The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #231 - Dr. Anthony Youn

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Melanie Avalon:
Friends, welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation that I am about to have. I know I always say that, but I am really, really excited. The backstory on today's conversation, I have been wanting to do an episode for so long on cosmetic procedures, Botox, fillers, all of those things, especially because so much of this show is about health and longevity.

Melanie Avalon:
All of that world is about presenting to the world a vision of youth and health and longevity. It's a really interesting way that those go together. Then on top of that, there's all these concerns about, well, beyond esoteric conversations about authenticity, there's questions about the potential toxins or is this an issue?

Melanie Avalon:
Is it healthy? Are there alternatives? I've been wanting to do an episode on this for so long and I've actually also never shared what I personally have done in that world. Maybe on today's episode, I'll share that for the first time, teaser.

Melanie Avalon:
I knew I needed the perfect person for it and I thought it would probably just manifest and come to me. When I got the pitch about Dr. Anthony Yoon's new book, Younger for Life, feel great and look your best with the new science of autojuvenation.

Melanie Avalon:
Well, not only did I see the title and I was familiar with Anthony's work. He's followed by millions. He's on TikTok. He's on Instagram. He has a podcast called the Holistic Plastic Surgery Show. A lot of you guys are probably very familiar with him.

Melanie Avalon:
Not only was I already just completely on board, but reading the book, oh my goodness. I felt like I was just hanging out with friends because he talks about everything that we talk about. He talks about so many guests that we've had on this show.

Melanie Avalon:
I'm just so happy because this is the perfect person to have right now at this moment. I know you've had a crazy day today. Thank you so much for making the time, Dr. Yoon. Thank you for being here.

Anthony Youn:
Oh, thank you so much for having me on. No, this will be fun. I appreciate you having me on and spreading the word. And yeah, let's chat about some fun things.

Melanie Avalon:
So many directions I want to go and I also did ask listeners for questions and got inundated with questions. But to start things off, in the book you talk in the beginning about your own experience with becoming a plastic surgeon, your experience with your age and how people think you're all different ages.

Melanie Avalon:
What led you to doing what you're doing today and in particular this spin you have on it where you do come from a holistic perspective.

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, thank you for asking. So yeah, I'm a board certified plastic surgeon. I did my traditional training in medicine. I have an MD from Michigan State University. I went to general surgery residency training for three years.

Anthony Youn:
I did two years of plastic surgery residency. And then I did a year fellowship out in Beverly Hills with a top named plastic surgeon. And throughout all this time, I was taught basically medicine and I didn't know.

Anthony Youn:
And this is a term I've used in podcasts is I didn't know what I didn't know. And so for many years, I was a traditional plastic surgeon. I performed operations. We did Botox and did a bit of skincare and stuff like that.

Anthony Youn:
And I had a patient that really profoundly affected me. I had a patient with a terrible complication after a facelift. Not her fault, not my fault. Sometimes just when you do surgery, things happen. And it really got me rethinking kind of the whole practice of surgery.

Anthony Youn:
And I was always taught during my training several things like to cut is to cure. There's this saying and other saying the only way to heal is with cold steel. And so as surgeons, we pride ourselves in the operations that we do.

Anthony Youn:
And so if you're a general surgeon, the operation that you wanna ideally do is the biggest, most complex, hardest operation. And that's the Whipple. The Whipple is a 10 hour cancer operation that if you're so lucky that you can scrub into a Whipple, then you are really fortunate.

Anthony Youn:
For plastic surgery, that surgery is probably the facelift. Cause people may trust almost anybody to do their liposuction, but you know if you're gonna do somebody's facelift, you've gotta be the cream of the crop.

Anthony Youn:
And so for many years, I gauge the success of my practice based off how many facelifts I was doing. And then after this complication happened, it really got me into thinking, am I really doing the right thing?

Anthony Youn:
Is the goal of plastic surgery truly the goal that I was always taught to bring people to surgery as that really the right thing? And I realized after many, many months of just kind of soul searching that the goal of being a plastic surgeon should not be to bring patients to the operating room.

Anthony Youn:
It should be the opposite. It should be to figure out how I can keep patients out of the operating room, yet still help them to look and feel their best without going under the knife. And so this kind of got me onto the path of alternative medicine, holistic medicine.

Anthony Youn:
I started reading books from alternative medicine physicians, from nutritionists, from dietitians, from dermatologists and skincare specialists. And that led to this new book of Younger for Life. And it's this whole different way of looking at aging from a more integrative perspective, not the traditional kind of cut first plastic surgery.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay. Now I think listeners will understand why you're the perfect guess for this show. And for listeners, by the way, I cannot recommend enough getting Anthony's book. It's so amazing. And so it dives into, you know, theories of aging and the history of aging.

Melanie Avalon:
And then your, your plan that you have, which is so fascinating because part of it is focusing on how we're supporting collagen in our skin. And then the second part, something that listeners will, their ears are going to perk up.

Melanie Avalon:
You have this autophagy supporting diet that involves intermittent fasting. And, and then on top of that, then the book is a valuable resource where you give your thoughts on all the questions people have about all these potential different cosmetic procedures.

Melanie Avalon:
So get it now. It is the best resource ever.

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, so the idea is this concept of autojuvenation. And it's this belief that, and I feel it's completely true, is that our bodies contain immense regenerative abilities, and it can rejuvenate itself.

Anthony Youn:
But we have to give it the right tools and the right environment to do so. For me, this morning we were talking before we recorded, I did a tummy tuck on a woman who, all her life, after having kids, she had just a ton of extra skin of her tummy to the point where prior to surgery, she was embarrassed to show it to her spouse, who she's been married to for decades.

Anthony Youn:
And so I brought her surgery, I removed almost eight pounds of excess skin from her tummy. And we take patients as plastic surgeons, I take somebody who's healthy, and then I operate on them, I make them technically unhealthy, and I expect that they're gonna become healthy again.

Anthony Youn:
And when you think about it, that is the ultimate of arrogance, of like, I could take somebody who's healthy, make them unhealthy, and then just expect that they're gonna be healthy again. And they are because the body contains this immense regenerative potential, but we have to give it those right tools.

Anthony Youn:
And so what are those tools? Basically, it's five main things. It focuses on what you eat, when you eat, nutritional supplements, skincare, and non -invasive treatments. And I firmly believe that if we focus on these five things, that 80 to 90%, almost everybody can look and feel incredible and hopefully not feel like they need to go under the knife in order to get there.

Anthony Youn:
There's still some things that you can't treat without surgery. Like this patient who's got eight pounds of excess skin hanging from her tummy, going on a healthy diet is not gonna make that go away, but short of those types of things, I think the vast majority of people can just look amazing and not feel that they need to go under the knife.

Melanie Avalon:
I love it. That made me think of two very random tangent questions. One, just because like I said, I asked listeners for questions and I got a question about Temitex from Tara because she said she was interested in it for weight loss but she was scared of the recovery.

Melanie Avalon:
She asked a really interesting question though. She wanted to know if you had thoughts on how if you're coupling it with liposuction, so I guess this could also apply to just liposuction in general, how it affects potentially brown fat.

Melanie Avalon:
Have you thought about that? Like the type of fat that you're taking out?

Anthony Youn:
So a tummy tuck is an operation to remove excess skin from the tummy, typically after massive weight loss or after having multiple children. So it is not a weight loss procedure. No plastic surgery is technically a weight loss procedure.

Anthony Youn:
Now from this woman, I did remove eight pounds from her tummy. So yeah, she will lose those eight pounds technically, but it's a very hard way to lose weight essentially. That's not necessarily why we do it.

Anthony Youn:
Liposuction, the idea behind that is removing fat that is stubborn fat in areas that are disproportionate on the body. So for example, let's say you've inherited saddlebags, like fat pockets on the sides of your thighs, and your mom has it, your grandma has it, and you have it, and you're like, look, I want to get rid of this.

Anthony Youn:
Or maybe a guy will inherit love handles, and it's just no matter how cut this guy gets, he's always has love handles. Those are typically what we ideally do for a lipo. Now sometimes with lipo, people will do kind of a massive amount of lipo just as a general kind of debulking, but that's not typically the usual, it's not the ideal, because we max out with liposuction, you can remove a total of five liters of liposuction at one time according to the FDA.

Anthony Youn:
Before anything more than that, you need to have blood products available and do it in a hospital setting. Five liters is gonna be about, when you take out the blood and everything, maybe 10 pounds, and that's the most.

Anthony Youn:
And that's, you're probably talking about a four hour operation, significant recovery time, like that's a hard way to lose 10 pounds. There are a lot easier ways to lose 10 pounds than that. And so that's the way I would in general look at lipo and a tummy tuck.

Anthony Youn:
And that doesn't necessarily affect brown fat. That's a whole other deal. You don't do a tummy tuck or lipo as a way to improve your health. It truly is a cosmetic procedure not to improve your health necessarily.

Melanie Avalon:
What about laser lipo versus like normal lipo?

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, so normal LIPO, you basically inject anesthetic solution into the fatty area and then you physically remove the fat by sucking it out essentially. And so there's going to be some traumatic because you got to suck it out.

Anthony Youn:
You use a long metal cannula, like it's kind of like a long metal rod, and you break that fat up as you're sucking it out. Laser LIPO has an added step where you take a laser, insert it under the skin, and you try to heat the skin and the fat with that LIPO before removing it.

Anthony Youn:
And there was a belief that that will help to tighten up skin. In reality, the amount of skin tightening you get from it is negligible. It's very minimal and it is more considered to be a bit of a marketing gimmick.

Anthony Youn:
It was really popular probably about 10 to 12 years ago. And now most of the companies that had laser LIPO have discontinued them because doctors and patients have figured out that it really doesn't do a whole lot.

Melanie Avalon:
And now you've just got me thinking because we often hear about how fat itself can be inflammatory and self -perpetuating and release inflammatory cytokines. When people do fat transfers, does any of that ever transfer over?

Melanie Avalon:
Like can people get inflammatory effects where they put in fat somewhere else in their body?

Anthony Youn:
You know, that's interesting. So the idea behind fat transfer is that you lipo suction fat, you keep it sterile. Sometimes you'll purify the fat so you can remove like blood and fluid from it. And then we re -inject it into parts of the body that you want to be fuller.

Anthony Youn:
So the most common area is the face. I do a lot of that in the face. The benefit is that our face ages in three dimensions and by adding fat back into the face it helps to fill areas that may have gotten thinner with age or, you know, more narrow or gaunt.

Anthony Youn:
Another area that we injected is into the buttocks. That's kind of controversial because it does have definite major risks and people die from that operation sometimes because if you actually inject the fat into the blood vessels of the buttocks people can die very quickly from it.

Anthony Youn:
So it's an operation that is still being done quite a bit. I don't do it because of the risks and it has to be done very carefully if you're going to have a BBL. That's the BBL operation. And then the final area that's commonly injected with fat are the breasts as another option to basically enhance the breasts.

Anthony Youn:
That I have my own concerns with too long term, you know, fat is chock full of stem cells. Is that going to potentially, you know, impact the future risk of breast cancer? We don't know that. Really when you inject fat only about half the fat or less will stay in that body part.

Anthony Youn:
As far as creating inflammation there, I mean, you know, fat with estrogen, you know, you can get estrogen deposits, you know, increased from fat, but I don't know that's ever really been studied as far as more of an inflammation perspective.

Melanie Avalon:
And just really quickly, because my friend Morgan asked, she wanted to know if you had thoughts on the new lasers for the chest that help with the boob jobs, like the new lasers. Does that ring a bell?

Melanie Avalon:
But they do now before the boob job?

Anthony Youn:
I do a lot of breast surgery that I've not heard of. So I'm not sure, you know, the problem that you have now is that there are doctors who make up their own marketing kind of gimmicks and they'll say, oh, I do this and it's gonna be so much better.

Anthony Youn:
And it literally is just a lie. It's just to kind of market to kind of get them out there. And a lot of times it'll give, you know, very fancy names to things. So for example, many years ago, the number of faceless performed by plastic surgeons dropped significantly for a few years because there was this procedure called the lifestyle lift where they had all these paid ads on cable TV and stuff.

Anthony Youn:
And people were all around the country were opening up these lifestyle lift centers where people would have these quote unquote, revolutionary mini facelifts. Well, essentially it was a regular facelift.

Anthony Youn:
They just did it under a local anesthetic and they just weren't very aggressive with it. And so for many years they bought all these ads and people had these operations done. And it took a couple of years before the public realized that it was just a big scam, that there was nothing revolutionary about it.

Anthony Youn:
There was nothing special about it. And in fact, the doctors performing it were low quality surgeons. And so the results were not good at all. And eventually the company went bankrupt. But that hasn't stopped a lot of other people from kind of taking that model and doing it the same way and saying, hey, we're gonna create this quote unquote, revolutionary procedure, even though it's the same thing that other doctors do or maybe it's not even as good, we're gonna market it for, you know, in some way.

Anthony Youn:
And then basically fool people into having it done. And there you go. And this happens all year long with procedures. So you just gotta be careful. You know, I think that if you're having a surgical procedure, you're in biohacking, like you can't biohack a surgical procedure.

Anthony Youn:
You can biohack other things. But like, you know, if you've got like a secret to a surgical procedure, we've thought about it. And if anything is truly revolutionary, doctors will share it with each other.

Anthony Youn:
Like it's not gonna be like a secret. If you've got a secret, then in the end, the reason why it's secret is because you don't wanna share it because you know it's BS. And it's nothing special.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow, okay, I love that.

Anthony Youn:
A surgery is very, very different than non -surgical things. Like biohacking, you cannot biohack in surgery. You know, you can't just try stuff. Like, and if you do, unfortunately you're experimenting on patients and that can become, when you deal with surgery, that can become a very, very difficult situation.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow. So I guess the first surgeries for all these different procedures, they were like the initial experimentation or was it pretty much known how it was going to turn out?

Anthony Youn:
Because sometimes you can take surgeries and you can do little tweaks to see if it improves. And this is what we discussed at our conferences. But to create a new operation is not commonly done. Usually it's some type of offshoot of something that's already been done.

Anthony Youn:
So yeah, I mean, we do advance by trying new procedures and techniques, but it's not quite the same, I would guess, as like a biohacking thing. Because there are such huge ramifications, you have to be very careful with that type of thing.

Melanie Avalon:
That completely makes sense.

Anthony Youn:
because I mean the the drawback is a patient could have a complication and and just real quick when you get sued and knock on what I've been in practice 20 years I've not been sued yet but when you get sued what they sue you for is performing a procedure or doing a decision outside of the standard of care and that makes it very difficult to do stuff stuff like a like quote unquote biohacking of surgery because you're essentially then trying something that's different that's going to be outside the standard of care and if they have a bad outcome from it you are liable for that that's a big deal.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow. So it's pretty difficult to innovate in the world of surgery.

Anthony Youn:
It is difficult to make like a massive innovation. Like a new. Yeah, you can, there are little tweaks. So these operations that we do, we make little tweaks along the way, which really is the best way, because once again, you don't wanna do a massive, you know, massive different operation, and then find that your patient had a bad outcome from it, because you should have done something that is tried and true.

Anthony Youn:
You know, that's not fair to the patient. And patients aren't gonna sign onto that. Like, well, I know that this tummy tuck, if I do it like the way that, you know, if you do the tummy tuck, the way you've done the last 1000, I'll get a nice result.

Anthony Youn:
But if you try this new thing, then maybe it will be better, or maybe everything will fall apart. Like, that's not okay. Cause it's a person's life you're dealing with here. And you can't, you know, biohackers a lot of times will, biohack their own body first.

Anthony Youn:
Well, I'm not gonna test my techniques on myself. That's not possible. So there you go. Although in the past with medical stuff, doctors sometimes would try stuff on themselves, but not surgery so much.

Melanie Avalon:
stuff you never think about, or at least we never think about, who aren't doing surgeries. Okay, just some spin -off esoteric questions that this may be think of, because you were talking about basically hinting at the signs of aging and like losing the fat and looking gaunt and things like this.

Melanie Avalon:
This is super esoteric, but I have thought about this before. Do you think so aging, like the concept of aging and how it presents on the face, you referenced a lot of really incredible studies. You talk about a study where people's, like how old they look, I think it was like a Danish twin study, how they look on the outside correlated to their actual ages, which is very, very cool to read.

Anthony Youn:
correlated, Holly looked on the outside correlated to how long they were going to live. And so the younger looking of a pair of identical twins ends up living longer than the older looking. But the big question is, is correlation versus causation?

Anthony Youn:
Is it that the younger looking twin was just healthier? And so that's why they live longer. And I think that's probably more of what it is because really, I have a friend of mine, probably a common friend, you know, Trevor Cates?

Anthony Youn:
She's a naturopathic doc.

Melanie Avalon:
She was possibly gonna come on the show actually so yeah

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, yeah, she's great.

Melanie Avalon:
We did read her book. It's like sitting over there.

Anthony Youn:
So she calls our skin our magic mirror, which is so true. It really shows what's going on on the inside of our body. I mean, it's our largest organ. And what shows on your skin truly is what's on the inside of the body.

Anthony Youn:
And especially when you deal with the gut. There's something called the gut skin axis, where there is a direct correlation between the health of the gut and the health of the skin. Something that we're learning more and more about.

Anthony Youn:
But now there are some studies that are showing connections between the health of the gut and certain inflammatory skin disorders like eczema, rosacea, and acne. And so all of that definitely is intertwined.

Melanie Avalon:
Do you think we're born with the understanding of age and how it looks on people, or do you think it's something that we learn based on... We just see people who are older and they look a certain way, and we see people who are younger and they look a certain way.

Melanie Avalon:
The view of aging, is it something you think we know intuitively, or is it something that we learn just because we see it in culture?

Anthony Youn:
I do think it's something that we learn and all cultures look at aging differently. You know, so my parents, they came from Korea, their first generation immigrants. And, you know, we always have looked at people who are older as wiser and are elders.

Anthony Youn:
And there's always been, there's always been a reverence towards them and an admiration just for the fact that they're older. When you think about it, you know, it may not be deserving. You know, there may be older people who are really like not intelligent or they're bad people, yet you still have to revere them because they're just because of the fact that they survived.

Anthony Youn:
But you compare that to here in the United States where it's like, what do you, you know, you see older people and they're not, you know, portrayed well in our media in general, you know, they're portrayed as being clueless, as being slow, you know, the popular term now here for the younger people are boomers, you know, these are boomers.

Anthony Youn:
Now, people consider me to be a boomer, even though I'm generation X, you know, to young people, anybody who's older and kind of clueless is a boomer. And so I unfortunately, I think our society has gone in the wrong direction where we should be revering our older folks, we should be respecting them and admiring them.

Anthony Youn:
But we unfortunately are kind of doing the opposite now. And we so value in our society youth, that I think it's overvalued more so than possibly ever before.

Melanie Avalon:
I wonder how that will change like in the future. Cause what do you think is the, and I guess we would need to define how far in the future, but do you see a future at all where we completely eradicate aging and then the people who are boomers look young, like really young?

Anthony Youn:
I don't think so. I mean, I think in the end, you know, there's, as you know, there's a difference between your chronological age and your biological age. I don't think that we'll ever be able to, there's never going to be a magic delorean that's going to bring us back in time.

Anthony Youn:
Nobody's going to be Benjamin Button. But I do think that there are, you know, realistic ways, and you have talked about before, to biohack your age, your biological age back. But unfortunately, it's going to continue moving forward.

Anthony Youn:
That's the problem. And so the way in general, the way I look at aging is that, you know, and I'm 51 now, and turning 40 was tough. Turning 50 was a lot harder than that. And the way I look at it though, is that I've got friends of mine now.

Anthony Youn:
I had a friend of mine not that long ago who died, and it was like, dang, you know, people are actually starting to die now at this age. And so I do look at aging as a blessing, because God forbid I wouldn't want the opposite of that, which is you're in the ground.

Anthony Youn:
But at the same time, I think this is a very exciting time to get older because we have so many things that we can do to turn back the clock and to slow down that aging process and to feel and look amazing even in our 50s.

Anthony Youn:
I mean, I was sent to a meme the other day from, there's one of my old favorite bands wearing up was the Traveling Willbaries. And this was an old supergroup of George Harrison, who was from the Beatles, Roy Orbison, who was like big in the 60s, I think, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan.

Anthony Youn:
And like at the time, they were considered all these old geezers that got together for the supergroup. And I just found out that most of them were in their freaking 40s. And I was like, dang, or you find out that the Golden Girls are in their 50s when they're on that show.

Anthony Youn:
Aging is looked at very differently now. We have so many things available to us. So even though chronologically I may be 51, the hope is that you can feel, look, and act like maybe you're in your 30s.

Anthony Youn:
But at once again, it comes down to this concept of auto -juvenation. It's the fact that our bodies have this regenerative potential and regenerative abilities. You just have to give it those tools and the environment for it to do so.

Anthony Youn:
And I firmly believe that, yes, you can look and feel great when you're in your 60s, 70s, and 80s if you do those right things.

Melanie Avalon:
It's crazy that you say that. I was literally last night listening to a podcast and they were talking about that very concept, about how through the decades, like basically what looked older, it's what you just said, in culture and media, what looked older was like way younger age -wise than it is today, and it's like mind -blowing.

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, and it's not that they're just wearing different clothes. It's that we have so much more available to us with regards to skincare, with regards to non -invasive treatments, learning more about nutrition and the immense importance of your diet and even intermittent fasting and things like that that can help really to slow down that aging process.

Anthony Youn:
So that even JLo in her fifties looks amazing and I mean, she's an amazing shape. She's the same age as some of the Golden Girls when they're on that show. I mean, it's crazy.

Melanie Avalon:
Are there any studies, because I can see how we've made massive advances with everything that you just said, you know, skin care, cosmetic procedures, so many different things. We also have been saturated for a while in processed foods and environmental toxins and things that you talk about in the book as being an issue.

Melanie Avalon:
I'm just, I'm super curious. Do we know what aging looked like on like hunter -gatherers? Like they had way more physical stress, but they didn't have like the mental maybe as much.

Anthony Youn:
We have to keep in mind that back in those times, people did not live nearly as long as us. You know, I mean, I know that there are biblical stories of people living for 100 years and 200 years and things like that, but realistically, you know, people back then did not live nearly as long as we do now.

Anthony Youn:
I mean, the average life expectancy for a woman is in her 80s, you know, and that's just, it keeps extending, but I think what we have to be wary of is the difference between health span and lifespan and the fact that, yes, we are extending our lifespan so people are living into their 80s, but what is the quality of their life?

Anthony Youn:
And that's a part of the book that I think is really important is the fact is that, you know, you can look younger, but what is your quality of life as you get older? And the ideal would be to have a long health span where your, you know, health span is, lifespan is how long you live, health span is how long you live and feel active and feel good, active, be productive and all of that.

Anthony Youn:
And, you know, here in our society, unfortunately you get people who are in their 60s, basically kept alive by modern interventions. You know, they're not healthy, they're on multiple medications, they may not be very mobile, they're in chronic pain, they may have invasive procedures done every several months, you know, that's not the best way to live.

Anthony Youn:
And the ideal is what you see in some of these other countries where people are active well into their 80s and then all of a sudden they die, you know, when they're 90 or something from a quick illness.

Anthony Youn:
Like that's how I would like to go is I wanna be that person who's in his 70s hiking, you know, in the mountains and things like that, traveling all around the world and feeling active and alive and really feeling good about how you look, you know, that's a part of it as well.

Anthony Youn:
But in order to do that, once again, you can't just take all of this for granted, you know, it's not a lot of work to turn back the clock that way and to feel and look your best, but it does necessitate following your diet, it does necessitate ideally doing a little bit of intermittent fasting if you can, you know, adding those supplements in so you're not nutrient depleted and then working on the skincare and maybe even some noninvasive treatments if you can.

Melanie Avalon:
And even with the super centenarians that live to be 110 plus, it's the same trajectory as you just mentioned. They're great typically up until the end, and then they very quickly just die.

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, they're not sitting on the couch eating popcorn and chips watching TV every day.

Melanie Avalon:
You also, I thought this was so interesting because you referenced a 2018 study in the book about the age of people and whether or not they want to live longer. And it found that the older people were, the more they wanted to live longer, whereas the younger people weren't really thinking about longevity as much.

Melanie Avalon:
That speaks to a theme I've been encountering in life because I've, I've been obsessed with this topic. I remember the first time I thought about aging and how I needed to like stop aging. It was when I was 11 because spy kids came out and I was like watching it and I was like seeing how old the main actress was.

Melanie Avalon:
And I was like, okay, she's like, I think she was like 13. I was 11. I was like, I was like, okay, I've got until I'm 13 to like have made it. Don't be so hard with yourself. I know. I'm like, and then I kept on to like move it back a little bit.

Melanie Avalon:
I was like, okay, well, 13. But that's when I started becoming obsessed with aging, like living forever. And I thought everybody wanted to live forever. Apparently they don't. Do you want to live forever?

Anthony Youn:
No, no, I don't.

Melanie Avalon:
That's the common answer.

Anthony Youn:
Well, our common friend Dave Asprey wants to live to 180. That would be nice, but I think it's unlikely at this point. For me, I think I look at it on short term stuff. So I think I've got two kids, one's in, they're both in high school, one's a senior, and my daughter's a sophomore.

Anthony Youn:
My number one thing right now is I wanna make it to her to walk her down the aisle at her wedding. And if I do that, then I will be happy. But we'll see, like right now that's my immediate goal. I mean, I don't know when she's gonna get married, she hasn't even had a boyfriend yet.

Anthony Youn:
But someday I wanna be there to walk her down the aisle. And then once I do that, I will die a happy man, probably. And who knows, maybe I wanna go longer than that if I can. But yeah, I don't look at it from like Dave's perspective of, oh, 180, what am I gonna do to, for me, I look at it, okay, what am I gonna do to get to that point where my daughter gets married and her dad can walk her down the aisle.

Melanie Avalon:
I love that approach and I wish, I sort of wish I felt that way. I feel like that would be an easier perspective, but yeah. I'm actually, I'm going to see Dave next week in Austin to record a podcast for, for my other show.

Melanie Avalon:
So I'm going to have to ask him if his, if his 180 is still, still the a thermometer, but.

Anthony Youn:
I think it is. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That's gonna, yeah. He's not even like, he's not nowhere near halfway. He's not even a third of the way there. It's like, he's got a long ways to go.

Melanie Avalon:
I know, long ways to go. I would never want to put like an actual number out there because then it's like you, you're just setting yourself up for a failure.

Anthony Youn:
I mean, you put a number out there, 180. That's a pretty hefty number. Like I think I'd start at 100 first, but hey, you know what, this is Dave. So, Dave goes by his own tune, so it's all good.

Melanie Avalon:
I know. It's hefty and it's highly specific. I like to keep things vague. But okay, here's the question for you. I want to tell listeners about my Botox experience. Like I said, I've never talked about anything that I've done cosmetically.

Melanie Avalon:
I don't think publicly, so this is the first time. I had never done Botox and I'm embarrassed to say I was judgy about it and I didn't even know exactly what it was. I always thought it was that you were kind of treating aging once it happened.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, so I wasn't really clear. I hadn't really looked into it. And then I was going to my studio where I do M -Sculpt, which that's a whole tangent. I'm obsessed with M -Sculpt. Are you really? Okay.

Melanie Avalon:
You tried it?

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, yeah, I have it. Oh, yeah, I have it.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, you have it. You have it at home.

Anthony Youn:
Not at home. No, that's in the office. Yeah, yeah.

Melanie Avalon:
Man, if I had an office with M -Sculpt, like of my own, I would just not be good. I would just be on that machine like all the time. It's very great for like working because you can like do work calls while like getting a workout.

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, while you're stimulating your muscles to contract 20 ,000 times over a half hour.

Melanie Avalon:
So, and then you build muscle, which is healthy metabolically. My only concerns are the EMF exposure.

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, I mean, I think it's overall a nice treatment. I think that unfortunately some people make it more than it is. As far as, you know, there are claims, I feel like it's, you know, it's not, the results are nice, but they're still subtle.

Anthony Youn:
And I think that's the important thing. And you do have to continue doing it because, you know, it's like a workout, like you can't work out once and then be like, hey, I don't ever have to work out again.

Anthony Youn:
Am I also going to stay the same? No, I mean, you do have to continue, you know, kind of keeping things up to an extent.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, let me ask you, because I've been doing it for a few years now, and I always ask them, like, what's the best maintenance protocol? And they're like, well, some people do it once a month. Some people do every three or four months.

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, I don't know that there's a specific one for everybody. I do think maybe once every three months would make sense. Once a month is a lot. I would think once every three months would make a lot of sense.

Anthony Youn:
Every three to four I think sounds very reasonable to me.

Melanie Avalon:
like a session or like multiple sessions in a row.

Anthony Youn:
No, like a session. I mean, you can always do more. I think it just depends on what type of result you're looking for. And if you want to continue building, then you could do more than one. If you want to just keep it, then I would say maybe one treatment every three months is pretty reasonable.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, that's valuable feedback. I'm very casual with it. I just kind of just do it. I'll be like, I feel like a session. But so they do Botox where I go for that. They finally, they kept trying to get me to come in for a consultation for it every single time.

Melanie Avalon:
Finally, I was like, okay, I'll listen. So I went in, I went in there being like, I'm never getting Botox. I walked out, I was like, I should have gotten Botox yesterday. Like I didn't realize, and here's the irony about all of it.

Melanie Avalon:
Cause we talk in the world of biohacking about addressing the root versus the symptom. Botox is literally addressing the root cause. I was like, oh, this is addressing the root cause and it's preventative.

Melanie Avalon:
It blew my mind. So my question and my thoughts, I get ZMN because of the lack of fillers and additives. Is the, well, A, is that correct? And how I just assess it as being preventative and root cause and be the toxin because it's one of the most toxic things, I think, that we like know about.

Melanie Avalon:
Does it stay local in the muscle? Are you concerned about it longterm?

Anthony Youn:
So yeah, so what Botox is, as you mentioned, is it's a neurotoxin. It prevents the transmission of nerve impulses to muscles. And so it started off, doctors were using it for the muscles around the eyes that would get spasmodic.

Anthony Youn:
You inject it into the muscle, and then people would have an improvement in their muscle spasms of their eyeballs. Not the eyeball has muscles, but the muscles connected to it. And so they realized that as they were injecting it, that people's wrinkles were getting better.

Anthony Youn:
And it was actually a husband -wife team, where the husband was an ophthalmologist, and then the wife was a dermatologist, and the dermatologist's wife was like, oh, geez, the wrinkles are gone. And so we have wrinkles called dynamic wrinkles.

Anthony Youn:
Certain wrinkles of our face are caused by muscles that contract, and these are called dynamic wrinkles. And there are three main areas. It's the wrinkles between the brows, the frown lines there, the crow's feet wrinkles, and the horizontal forehead wrinkles.

Anthony Youn:
All these are caused by specific muscles. And if you inject Botox into those muscles, you can prevent the transmission of nerve impulses to those muscles for about three to four months. Eventually it wears off, and the muscles kind of start working again.

Anthony Youn:
So yes, you are targeting the root cause of those wrinkles by tackling those muscles. I'm not a huge fan of preventative Botox. There are people who are in their early 20s who want to get Botox done, because they think, oh, I just will never get wrinkles.

Anthony Youn:
The problem with that idea is, number one, is a medical procedure, and there are risks of it, although the most I've ever seen of probably treating over 20 ,000 of them is a droopy eyelid a couple of times over the past 20 years.

Anthony Youn:
So it's not like you're dealing with like big potential risks. But the bigger thing is that some people will get antibodies to Botox. If you do Botox too much, or if you've done it for a long, long time, you can get some resistance to it.

Anthony Youn:
You know, your body may create antibodies to that Botox, to those proteins, and deactivate them so that it doesn't work as well for you. So are you doing yourself a service by getting Botox when you don't really need it, when you're in your 20s, and the wrinkles are barely visible, and then you find that when you're in your 40s, and those wrinkles are getting deeper, you try to get Botox, and it doesn't work anymore because your body has antibodies to it.

Anthony Youn:
And so you could be shooting yourself in the foot by doing it too early. So for me, I'm not a fan of preventative Botox. Some people call it prejuvenation, where you're actually, you know, preventing wrinkles, but I feel like it's a bit of a waste of time and money and effort, and may even, like I said, be a drawback in the long run.

Anthony Youn:
As far as complications and risks, you know, are they going other areas, Botox can spread, and that's why, you know, once again, I've seen a couple of droopy eyelids over the past 20 years. Not that we injected into the eyelid, but you inject it, let's say, near the brows, and it may spread down to the eyelid and affect the muscle that opens and closes your eyelid.

Anthony Youn:
And so it can spread, but as far as going anywhere else than body, there was actually a rat study, and this is a rat study, so you don't know if that's the same in humans, where they injected Botox into the facial muscles of a rat, and then they tested the cerebrospinal fluid afterwards and found some botulinum toxin in the cerebrospinal fluid of the rat.

Melanie Avalon:
like immediately after they tested.

Anthony Youn:
I'm not sure the timeline of it, but they did find it in the CSF of the rat, the cerebral spinal fluid. It doesn't appear to have any known complications that we can tell, but that was something that they did see in one study.

Anthony Youn:
That being said, like I said, I have treated over 20 ,000 people in my office with Botox. It's been used cosmetically for probably over 30 years now. And unless you're getting black market Botox or doing something really crazy with it, I just don't see significant complications from it.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, gotcha. And now I remember how they pulled me into the room. They were saying I could do it for my TMDD, my TMJ related pain. So I do it for that and that's been a game changer, injecting it to my massacres.

Melanie Avalon:
The thing that happened to me, and this actually kind of relates to something as well that you talk about in the book, I've done it or I do it in my forehead related areas, not a ton. Like I just, I told her I just want like a little bit.

Melanie Avalon:
One of the times she did it, she kind of like over did it. She, I don't know, she blasted me. It sort of made my, I got the eyebrow dropping effect and I felt over frozen. And it was so interesting because I don't really ever typically experience feelings of depression or anything like that.

Melanie Avalon:
But for the week or so following where I had that experience of everything having dropped, it made me, I mean, I literally felt depressed for a week. And you talk in your book about a study where the opposite effect where, because it like forces people into a smile, I think or something.

Melanie Avalon:
There's something about how it affected people's mood beneficially depending on where it was injected because of the muscles affecting the mental state, which was cool to think about.

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, and it's possible. So the idea is that, and it's a very simple idea, if you're feeling down, if you force yourself to smile, you may feel better. So there are studies that show that if you have Botox done, it can help to improve depression and moods.

Anthony Youn:
But also, it does make sense if you have Botox done and it makes it so you look like you're frowning, that maybe it does the opposite too. I don't think that Botox has some type of psychiatric effect where the Botox, I do think it has to do more with your expressions.

Anthony Youn:
And you may find that after having that done, and number one, being unhappy with the result, number two, maybe it causing you to have like kind of a permanent kind of, not a frown, but you know, look like you're looking stern, that that could impact your mood as well.

Melanie Avalon:
exactly, I'm glad you clarified. It's the mechanical change to the facial expression that you're making, then affecting your mental perception. I just remember going into my weekly therapy session, like the next day, and I had a lot of other really stressful things happening.

Melanie Avalon:
But I was literally just like balling on the couch about the photo talks. And the thing is, you couldn't even really tell that much from outside perspective. But it made me really realize how much we see ourselves a certain way compared to society.

Anthony Youn:
Well, I think it's important to realize with something like Botox, a good thing is that the results do wear off and within three to four months it will be gone and hopefully even sooner than that. That's different than surgery.

Anthony Youn:
In worst case with Botox, you look a little weird for a few months and it goes away. With surgery, that's a different story. So you got to take it much more seriously. So yeah, that's the big thing with Botox is just keep that in mind.

Anthony Youn:
Is it just temporary? And then what I do recommend if somebody is going to actually try Botox is a forehead is the last place to start because that will change how your eyebrows look. If you're going to start with Botox, you start between the eyebrows in those vertical frown lines or and or do the cross feet.

Anthony Youn:
When you do the forehead, it can really change your appearance because it impacts those muscles that will shape your brows. So if you've got, let's say an arched brow, it may make your brows look more arched or it may flatten them.

Anthony Youn:
You know, if you've got flat brows, maybe you'll arch those and that could be nice. Or if you make them even flatter, then that could make you look like you're really tired or something. So just be real careful with the forehead.

Anthony Youn:
If anybody is listening to this and like, maybe I will try a little Botox and start with the frown lines between the brows and or the cross feet first.

Melanie Avalon:
It's so interesting because I was convinced it was... Because I had it between my brows, forehead, and then the outer brow. I was convinced it was from between the brows that was causing the problem, but maybe it was from up above.

Melanie Avalon:
It was probably the forehead, yeah, yeah. So, so interesting. A good story I had since I said I've never said this publicly. I did have a rhinoplasty, septoplasty. Do you like performing that procedure, by the way?

Anthony Youn:
So I actually gave up doing that surgery about 10 years ago. I did a lot of rhinoplasty early in my career, but honestly, I never liked doing the operation. And so as I got really busy, I'm like, you know what, I don't really enjoy doing this.

Anthony Youn:
So I think I'm not going to anymore. So I've been very fortunate that I can kind of cut out those operations I just don't love doing.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, this is so interesting. So what makes you enjoy an operation like one type versus another? Like, is it the actual physical viscera of what you're manipulating?

Anthony Youn:
You know, I think preferring to do certain operations over others, just you find them more interesting. Rhinoplasty is a very difficult operation. You don't think it should be because just a couple of bones and a couple of cartilages.

Anthony Youn:
But the problem with rhinoplasty is that sometimes what you see on the operative table is not what they're going to get afterwards. And studies show that even a minimum or even a millimeter of asymmetry, even if it's just due to, let's say scar tissue, you can see in a normal speaking distance.

Anthony Youn:
And so it is the operation cosmetic surgery wise. It has the highest revision rate where we redo it. And so just, you know, for me, I don't love revising stuff. Uh, obviously if we need to, sometimes we will, but I find that, I found that kind of frustrating because, you know, sometimes you get a really nice result and maybe you think it looks good, the patient doesn't, then it's like, okay, what do you do now?

Anthony Youn:
Cause it's so subjective. So it's just not one that's been my favorite. I did a lot of them. I think I did a really nice job with them. Some surgeons love doing it, but it's just not my favorite.

Melanie Avalon:
you might be really familiar with this. We have this idea that forming a new habit takes a certain amount of time. And I'm pretty sure it was based off of studies of people getting plastic surgery and how long it took them to see their new self as their new identity.

Melanie Avalon:
Like that's where that idea came from, which I think is fascinating.

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, I think it takes, you know, what I see with my patients when we do, you know, changes, it can take a good six weeks sometimes for people to incorporate these changes into their sense of self. Until then, sometimes they feel their body is just kind of not theirs or, you know, it's kind of an odd thing, but it can take a good six weeks before somebody really is like, oh yeah, I forgot that I had this done.

Anthony Youn:
You know, now it's just me.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, my experience though was it was something I've been wanting to do since, also since middle school. I just had a bump, a dorsal hump. Every time I think about it, I'm so grateful. It literally just makes me so happy because it basically just got rid of something that was really bothering me for years and years and years.

Melanie Avalon:
And then it was gone. Because I used to be really self -conscious about looking to the left or looking to the right, like my profile. Now I could. Now I can look to the left. I mean, I could do that before.

Melanie Avalon:
Well,

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, I mean, with procedures like that, whether it's a surgery or whether it's even just something minor, doing a noninvasive treatment or trying, let's say, red light therapy or IPL, there is a feeling that you can get where it's kind of the way I describe it.

Anthony Youn:
It's akin to like if you go buy a new shirt and you wear that, you go buy a new shirt, you put that shirt on and sometimes it just improves your mood and you feel good. Even though it's not like people are staring you because you're wearing a new shirt, you take that in and it makes you feel good.

Anthony Youn:
And don't we all deserve to feel that about our appearance? I mean, there's so many people that live their lives feeling embarrassed or not feeling beautiful in general. And one of the things I really try to do is try to encourage people that I do think that there's beauty in everybody.

Anthony Youn:
I think one big part of beauty is being healthy. That's really the first step. And so that's why I try to encourage people is use your vanity to make yourself more healthy. Because sometimes I see patients who, I may say, hey, if you keep eating this diet, you're going to get heart disease.

Anthony Youn:
You may have a heart attack or something like that. They don't care. You may get diabetes. I don't care. Oh, it's going to give you wrinkles. And they go, oh, well, that's the case. And I'm definitely going to change it.

Anthony Youn:
And so sometimes our own vanity can be a very strong motivator. And if that's what motivates somebody to improve their diet, to try taking some supplements, to try some intermittent fasting, to take care of their skin, then that's powerful enough.

Anthony Youn:
And that's reason enough to do that. It's an exciting time to be getting older because we do have all these options available for us.

Melanie Avalon:
Well, to that point in your book, the most common question I got when I asked for questions about all this was people really did want to know alternatives. Megan wanted to know what alternatives are effective.

Melanie Avalon:
Tracy says she feels like everything today is Botox and fillers and she'd like to hear about other things. Tara wanted to say effective alternatives would be great. So in your book, you're younger for life program, and I mentioned this earlier, but we have phase one focusing on rebuilding collagen and phase two on cellular rejuvenation and including this autophagy diet.

Melanie Avalon:
Those two, so when you were creating your program and your plan, was it obvious from day one that those were the two things or were there like a lot of things and you had to kind of, you know, how did you get to coming up with this program?

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, so I mean, I knew myself, you know, what I knew obviously as a plastic surgeon was surgery. I knew a little bit about nutrition, but not much. What I ended up doing is I studied the works of really wide range of professionals from holistic health physicians from naturopathic docs to chiropractors to nutritionists to dietitians to dermatologists.

Anthony Youn:
And what I wanted, what I felt in my mind was that the best way to turn back the clock naturally was to really do a true integrative approach to turning back the clock. And I knew that that integrative approach had to entail food because really food is the foundation of our lives and of anti -aging and of health.

Anthony Youn:
So food was huge. I learned more and more about supplementation and how supplementation can really help impact food because one of the main ages of our skin is nutrient depletion is that our food is not as nutritious as it used to be.

Anthony Youn:
And so adding the supplements in was super important. And then I started learning about intermittent fasting and the effects of autophagy and how the anti- and I read works from anti -aging scientists and how they are really focusing on calorie restriction and fasting as a way to lengthen life.

Anthony Youn:
So one thing we did for the book is we combined everything into a 21 day jumpstart and we tested it on some people. And essentially what we did was for 21 days or essentially three weeks, we started by cleaning up their diet.

Anthony Youn:
So we put them on what I would say is a collagen supporting diet. So we got rid of gluten, we got rid of dairy, we got rid of ultra processed foods and foods that are have added sugar in it. So for the first week we cleaned up the diet, we added in a very simple supplement plan.

Anthony Youn:
Then we had them go on a very simple skincare regimen. It literally took two minutes a day. And then the weeks two and three, we added in intermittent fasting and it was just two days a week that they would intermittent fast.

Anthony Youn:
So they would stop being at 8pm and then they would refeed the next day at about noon. But one thing that we added to this that hasn't been done before that I believe is that we added an autophagy supporting component to it.

Anthony Youn:
So what I learned with all my studies was that there are certain foods that can help to stimulate autophagy, intracellular renewal, even though you break a fast. Okay, so the idea behind fasting and longevity is that you can stimulate autophagy where our cells will build up with intracellular waste products, which are like used organelles, proteins in mitochondria.

Anthony Youn:
And periodically when you stop eating for a while, your body's cells can actually use that for energy, but you have to stop eating for that to happen. And so what we ended up doing is we put them on intermittent fasting to stimulate autophagy and for those days where they refed, we had them eat a very specific autophagy supporting diet, which are healthy fats and polyphenol rich foods.

Anthony Youn:
And we found that by doing healthy fats and polyphenol rich foods, we do believe that that helped to continue that autophagy process, even though they were eating at that point, but continue that and we saw some amazing changes in people's skin after those three weeks.

Melanie Avalon:
So was that also low protein during that refeeding or not?

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, so it was only low protein for that period of time. And I think that that's something that's really important to realize, is that especially women after they go through menopause, having sufficient protein is so important as you get older because you want to avoid sarcopenia.

Anthony Youn:
And so I'm not one that intermittent fasts every day. I know there's some people who do that. What we did for the program is we just had them intermittent fast two days a week for weeks two and three where they would go low protein because protein is going to stop that autophagy process in its tracks.

Anthony Youn:
And we wanted that autophagy process to continue. The idea is to try to have a balance between having sufficient protein and then those two days a week where you're intermittent fasting and stimming that autophagy process to kind of get that intracellular clearance going.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I was so fascinated to read that part of the book because normally, especially on the intermittent fasting podcast, we're talking a lot about intermittent fasting and it's being often done daily.

Melanie Avalon:
Then all the emphasis is on definitely getting a lot of protein. But this approach is a little bit different because it's more specific and that you're using fasting paired with this potentially lower protein intake for a smaller amount of time, but to get a more maximum bang for your buck autophagy -wise.

Melanie Avalon:
If I'm interpreting it correctly.

Anthony Youn:
Yes, that's the goal is to try to improve the whole the aging process exactly. And so, you know, I, and instead of trying to get somebody to fast for, let's say 24 hours, which is tough for, I mean, I don't want to fast for 24 hours.

Anthony Youn:
The idea is, hey, we can get them refeeding, we can get them eating like delicious foods, but hopefully continue with that autophagy process in their body.

Melanie Avalon:
And then I know you say this in the book and I'm sure you get asked this all the time. So apologies in advance, but on the college and building side of things. So college and supplements, do they or do they not work?

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, so these are really controversial. I comment on it all the time, and we see these comments from people all the time, where they say, well, I was thinking about taking a collagen supplement, but my family doctor said it doesn't work.

Anthony Youn:
And it's like, okay, here we go. Our skin is composed 70 to 80% of collagen, and we lose about 1% of the thickness of collagen every year, starting about in our mid -20s. So it makes sense that we want to have our body have more collagen, and to ingest collagen, you would think would then help with that.

Anthony Youn:
So what does the science say? Well, the fact is that collagen is a large protein. And people who say that collagen supplements don't work, their belief is that it's such a large protein. How do you know it's even going to get broken down in the stomach?

Anthony Youn:
It's going to get absorbed. And how do you know that then that that's even going to get to the skin where let's say you want it? Well, the studies actually, there's a lot of them on collagen supplements and the health of the skin.

Anthony Youn:
So for example, Melanie, there was one in 2021, it was a meta -analysis of over 1 ,100 people where they put them on a hydrolyzed collagen supplement for 90 days. And they found a statistically significant improvement in wrinkles, in skin hydration, and elasticity of the skin.

Anthony Youn:
And there are randomized perspective placebo -controlled clinical trials where they put people on hydrolyzed collagen supplementation for a couple of months, and then they biopsy their skin afterwards and find an increase in the amount of collagen in their skin.

Anthony Youn:
There are so many studies out there supporting the use of hydrolyzed collagen supplements to improve the health of the skin that if now if somebody says, oh, well, the science says it doesn't, it doesn't help, they're lying.

Anthony Youn:
Like they just haven't actually read the studies then because there's a ton of studies there. Now, if you were to say this maybe five, six years ago, then yeah, there may not have been the science there yet, but the science is there now.

Anthony Youn:
And doctors are finally like coming to grips with saying, yeah, it actually can't help.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome, awesome, awesome. On the drink side of things. I definitely liked your section on wine. Do you have thoughts on wine?

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, I mean, I'm not a huge wine drinker. You know, there is this, you know, they call it the French paradox of why is it that French people who, you know, eat a lot of foods that traditionally are not heart healthy, considered heart healthy, live so long and have such low heart disease.

Anthony Youn:
And a lot of people believe it could be that they drink red wine like almost every day. So red wine contains resveratrol. Resveratrol is a very powerful antioxidant. It's being tested for its longevity features.

Anthony Youn:
And so for me, when I look at wine, I think it comes down to there is the benefits of the antioxidants and the polyphenols versus the negatives of the actual alcohol. Because, you know, make no bones about it.

Anthony Youn:
You know, ingesting alcohol is toxic for your body. It's not good for you. I do believe that in for most people, drinking one glass of red wine a day is the beneficial effects of those antioxidants and polyphenols most likely outweigh the negative effects of the alcohol.

Anthony Youn:
But more than one glass of wine, you probably go on the opposite end and that alcohol, the negatives of that outweigh the positives. And like you, I assume I'm a big fan of dry farm wines. There's some of the only wines that I drink because, you know, they are screened for purity.

Anthony Youn:
They are low sugar. You know, it's interesting because if I drink dry farms wines, I feel fine afterwards. And I typically don't wake up with a headache or anything. Other wines, sometimes I start itching.

Anthony Youn:
Sometimes it makes me a little bit flush. You can feel kind of crummy the next day. So it is, it's fascinating how they have, I don't know what exactly they do, but it seems to really, those wines do seem to really, I tolerate very well.

Melanie Avalon:
It is crazy the difference for me personally, like you said, in how you feel drinking it. And it's, I mean, it's to the point that I have become very skilled, I will say. Not that I sneak it into events, but I found you can do a lot with a big dress and thanks Hunter.

Anthony Youn:
Well, you know, you can't get it in Michigan. It's been really disappointing. I used to be subscribed to it and now Michigan has some stupid law where you can only, you can only import wines directly from the wine manufacturer.

Anthony Youn:
And because dry farm wines is an aggregator, they cannot send wine to Michigan. It's so, so annoying. So I can no longer get it.

Melanie Avalon:
Is that a new law?

Anthony Youn:
It's been around now for a couple of years because I used to get dry farm winds here. I used to be subscribed to it and I gave them away to my employees and stuff and now I can't even get it myself.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh my goodness. Wow, that's insane.

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, you would move.

Melanie Avalon:
I don't know. I might have to. I don't have to do something. Well, I will refer listeners to your book because, like I said, it is an overwhelmingly incredible resource for answers to, it has the details, it has recipes, and then I know listeners have so many questions about different specific procedures and stuff, and you talk about all that as well.

Melanie Avalon:
So it's absolutely amazing. I want to be really respectful of your time, maybe just one last topic to end on, because you talk about ingredients, like you talk about the importance of skincare and you have a recommended skincare plan and you referenced it earlier.

Melanie Avalon:
It's super easy to do. This Cleanse Protect, what's the order, Clint? Treat. Treat, yes. Yeah, Cleanse Protect Treat, yes. Cleanse Protect Treat. You have your beauty blacklist though and things to avoid in skincare products, and that's something I talk about all the time, like all the time.

Melanie Avalon:
And I have had concerns about retinol and retinoids, but now I'm wondering if maybe they're not as much of a problem as I thought. What are your thoughts on retinol and retinoids?

Anthony Youn:
You know, that's something I know that there are some people who are concerned with them. If you talk to dermatologists and plastic surgeons, I mean really the number one antigen ingredient for skincare is retinol or retinoids.

Anthony Youn:
Retinoids basically is a derivative of vitamin A. There's prescription strength, which is retinol and non -prescription strength, which is retinol. Most of the studies have been done on retinol, the prescription strength, and have found that it can improve wrinkles.

Anthony Youn:
It can thicken the dermis of the skin or basically improve the collagen thickness of the skin. It can exfoliate the skin. It can lighten dark spots or unwanted pigmentation, and it can even reverse early preskin cancers.

Anthony Youn:
So it really can do so many things. And so retinol is the over -the -counter version of it. Essentially, if you apply retinol to your skin, it's initially inactive and it undergoes two chemical changes and becomes basically retinol on your skin.

Anthony Youn:
And so most dermatologists and plastic surgeons, if they would pick one antigen ingredient that they would recommend, it would be a retinol. I know that there's some concern with it. It is something where you should not take it if you're pregnant or nursing.

Anthony Youn:
I think that there have been studies that have found that it can pass through the umbilical cord and into the baby, but I don't know that there's any science to show that it's actually detrimental. But still, I don't recommend using it if you are pregnant or breastfeeding.

Anthony Youn:
Now, if you're concerned about retinol, then there is an alternative called bakuchial. Bakuchial is a plant based alternative. It's from a plant called the Bobchi plant. This has been used in ancient Chinese medicine in Ayurveda for centuries.

Anthony Youn:
And there was one study that compared bakuchial to retinol head -to -head and found very similar anti -aging benefits to bakuchial. But the difference is it had less skin irritation than retinol. So yeah, I mean, if you're at all concerned, you're like, yeah, I'm not sure about retinol, then try bakuchial instead.

Anthony Youn:
Like I said, I don't know that it's going to do exactly the same as retinol, but it does appear to be fairly comparable overall anti -aging -wise to the skin.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, awesome. The products I currently use, I use a beauty counter line and they use that ingredient. So, okay, awesome.

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, and Vutaconder has been great because it's been really pushing for safer beauty products and I think that's so important because right now, as you probably know, the FDA has only banned what? Like 11 substances in our skincare and in the EU, it's like hundreds if not thousands.

Anthony Youn:
So I do think that there is a, it's kind of like I mentioned earlier, it's a you don't know what you don't know type of a scenario here where a lot of people, quote unquote, skincare experts don't know that there's all these chemicals that can be in the products that may be potentially harmful.

Anthony Youn:
You know, and if you're just exposed to one, you know, for a period of time that it may not be a big deal. But when you're talking about a lifetime of exposure to these products and other types of products, it's that cumulatory effect that we're concerned about.

Anthony Youn:
You know, and I think a lot of traditional medicine people maybe aren't taking that seriously enough.

Melanie Avalon:
Well, and to that point, you talk about in the book your own experience with products and your own sensitive skin. And this is something I loved about what you talked about because it's the way I am with my products.

Melanie Avalon:
Like you've created your products basically to address the issues that you are experiencing. So people can actually, how does this work? So if they order the book, they will get...

Anthony Youn:
Yeah. So yeah, we have a website called autojuvenation .com, autojuvenation .com, where if you go and we have links to preorder the book, but even if you get it elsewhere, that's fine. If you go to the autojuvenation .com website, then you input your name and your order number in and we'll give you a companion recipe guide and we'll actually give you a $30 gift card to our online store, unbeauty .com.

Anthony Youn:
So I have a complete skincare line that's made with natural and organic ingredients. It's fragrance free. It's clean beauty. We'll give you $30 to kind of get you started on your skincare journey. So that will more than pay for the price of the book.

Anthony Youn:
And so I'm proud to be able to give that out and happy to do that to help encourage people to take good care of their skin.

Melanie Avalon:
That's amazing. Literally you're making money on this, audience friends.

Anthony Youn:
You kind of are. I mean, if you look at it that way, yeah, yeah.

Melanie Avalon:
What I have it says pre -order or order. If people are listening later, will it be an ongoing offer?

Anthony Youn:
Yes, yes. So, yeah, so the book goes on sale January 2nd. So if you listen to this before that, then we do have that as a pre -order bonus. After January 2nd, we will still have that available. There's certain little bonuses that we give for the pre -orders.

Anthony Youn:
Like we've got a sweepstakes where you can win a huge basket of products and things and red light therapy and all this stuff. That we're going to give away just to the pre -orders. But otherwise, everybody, whenever you listen to this, if you order the book, go to autojuvenation .com and get your free gifts.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. Well, we will put links to all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much, Melanie. I appreciate it. No, of course. Thank you. I'm just so... Thank you for making the time, by the way, for listeners when we were scheduling this.

Melanie Avalon:
I was booking out really far and he was like, well, I kind of need to do it now because of the launch. And I was like, well, okay, we will make this happen. So for listeners today, he was telling me he had two other podcasts and a surgery this morning as well.

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, yeah, I did. It's how I took this morning and then your good friend Cynthia Thurlow did her podcast earlier and then Gabby Reese's podcast and I've got this and then I've got to do a branded post for peak tea once we're done.

Anthony Youn:
So then I think I'm done for the day.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, the fasting Jason Fung's tea, right? Isn't that his or no?

Anthony Youn:
It's great. It's actually in little satchels, so it's kind of nice because you don't have actual tea bags and stuff. And so we're talking about they've got kind of their beauty. They've got kind of this beauty combination of their matcha.

Anthony Youn:
They've got, it's called BT Elixir. Basically, it's their electrolyte mix. So yeah, very nice.

Melanie Avalon:
Something I do, because you talk in the book about how you recommend putting spring water on your face throughout the day.

Anthony Youn:
I can do that, yeah.

Melanie Avalon:
I used to do that with tea and I still do it with coffee. I don't know if it's actually doing anything, but I was looking at all these skin care lines so they'd have like coffee as an ingredient. I was like, I'll just like put coffee on my skin.

Melanie Avalon:
And I do that every morning and I find it like tightens my skin and kind of wakes me up.

Anthony Youn:
Yeah, yeah, because coffee will, yeah, it will kind of constrict. It's a vasoconstrictor, so it can kind of constrict that skin a bit. It can reduce some of the redness. A lot of people, you know, we put that in our retinol eye cream because that can help to constrict the puffiness under the eyes temporarily.

Anthony Youn:
So yeah, that's nice. I just don't know if you want your skin to smell like coffee. That's the only thing.

Melanie Avalon:
It doesn't really linger. It kind of, yeah. I do it in the morning and then if I do a sauna session, I do it after that.

Anthony Youn:
Well, there you go. More than one use for coffee. Just make sure you don't have butter in it when you do it. That would not be a good idea.

Melanie Avalon:
I know. Well, thank you so much. I am so grateful for your work. I swear, the last question I asked every single guest on this show, it's super easy. And it's just because I realize more and more each day how important mindset is, which is something that you talk about in the book.

Melanie Avalon:
So what is something that you're grateful for?

Anthony Youn:
I am grateful for, I mean, I've got my book coming out and I've done 50 podcasts for it. So I am very grateful for all the people like yourself who are so giving with your time for me to spread my word.

Anthony Youn:
Word of the book essentially is that anybody can look and feel amazing and not feel the need to have to go into the knife if you just follow the principles of autojuvenation, of using your body's own regenerative abilities to rejuvenate itself.

Anthony Youn:
Our bodies are amazing structures. We just have to give it the right tools in the environment to do that.

Melanie Avalon:
I love it. Well, thank you so much for what you're doing. You are like just filling this black hole of something that we need in the world of cosmetics, procedures, and every I'm just so grateful. So friends.

Anthony Youn:
Well, thank you. Well, I appreciate you. Thank you.

Melanie Avalon:
the book and hopefully we can meet in person someday at some conference or something. So thank you. Have a good rest of your evening. Thank you. Bye.