Stop Fighting Your Skin

Your skin is not separate from the rest of your health. Stress, sleep, hormones, nutrition, skincare products, haircare, laundry detergent, and the microorganisms living on your skin can all influence how it looks and feels.

In this episode of Wellness in Every Season, Autumn speaks with Dr. Mireille “Mimi” Vega, a biotechnology PhD, cosmetic chemist, Skin-to-Soul Science Simplifier, and founder and CEO of VGAM Biome.

Dr. Mimi explains the difference between the gut microbiome and the skin microbiome, how the skin’s natural ecosystem helps protect us, and why aggressive cleansing or complicated skincare routines may sometimes make acne, dryness, irritation, or sensitivity worse.

Together, they discuss:

- How the skin microbiome supports the skin barrier and local immune health
- The connections between skin, stress, sleep, hormones, nutrition, and inflammation
- Why acne, eczema, dermatitis, rosacea, and other changes may offer clues about what your body needs
- How hair products, detergents, sunscreen, and other everyday products can affect your skin
- Why cleansing too frequently may strip protective oils and disrupt the microbiome
- The importance of hydration, oils, salts, pH, prebiotics, and postbiotics
- Why skincare needs may change throughout the menstrual cycle, across seasons, and while traveling
- How nutrition supports collagen production and healthy aging from within
- Why Dr. Mimi prefers a simplified, adaptable approach instead of treating every skin concern with a separate product

Dr. Mimi also shares how her daughter’s skin struggles inspired her to question conventional skincare and develop a microbiome-based system that allows people to adjust the balance of hydration and oils according to what their skin needs each day.

The goal is not to fight or control your skin. It is to understand its natural intelligence and create an environment where it can function well.

Connect with Dr. Mireille Vega

Explore her skincare philosophy and products at:

toloveyourskin.com

Learn more from Dr. Mimi at:

drmimi.ca

Instagram: @dr.mimichemistry

LinkedIn: Dr. Mireille Vega, PhD

Her upcoming book, currently titled The Skin Solution Is You, will explore the connections between skincare, nutrition, lifestyle, and whole-body wellness.

For more wellness tips and exclusive content, join my newsletter! Sign up now at https://wellness-in-every-season.kit.com/5-days-to-mastering-mornings-and-evenings receive a free 5-day guide called "Awaken and Unwind: 5 Days to Mastering Life's Mornings and Evenings." 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:02

This is episode 231, and today we are talking about skin health and the microbiome. Welcome to Wellness in Every Season. We talk all things wellness to help you align yourself, align with your goals, find balance in your life, and just recalibrate yourself. If you are listening for the first time, welcome, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. And let's get started in the rest of the podcast. Today I have with me Mireille Vega. Who I asked from the beginning, how do you say your name?

SPEAKER_00 0:40

But Mimi for short. That was my childhood nickname, actually.

SPEAKER_03 0:45

It's a perfect nickname. So let me introduce her a little bit further now. So, of course, we're talking about skin health. And before we hit recording, she was talking about how the skin is related to everything. And I had to tell her to stop so that we could then put it in the recording. But she she is a doctor. And is this a PhD or MD? PhD.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

PhD.

SPEAKER_03 1:08

So she knows how to research. She was driven to create her company, which is how do you pronounce it?

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Vegan biome.

SPEAKER_03 1:20

Vegan biome. After her daughter's skin struggles related to gaps in conventional skin care. And I absolutely agree, I have four kids. We have all different kinds of skin issues, myself as well. She has a PhD in biotechnology and decades in cosmetic chemistry. She combined personal experience with scientific expertise to develop a simplified microbiome-based approach to skin health. And my understanding is microbiome is your gut. Is it more than that?

SPEAKER_01 1:52

So actually, the microbiome, the human microbiome in general, is all the genes of all the microorganisms live in, you know, within or with us, right? That we're hosting. So we're hosting these microorganisms in the gut. Now we know, we understand a bit more as to what it does, right? In the gut, it supports our overall immunity, right? Or systemic, right? How we can combat or protect ourselves from disease in general. On the skin, there is also a community, which is very different than the one you have in your gut because it's a completely different environment. It's external, it's exposed to oxygen, to pollution, to all sorts of things. And it also protects our skin. So it's a very different dynamic, even if the foundations, the principles are the same. So caring for your gut microbiome, there's tips for that. And there's also tips for caring for your skin microbiome. So different environment, different communities, and it has a lot more impact on your local immunity. What I mean by local immunity is your skin. There are conditions like acne, rosacea, eczema, dermatitis, that are actually dependent on your skin microbiome, fully or partially, right? Because some are it's a dynamic, it's complex. That's the difference between the two. They work together, they talk to each other, but they're not the same.

SPEAKER_03 3:29

Yeah, and that makes me think I am I just know little bits from anatomy and physiology that I took in high school and then I took again for my undergrad. So I know that we have different layers of skin. So it makes sense to me that if our skin isn't doing as well here on our epidermis, that it's probably not doing as well interiorly, right? So how does that correlate?

SPEAKER_01 4:03

The skin does two things. It protects us, yes, from the external, that's the main function of that organ, which is fabulous, complex organ, but it also is a fabulous diagnosis tool because it shows us sometimes what we're lacking inside. So, yes, absolutely. Sometimes there's issues on your skin that no matter what you use on your skin, it's not gonna change anything. You gotta go deeper inside. And other times it's actually very skin deep, skin dependent, and it's uh it's relating to your your skin health itself, right? So there's always these two, and I love the skin because it does both. And when you know how to kind of listen to your skin, it kind of tells you what it needs, which is simplifying the practice that we currently have that are, in my opinion, way too complicated.

unknown 5:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:09

Right before I hit record, and I had to stop you to record what you're saying. Can you repeat that again? Because I feel like this is the perfect time to explain how all of this is connected. And not all of us realize this, but our biggest organ is our skin. Explain these connections and why this matters.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Okay. So we gotta go a bit, you know, a few decades back in the sense that I was reading on you and what you do and preparing for this this podcast, and you were explaining what you came about, how your wellness journey, you know, started. It's very similar to many people where you're faced with struggles and then you learn along the way. And then it's natural to want to share those things to have others benefit from that. It was very similar for me. And I I'm a very curious person. That's the first thing I would say.

SPEAKER_03 6:05

I wanted to let you know that there are some amazing things happening behind the scenes here that I'm very excited about. The first one is I am opening my podcast up for sponsorships. So if you are an aligned brand with wellness, reach out to me. You can find me wellnessevery season.com slash podcast slash sponsor. I also have something going on for you listeners. If you've been listening for a while, I interview people who are aligned with wellness and they talk about the healing modalities and different modalities that they do, but it is in a very descriptive sense. I am making it so that you have the chance to experience it during a recorded episode, and other people get to experience it alongside you so that we can really see how it works. Instead of just this zoomed out experience, we get to really zoom in and experience it. So you can find out more about that at wellnessevery season.com forward slash listener wellness guest.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

So as a teen, super curious, and wasn't the chemistry club, and I also had skin issues that I try to resolve. I'm in my 50s. So at the time, evidently, we didn't have the resource we have now in terms of research, what to do. Surprisingly, the solutions were very similar to the solutions we have now, but that's another story. So went to drugstores, dermatologists, tried to figure out what was going on, and also study ingredients, like and what would work, and became a chemist because of it. And then I decided to do a PhD because thought that something was missing. I wanted to understand how the skin could be nurtured properly. It's an organ that's there to protect us and we treat it, you know, like as if it's not intelligent, right? I worked on it, I actually grew microorganisms in the lab, even before we talked about microbiome, you know, like or microbiotize. Something's, you know, happens for a reason and you only understand a few decades later. During that time, I really wanted something that was natural and coherent for the skin, but I felt I was missing something. And at the same time, I was very curious, like I said. And when some things happened in my family or around me, I would question it. I would go to the literature. This is really what I learned during my studies, is to look at a lot of information and, you know, grasp what is essential and what connects from one organ to another. And my main, main learning school, if I could say, is after I finished, like I said, I felt something was missing for the skin. But at the same time, my mother had been diagnosed with a leukemia, being very, very curious. I did lots of projects in oncology as to why she developed this and how can we support it and how could we have prevented it? And thankfully, she had remission and she passed away now, but not from this, right? So it resolved. But it made me start to look at conditions across the whole body, right? So sometimes we have something occurring for her, it was the blood, leukemia, but it may have come from something else, right? And how everything is connected and on the skin is very similar as well, right? So with time and with experience and being exposed to so many disease states, because oncology is very wide, there's lots of disease, but it's relating to cascades and what happens with this within a cell, right? And how the cells occur, but it doesn't matter so much the organ, right? So you start to see patterns across, and then I started connecting these patterns because after another health care, it was my son's diagnosis with brain tumor, which he's doing super, super well now. But at the time I needed space, I needed space from that whole uh pace, you know. So uh I moved into immunology, which is related because everything is connected with the gut and with health and with the skin, and to realize after a while being in these conferences that what helps prevent cancer and what helps prevent dementia, what helps prevent cardiovascular events, they're always the same basic longevity aspect, right? The sleep, the nutrition, the diet, we're movement, understanding all the systems working together to basically ultimately have better skin, yes, but aligned wellness as well. And we're talking very physical wellness, obviously, like you go into multi-dimensions of wellness. I'm talking about all these connections from the physical well-being. Obviously, I think stress management, sleep, and all of these, which are risk factors for developing so many conditions, are actually more than physical, but still they all connect. They all connect to your wellness and to your skin.

SPEAKER_03 11:56

I was 18 and I was working at an optometrist's office. One patient came in and he must have been a homeopath looking back at it now. He was talking about how he can tell people's health just by their nails. And immediately I'm like, not showing you my hand so anything about myself at that age. And then he was talking about skin and hair as well. And that memory popped up for me with what you were saying. I've thought about that for myself as well, especially I have four children, so each time postpartum, and then I'd have that hair growth, and then maybe I'd get really sick, especially when COVID was stronger than it is now. So I would lose hair then, and that thought of oh, that extra stress on my body from illnesses, and then from after having a baby, and then other times when I'd be really stressed out and I'd lose hair or my nails would change times where my skin does, especially with cystic acne away. And we have one babysitter, and I tend to forget that she does not eat dairy because she's realized that she breaks out more from that type of idea. But we don't think about that with food sensitivity. We just think about it with our sense of bloating and our gut. We don't think about how does it show up on our face.

SPEAKER_02 13:20

Yeah, especially with dairy. Yeah, the clearest connection, but the issue.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

So what do you do with these, right? So these are very topical issues, right? But sometimes they come from elements that we're exposed to daily and we don't even know about. And sometimes it's an ingredient like that eggs, dairy. There are there are some that are most common in terms of uh allergen that can actually trigger dermatitis. And uh, I love when people identify or you know, start seeing the skin as this ecosystem because it helps them understand what could be a trigger and then to actually approach it from a completely different standpoint. And I give you an example earlier. I mentioned yes, the skin that has like these three layers, and we've been talking about when we think about the skin structure, we see it, right? We see the diagram that we've learned in high school or later on, and we were curious, and we know that on the epidermis, this most of the effect we can have. And but if we want to actually have ingredients that have an activity, it needs to go deeper. And most of the products we use don't go deep enough to actually have a real impact on our skin. So, with time, I start seeing the skin as three barriers. Yes, the skin physical structure is the 3D thermos and with his different layers as depending on how deep it is from the surface. But on top of the skin, there's a full ecosystem. There's first uh the oils and the salts that the skin produce, but they're not part of the structure. They're loose, right? They're just attached to the skin by either the oil because it's oily, it sticks there, or they're attached to the skin by water bonds. It's actually the pH of your skin that retains and the salts that keep the water in your skin. So that's the two barriers that work together in terms of the chemistry of the skin. And then on top of it, there's the skin biota, the micro, which is composed of bacteria, viruses, even small microscopic. And when when there's a good balance and a diversity of microorganisms on top, it does so many things for us, for our skin, and it uh really helps even the chemistry of the skin. And for dermatitis, for instance, some people will have a reaction from something they ate and it shows up. It's the inflammation and the local inflammation, which is really particular, but it's really the system talking to the skin. And sometimes it may be just an ingredient, right, that's used on top of the skin, and the ingredients in detergents that we use that we don't think of because we also think about the stuff we put on our face in how you wash your clothes or in the sheets that you sleep in, or even your hair, because your hair, like your hair care, your skin, because we don't think about it. Oh, we wash our hair. Yeah, but there's the scalp and there's uh everything, it lands, and there's ingredients that are super allergenic. Some people spent years looking for the ingredient, the troublemaker, but it's actually in their hair care or in something else that they don't use directly on their patient. And because the microbiota is not solid enough, it's not diversified enough, there's like an imbalance that's created, and the yeast actually take over. And that's why it lingers and it stays, right, instead of resolving itself rapidly. Anyway, that's just an example how dermatitis can be not easy, but more easily resolved if we think about the microbiota and how to care for it. And the caring for it is actually simpler than we counterintuitive, I will say.

SPEAKER_03 17:42

That makes me think about the teenage version of me. And I did realize that with my hair products, but I was low income enough that I wasn't using hair products that didn't affect my skin. So I had the back knee, the chest knee, my face. When I was making enough money on my own that I was able to buy better, it went away overnight on my chest and back. And then I was switching face soaps every three months. That helped, but I was also struggling with it needs to be strong enough to take care of my acne, but not so strong that it drives me out and just perpetuates the cycle. And the part that I was missing looking back is stress. I was under a lot of stress. I had a lot of abuse growing up and my diet. And I could not do a lot about my diet because I was still living at home. But looking at it now as a parent, knowing that my oldest is 11 years old, what things will I do differently for him and then the other three children when they get to become teenagers? Because chances are pretty high they're gonna have more my skin than my husband's, unfortunately. Where my husband's skin is like, I'm thinking about having a pimple. Oh, never mind. I'll child stuff in. And when we are first dating, if we would kiss and his nose or skin at all would touch my face, I'd break out from his oil. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

Wow. Very sympathetic.

SPEAKER_03 19:14

I already have an idea of what things I will do differently for them. And the biggest things that they already have that is different is they don't have the same amount of stress I did growing up. We have a much better diet in our family, and we can afford better quality products. So, right there is set them up. And that brings me to the question of one of your children had skin issues, and that's what led you through a lot of this journey. Can you talk us through that part?

SPEAKER_01 19:42

There's a few things that I'm gonna add that may actually trigger you to go, oh my god. The learning came a lot from my experiences, the products we were exposed, what we were told to do, the options we had. And now we have a much more complex offering, but we live in environments that are even more polluted than they were back in the days, and we use even more aggressive ingredients than we used to. So, my daughter, when when we're talking a lot about the gut microbiota in applying it to health and psoriasis and all these conditions that are related to the skin or not. And because I was so passionate about the skin, I was okay, what happens with the skin microbiota? I knew there was other communities and started looking into it. And the more I digged in, the more I realized, oh my god, this is what we hadn't considered. We were not looking at this. And the more I realized, okay, you gotta diversify, you gotta do this, I'm someone that needs to make sense of every dimension for something you know to be coherent and aligned and to propose something, right? So I start mapping everything because my daughter, when she's opened our drawer at the time, I still have tons of products because you buy one for this, you buy one for another, the trial and error loop where and you end up with lots of products, most of them are expired because but you don't want to throw them out because you've never really used them to their maximum benefit. And anyway, a full closet full of confusion. And she was okay, what do I do? But now I knew this ingredient will do that, this will do that. And I'm like, oh my god, no, no, no. We gotta start from scratch, we gotta go back. So I mapped everything. I'm at the good, the bad, and the wasteful. So these ingredients that this can really actually use, and those ingredients that this Skin doesn't like and we know about them, you know, so we can take them out of formulations and those in between, those collagen or vitamin C. And for teens, they're not concerned about that yet. But the skin is the skin, you know. So if it's good for the skin, why shouldn't it be good for them too? Right. And I start focusing on the root functions, how the skin really works. Because it took me years to reprogram myself, because the industry is based on symptoms. And then we look at the symptoms and when we treat that symptoms, but we don't look at the skin at the core, how it works, right? So if we have breakouts, we're going to look at, as you mentioned, the balance of stripping your skin from the orals, but not too much to break out even more or to create irritations. Or, you know, it's always that balance instead of focusing with these symptoms, because I had gone through that loops myself many times and ended up spending my teenagers like kind of really red face, either from breakouts or from products that were super irritating. So it was a never-ending cycle. And when I did that, I realized okay, I'm gonna have this base that feeds and supports the skin throughout its function. Because I was still programmed with the mindset that the skin of a teenager and my skin works completely different. I want to prevent aging signs, right? I want to be as youthful as I can be for a long as long as I can, right? And I don't know anybody that wants to look older, but by looking at all these functions, I came up with 35 ingredients that actually the skin produces at the core, but we strip it away, right? So it's 35 ingredients that work together. The only ingredients that the skin doesn't produce that I added, it was really to support the microbiota. Because I have studied in lab where we grew those microorganisms to make sure that they were as solid and diversified as possible. But this is what I did, and I wanted to work throughout the year and not having to rethink my routine and what the skin should need, because the skin's core basis function are always the same. And it took a few more trials to realize, oh my god, we have it all wrong. And that's why I decided these 35 ingredients to separate the oils from the salts and to increase the amount of microorgan, like pre- and postbiotics, those ingredients that support the microbiota, to increase the proportion in both products. So no matter the proportions of oils and salts that your skin needs, you feed properly your microbiota. And the reason I did that is because your skin, you mentioned that with hormones, the cystic acne, and the hormones for women make your skin's needs change daily, right? And why is stress so important to manage? It's because it influences your hormones, your sex hormones, even more. You break out every month, and because of these cycles where at some point in the month you get more oily than other parts, but you're still dehydrated by being able to adapt daily. You don't have on the skin too much oil or not enough, right? So you can balance by what your skin is actually telling you. Like sometimes it's stretched and tight, it needs more oils, and sometimes it'll just look dull and oily, it's dehydrated, even if it's oily, right? So you can give it more of these salts that keep the water in the skin. By understanding this, we also understand that the cleansing product is super key in the sense that if you cleanse too much or with the wrong cleanser, you end up causing more issues than if you didn't cleanse at all, right? Because stripping for the oils, it's one thing, but you gotta replenish because you're stressing your skin, a teenage skin that produces a lot of oils because of its hormones and it's all over the place. It's in this inflammation loop. Then we tell them, okay, you gotta cleanse your skin more. Have you cleansed tonight? Did you do this? But then the skin is told, oh, I'm stripping all my oils, I gotta produce more. So you're just training your glands to produce more oils. And that's exactly what a teen doesn't want to produce more oils. That's very neutral, so it doesn't create that tightness. And you gotta put back oils so that it doesn't trigger the skin to produce too much. You're gonna put very, very neutral oils, but it's gonna rebalance the skin. It's really like the vinaigrette for the skin, like the water and oil, like keeping that balanced and it works well.

SPEAKER_03 27:40

Makes me think about, especially with my husband, I would wash my face all the time and be still breaking out. We married when we were really young, so still I was in my early 20s. And he would only wash his face in the shower. And he would not break out. What about the people who are looking more at wrinkles and stuff like that? Because you're saying that it's related. So talk to our age group here.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

Again, it's a question of hydration, right? A healthy-looking skin is the skin that's hydrated. Why? Because when you're hydrated, the skin functions are working properly, right? Because the functions of the skin are based on its pH. The skin is good enough, it can re-establish its pH. So the the right acidic, you know, like slightly acidic environment for the skin is where all the functions, like even exfoliation, like natural exfoliation, the scamation that we call it, the skin does it naturally at the proper pH, right? So if you provide the right environment, the skin will do what it needs to do to stay as healthy as possible. And there are two elements for that again. Well, there's a third one, the microbiota, but there's the hydration in terms of the water in your skin. So that's done by keeping the salts present so that the water stays in at the right pH. And then the oils. Why are the oils super important, especially the more you age? Because they create this film that actually prevents evaporation, right? And it gives the suppleness. So there's multiple ingredients that do that. Ceramines, different types of oils are emollients, and the humectants are those salts that actually keep the water in, like ionic acid. Uonic acid is a molecule that we produce. We produce different types of different length. Super, super important for the skin. It's a key ingredient. I don't believe in anti-aging, I believe in pro-aging. We cannot reverse time, unfortunately. Not yet. We can't do it for anything in the body. We can't do it on the skin, but we can make sure that it's healthy enough. And when it does its functions to the maximum, it removes like even the hyperpigment pigmentation that gives a look of aging skin, it just like naturally exfoliates itself and it gets rid of these pigments or wrinkles as well. It's a question of hydration and plumpness. Now, there's a collagen issue, right? Collagen, L-Sin, these molecules really tend to produce less with time. That's especially women with lower hormones produce less. But this is produced internally. And I think this is a big mistake that people do is putting vitamin C and collagen and all these ingredients. They should focus on their diet. This is really, really important for the skin. You have to eat it daily. The red pepper, go for it, or even supplements of vitamin C if you see you don't have it daily in your diet. Collagen proteins, the body does when it has the proper nutrition and the cofactors. You could eat or take supplements of collagen, it's not bad, but it's very expensive for something that you can get in your diet quite easily. Another benefit of a solid microbiota on the skin is preventing premature aging. It acts like a filter, actually. It's not an FPS. You still need to protect yourself from the sun because this is the most uh aggressive. No matter the color of your skin, you gotta protect your skin from exposure. The skin microbiota will actually filter free radicals, UVs, even on a day-to-day. The more solid it is, the more important these tiny soldiers work for you, the better. Uh, one thing, and we come back to cleansing, the one thing you can do to prevent getting rid of your skin microbiota is not cleansing too much. I recommend to cleanse once a day at the end of the day. I'm talking mostly for your face. The body doesn't even need that much cleansing, by the way, right? So if you have skin issues, the first thing like you did, you changed cleanser, but sometimes just skipping. Like your arms are not that dirty, just wash with water, like rinse with water, and that could be fine. There are strategic zones that, yes, maybe a bit more cleansing, but uh your face once a day to remove makeup if you put it, sunscreen, because the sunscreen protects us, but it has a lot of ingredients that are not great. Teenagers will break out if they keep the sunscreen on for sure, because it has these occlusive ingredients, right? So once a day you cleanse with a neutral pH cleanser, you're rid of these ingredients. By having a neutral pH, you will protect some of the essential, like the oils, the salts, and the microbiota will stay more, but you do get rid of some every time you cleanse. So the less you cleanse, and with the gentlest uh cleanser, the better. And then you protect this way, and then the other way is obviously feeding these more microorganisms. They thrive on like we call them prebiotics. That's actually food for the microbiota. So in the gut, we kind of know which ones they're all plant-based for the skin. There's oligosaccharids, it's complex sugars. We now we see them more in formulations, but you know, to make sure that you have some sorts of fuss or gus gos or fos ingredients in there, they're actually prebiotics, and probiotics is really to support that environment. The pH and slightly acidic pH.

SPEAKER_03 34:22

So, what is the relationship between stress and wrinkles?

SPEAKER_01 34:26

I think it's uh slightly more complex, and if we want to simplify it, I think that stress influences everything. And the main thing, it influences your sleep. And I think this is why there's a big connection between stress and aging skin. Because the perizone is the the inflammation, both of them are influenced, right? The stress influence your sex hormones, that's for sure, right? By decreasing them. And not surprisingly, when we go through menopause, these hormones also go down, and we see the aging effect more. Like we can spend up until our end of our 40s, 50s, and we look kind of the same, like for two decades, and then there's a big drop. And oh my god, you you you look in the mirror and you you feel like you've aged 10 years in a day, right? But this is due to these hormones going down, right? So the stress connection with these, I think, are through the lowering of the hormones, and like I said, affecting sleep. The sleep health, super, super important for everything dementia, cardiovascular risks, oncology, and your skin. It's yeah, it's all connected.

SPEAKER_03 36:00

So, do you have examples of some of your favorite products?

SPEAKER_01 36:06

I only use mine when I developed honesty. I haven't used anything else. Yeah, okay. So I have this duo. This is the travel size. We have an onboarding size, like which lasts about three, four weeks. So people, you know, I can start understanding one, what it means to listen to your skin. How do you adapt daily? What your skin tells you. It becomes intuitive after a couple of weeks, and you start with two products that you use together. So, of course, they're like, oh no, no, you've got to use this one first and this one. No, it's all together. You put a piece size of cream in your palm because you're gonna want to mix both of them.

SPEAKER_03 36:48

Right. And they're in two different containers because they don't mix very well chemistry-wise.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

Well, because you're not going to use exactly the same proportion every day. You start with about the same amount of each, right? And then you test out what becomes very intuitive, and you mix them and then you apply, and that's it. And then you feel your skin. And if you feel it's still tight, then you need to add more of the oils. And then if you feel it a bit oily, you need to balance it more with the salts, and that's it. But even for one person, especially women, because of these hormones that shift in a month, there's a period in a month you will use more serum. And a period in a month you will use more cream, but it's all relative, one person to another, right? Some women will always use more cream than serum. I'm using about half and half in the summer. In the winter, I'm using more cream than serum, but it still varies because there are days because I was stressed or I didn't sleep properly, or I start working out a lot and my metabolism is faster. I produce more oils. So then I'll balance it, right? And I don't have to worry, okay, what am I skin missing? And that was one question for me. I had, oh, I'm seeing I have this hyperpigmentation, this dark spot. What should I be putting on it? Like nothing. Just let your skin do its thing. And yeah, so that's why I developed this so that I didn't have to worry about what my skin was missing or what the new ingredient that just came out could do differently. They all target symptoms. Do you give back to your skin what it needs, the orbs, the salts, and the pre-postbiotics?

SPEAKER_03 38:39

The rest I like it because it made me think about with your daughter how you had a ton of different products. So try it out, make sure this works for you, and you have it so it's individualized, so you can switch it up throughout the month.

SPEAKER_01 38:54

So after that, we're gonna be launching the subscription base. We sell as an onboarding kit, and then you try it out. And then you either keep the same format of serum with a bigger tube or a bigger. My teens, for instance, they use the proportion that I call balance, which is much bigger bottle.

SPEAKER_03 39:17

So some people need a bigger bottle in one than the other.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

It's always this size of cream for either this. So this is the comfort proportion, and this is the balance proportion. It's the same product, but it's just so you don't run out of one before the other. You don't feel like you're spending on products you don't use.

SPEAKER_03 39:38

And I like that it's travel size for the trial because I swear every time I go on vacation, I get a vacation pimple. Because the plastic at home aren't travel size. So that makes a big difference.

SPEAKER_01 39:52

I used to be in corporate, I was traveling in the plane, or you know, like you land somewhere else, and your metabolism influences what your skin needs, but the external conditions as well, you know, like if it's super windy in a dry environment, it's not the same as a human environment. So your protection will need to be different. So you don't have product that can switch like that. Whereas for this, I thought that was oh, yeah, this is a perfect travel companion because you don't need again to carry all of these products just in case.

SPEAKER_03 40:26

I don't want to carry all that stuff everywhere, big heavy things. And I'm the type of person where I sweat a lot on an airplane because there's not enough air circulation. So I would definitely be using one bottle more than the other on the day that I know I'm flying. So that makes difference.

SPEAKER_01 40:44

Yeah. And then you adapt, and then your skin also adapts. I've had people tell me, my god, this changed my life. It's completely different because you don't need to rethink and you can adapt so quickly, it becomes very intuitive for something that we kind of take for granted that we have to give it whatever X, Y, and Z. I don't know where why it developed like that. You know, like in terms of diet, why is it that it became more complicated to care for your skin than what you actually put in your plate, which is responsible to support your whole body, including your skin. But it's become more complicated to care for your skin, and there's all these regimens. Mind you, there's regimens for food too, but I think it's kind of normal to explain what makes sense. We should spend more time caring for what we put in our plate than what we actually put on our skin. Like this routine, I wanted to resolve it once and for all. And I literally spend a minute every day doing it. But the minute I spend massaging in the product just to feel better in my skin.

SPEAKER_03 41:57

So tell us where to find this.

SPEAKER_01 42:00

So it's online, it's at dot com online. Otherwise, I do have a platform called drmimi.ca where you can find, you know, like information on the skincare, and it will provide some sort of uh offer for onboarding for people that are interested in learning more.

SPEAKER_03 42:20

And it also provides information that relates to the book that is in the final stages now of drafting, so that we can, yeah, we can let me know when that book goes live, and I will come back and put it in the show description, and I can make sure and put it in my newsletter for those who've already listened to this episode and they want to. I know from growing up, I would just learn bits and pieces here and there and be like, oh, maybe I'll try that for my skin. Oh, I'm not supposed to be doing it that way. Books are needed to explain to us this is what you actually should be doing. And here's how to make it easier and aligned, less time.

SPEAKER_01 43:05

Exactly what we're doing in this book, right? Of course, we explain the foundation. I go much deeper than the skin, and then I try to connect it all simply. So, yeah, hopefully it's a good idea.

SPEAKER_03 43:17

Sounds like what's the title of this book? Do you know the final title?

SPEAKER_01 43:21

And now the working title is the skin solution is you.

SPEAKER_03 43:26

Oh, I love it.

SPEAKER_01 43:28

It's aligned also to you know what we eat, how we heat, the fasting regimen, like why and the connect many things, but from years, honestly, of connections and experiences that I really tried to simplify because otherwise, you know, like yeah, I love these details, but I I can appreciate how most don't.

SPEAKER_03 43:55

And it's interesting because the skin is still. part of you and we treat things as a dermatology specialty. It's very like here's this box. It does not touch this box, but it's all me.

SPEAKER_01 44:10

So it's all connected. I used to be, you know, when I would when I was a teen, you know, like I would ask, okay, how about what I eat? Oh no, it's not related. Oh no, it's you know like now at least we know and I'm sure dermatologists no longer say this, but it's very, very focused on the skin, of course. And we have to understand that MD degrees are there to diagnose conditions, right? And to treat these conditions. But a physician is rarely the one that will actually support nutrition wise. That's not what they don't go into prevention much. They don't learn in school. They don't learn in school. So how are they going to teach us? Exactly. But it's the same for the skin, right? It's either treating a specific condition like psoriasis, for instance, but psoriasis is really a systemic disease. It comes from your inflammatory pathways in your gut. Even if you give it the best topical care you're supporting your skin dynamic. But the condition is there. It's inside right and there are other conditions that are really dermatology related that are not just symptoms and they care for that. But at the core the skin functions nobody looks really at that they look at what you can do for these different symptoms. So unfortunately that's where we are especially in Canada. I know in the US you have more integrative medicine and wellness and it's starting to double up here but the system is so full that they don't have the time to care for these prevention aspects. They go deep into treatment and that yeah so that's that's I think on us to make it work.

SPEAKER_03 46:03

Things and we have different bottles of whatever yeah and it not just with skincare. I mean it could be with hair care it can be with laundry detergents if we're realizing it's affecting our skin or my stepdad went through that whole path.

SPEAKER_01 46:19

It's amazing that we forget how connected things are and we forget that modern medicine is treating the symptom not the root cause like you talked about and how there's so many times if any of you have tried any type of new medication if you read the pamphlet that comes with it can be kind of scary to realize that it can be treating one thing while causing a host of other problems within your body because everything is connected it's all connected you know like sometimes you don't have the choice you know you have a serious condition you have to make that trade-off right but the more you're exposed to treatment and hard decisions the more you think for yourself okay is there anything that I can do now not to be faced with that hard decision later.

SPEAKER_03 47:10

Thank you for being on and we are very excited for your book and I like I said I will make sure that it is in the newsletter and that it is in the show description when it comes out and good luck with your book baby.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

Thank you so much I was really nice to be on with you love the questions.

SPEAKER_03 47:29

Oh good love alignment of dimensions of wellness yes thank you thank you so much for listening to this episode I hope that you found the answers that you needed and you had some amazing aha moments. Please share this episode with others because it helps us align ourselves and then better align the world so that we can seek the healing that we really are looking for. As part of the legal language I am a certified life coach with a bachelor's in applied health that is what I am leaning on for this is general advice taken as such. See you in the next episode.