Treating aging from a symptom perspective with Dr. Mark Lees

[Intro] Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Facially Conscious with myself, Trina Renea, esthetician, Dr. Vicki Rapaport, dermatologist, Rebecca Gadberry, the cosmetic ingredient guru, and our fabulous, overly-educated consumer, Julie Falls. We are gathered here together with you to talk about this crazy world of esthetics. It's confusing out there in this big wide world. 

That's why we are here to help explain it to you all, subject by subject. We will be your go-to girls, and from our perspective without giving medical advice, we will keep things facially conscious.

Let's get started. 

00:56 Trina Renea: Hello, hello, and welcome back to Facially Conscious. How are you guys doing today?

01:01 Julie Falls: Hey.

01:01 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Good morning. Hello, everybody.

01:03 Rebecca Gadberry: So excited.

01:04 Trina Renea: We're so excited to be back with Mark Lees. You guys heard him on our last episode. We were talking about derms and esthes and how they work together, estheticians. Today, we get to talk to him about treating aging from a system perspective or an individual…

01:22 Rebecca Gadberry: Individual, yeah.

01:23 Trina Renea: Perspective. How is everybody doing today? How are you, Mark? How's your cute little doggy?

01:28 Dr. Mark Lees: I'm good. She's fine. She's been very quiet. She's been a good girl, at least for now.

01:34 Rebecca Gadberry: Her name is Halo. We thought that she was named after the Halo procedure. 

01:41 Julie Falls: The laser. 

01:41 Rebecca Gadberry: That you were really into skin care.

01:46 Trina Renea: No, it's because she has a little halo on her head.

01:47 Dr. Mark Lees: She has a little white puff on her head.

01:50 Trina Renea: So sweet.

01:50 Rebecca Gadberry: We should put her on Instagram.

01:52 Dr. Mark Lees: She's a Cavapoo.

01:54 Trina Renea: Oh, she's a Cavapoo.

01:55 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: What’s a Cavapoo?

01:56 Julie Falls: Cavalier King Charles.

01:58 Dr. Mark Lees: Cavalier spaniel-poodle mix. That's what it means.

02:02 Trina Renea: I don't even know that first dog you mentioned.

02:05 Rebecca Gadberry: A Cavalier?

02:06 Dr. Mark Lees: When she was little, she had these little brindle eyebrows that were so cute. Now, they've kind of turned— well, she's not very old. She's not even five yet but they've kind of turned white. 

02:19 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Aging eyebrows. 

02:20 Rebecca Gadberry: Aging in animals. In case we run out of topics, we’ll talk about how to treat your aging dog.

02:28 Julie Falls: We've actually had more heat here than you probably have in Florida.

02:33 Dr. Mark Lees: One of my best friends is in West Hollywood. I was just talking to him this morning. He just got back from London, which was even more of a shock, I'm sure.

02:44 Trina Renea: Oh, yeah.

02:47 Dr. Mark Lees: And he was saying how it's been— I understand it's been really bad. And we've had an unusually hot summer here too, but ours has been very wet. Fortunately, knock on wood, we haven't had any hurricanes so far.

03:04 Trina Renea: They're moving to Southern California.

03:08 Dr. Mark Lees: Yeah, nothing really in the gulf so far. The peak is September 15th for hurricane season.

03:15 Julie Falls: Might have missed.

03:16 Dr. Mark Lees: It intrigues me, though. I think if I hadn't been an esthetician, I might have been a meteorologist. I'm interested in it.

03:22 Trina Renea: We had a hurricane passed by us yesterday.

03:25 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Yeah, Hurricane Kay.

03:25 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah.

03:26 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: It was raining all night. It was so nice with wind…

03:29 Julie Falls: It was so funny, we finally got a break from the heat and had some rain.

03:33 Rebecca Gadberry: So let's tell everybody. We are recording this on September 10th 2022, because I know this is going to air, it may even air in January. 

03:43 Trina Renea: Yeah, so we're recording this in early September.

03:44 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: But aging will matter then as well.

03:46 Rebecca Gadberry: It matters every time, every day, every minute.

03:50 Julie Falls: That will still stay consistent.

03:50 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: We care about aging in January 2023, we will.

03:53 Trina Renea: Let's talk about aging, because aging does not create an equal.

03:59 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: We don’t all age the same.

04:00 Rebecca Gadberry: It is not created equal. Yes.

04:01 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: We all age quite differently.

04:03 Rebecca Gadberry: So, Dr. Mark, how did you come up with this concept of treating the individual symptoms as opposed to just a global approach?

04:13 Dr. Mark Lees: I divide aging, as many people do, as science does a lot of times, in intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Intrinsic aging, though, for my clients, I refer to as birthday aging. And extrinsic aging, I generally refer to as sun damage, although there are other environmental aging factors in there too. 

So many people come to me and say, “I have some wrinkles and they bother me, but I don't think I look so bad for 55, and I'm thinking we could look so much better than this.” They're blaming it on…

04:54 Rebecca Gadberry: Do you say that? 

04:56 Dr. Mark Lees: Well, they're blaming it on the passing of the years, as opposed to the fact that they are also not practicing very hodge-podgey skin care and just so many mistakes and throwing things at the wall and see what will stick. All my clients when they come in the first time, I ask them to bring what they're using now at home. They bring a little bag and some of them bring like a feed sack full of stuff. I'll dump it out on the table and I’ll say, “Okay, pick out what you've used in the last week,” as to where we are with this, if there's any sort of system in here at all.

And there's $300 creams in there and there's drugstore creams and there's Retin-A and there's all this other stuff. 

Retin-A is one of my favorite things to talk about for this particular subject because I'll say, “Oh, I see you've got tretinoin in here,” and I'll pick up the tube and I'll say, “How often do you use it?”

“Oh, I only use that when I have a zit.” 

06:01 Rebecca Gadberry: Dr. Vicki, what you say to that?

06:03 Dr. Mark Lees: They're really using tretinoin as a drying agent. And I'll say, “Well, it doesn't work if you don't use it all the time. If you want to learn how to use it, I know a lot about how to use this. I personally prefer alpha-hydroxys to retinoids. That's just a personal thing with me. But none of it works if you don't do it all the time.”

I preach to the clients and I preach to the estheticians that what you're doing to that face 24/7 is what’s really going to change it outside of a surgical or medical procedure. What you're doing to that entire face 24/7, every day of the week is going to make the biggest difference in the way your skin looks. If you can go in for procedure but if you don't treat your skin right, you'll have good results from that procedure but the best facelifts— and Dr. Derek Jones is my plastic surgeon. He's not the same Dr. Derek Jones that's in LA. I know you have one out there too.

07:03 Rebecca Gadberry: Oh, yeah, we do.

07:06 Dr. Mark Lees: Dr. Jones here is a plastic surgeon and he and I have been working together for years and years and years. He always says, “You know, my best-looking patients, my most natural-looking patients are the ones who have been doing good skin care for a long time even before they come in for their lift.” That their skin is in such good condition…

07:25 Trina Renea: Because it just makes it heal so much faster and better.

07:28 Dr. Mark Lees: Absolutely. And better and more even and more natural. But I try to get— one of my big things, and this is across the board. This doesn’t just deal with aging. Is to look at skincare as a program as opposed to an ingredient or a product or one procedure. You have to look at it as a program. 

It's just like going to the gym. You can hire the best trainer in the world but if you don't do anything between sessions, it's not going to work. Or if you work out three or four days a week and do your thing and do your cardio and everything like that, but you still haven't given up Krispy Kreme and sausage gravy, that's not going to work either.

08:10 Julie Falls: And smoking.

08:12 Dr. Mark Lees: And smoking. None of that's going to work either. But to look at it as a program and to really approach it from every little different thing that we can do to contribute to protecting or improving that aging skin, whether it's birthday aging or environmental aging. Most people have a combination of both.

08:35 Rebecca Gadberry: Mark, you look really good.

08:36 Dr. Mark Lees: Thank you.

08:37 Julie Falls: I'm not going to tell your age, I'm not going to tell mine. Living there, do you just not go outside? Do you wear protective clothing?

08:45 Dr. Mark Lees: Oh, I go outside. I walk every day. Halo and I have a standing date for the park every day.

08:51 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: What time of the day?

08:53 Dr. Mark Lees: I usually go early in the morning, but that's because it's cooler. I'm not real fond of sun, just in general. It has nothing to do with me being a skincare specialist. I'm not real fond of sun. 

09:03 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Do you wear a big hat?

09:05 Dr. Mark Lees: I don’t like sun, I don't like heat, I don't like sand.

09:08 Julie Falls: And you live in Florida.

09:10 Dr. Mark Lees: I think the beach is really good from a restaurant balcony at 5:00 with a glass of wine.

09:14 Trina Renea: That’s right.

09:16 Rebecca Gadberry: That's how I go to the beach.

09:19 Dr. Mark Lees: But I've never been one to really spend a lot of, certainly not deliberately tanning, except maybe when I was in high school, but I've never really. And I've always had a job because I'm very busy. I'm a very busy person. I like being busy and I'm bored and not good if I don't have projects going on. So I really don’t have a lot of time to go to the beach.

09:47 Julie Falls: So when you walk Halo, big hat, glasses, sunscreen, covered clothing?

09:50 Dr. Mark Lees: Usually, baseball cap and sunscreen. Yes, definitely sunscreen.

09:56 Trina Renea: And early in the morning.

09:57 Dr. Mark Lees: I wear sunscreen all the time.

09:59 Rebecca Gadberry: What SPF? 

10:01 Dr. Mark Lees: The general one I wear is a 30, and sometimes I wear— I have a liposomal screen that I wear if I'm going to be out all day or I'll wear like an anhydrous zinc oxide titanium kind of thing.

10:18 Rebecca Gadberry: So, waterproof, yeah.

10:20 Dr. Mark Lees: Like if I'm going to be at Disney, where I don't sweat it off.

10:24 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: I have two questions. Do you wear long sleeves and what are your top three favorite sunscreens?

10:31 Dr. Mark Lees: You mean outside of my own? That's a big question. My favorite sunscreen is my own sunscreen, actually, but I like TIZO, whichever you pronounce that. I like their products. I have this new one and they just renamed it. For a long time it was called Celazome and it's a liposomal sunscreen.

11:00 Rebecca Gadberry: That's with a C, Celazome.

11:02 Dr. Mark Lees: With a C, Celazome. What it does is it sinks below the surface of the epidermis so when you're sweating, your sweat is pouring on top of it instead of rinsing it off sort of thing. The only disadvantage to this product is it makes you smell like sunscreen for about three days, because your skin has shed off that sunscreen. But it's great for tennis players and stuff like that because it doesn't run in your eyes.

11:33 Trina Renea: And do you wear long sleeves, like sun shirts and stuff?

11:37 Dr. Mark Lees: I do if I'm going to be out all day, not usually at…

11:40 Trina Renea: When walking the dogs?

11:44 Dr. Mark Lees: When I walk Halo, it's usually like 7:00 in the morning. We have sort of a canopy park that we walk in so I don't get a lot of direct rays.

11:52 Rebecca Gadberry: That sounds amazing.

11:55 Dr. Mark Lees: We go there every morning. It's just our little routine. I do try to keep— and I sunscreen my arms too, absolutely. But that's part of it.

12:05 Rebecca Gadberry: Or if you can't find a canopy park, even like a paper umbrella that you can take with you is good.

12:13 Dr. Mark Lees: Well, I just try to do it early. Of course, like I said, other times of the day here it's really hot and I don't like, I'm not a heat fan at all.

12:22 Rebecca Gadberry: So let's get back to the individual aging.

12:25 Dr. Mark Lees: Sure.

12:28 Rebecca Gadberry: Where do you want to take that? This is your topic, so let us know what you’re thinking.

12:34 Dr. Mark Lees: Everyone, all people that I'm going to see are going to suffer from what I call birthday aging, which is the passing of years.

12:41 Rebecca Gadberry: Chronological aging.

12:42 Dr. Mark Lees: Yeah, chronological aging. With them there, there are two or three things that I do for clients that are part of our program, that regardless of whether we're treating environmental or we're treating intrinsic, or birthday aging as I call it. One is sunscreen and making sure that they're wearing it all day, every morning.

The trick in doing this is to find one that meets their beauty needs too, because if it feels right going on, it's the right weight, if it works well under makeup and then also has a decent SPF and certainly broad spectrum-tested protection, it's obviously very important. 

But I want to give people something they'll actually use and that they look forward to putting on. When I try to explain this to estheticians, I always say, “You know, if you have a hair gel that you really like and really nothing else to you works like that hair gel or whatever hair styling product you're using, and then you get caught in an airport overnight and your bags go on to Florida. And you're still in Washington or whatever and you have to go down to the hotel gift shop and buy some sort of hair product, it's never the same. It's just awful.” 

That's what I feel like a lot of people don't like sunscreen because it feels icky and sticky and smells like pineapple if they get the wrong kind. But to get a great moisturizer, which is also, which doubles as an SPF 30, and the one I'm using most of the time is also loaded with ceramides, they're getting the triple whammy there. It feels good, their makeup goes on well over it, they like the texture, they like the weight. The weight of a sunscreen is very important. 

So these are user-friendly things and it's not just sunscreen. It goes throughout whatever we're using. People don't like things that feel icky and sticky. They don't like things that smell real strong. They don't like things that feel heavy on their skin and we try to completely avoid that. So finding the right sunscreen that they feel good about wearing is really important.

The second thing is alpha-hydroxy of some sort, like I said. And this could be substituted with a retinoid, but I happen to be a big fan of alpha-hydroxys. I make sure they're using an alpha-hydroxy because both…

15:23 Trina Renea: Can you explain to our audience what an alpha-hydroxy is?

15:27 Dr. Mark Lees: An alpha-hydroxy is, alpha-hydroxy acids are a family of acids and they occur in nature. As a matter of fact, you have a lot of alpha-hydroxys even within your body, within your cells. Glycolic acid is part of the Krebs Cycle, which is the sugar energy cycle that your individual cells go through. Lactic acid is what causes you to cramp when you've been walking too long or you haven’t exercised a muscle in a while. A lot of these acids are also in your body.

But we get, we derive them from— well, they occur in nature in things like sugar cane and sour milk.

16:10 Trina Renea: Fruits.

16:12 Dr. Mark Lees: But most of them come from either biofermentation or a byproduct of another chemical industry. Honestly, they don't all come— a lot of people like to think they come from nature, and I suppose you could get them from nature, but it would be really expensive and probably pretty useless because it's the same molecule.

16:29 Rebecca Gadberry: I like to say that they come from a plant, the chemical plant.

16:36 Trina Renea: And so alpha-hydroxy acids are also called AHAs and you'll see them on the label, usually, as a glycolic acid or malic acid, tartaric acid, citric acid…

16:49 Dr. Mark Lees: Glycolic and lactic are probably the two most popular. The reason I have people do them is they remove a lot of dead stuff on the surface of the skin. It's almost like peeling an onion. It just removes that surface-y buildup of dead cells, a lot of which are stained. So if you use an alpha hydroxy every day for about six weeks and take a before-and-after picture of yourself, you'll find that things like little mottling stuff is improved, your general color tone. You also look lighter if you're tan, because it takes off that tip top layer of stained cells.

But the main reason I have people do it is it accelerates your cell turnover and it causes your cell turnover— when you're older your cell turnover slows down and this actually speeds it up, which means that you're getting fresher cells to the surface faster, but more importantly, the sped up cell turnover rate is causing you to make more of your own ceramides, which is the filling between the cells, the interstitial filling.

I just was looking at this book. I just got this book. I'll hold it up because I'm about to quote him. No, that's not the book. Where did the book go? I just had it. But it's a book on barrier function by Dr. Peter Elias. I just got it in the mail.

Dr. Elias has something he calls the Brick-and-Mortar Theory of skin. He's a derm at UCSF. He calls it the Brick-and-Mortar Theory of skin. The mortar is made out of ceramides. This is a fatty substance that your skin makes and it fills the gaps between the cells and it helps you hold on to moisture. That as we get older, we make less of this because our cell cycle slows down. It's the cell cycle turnover that causes this to form in our skin so we have to speed it up.

And then the last thing, we already talked about sunscreen, we talked about alpha-hydroxys. The third thing I do to every aging skin is supplement them with ceramides, making sure that they put ceramides on their face every day along with a good hydrator, like hyaluronic.

19:03 Trina Renea: Didn't we have an episode on ceramides already?

19:05 Rebecca Gadberry: We've done ceramides. We've talked about Dr. Peter Elias, because Dr. Pete has influenced both Mark and I in product development and in our teaching.

19:16 Dr. Mark Lees: I'm a huge believer in ceramides. And I tell my clients this, and this is a little bit of an over exaggeration but it reminds them of why they're doing it. I say, “When you put this sunscreen on your face, it has ceramides in it. When you put this moisturizer on, it has ceramides in it. And remember, ceramides kind of blow the mattress back up.” And those words ‘blow the mattress back up’ ring home to them because they're thinking about, what I'm trying to do is explain to them their hydration elevates if they use ceramides and hydrators every day. It really does make a big difference in the smoothness of skin.

So those three are universal.

Then when we get into sun damage, I start thinking about a combination of peptides, different peptides or different combinations of peptides for different skin types, different lightening or brightening agents that we might want to use when someone is super pigmented. And this is when we're getting into the sun damaged part of the aging.

So if you've got somebody who's— for example, I tell the estheticians this. If you've got somebody who's 50 and a normal 50-year-old skin that's not sun damaged will have some facial expression lines, like nasolabial and maybe some forehead lines. They're having minor sagging at age 50, but their skin, generally, unless they're having hormonal issues too, is all going to be still one color pretty much. They're not going to have a lot of multiple aging symptoms and multiple wrinkling that's not in the normal facial expression if they have stayed out of the sun. 

In other words, it would be fine for them to have peptides that would probably get everything going a little bit better, but I would rather see them use something like resveratrol or something that kind of peps up the cell activity for a 50-year-old who doesn't have a lot of sun damage. 

Resveratrol is probably my favorite antioxidant. I have it on my face right now, as a matter of fact, and I wear it. I've been wearing in it probably very daily, consistently for the last 12 years. I also use a lot of anti-glycation ingredients.

21:39 Rebecca Gadberry: What's glycation?

21:41 Dr. Mark Lees: Glycation is when the collagen— it's sort of a bonding or a binding that happens. It causes the collagen to become brittle in your skin. When you multiply it a lot, you can see differences in your skin. 

22:04 Rebecca Gadberry: It's like crisscrossing of the wrinkles.

22:03 Dr. Mark Lees: It's something that's very prevalent also in diabetics, because they have so much sugar.

22:07 Rebecca Gadberry: Or it looks kind of like a wrinkled sheet on your bed.

22:10 Trina Renea: Yeah, it's like when your wrinkle doesn't just go one way. It looks like it has a crisscross wrinkle in it.

22:16 Dr. Mark Lees: Right.

22:19 Rebecca Gadberry: Also, it leaves like a yellow…

22:22 Trina Renea: Yeah, a yellow hue. 

22:23 Rebecca Gadberry: Surface on your skin that's not deep. You can work with the acids to take it off.

So Mark, from what I'm understanding or hearing from you, there are a lot of different symptoms, as you're calling them, or individual characteristics of aging. Your idea is don't use something just as a sledgehammer for aging but treat the individual elements of your own aging.

23:00 Dr. Mark Lees: Right. I don't believe you should use something that consistently causes inflammation, because inflammation causes aging. You're just feeding it. And I'm not saying that most of it comes from incorrect use or client compliance issues or they're skipping a step or the vicious cycle of retinoids with things like tretinoin and they start putting it on. They put too much and they put it too often and they don't break it in. They don't use the right hydrator with it. They don't prep their face right. 

Then they get aggravated because it's turning red and flaky and they totally stop and then they try it again. And guess what? Same thing happens again because they make the same mistakes. 

I think retinoids are great as long as the client is disciplined. If the client is disciplined, I feel really good about them. There are obviously tons of research behind them, but I think that alpha-hydroxys in general are a lot more user-friendly, and from a cosmetics perspective I feel like they do what I need them to do for that client. 

We get the same cosmetic results. We might not get exactly the same physiological results but we get the same cosmetic results, and they're user-friendly.

24:21 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: I have a question about that with your scope of practice versus what we do. I would imagine giving somebody the most amazing skincare regimen and I'll tell them it does 10% to 15% of the improvement. But, really, I'll give them a peel. I want to give them all these other things that I am able to give because I'm a board-certified dermatologist. But is it frustrating to not be able to do like big peels or really get their skin like to slough once and for all?

24:51 Dr. Mark Lees: Well, I do up to Jessner’s and I also do…

24:55 Rebecca Gadberry: Which is what? What is Jessner’s?

24:57 Dr. Mark Lees: Jessner’s is an epidermal peel. It's probably the strongest peel one, of the strongest peels that estheticians do. I don't do TCA because I don't feel comfortable with it, but it's a…

25:11 Trina Renea: Jessner’s, some Jessner’s have TCA in them. It's just a blend of different acids and things that you can do. And you can do TCA up to a certain a percentage as an esthetician.

25:25 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Can you in California do TCA?

25:28 Trina Renea: With a small percentage.

25:29 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: So what? 5%?

25:30 Trina Renea: I don't even remember.

25:32 Rebecca Gadberry: It's not that effective that's why you can do it.

25:33 Trina Renea: No, but it's blended within Jessner, which is like different percentages and they do different blends. PCA, the brand PCA has a lot of them.

25:41 Rebecca Gadberry: Isn’t Jessner’s ____ [25:42]? 

25:45 Dr. Mark Lees: PCA is a company.

25:50 Trina Renea: PCA, yes. PCA is a company who provides peels for estheticians.

25:52 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: I know PCA. My girlfriend bought it. Exploded it and then bought from the original owner, exploded it and then sold it, so I'm very familiar with PCA.

26:01 Trina Renea: Yes.

26:03 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Okay, so you can do peels as an esthetician. I assume they're…

26:06 Trina Renea: And you can do layers of peels as an esthetician. We can go pretty…

26:10 Dr. Mark Lees: I can't do Fraxel and I can't do CO2 or erbium or any other types of peeling lasers or ablative lasers. And I certainly can't do a 50% TCA or whatever. But when I get to that point, of course I'm discussing this with a client all through the program, I'm not close-minded to any of those things. I think that they are really good if the client is ready and they know what's going on. I think I have fairly significant improvement in our program with a combination of the home care and primarily AHAs, also AHA peels, but we also do other types of skincare treatments. We do LED and things like that along the way with them at home.

But most of my clinical stuff, I try to do with just product, because usually I'm trying to prove something as opposed to something that I enhance with a lot of peels when I'm doing actual clinical studies. But I have no problems. As a matter of fact, I work with a laser whiz, a couple of laser whizzes for different types of peels and things like that that I don't have any.

We run into the same thing with people who need telangiectasia and vascular lasers and things like that, and hyperpigmentation that's nonresponsive to other things where we need to come in with something else.

27:45 Trina Renea: I also think on an aging program, me as an esthetician, first of all, you figure out what their aging issues are that most concern them, and then you put them on a program that includes products, different types of facials. And we're going to start them in this one area, then we're going to advance them to this, then you might go see a derm and get a laser or some kind of treatment with a derm, then you're going to come back to me for this and that. 

And you put them on this long program where they know that you're going to get them there. Sometimes it involves sending them to a derm, and sometimes you have to be like, “That's a plastic surgeon issue.” So you have to really know where you are and put them on a program, because everybody's program is going to be different. Like, this aging program is not universal. It really is dependent on where they're getting their wrinkles, if they have hyperpigmentation, how deep their wrinkles are, how old they are and if they've treated their skin with any products along the way, if they're really advanced in product knowledge or if they're just beginning. 

So I think it really is specific on who the person is and that you know how to put them on the proper program than just saying, “Okay, this is our aging program. First, we put you on these AHAs and this retinol and then you get this kind of facial and you need to have…” Everybody is never going to be the same.

29:09 Rebecca Gadberry: Right. And that's the individuality of aging.

29:13 Dr. Mark Lees: Right. And then we blend different serums and different ingredients, particularly different peptides.

29:20 Trina Renea: It's really teaching your client how to understand. That's what I like to do. I'm sure Mark, too, is teaching them how to understand why they're doing it and not just throwing stuff at them and saying, “This is what you need,” but really teaching them how to treat their aging so that they can go home and do the right things and eat the right things and antioxidants within, and like it's all within and then the outside.

29:45 Rebecca Gadberry: Meditation and controlling stress.

29:47 Dr. Mark Lees: Right, it's the program.

29:48 Trina Renea: Some people stress, yeah, putting them on a…

29:50 Rebecca Gadberry: It's a total program.

29:50 Julie Falls: Totally.

29:52 Rebecca Gadberry: One of the things that drives me nuts is when people come in to see me and they say, “Well, my girlfriend has been using this and my mom's been using this, so they told me to use it.” Well, you're aging differently than they are.

30:08 Trina Renea: I get that all the time.

30:10 Rebecca Gadberry: What everybody else is using may or may not apply to you, which is one of the reasons why you need to see an esthetician or a derm to find out what the guidance is.

30:20 Trina Renea: I have clients who are friends, Julie being one of them, and her friends will come in for facials. I'll have Julie using a product that's specifically for her face and a friend will come in and be like, “Julie’s skin looks amazing. You don't have me on that product. Why am I not on the product?” 

And, “She said you gave her this. Why didn't I get that?” I'm like, “Because you totally don't need that. You have a completely different skin. You need this.” Not that her skin looks bad. She just sees Julie and she wants what Julie is using. She wants the same product.

This happens all the time with people, is that they use the wrong product and then they'll be like, “That product didn't work on me.” Well, you shouldn't have used that product in the first place. 

So, people follow each other.

We have to wrap this up and I do want you guys to know that Mark is going to be on our show again in the future, in a couple more episodes for sure. We're going to be talking about some acne myths with him in the future and some ways that you can mess up your acne program.

31:24 Rebecca Gadberry: Come on. We can say it live on air. You can fuck up your routine.

31:30 Trina Renea: Oh, my gosh, she did not just say that.

31:32 Rebecca Gadberry: I did, but we've said it before.

31:35 Trina Renea: Bleep, bleep. 

31:37 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: On my way over here to the recording, I was listening to a podcast Pod Save America, and it's great.

31:43 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah, they swear all the time.

31:44 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: But not all the time. I feel like whenever they swear, it's so poignant. It's like perfect. The F-word is placed at the most perfect spot. I like it where you just placed it. Let's not fuck up our skincare routine.

31:56 Rebecca Gadberry: Right, because that's what we do. We don't mess it up. We don't put it on the counter and spread it all over the place. That's messing it up. We fuck it up.

32:09 Trina Renea: So, yes, so in the future, you guys, look out for Mark Lees. He will be back with us in future episodes.

32:15 Julie Falls: And wait for the acne episode, yeah.

32:17 Trina Renea: Yeah, it'll be fun.

32:18 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Thank you, Mark. Such a treat.

32:19 Julie Falls: It was great. 

32:20 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Thank you, Dr. Mark.

32:21 Julie Falls: Great information, Mark.

32:22 Dr. Mark Lees: It's so fun. I had such a good time. Thank you all.

32:25 Rebecca Gadberry: Okay. 

32:26 Trina Renea: Talk to you soon.

32:27 Rebecca Gadberry: Bye.

32:27 Julie Falls: Nice to meet you.

32:27 Dr. Mark Lees: Bye-bye.

32:28 Trina Renea: Bye.

[Outro] This podcast is so needed in the world right now. There's so much information out there that it's hard to know who to believe and if it's right for you. We are very excited to be your guides and bring you Facially Conscious. You can find info we talked about today in our show notes and on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. 

Please subscribe, like and review us wherever you listen to podcasts. This helps others find us. And if you have any questions or ideas, please send us an email at info@faciallyconscious.com.