, but we still don't know in humans how biological beneficial that actually is, whether it actually gets converted to an AD, we don't know.
Alex Brooks 36:52
Okay, there's so much we don't know…
Natasha Cook 36:53
… there's so much we don't know. So it's extrapolated data from mouse studies and other things. So it's now a little bit like…But what we do know is niacinamide is very, very good for us And it's in lots of food groups and it's in very, very good multi-B supplements and different multi-Bs will have different concentrations. - Ah, okay. - So try and get something that's got around about 100 milligrams of niacinamide B3 in it. It's also an extremely good topical, which is why I super invested in all my skincare products - and I was the first and only company in the world to do that – and tryptophan, which is found also in things like warm milk, makes tryptophan, makes you sleepy, chicken breast, other food groups, those things can help elevate our natural energy levels.
Alex Brooks 37:33
Okay, and is this the reason why the Mediterranean diet is all hail B for sort of eating well because the more variety of things you eat –
Natasha Cook 37:45
Colours, so I can break that down. So the Mediterranean-diet-meets-the-Okinawan-women-diet was the easy way just to get people to understand what they should eat, right? Neither or is fabulous alone, but in a super summary, bright, colourful things are very good for you because they have...
Alex Brooks 38:01
Like red capsicum, green broccoli, orange carrots.
Natasha Cook 38:02
Yes, and I'll tell you why, which is why food sources... I mean, sorry, fruit and veg have all antioxidants. Animals don't. That's why. Fruit, with its skin, is exposed to the elements. They must upregulate all of these natural survival mechanisms to survive that if we ingest, they're really good for us. OK.
And all those colours in the skin are a reflection of the load of antioxidants and polyphenols, which is an antioxidant, right?
Alex Brooks 38:27
And they're like, they're things that help ourselves.
Natasha Cook 38:38
They're antioxidants and anti-inflammatories. So if we are dying because of oxidative damage, because believe it or not, breathing in oxygen actually destroys us, which is hyperbaric oxygen is debatable, good limited. Yes, we are constantly oxidizing. So living better is all about increasing nutritional support, reducing inflammation, reducing oxidative damage. So if we eat more things that are more anti-inflammatory and they're more antioxidant, and then we up our levels of things in high nutritional support, we are gonna live better and look better.
Alex Brooks 39:00
And feel better?
Natasha Cook 39:01
Yes, so if you think about it, all these plants in their skin, they make natural sunscreens to survive in 40 degrees, 45 and then if you think of like grapes for example, so you know the whole thing about red wine and –
Alex Brooks 39:15
– and resveratrol, right?
Natasha Cook 39:17
Yes, I'm gonna stand on that because there are trials of polyphenols. So we're talking about the same thing. So grapes that look really crap – so the food that looks worse is actually better for you in a way – so perfect looking food. So brighter in rich colors always go for the most green broccoli or the most purpley berries, right? Not the ones that look a bit pale red like the berries the raspberries that my team bought me the other day, I'm like, "Oh, man, these look like they've been nuked by something, or they've grown up in some, you know, incubator gone wrong.”
You want bright colors, 'cause bright colors means more nutrition, right? Secondly, sometimes the fruit that's not perfect has had to work harder to survive, so it's got more good things in it.
Thirdly, when we think about grapes, why do Pinot Noir grapes have higher resveratrol than, say, Cabernet? Because they grow in very cold, low-exgenated, high-altitudes, so they've got to work harder, so inside of them are more nutrient survival mechanisms that we eat, which then help our cell survive, so they will have higher resveratrol.
Alex Brooks 40:14
So drink Pinot Noir, not Shiraz, is that so?
Natasha Cook 40:16
The problem is though – and I learnt this from Professor Zoe Drilos, who's America's leading dermatologist in nutraceuticals and cosmeticals, she's a legend – and I remember being
at the World Congress in Korea of Dermatology in 2011, and she talked about the problem is, so the sources for resveratrol that are high in lots of foods, but particularly red grapes and also Japanese knotweed or something, I think.
Yeah, they are the two key big sources of it, but she said for us to get enough of that by drinking red wine alone, we would have to be comatose, in an alcoholic stupor.
And topical resveratrol does not absorb in the skin, so I know it's really trendy, and this is the problem. We get one trendy thing in a market that comes longer, it's put in a cream, we'll sell it, make money. There is no sustainable science to show that it's bioavailable or works.
And another really cool thing, why are red grapes red? Because resveratrol's pink. So if you were to put resveratrol, and it did get in the skin, in the right amount and a concentration to work in the skin, your skin would be bright red every day.
Alex Brooks 41:16
Oh, like a prawn.
Natasha Cook 41:17
Well, maybe like a peach or a plum. So all of these things, when you're a science-based person, you start to look at things and just go, that can't be feasibly possible. So we are working in a world of smoke and mirrors where everybody wants to live better, wants to look better, wants to stay younger, and doesn't want to age. And it is a billion-dollar industry, so it's really hard to navigate. But he answers are actually simple.
Alex Brooks 41:41
Okay, that's good to know. Now, did you bring your buttons with me today?
Natasha Cook 41:44
Oh my God, I forgot the buttons.
Alex Brooks 41:45
You forgot them. How's your brain ageing?
Natasha Cook 41:48
It's fine. No, it's ageing fine, i's just that I had to get the dogs sorted and then feed them and then do 25 ,000 other things and finish the handful of emails. And I just kind of, the buttons wasn't on the shortlist.
Alex Brooks 41:48
Oh, it's okay. It's totally okay. So we're going to go ‘ba-bow’ or ‘yes’ when I'm asking you a couple of questions.
Natasha Cook 42:04
It's ba-bow or ting-ting.
Alex Brooks 42:06
Okay, ba-bow and ting -ting. -
Natasha Cook 42:08
Or chu-ching if it's a cash cow.
Alex Brooks 42:09
All right, should I take collagen for better hair and skin?
Natasha Cook 42:16
Bup -bow. Could I tell you what the definitive answer would be? Eat seriously well. High antioxidant, anti-inflammatory foods and really good protein sources.
Alex Brooks 42:25
Okay, what about skin whitening treatments? You know, as we get older, we get these little pigments and stuff.
Natasha Cook 42:30
There's no such thing as overt skin whitening, however we can fade skin, it's prescription medicine is usually required and some actives in skincare such as niacinamide is a good over-the-counter ingredient to use for it, a prescriptive vitamin A and usually a compounded prescription of hydroquinone 'cause over-the-counter doesn't work.
Alex Brooks 42:47
Oh, it's lost me, okay.
Natasha Cook 43:48
And guess what's the best? Not getting brown spots in the first place, which means SPF 15 above every day, sun protection and protecting your skin. So not getting the problem in the first place is the answer.
Alex Brooks 43:01
That's pretty much the answer.
Natasha Cook 43:04
And then lasers, lasers are very helpful as well, but there's no ultimate skin-whitening product on the market. Skin fading, yes, but complex.
Alex Brooks 43:10
Okay, so let's talk about lasers. Can lasers help us look better from a skin perspective?
Natasha Cook 43:15
100%, but it depends what laser. So these things – again, it's a billion dollar industry that's not very regulated, that the only regulation, actually I'm going to Parliament to talk about this, the Shadow Minister this week. Yes, I'm a bit popular this week.
The only barrier to entry to buy an energy-based device in the state of New South Wales is drumroll, a power point.
Alex Brooks 43:39
So there's no regulation for lasers?
Natasha Cook 43:40
Very little. So you've got to be careful what your technology is, 'cause again, it's a billion-dollar industry, marketing is powerful, the fear of ageing is predominant. So certain technologies are amazing, but certain technologies will only do one thing and not all technologies treat every pathology, which means why we have 15 different devices in our clinic.
Alex Brooks 44:00
Right, so I had my eyes lasered, right? Because I kept losing like glasses –
Natasha Cook 44:06
Different laser, ophthalmology and the lasers they use is different to what we use on skin and that's very predictable. If you're the right candidate, it works extremely well.
So you had a refractive error that was corrected by the laser on your cornea?
Alex Brooks 44:18
Maybe, yeah, I don't really know, yes. The doctor did that for me.
Natasha Cook 44:21
Not everyone's a candidate, so you must go to a great ophthalmologist. Australia has excellent ophthalmologists, the training's some of the best in the world. And yes, but you've got to be the right candidate, it doesn’t fix everybody.
But lasers and skin are a yes, right technology, good operators, do your research.
Alex Brooks 44:39
Okay, so I can't just go down to my local skin clinic and ask them for a laser.
Natasha Cook 44:45
You could, but whether it's gonna meet your expectations or not is another thing.
Alex Brooks 44:47
Okay, okay, I get that. All right, now let's talk about something my niece is very obsessed with, which is snail mucus.
Natasha Cook 44:54
Oh my God, I'm gonna, okay, I love this. This is hysterical. This is a ba-bow.
Alex Brooks 44:59
She buys all the Korean products.
Natasha Cook 45:01
Well, Korean beauty is overestimated because Koreans don't age because they don't go outside. And whenever I go to a conference with Korean lasers and my beautiful Korean colleagues, they're gorgeous, they've got nothing to treat and they're showing before and after so people look no different.
And then you come to Australia, they would fail. They would fail you. They would fail you. They would fail you to have a country in the world because they just sit there from... they don't go outside. They have these elaborate routines and when you break down the ingredients profile that's celebrated in dermatology literature, there's nothing in there that's that special.
Alex Brooks 45:31
Oh really?
Natasha Cook 45:32
Nothing. I think they're very innovative in the quality of their formulations, right? And their feel and all that. And like, you know, like the she-shaders and whatever, but I wouldn't rate their SPFs say over standards of something that's tested and made in Australia. Very different kind of ballpark there.
And like, I was watching this skin-tightening laser and I'm looking at the before and afters – I'm like nothing's happened and there's nothing to treat the first place. And there's unfortunately it's like it's a bit of a cult like k-pop all of a sudden is made k-beauty which has now Korean technologies and I'm like I'm not saying something laser technology is good but they have a lot less heavy lifting to do than what we have to do in Australia, so you can't really compare. And lifestyle. So I think there is a lot of sort of – what do you call it? It's a bit culty.
Natasha Cook 46:20
Okay, not saying it's bad. So I don't want to sit here and tell you that it's bad. But I don't think it's necessarily – it's a bit ‘hope in a jar’. So probably make really nice formulations of moisturizers and things that feel good.
Natasha Cook 46:32
So let's talk about snail mucus, when I spoke to all of my PhD scientists, you know, people don't get paid much for being really smart, okay? Because they're truth seekers and they're not out for the money. They're out for actually to be really legitimate scientists. And their publications get pulled if they lie. Not like you can win elections by lying. Anyway, so we'll just say that, right? So they have told me there are no snail farms anywhere in the world. And you know what snail mucus actually is?
Alex Brooks 46:57
What is it?
Natasha Cook 46:58
It's hyaluronic acid. So this is made synthetically, not from little snails being slugged away like cruelty.
Alex Brooks 47:06
Yeah, making their mucus to put in a jar.
Natasha Cook 47:07
No,no, it's hyaluronic acid. Hyaluronic acid is in creatures, it's a lubrication, it's in our joints, it's in our skin. It lasts in our skin less than 24 hours. Hyaluronic acid is actually a very bad moisturiser – glycerin is better. But in combination and moisturising complex, it's great, but by itself, it's nothing outstanding. It just got extrapolated off fillers. And everybody thought, well, if it's in fillers, it must be amazing. Glycerin's not sexy enough.
Alex Brooks 47:28
So wait a minute. People sell snail mucus as, like, an ingredient, but you're saying it's not from snails.
Natasha Cook 47:37
It's not, it's like another one of our fabulous beauty dermatologists – not a dermatologist, people selling their skincare brand for $400 million recently to private equity – talks about an ingredient called purslane, P -U -R -S -A -L, purslane. Purslane’s a plant, not an ingredient.
Alex Brooks 47:51
Yeah, that's what I was gonna say.
Natasha Cook 47:52
Purslane is 97% water with a bit of free fatty acids and vitamin C. But they don't label free fatty acids, water and vitamin C. They put purslane, which is actually misleading and deceptive conduct and a breach of TGA and FDA labelling regulations. But why is it sold all around the world?
Alex Brooks 48:09
Why?
Natasha Cook 48:10
Thank you. It's called fraud.
Alex Brooks 48:13
Yes, I think you're right. Okay, there's this new thing I've read about called spermidine.
Natasha Cook
Oh yes, so spermidine is an ingredient is biologically natural around sperm to preserve sperm. Now, do you also know what preserves sperm? Within the old days when IVF was first coming around in sperm donation: green tea. Green tea is a powerful, and he obviously used to put in with his ejaculate.
Alex Brooks 48:37
Oh, this is disgusting.
Natasha Cook 48:38
Well, it's true.
Alex Brooks 48:39
I know, I don't doubt that.
Natasha Cook 48:40
So, now all of a sudden, off spermidine – and spermidine actually does exist in certain foods, so you can eat it – so now all of a sudden this exists.
Alex Brooks 48:46
Like what? What foods have spermidine in them?
Natasha Cook 48:48
Look, I'm pretty, I'll have to go back to it. I know phycotin’s in strawberries, and when I did this talk, and it's been a little while, but I will follow up on this. There are some natural food supplies of spermidine, and now, and wheat germ, wheat germ is one of them.
And then now all this extrapolated data, because that's a around sperm, can it be put in a face cream? There's no studies. But there is a new skincare range all about spermidine. I'm like, there's no studies on biolife. And is this any better than vitamin A? Is this, which we have decades of biopsy proven studies, is this any better than alpha and beta hydroxy acids? It's like a blueberry is always a blueberry. It's always as good as it. The spermidine ain't gonna replace a
blueberry. So, but it's trendy, and again, it's an assumption because it makes our sperm preserved temporarily, but so does green tea.
Alex Brooks 49:35
Well, I don't have sperm.
Natasha Cook 49:36
Is this therefore now the panacea of longevity that should be in a skin care cream? My answer is we don't know, and the science isn't there to prove it, but it makes a lot of people in suits and private equity, makes a face of a brand, lots of money very quickly, with no accountability, by the way.
Alex Brooks 49:50
This is the thing, right? You can sort of sell this whole idea of ‘natural botox’. I've seen tons of botox on social media.
Natasha Cook 49:55
What is natural botox? There is no such thing. It's a peptide, it's meant to be a muscle relaxant. It does not work like botox side to side. Nothing works like botox. 'Cause if it did go all over your face and work as well, everything would be paralyzed and you couldn't drink or sleep or swallow and talk. Think about it, right?
Alex Brooks 50:14
I don't want that.
Natasha Cook 50:14
So Botox is a purified purine, a bit like it's kind of made like penicillins made from fungi. Except it's made from bacteria, the botulinum bacteria purified, and then literally goes into selective areas, which which is why we inject it selectively, why we don't want it diffused into others 'cause then you can't open your eyes or you can't talk or you might swallow when you put in the neck. And then relaxes that specific muscle area.
So it relaxes, so we stop heavy pulling and frowning and then we don't get creases in our skin. So if a cream works like that and you put it everywhere, how can that really be sold over the counter? If it works exactly like Botox.
Alex Brooks 50:49
And Botox is used for other things, not just facial beauty, right? Like sweating…
Natasha Cook 50:58
Botox fixes so many legal problems, like bladder dysfunction, like cerebral palsy, muscle spasm, sweating, grinding, migraines. It is like we used to, when I used to work with the medical ascetic group at Allagan who are the pioneering discoverers of botulinum toxin way back in the 80s with Professor Jean Carruthers and her beautiful dermatologist husband, who recently died of Parkinson's, which is very sad.
Yeah, way back then and working with those guys, like the amount of things I found out, they used to have this kind of inner aboveboard joke, like, well, if you've got a problem, stick botox in it, see what happens. Because there have been so many things in the medical arena, like with diseases and problems helping people by using Botox. So it's beyond aesthetic.
The aesthetic role was secondary to it primarily being a medical treatment. So the aesthetic discovery was a result because Gene Carruthers, Canadian oculoplastic surgeon/ ophthalmologist was using it for blepharospasm. So people have got non-voluntary twitchy eyes, very debilitating.
Alex Brooks 52:04
All right, yes. Like when you get tired, your eyes flit.
Natasha Cook 52:06
Yeah, and some people just have that all the time. You can imagine how distressing, how the stigmata socially, all of those kind of things. So they were just treating obviously the problematic eye. And then they, part of the study was obviously before and after images, et cetera, other things they measured. And Alistair Carruthers, her husband, who's a dermatologist, was looking at her results on the photos and she goes, "Why is this eye that you've treated for blepharospasm, Dr. Jean, smoother and looks younger than the non-treated side? And that's the story.
So medical uses of Botox actually is how Botox was discovered for aesthetic purposes.
Alex Brooks 52:41
Okay, so is it too late to have Botox after 50 for aesthetic purposes?
Natasha Cook 52:45
Never. My oldest patients who I treated who had big 11s or central frown lines came relentlessly every 3 months for a year and over time, if not using those strong – because it is abnormality, excess frowning is an abnormal response –
Alex Brooks 53:01
Not in my life, I frown a lot, Natasha.
Natasha Cook 53:03
Yeah, but learned, babe.
I know, I know, it's like grinding. So I would say people either, 'cause I treat a lot of grinding and a lot of frowns, right? And grinding mainly, 'cause grinding will stop you needing dental work, tends to work better than the plates, which often create people grinding more than they were anyway, and also they don't use them because compliance is hard because it wants to be –
Alex Brooks 53:22
Well, they're pretty ugly.
Natasha Cook 53:23
And also, they're uncomfortable. So, whereas softening the masseters works amazingly, I've been doing it for 15 years. It's incredible. And it also then stops the headaches. It preserves the teeth. It's got so many benefits. Anyway...
Alex Brooks 53:33
'Cause teeth are pretty important to age well, right?
Natasha Cook 53:37
Oh, my God, yes. And gum health. And we were taught to overclean our teeth in the wrong way, which gives us early gum degeneration, which exposes roots, which then needs root canals, then needs caps. You name it, there's a hundred thousand dollars of dental work over the next 20 years, right? And a healthy mouth, we know, is connected to healthy gut and healthy organ systems as well.
Alex Brooks 53:52
That's right, and the gut microbiome, right?
Natasha Cook 53:54
Which is another topic.
Alex Brooks 53:57
A whole new topic.
Natasha Cook 53:58
Yes, dysbiosis happens, which means bad bacteria goes up, good goes down as a result of metabolic ageing, but we can also biohack that by how we eat what we eat in food groups.
Alex Brooks 54:07
Is that just having more yoghurt?
Natasha Cook 54:08
Well, yeah, things like vinegar and balsamic vinegar and olive oil and lemon juice and fermentable plant-based foods, which is legumes. Best friends, yep. And Metformin, which is another topic, but Metformin reprograms your gut dysbiosis.
Yes, but back to teeth grinding, frowning. So people subconsciously take out elements of stress, and, as they say, that the body holds score, right? Often by frowning, grinding or both and then they start doing it in their sleep.
Alex Brooks 54:38
Oh, yeah, that's me. I do that.
Natasha Cook 54:39
I can pick what people are going through stress at work, relationships and I feel their masseters and they're like, big ,kind of, golf balls coming out.
Alex Brooks 54:44
Masseters – you just mean jaw, right?
Natasha Cook 54:46
Thank you, that's right. Thank you for bringing me back to being understandable by the majority of the population. Yes, your muscles that make your mouth mouth open and close and chew. So usually I can tell exactly what's going on in their greater life. As I say, behind every skin or a grinder, there is a story. So they usually do it subconsciously in their sleep as well. And they usually subconsciously frown. So using medical-based treatments like botulinum toxin can be super helpful and change people's lives beyond the aesthetics.
Alex Brooks 55:20
Okay, okay, that's really interesting.
Natasha Cook 55:23
Yes, and most importantly, preserving your teeth.
Alex Brooks 55:26
Yeah, but someone told me that like toothpaste doesn't actually help your gums or your teeth.
Natasha Cook 55:32
No, it does. That's ridiculous. So flossing is super important because even if we use electric toothbrushes and whatever, the accumulation of the food promotes bad bacteria that leads to plaque and that leads to a plethora of problems. Okay, so flossing twice a day ideally is really important probably potentially more so than cleaning, but I mean really both are what you need to do.
You don't want to use too many mouth washes, because then you're going to kill your good oral microbiome.
Alex Brooks 55:58
The biome, yeah.
Natasha Cook 55:59
So you want to floss, floss, right? I put floss in my car, because I've had bad dental work from stuff they did to us in experimental decades when we were teenagers, I'm still fixing. Thank you, dental fraternity.
Alex Brooks 56:09
Oh, was that your braces when you were a teenager?
Natasha Cook 26:11
Yeah, that was pretty bad, but I won't go into that. But, you know, and failed root canals, some people had told me they'd fixed the canal, but they hadn't, they never got in.
Yes, I know a bit negligent, but anyway, we just move on. But flossing's super important for gum health.
Alex Brooks 56:25
Because that's like the berries growing in a cold climate, right? You're sort of doing a little bit of trauma to keep things…
Natasha Cook 56:30
Well, you don't want too much trauma 'cause then trauma is gum recession. You just basically wanna get anything that's hanging around there that your toothbrush can't get to so you don't accumulate and give your bad bacteria, food, that's it.
And then that creates inflammation and inflammation creates gum recession.
Alex Brooks 56:46
And as we age, you know, there's two very big conditions that affect pretty much everybody: eyes and dental work, right?
Natasha Cook 56:54
Yes, but you can prevent eye aging with what you eat as well.
Alex Brooks 56:57
Oh, how?
Natasha Cook 56:58
Things like fish oil, cod liver oil, olive oil and antioxidants do improve and slow down ageing of your eyes.
Alex Brooks 57:09
Okay, that's interesting.
Natasha Cook 57:11
Big time. And a lot of ophthalmologists now are looking at supplements as well that they think can help with macular degeneration prevention. So lifestyle is powerful. Epigenome.
Alex Brooks 57:23
My mum and dad.
Natasha Cook 57:24
No, that's inherited, to a point. But we can bio hack by lifestyle – not by getting blood from your child. Thank you, Mr. Johnson doesn't work.
Alex Brooks 57:34
No, no, we never do that to my children. I've done enough to ruin their lives. I don't need to do more.
So, there you have it. Brutal truths about longevity and the hallmarks of ageing as explained by Dr. Natasha Cook. Thanks for sharing that very big brain packed into that very tiny body with us today. I really appreciate it. Thank you
Natasha Cook 57:55
Alex. It's been a pleasure. Lots of fun. Thank you.
[ENDS]