Winter Beauty Secrets

[Intro] Hey, everyone. Welcome to Facially Conscious. I'm Trina Renea, a medically trained master esthetician here in Los Angeles, and I'm sitting with my rock star co-host, Dr. Vicki Rapaport, a board-certified dermatologist with practices in Beverly Hills and Culver City, Rebecca Gadberry, our resident skincare scientists and regulatory and marketing expert, and Julie Falls, our educated consumer who is here to represent you. 

We are here to help you navigate the sometimes confusing and competitive world of skincare. Our mission is to provide you with insider knowledge on everything from product ingredients to medical procedures, lasers, fillers, and ever-changing trends. With our expert interviews with chemists, doctors, laser reps, and estheticians, you'll be equipped to make informative decisions before investing in potentially expensive treatments. 

It's the Wild West out there, so let's make it easier for you, one episode at a time. Are you ready to discover the latest and greatest skin care secrets? Tune in and let us be your go-to girls for all things facially conscious. Let's dive in.

01:32 Rebecca Gadberry: Hello, everyone. Today, we're going to do something a little bit different than what we have traditionally done by interviewing other people. We're going to be interviewing each other. 

And we're going to be talking about our favorite products and ingredients for winter skin to protect it, to winterize it, in other words, to make it flourish and look gorgeous in the winter instead of all dried out and dull and all the other flaky stuff that happens. 

Now, I want to preface this with a little bit of more information. In our podcast, we refrain from promoting specific brand names in the skincare industry and for several important reasons. Firstly, discussing particular brands can introduce bias and compromise the credibility of our opinions, potentially giving the impression that we're endorsing them for undisclosed incentives, which we don't do. 

To maintain a broad and impartial approach, we choose to concentrate on discussing ingredients, skincare concerns, and general recommendations suitable to a wide range of products, strengthening trust that our audience, you, and ensuring that our advice remains valuable and unbiased to you. 

While we highlight exceptional industry innovators in our founders' podcast, our unique focus on the science behind brands sets us apart from other beauty podcasts, offering our audience a more objective and comprehensive understanding of skincare products. So by delving into the research and development, ingredients and technologies that support these brands, we empower our listeners to make informed decisions about their skincare routine and gain deeper insights into the beauty industry's products. 

Our podcast's scientific approach provides a different viewpoint compared to standard brand reviews and recommendations, allowing our audience to make well-informed choices and place your trust in our guidance. All four of us come from that angle. 

So today, we're sitting together. Julie, our very highly educated consumer, Trina, are lovely and very well, I was going to say educated, which you are, a very well-educated esthetician.

03:51 Julie Falls: Very talented. 

03:52 Rebecca Gadberry: Very talented. Dr. Vicki Rapaport, who is our board-certified dermatologist, who does everything for the skin, and myself, who's a cosmetic chemist and also in marketing and education and regulatory in the industry.

Between the four of us, we have seen it all. So we're going to talk today about what we do personally for our own skins, knowing that you're an individual, your skin is different for you. But we're going to talk about what works for us and maybe give you some ideas or insights into what you can do this winter. 

04:32 Trina Renea: Yeah. It's basically taking our skincare into winter. So what do we change or what do we love to use?

And just so you guys know, if you are a monthly subscriber on our Substack page, we will put some links in there and all of our notes. There, we will reveal our actual favorite brands and products when we talk about them on the show. And we don’t talk specific. You can find our specifics over there, if you're interested in what Julie said she loves or something like that. 

05:06 Rebecca Gadberry: But here we're going to just do a description. 

05:08 Trina Renea: Yes. 

05:09 Rebecca Gadberry: It sounds like BeraVe. Just an idea. 

05:15 Trina Renea: Bera V? 

05:16 Rebecca Gadberry: BeraVe. 

05:18 Trina Renea: And what does that mean? 

05:18 Rebecca Gadberry: It's a brand name. 

05:19 Julie Falls: She's not giving the full name. 

05:21 Rebecca Gadberry: But I can't give the full name. But you'll find out what I mean on Substack.

05:23 Julie Falls: Sounds like. It's charades. 

05:28 Trina Renea: So who wants to start? 

05:29 Julie Falls: Let's have Rebecca start. 

05:32 Rebecca Gadberry: Me? I'm always, I like to go last. 

Okay. I'm almost 70, I'll be 70 next year. So my skin has changed over the years, and we're going to talk about changes with age in another podcast. But my skin changes in the wintertime differently than it changed in the wintertime 10 years ago, even five years ago. So what do I do today? 

Well, first of all, my lips get so dry. They're starting to wither on the vine, so to speak. So I don't have as good of a— I mean, the lips don't have a very good barrier anyway. There's no stratum corneum on the lips so you're going to get dehydrated on the lips anyway. But with the aridity, with the lack of moisture in the air and I do more traveling in the air during the winter seasons, because I go see family during the holidays, the big holidays, so I need to protect my lips. 

I will use a very rich lip protector, the name of which will be on the Substack site for those of you who are subscribers. But I also do a nightly treatment on my lips. What a lot of people don't remember, if you're younger than I am, we used to have eye and neck creams. They weren't separate. But you can also have an eye and lip cream. And the same rich products that you put around your eyes at night can be put on the lips as well to treat them.

07:06 Trina Renea: Really?

07:06 Rebecca Gadberry: So I take my eye cream, which is very lubricious, and I put it on my lips at night as a night treatment. 

I'm also a big slugger. I really love to slug in the wintertime. So we've talked about that in a past podcast.

07:21 Trina Renea: Me too. 

07:23 Rebecca Gadberry: You too? Yeah. So I start with a hyaluronic rich, it's got four different hyaluronic acid groups in it with something that's called a beta-glucan, which is a molecule that’s found in baker’s yeast and oats. Put all of that together, I slather that over my skin. I probably put three to four times as much when I'm slugging as when I just wear it for my skincare.

07:50 Trina Renea: So you put that on your face first and then you put the goop?

07:54 Rebecca Gadberry: Then I put the super rich on, yeah. That's where I would put the BeraVe product on. Just teasing. 

08:01 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Don't say that.

08:02 Trina Renea: Is it Aquaphor? 

08:04 Rebecca Gadberry: I can't say because it's on Substack. We're pushing it all on Substack. 

08:08 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: It rhymes with that. It rhymes with BeraVe. 

08:12 Trina Renea: Oh, I know exactly. 

08:13 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes. 

08:15 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: I get it. 

08:14 Rebecca Gadberry: You get it? Okay. 

08:17 Trina Renea: Now that I hear it over the ____ [08:16].

08:19 Julie Falls: Julie is going to the street. 

08:22 Trina Renea: By the way, you're on camera so everybody saw that.

08:26 Rebecca Gadberry: So we all saw that. I also just made a new product that repairs the barrier in five different ways. It's the most barrier repair-active product, I believe, on the market.

08:39 Trina Renea: Do I have it?

08:40 Rebecca Gadberry: I don't know if you do or not. I can't tell you if you do.

08:44 Trina Renea: Can you make a note? Text me.

08:47 Rebecca Gadberry: I don't…

08:46 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Rebecca, is that my favorite one from your lab?

08:49 Rebecca Gadberry: It is. It's the one that you helped do the testing on that you’re in love with. And it works great on the lips. 

08:55 Trina Renea: I got that.

08:57 Rebecca Gadberry: It also works as part of your slugging.

09:00 Julie Falls: I remember you talking about this.

09:02 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah, and I put a pump of it into my daily moisturizer too. Or I’ll put a layer of it over my serums and then I put on a richer moisturizer, if I need it. Like if I'm going to be walking down the street in New York City and it's 11 degrees below zero, I will put something highly protective on my skin rather than my moisturizer that I use in the winter in Los Angeles.

09:25 Trina Renea: Like a Vaseline? 

09:27 Rebecca Gadberry: I can't tell you. You're going to have to look at Substack. 

09:29 Julie Falls: It rhymes with.

09:30 Trina Renea: We've talked about Vaseline and…

09:32 Julie Falls: It rhymes with. 

09:33 Rebecca Gadberry: It rhymes with. 

09:34 Trina Renea: Maquaphor. 

09:36 Rebecca Gadberry: And then, okay, they say to avoid long hot showers in the winter. I love long hot showers in the winter. What I do differently is I will take a product like from, it's an oil, it's a bath oil that's made by a company that sounds like Seutrogena, and I will slather that all over my body. Or you can put a petrolatum-based ingredient, or you can put a lipid-rich ingredient. 

10:07 Trina Renea: In your shower? While you’re in the hot shower?

10:10 Rebecca Gadberry: I will get out of the shower. I will pat myself, not dry myself vigorously off so that the water is still in the skin surface, and then I seal it in. It's kind of like slugging, but with the shower and I seal it in. I do this during the morning. And if I take a shower at night, I do it at night before I go to bed. 

10:27 Trina Renea: Well, I do that. Every time I take a shower, I put an oil. But this is richer than the normal one I put on. It's richer than you normally would. It definitely makes a big difference and you don't dry like a prune like you would if you're doing that in the winter. 

10:43 Julie Falls: Do you wash your face as much in the winter as you…? 

10:45 Rebecca Gadberry: No. I rinse my face with water, probably 10 times just splashing it on my face in the morning. That is to get the microbes off and the saliva off, because I drool at night. A lot of people go yuck, but it's true. You know what? I've said it in front of 5,000 people so I don't mind saying it here. 

11:06 Julie Falls: Probably most people do.

11:07 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah, of course we do, especially as we get older.

11:08 Trina Renea: I don't because I lay like this. 

11:09 Rebecca Gadberry: I know. You lay like a corpse in bed. 

11:13 Julie Falls: Her husband straps her down and ties her. I have no idea how you cannot turn all night long.

11:17 Trina Renea: I don't move. I’ve found a way. 

11:20 Julie Falls: I'm so jealous. He ties you down.

11:23 Rebecca Gadberry: Then my last tip, my last tip is I wear an SPF 50 24 hours a day. The reason that I do is it's a UVA, UVB, HEV protector. And HEV is the high energy visible or blue light that emits from the screens of your devices. 

I watch TV at night. I work on my computer at night. I work on my iPad at night and I work on my phone at night. They're all held close to my face. If I have an HEV protector on at night, I'm protecting my skin.

That's just for all year long, but make sure that you also wear a sunscreen at night. Don't call them sunblocks. There's no such thing as a sunblock. You're going to get some rays in.

12:03 Trina Renea: Sunscreen while you’re sleeping?

12:04 Rebecca Gadberry: Sunscreen while you're sleeping, yes.

12:06 Trina Renea: Why? 

12:07 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, you could take it off before you go to bed. But as long as you're using devices, you need it on. 

12:15 Trina Renea: Well, ever since one of our episodes, and we talked about the light, which is— what episode was that?

12:22 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: The ageless beauty. 

12:24 Trina Renea: Ageless beauty, we were talking about the light.

12:27 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: We were talking about those a few weeks ago. 

12:27 Trina Renea: Yeah, so I went home and I said, “Why doesn't my phone have this?” And it does. My iPhone has, you can go in your settings and there is a thing and you can change it to where the blue light is not there. Your screen looks orange, but you get used to it after a while. 

12:45 Julie Falls: You do it at night or you do it all day?

12:45 Trina Renea: No, I do it all the time. 

12:45 Rebecca Gadberry: All the time, and you can do that with your tablets.

12:46 Trina Renea: I did it on my iPads, too. 

12:49 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah, and newer computers. 

12:50 Julie Falls: Where is it in the setting? 

12:51 Trina Renea: Under brightness, I think. It's where you put on your nighttime screen. It's the nighttime screen and you can leave it on all the time and keep it at that. It takes all the blue light out. 

13:03 Julie Falls: Under Display and Brightness?

13:05 Trina Renea: I think so. 

13:05 Rebecca Gadberry: Then the last one is there are ingredients now, and I don't remember what they are, that protect from infrared. Infrared is the heat ray that is given off in heaters, in fireplaces, whenever you get hot, and the sun. So protecting your skin, especially from indoor heat and fires during the winter is very important. 

13:26 Julie Falls: Definitely.

13:28 Rebecca Gadberry: Because it can curdle collagen, increasing the aging effect of your skin. It can dehydrate your skin. It can damage the barrier. 

13:38 Trina Renea: This is one of my tips. What I do is I use, because of the winter heaters and things in the house, I see so much more dry skin, psoriasis, eczema flare-ups, rosacea flare-ups, all of that. So I tell people to put a humidifier right next to their bed, making sure it's going on their face all night long. That's one of the things that I recommend people. 

14:00 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Rebecca, the infrared ingredient, is that a botanical, the anti-infrared ingredient? 

14:05 Rebecca Gadberry: Some are peptides, some are botanicals. And you know what? I will look them up and maybe we can talk about them in a future podcast. 

14:14 Trina Renea: We can also put them in our show notes.

14:15 Rebecca Gadberry: In the Substack?

14:16 Trina Renea: In the Substack.

14:17 Rebecca Gadberry: Okay. Good. Let’s put it in the Substack.

14:17 Julie Falls: Is this set go to dark.

14:19 Trina Renea: Yeah.

14:22 Rebecca Gadberry: Oh, Trina and Julie are talking about the phone right now.

14:24 Julie Falls: The settings.

14:24 Trina Renea: I think it is the dark. I’ll have to ask Patrick. But if you look up on the internet…

14:30 Julie Falls: Now it looks like that. 

14:30 Trina Renea: No, that’s not it. 

14:32 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Julie, if you hold down your screen and it's in the Brightness, you just touch it and then three options come. You push on it, three options come down below and it's the middle one. It's like Night Shift. 

14:43 Trina Renea: Yeah, Night Shift. 

14:43 Julie Falls: Great. Okay. Thank you. 

14:45 Trina Renea: Yes. And I have my Night Shift on. So I put it on Night Shift from 7:00 AM to 11:50 PM because then I know I'm sleeping and I put on manually enable. 

14:57 Julie Falls: Night Shift, I have 10:00 to 7:00. 

14:58 Trina Renea: And go more to warm. So whenever you have your phone on, I just try to put it on as much as possible.

15:06 Julie Falls: So change my Night Shift to all day, maybe?

15:10 Trina Renea: Well, you have to schedule it. 

15:12 Julie Falls: So right here to the less warm, should I get it more warm?

15:15 Trina Renea: Yes. I have it all the way to more warm.

15:16 Rebecca Gadberry: Are we going to have this part in another podcast?

15:18 Julie Falls: No, people can listen.

15:20 Rebecca Gadberry: Okay. So I just wanted to finish. 

15:22 Trina Renea: Put it on your phone, everyone.

15:23 Rebecca Gadberry: I wanted to finish on the IR. It's not going to be in those sunscreens. You’re going to see it in a moisturizer or a serum. That’s all I had to say.

15:34 Trina Renea: All right. 

15:35 Rebecca Gadberry: Do you want to go next?

15:36 Trina Renea: Sure. I'm Trina. Hi. The main thing that I tell people is to, in the winter, is your face can get more dehydrated or drier. Dry is lack of oil and dehydrated is lack of water. You can have both of those things going on at the same time, but I find in winter from heaters in your car and in your house that that tends to happen. So I, instead of having to find a whole nother moisturizer to love, if you love your moisturizer and you love your products, you don't have to change those in winter necessarily.

What I tell people is to get a good oil and a good hyaluronic serum and add those into your routine, maybe putting on your hyaluronic serums or something that's going to grab moisture into your skin. Use that every day during the winter and when you feel dehydrated. Then you can put oil on before your moisturizer as an extra layer or you could mix a little oil into your moisturizer that you love so you don't have to change moisturizers. That's what I do. Those are the things that I change and, really, that's it. That and a humidifier, and that seems to help. 

And then of course I slug. 

16:56 Julie Falls: Sounds good.

16:58 Rebecca Gadberry: Slugging today means something different than it used to. 

17:02 Julie Falls: Well, first of all, we live in Southern California. 

17:04 Trina Renea: This is Julie speaking. 

17:05 Julie Falls: Yeah. We don't have extreme, extreme cold. However, I have to say that probably right after Halloween I start getting up in the morning and putting on the heat. Then I could immediately start feeling my face getting a little parched. So I'm going to try this winter to not use it as much.

17:24 Trina Renea: Wear sweatshirts. 

17:26 Julie Falls: Yeah. And I know you guys are always telling me that your water intake doesn't really affect your skin that much, but I do notice for me that if I stay hydrated, it really, really does help. 

Like you, both, I only wash my face in the morning with water then I just really daily kind of see what's it looking like. Does it seem drier? Is my rosacea flaring up? What's happening today with my skin? So I pretty much try and stay with a peptide, vitamin C, sometimes a serum here and there, eye cream. And depending upon how my skin is feeling, maybe I’ll do a moisturizer that’s a little richer. And always, always, always sunscreen. 

At night, I’ve been using micellar water and a general cleanser on dry skin and I leave the cleanser on the dry skin while I do other things, like brushing my teeth. I noticed that it works better if you leave it on longer. 

18:49 Trina Renea: Your cleanser? 

18:49 Julie Falls: Uh-hmm. Instead of just cleansing, I put it on dry skin and let it sit there for a while, and then I use water…

18:55 Trina Renea: Like a?

18:57 Julie Falls: A general cleanser.

18:58 Trina Renea: But like a cream cleanser?

19:00 Julie Falls: Yeah. And then, again, the peptide, the vitamin C, and then sometimes a retinol. Then I have some powerhouse moisturizers, if it's dry and it's winter, that I'll use every once in a while. I'll rotate with my regular one. And then if I'm super dry, like you, I will slug with different products. 

19:30 Trina Renea: Not petroleum or…

19:30 Julie Falls: Yeah. 

19:31 Rebecca Gadberry: Not petroleum. Petrolatum. 

19:34 Trina Renea: Petrolatum.

19:34 Julie Falls: Petrolatum.

19:35 Rebecca Gadberry: We don't put black goo on our face.

19:36 Julie Falls: True. The other thing I try to do, we were talking about hot showers is I try to not take them as hot. Then when I'm done, I also have been trying to do my own plunge. I had my plumber make my cold water very, very cold. I tried, even though it's winter or whatever, I try to finish with a really cold, cold rinse and have that on my face too. It feels good. 

20:02 Trina Renea: That's cool. 

20:03 Julie Falls: Yeah. 

20:04 Trina Renea: You can just go cold in your shower. I mean, it's really hard to do it, but that's a good idea. 

20:09 Julie Falls: That's what I do. 

20:10 Rebecca Gadberry: That stimulates oxytocin, the hormone that makes us more loving and kind. 

20:17 Julie Falls: Oh, yeah. There's all this research about these plunge pools. 

20:20 Rebecca Gadberry: Absolutely. 

20:20 Julie Falls: When we were in Mexico. My daughter and I would go in the ocean and in the plunge pool and it felt so good. 

20:27 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Do you have a sauna, Julie, and a cold plunge? You have that?

20:29 Julie Falls: I do. No, no. I have my own cold plunge in my shower with ice cold water, but no. But we did at the hotel in Mexico and it was yummy. It was lovely.

20:39 Trina Renea: It's really heart attack feeling for me. 

20:41 Julie Falls: Is it? 

20:42 Trina Renea: The cold plunge. It's like I can't do it. 

20:44 Julie Falls: You're like in shock. 

20:46 Trina Renea: Yeah, I can't. That shock feeling makes me feel like I'm going to die. 

20:49 Julie Falls: I miss that infrared you used to have. That was nice. 

20:52 Trina Renea: I know. I should have kept that. 

20:53 Julie Falls: We did that too in Mexico. That's fine. There's places to go and do all these things. We should do that. Field trip. 

21:00 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah. Okay, Vicki, what's your winter routine? 

21:05 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: I am shocked that none of you three came up with my favorite winter tip-slash-mantra, and that is an oil cleanser. I hate the word because it's all over Instagram, but I am absolutely obsessed with my oil cleanser.

When I feel like I need some luxurious-smell feeling, I need a little bit of hydration, I just don't want to have any sort of foam on my face, I don't want to have anything lather up, I use the oil cleanser. I do it on dry skin, kind of like Julie. I leave it on, but I actually rub it on and leave it on and smell it and enjoy it and have like a meditation moment because it smells so good.

I get it over my eyes. It gets off my eye makeup. And when you rinse it, it rinses to like a milky water. It rinses completely clean. I kind of fell in love with it after I realized it actually cleaned my face better than any of my foaming cleansers, any of them. I have scrubs. I have cleansers. I have deep penetrating cleansers. I have glycolic cleansers. 

Then after I cleanse, sometimes I'll use like a little peel pad just to give myself a little bit of acid on my skin to kind of help exfoliate. And I would notice after almost every other cleanser, except for this oil cleanser, I would still have so much gunk on my face. I'd have makeup. I'd have sunscreen. You could see it on the pad. Never ever do I see anything on the pad after I use the oil cleanser. 

The oil cleanser that I use is from Rebecca's lab. It has safflower oil and olive oil and rosewood oil and lavender and jojoba and clove. It just smells insane. It feels insane. It lasts way too long. Like, the bottle just keeps going. 

But I just love an oil cleanser. And I've been to Sephora. I've tried oil cleansers. I've tried the supermodel with her oil cleanser. I tried it. It was like, I don't know. I was so excited. I thought it smelled good at first and then it kind of made me sick. It was too sweet and I wasn't into it. I've tried some other oil cleansers and, for whatever reason, this one is my favorite. I'm just so happy that I discovered it.

23:26 Trina Renea: That’s the thing about oil cleansers is just making that feeling of it not coming off or like it's not cleaning. That's nice to know that you feel like it cleanses, actually cleanses off your skin and doesn't leave it feeling oily.

23:44 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Yeah, it doesn't. You know, once in a while, if I'm oily, like if I do it on a day where I really maybe shouldn't have done it and I'm just already kind of oily because that's how I run, I run oily, it doesn't maybe clean off quite as “squeaky clean”, but I do notice on days when I'm dry, it definitely cleans off sort of squeaky clean. But it completely takes off everything. 

24:07 Julie Falls: It sounds like you double cleanse too, because you're using that and the pad or? 

24:12 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Well, I do the pad only once or twice a week just if I want to— because I have this TCA pad that I love. It has trichloroacetic acid, it has saline, azelaic. So it's just like an exfoliate. 

I don't do it every time. No, that would be way too much. I would totally ruin my microbiome if I did that.

24:27 Rebecca Gadberry: Oh, yeah. 

24:29 Trina Renea: Well, also, can I just say that the squeaky-clean feeling is not the best thing because that means your skin is overdried and then that's not a good thing. 

24:37 Rebecca Gadberry: The barrier has been damaged. 

24:38 Trina Renea: Yes. And you have this damaged barrier that now you have to put all these products on to repair. So that squeaky-clean feeling that has been in the marketing for so long is changing.

24:52 Rebecca Gadberry: Removes the microbiome too. 

24:54 Julie Falls: I will use a famous cult-following toner.

24:58 Trina Renea: Which is also stripping, I have to say, because I know what it is.

25:00 Julie Falls: Some of them even have formaldehyde in it. However, it is fabulous. Maybe once a week. That’s all. 

25:09 Rebecca Gadberry: What does it rhyme with?

25:11 Julie Falls: Legique. 

25:13 Rebecca Gadberry: Legique. 

25:16 Julie Falls: But again, I think I've gotten— we're talking about the less is more, less is more, and I think that you find your way. But easing off, and I can't totally get rid of it. I like it. 

25:30 Trina Renea: Well, a lot of toners now are hydrators. They're not really stripping anyway. But what's your other thing you do? 

25:36 Julie Falls: Yes. Tell us. 

25:38 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: I mean, on the same topic, it's the face oil, which, as I've gotten a little older, I have discovered oil for my skin. I used to be so paranoid about putting oil on my face. I didn't want to break out. I didn't want to have clogged pores. I've noticed, especially in preparing for this episode with our topics for winter skin, I just think oil as my last step is the key. 

So, I wash my face. I'm talking at night. I'll wash my face with the oil cleanser. I'll put a little eye cream on. I'll put like a light moisturizer, usually with a little peptide in it. And then I'll wait a minute or so and I'll actually finalize it with this blue face oil that I have. Again, same kind of insane, yummy ingredients. It has sunflower oil and it has jojoba oil, clove oil, orange peel, so it smells really, really good. 

And also, I really like a shine. I like my face to be shiny and it makes it glow.

26:33 Trina Renea: It's the best thing right now, I just have to say.

26:35 Julie Falls: The best, the best. 

26:36 Trina Renea: Your skin looks really good right now.

26:38 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Oh, it does? Thank you. I don't even know if I have anything on it. Oh, yeah, I put a little bronzer for you guys today because I didn't want to look like I was dead. But I do like a glow. 

I have also noticed as I've gotten a little older and also so careful with the sun that I have no color in my skin. I have no pigment. And I look a little dead in the winter. So having a little shine on my skin makes me at least feel a little bit alive when the light bounces off my skin. I don't really love a matte look anymore. I really like it to be shiny. 

27:11 Julie Falls: I'll tell you about a highlight that I use that it's lifechanging. 

27:17 Rebecca Gadberry: A highlight for the hair or for the face?

27:18 Julie Falls: No, a makeup highlight. 

27:21 Trina Renea: We're going to have to put that in the Substack. 

27:22 Julie Falls: That will be on the Substack, but I don't go anywhere without it. 

27:26 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: You mean it makes your skin glow?

27:27 Julie Falls: I don't go anywhere without it. I have one in my purse. It's just the best. 

27:32 Trina Renea: Julie has the best finds. 

27:34 Julie Falls: I do, I do. 

27:36 Rebecca Gadberry: Follow Julie. 

27:37 Julie Falls: Because we don't go in the sun anymore. I love that look of looking sun-kissed, but we have to get it artificially. 

27:47 Trina Renea: Do you know one time I went on a vacation, I was so white that I spray tanned? I had somebody physically spray me down with a tan and it looked so good when I left. I was like, “At least I'll look tan. I won't have to go on the sun.”

As soon as I went in the swimming pool…

28:05 Julie Falls: I remember this. 

28:06 Trina Renea: I turned into like a leper. I had like brown spots and different areas of my skin that were discolored.

28:14 Julie Falls: That was a bad spray tan. Someone did not…

28:16 Trina Renea: That doesn't normally happen?

28:16 Julie Falls: That’s not supposed to happen. No. 

28:18 Rebecca Gadberry: No, it's not supposed to happen. It's the formula. 

I actually got a big account one time because we were making a self-tanner for this huge movie star who was known as the tan master. He was known for his tan. Well, one of his friends came out with a competitive line to his, but we didn't make it. The friend goes into the sun and he's on camera being interviewed by Access Hollywood or one of these big Entertainment Tonight or whatever, and he starts sweating. And it is sweating in rivulets off his face. 

So I called and said, “You know, we could do a better job for you.” And, of course, I had the permission from my first account. I would never do that to an account. But I had permission because I said, “I will vary it and yours will always be better.” So he said, “Yes, go ahead and call him.” He was like, “Because he went into competition with me, he got what he deserved.”

Okay. That's behind the scenes.

29:30 Trina Renea: So it's not supposed to sweat off or come off your skin. 

29:31 Rebecca Gadberry: No, it's how you formulate it. 

29:34 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Wasn't there just one of those— there was Rudy Giuliani. There was a photo of him.

29:39 Julie Falls: I was just thinking about it but I decided not to say that.

29:41 Rebecca Gadberry: No, that was hair dye.

29:44 Julie Falls: But Vicki, you go.

29:44 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: That was hair dye. Okay. 

29:45 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah, that was hair dye. 

29:45 Trina Renea: That was horrible.

29:47 Julie Falls: Was this celebrity, does his name rhyme with Schmamilton, this nameless tanning celebrity?

29:55 Trina Renea: Gorge?

29:58 Julie Falls: Did I get it right?

29:59 Trina Renea: Oh, my God, this is hilarious. 

30:02 Rebecca Gadberry: Okay. We're just going to tie up here. 

Okay. So, my takeaway, because I'm supposed to do the takeaway today.

30:11 Trina Renea: Yes, please. 

30:12 Rebecca Gadberry: Is slugging. Dr. Vi, do you like slugging also? 

30:16 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: I do, yeah. I feel like it's a little thick for me. I know that sounds crazy since I like oil cleansers and face oils, but I wouldn't put slugging all over my face. I do absolutely put it on my lips and around my eyes. 

30:31 Rebecca Gadberry: Okay. So slugging is the takeaway. If you're not doing slugging in the winter, at least once a week, you're probably not doing your skin as much good as you could. I slug two to three times a week. How often do you slug, Trina? 

30:46 Trina Renea: Just when I feel dry, so it's not like a weekly thing or whatever. It just is like, “Oh, God, my skin feels dry tonight,” and I will do it. So it's random. I do like two or three days in a row if I'm doing it, because if my skin is dry, I'll do like three days and then I'll stop. 

31:04 Julie Falls: You know, Dr. Vicki and I talked about the fact that you can get under your eyes. What are those little things called? 

31:11 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Milia. 

31:12 Julie Falls: Milia from a lot of the petroleum products. 

31:15 Rebecca Gadberry: It looks like a whitehead. 

31:16 Julie Falls: Yes. I actually was using one of these products that we use. 

31:22 Rebecca Gadberry: Not petroleum. Petrolatum or petroleum-derived ingredients. 

31:23 Julie Falls: Yes. I was using that under my eyes a lot because I get dry skin there and I did get some milia. And Dr. Vicki put me on a different kind of a thing for under the eye, like a cream. So have you experienced that, the milia from the slugging? 

31:38 Rebecca Gadberry: I've seen that over the years as an esthetician.

31:40 Julie Falls: It doesn't happen to you?

31:41 Rebecca Gadberry: It doesn’t happen to me though, yeah.

31:44 Trina Renea: I'm afraid to get that petrolatum into my eye follicles, my eyelashes, so I don't get it that close up to under the eye. I stay always outside of the orbital bone.

But Dr. Vi, I wanted to ask you, are you okay with acneic patients slugging when they're feeling if they have a dry day, if they're using too much topicals, or they're using topicals in excess? 

32:13 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Even though it's not on the comedogenic list, I don't recommend they go straight to petrolatum. I recommend a nice, gentle moisturizer and avoid all the medications for a couple of days, but I don't go straight to petrolatum. 

32:26 Trina Renea: For acne?

32:28 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: For acne patients, yeah. Just way too overkill. Why would I go all the way nuclear on them? 

32:35 Rebecca Gadberry: Also, when we're looking at slugging creams or oils, we're looking at perhaps ingredients that can cause comedogenicity or pore clogging, but that’s over a series of weeks or months, not one or two nights.

32:49 Trina Renea: Right, so you don’t use it consistently.

32:49 Rebecca Gadberry: Right. 

32:50 Trina Renea: Yes, I had a client actually that I told him to do the slugging for a couple, two, three days because he was having some irritation or redness in his skin. He came back a month later, he's like, “Oh, my God, that thing you told me to do has changed my skin.” And he's like, “I just use it every morning and every night.”

I'm like, “The whole month you did this?”

He's like, “Yeah.”

I'm like, “No, no, no.”

33:15 Rebecca Gadberry: But it changed the skin. 

33:15 Trina Renea: It did, but I'm like, “You can't do that for a long period of time. You can do it for a few days.” You do need to give your skin a break, even if it's like 12 hours leave it on, 12 hours off. You don't want to keep an occlusive barrier over your skin 24 hours a day because, in the long run, that's not going to be good. So I had to readjust his. 

But he was like, “Wait, what? But it worked for me.” That was interesting. 

So we do have a people's question, if everybody's ready.

33:48 Rebecca Gadberry: Ready.

33:49 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Ready.

33:49 Trina Renea: It says, “My esthetician told me my skin may purge after a facial. What does that mean? I didn't want to ask her.” Oh, there's a parenthesis. I'm not supposed to read that?

34:02 Rebecca Gadberry: Let me see. 

34:08 Trina Renea: She said, “I didn't want to ask her or address asking questions when you don't know?”

34:13 Rebecca Gadberry: I don't know what that means. Address asking questions. Oh, I know why I put that down “I didn't want to ask her.” Don't let your esthetician intimidate you. Ask the question if you need it. Don't let your dermatologist intimidate you. 

34:27 Julie Falls: Yeah, they're working for you. 

34:28 Rebecca Gadberry: They're working for you. If you have a question, you ask it. Don't be embarrassed if you don't know an answer because probably…

34:36 Trina Renea: That's what we're there for.

34:37 Rebecca Gadberry: Ten times more people don't know the answer besides you, and that's what we're here for.

34:43 Trina Renea: Yeah, so a lot of people, and I learned this early in my career as an esthetician is I wanted to learn all the big words and I wanted to explain things scientifically. And I would look at my client's face when I was talking and they would have this look of, like, glaze over their eyes. I'd be like, “You don't understand what I just said,” and I started dumbing down my answers and trying to explain it in really simple terms, layman's terms, because I noticed that clients don't understand and they're embarrassed to ask. 

So they'll just listen to you, but they're not getting what you're saying. So I started to dumb everything down and say it really simplified. I don't have to sound super expert with my big words like you do as a chemist, but…

35:28 Rebecca Gadberry: I try to explain what I'm talking about.

35:32 Trina Renea: Yes. So I explain very, very simply to the client, but if a client has, you should always ask questions. And I can usually see it in their face when they have a question and I’ll address it, because I pay attention to that. 

But Dr. Vicki, what do you think about the purging after a facial? Have you heard that in the derm office? 

35:55 Trina Renea: Yeah, absolutely. It happens to me after a facial. My face looks a little— well, not so much anymore, but it would look zitty for a week. It could be that we're changing a little bit of the microbiome. Obviously, the act of pressing and extracting can be aggravating and cause inflammation. 

I don't honestly know what the exact mechanism is because it doesn't happen to everybody, but if it does happen, it always gets better. People should just be patient and especially if they need those extractions, it has to get done. I tell them not to be afraid. 

36:29 Trina Renea: Yeah. If you have a lot of acne or a lot of what they call microcomedones, which are little bumps under your skin that aren't really noticeable on the surface, sometimes when we do exfoliate, steam, opening up the pores, exfoliating, pressing, extracting, sometimes that can cause a little bit if there's something that’s deeper, it will come out later. It may come partially out but not all the way out. 

If we have to poke at your skin or whatever, of course you’re going to have little scabies. It depends on how much your skin gets inflammation. Some people get really inflamed afterwards. Some people don't. But when I train estheticians on extractions, I always talk about sanitation and how to prep the skin and extract, clean the skin, zap the skin, benzoyl peroxide the skin, do everything you can and then calm the skin with ingredients before they leave so that doesn't happen. I don't have a big problem with that, but it's all in how you're extracting and the cleanup process after. 

37:40 Rebecca Gadberry: And I think sometimes we use ingredients that are just too irritating and we get little bumps of irritation that look like purging, but they're actually irritation backlash. 

37:53 Trina Renea: Right. So there's a lot of things in that. Some purging may happen. Sometimes it's the esthetician not doing a good job. 

38:04 Rebecca Gadberry: But that's not saying if you purge, you have a bad esthetician.

38:06 Trina Renea: No. But purging, to me, is your face explodes afterwards, of acne. That should not happen. 

38:15 Rebecca Gadberry: No, that shouldn't happen. 

38:17 Trina Renea: So if you had a bump under your skin and we try to extract it and then it comes out later, that’s a purge of a pimple. Some people have a bad reaction. That should not happen.

38:34 Rebecca Gadberry: But I’ve heard people say, “I'm purging,” when they have one zit. 

38:38 Rebecca Gadberry: Right, so it depends on what you think of the word purge. But also, it's the way that your esthetician tells you how to use product at home afterwards, because a lot of times a client can go home and use products too quickly. That can cause a purge because they're exfoliating at home right after you just did this big facial. 

So I tell people usually wait two to three days before starting to use an exfoliation product again. Don't pick your skin.

39:09 Rebecca Gadberry: Good point. It'll be interesting, as we continue researching on the microbiome, to see if changes in the microbiome after a really good facial are contributing to the “purging effect” that we see.

39:25 Julie Falls: He was talking about hydro facials. That was interesting. 

39:28 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah, I'd love to talk to Dr. Hitchcock about that more. 

39:31 Trina Renea: HydraFacials are basically just a suction that sucks and then blows water.

39:37 Julie Falls: So instead of the microdermabrasion with the sanding thing, it's all done with water. 

39:44 Trina Renea: Right. 

39:47 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: It's not just water. There are peptides and there's acids. 

39:50 Trina Renea: Yeah, they put stuff in the water

39:52 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: There's serums. That's the expensive part of it. Those consumables are expensive because the fluid is full of nutritious, yummy skin products. It's not just water.

40:02 Julie Falls: Do you like them, Dr. Vicki? 

40:07 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: I like it as an option. I like the DiamondGlow. I like the HydraFacial. I think just facials in general are nice. I don't have one machine that I think is the best out of all the facial machines. 

40:17 Rebecca Gadberry: But I can see how that would disrupt the microbiome, and so I think we need to explore it more.

40:23 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: It's blasting it onto the skin.

40:25 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah, I think we should explore it more at some point. 

40:27 Julie Falls: Good. Yes. 

40:29 Rebecca Gadberry: So that's our tips. And again, take what you want and leave the rest. It's kind of a smorgasbord, or whatever they call it, from four professionals. Well, three professionals and a highly-educated consumer. 

40:46 Trina Renea: She's a professional.

40:48 Rebecca Gadberry: She's a professional consumer. 

40:49 Trina Renea: She's a professional consumer for sure. 

40:52 Rebecca Gadberry: Okay, everybody. Have a good rest of your day wherever you are. 

40:57 Trina Renea: Bye. Have a good day.

40:59 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Everybody, have a lovely weekend. Bye. 

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