Ep 182 – The Rogue Pharmacist: Best Retinol Alternatives and Why You Should Use Them

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Lamb Probe can empower your skin practice with these new and highly in-demand services. For more information visit lamb probe.com. That's L-A-M-P-R-O-B-E.com and follow Lamb Probe on social media at Lamb Probe. Hello and welcome to A-S-C-P and the Rogue Pharmacist with Benjamin Night Foods. In each episode, we'll explore how internal and external factors can impact the skin. I'm Maggie Stasek, A-S-C-P's Education Program Manager. Joining me is Ben Fuchs, Skin Care Formulator and Pharmacist. Hey Ben. Well, hello Maggie. Good to see you. Good to see you. So, retinol, that's probably the number one go-to for anti-aging. Pretty much. Vitamin C is right up there. I would say vitamin C and retinol. But retinol is really powerful. Vitamin C is not as potent as powerful. In fact, in pharmacy school, we really study retinol, retinoids, retinol retinoids, O-I-D. At the end of the word implies the whole family of molecules that are similar to vitamin A. Now, when we hear about vitamins, we typically think of molecules from a biochemical standpoint. The average person doesn't think this, but from a biochemical standpoint, molecules that assist chemical reactions. They help chemical reactions occur. Vitamin A is distinct in the world of vitamins in the sense that it doesn't just help chemical reactions. It doesn't just assist. It doesn't just facilitate chemistry. Retinol actually act or vitamin A actually activates chemistry. In that sense, we call it a hormone. So, it's a vitamin because we have to ingest it, but it's a vitamin that has hormone-like properties, meaning it actually makes things happen. The word hormone means I make things happen in Greek. I aroused to activity, Hormaio, I aroused activity. So, it's much more fundamental and powerful in the world of biochemistry than an ordinary vitamin. Vitamin D is the same way. Vitamin A and vitamin D are hormone vitamins, in the sense that they don't just help, they actually activate. How do they activate? They activate like a hormone. They sit inside a receptor, which you can think of like a socket, like an electrical socket. That's what a receptor is. It's on the outside part of a cell. When vitamin A interacts with that receptor, it's just like a plug going into a socket. When a plug goes into a socket, it initiates electrical energy. It forms a circuit so that electrical energy can flow into your light or into your computer, into whatever your electrical device is. That's kind of how a hormone works. A hormone is like a plug and it sits into a socket on the outside of a cell, and it turns on chemical reactions via that plug and socket. They call it a lock and key effect, much more fundamental than vitamins, than ordinary vitamins. Vitamin A is a very, very fundamental molecule with lots of properties and lots of properties for the skin. That's what makes it such an important skincare ingredient because it's really handled very well by the skin. Not all ingredients, not all nutrients that have an effect on cells can be put on top of the skin, on the stratum corneum, and then have an effect. That's pretty amazing. Whenever you find a molecule that you can put on the surface of the skin, which we know is dead and made up of dead cells, and it can have an effect down below, that's pretty amazing in the world of ingredients. There's not a lot of ingredients that do that, and there's certainly not a lot of ingredients that do that with the intensity of vitamin A. Generally, that makes vitamin A. If not the most important ingredient you could put on your skin from an anti-aging and from a skin health benefit or skin health benefit perspective, it's right up there in the top two or three. I consider it, I would have to say, is probably the number one most important ingredient in terms of its effects on skin cells when applied topically. Let's talk about this. It's a very confusing subject, vitamin A, because vitamin A is molecules that have vitamin A activity are found throughout nature, and that's really important. So when we talk about vitamin A, we typically refer to the active form of vitamin A, which is called retinolic acid. The precursor to retinolic acid is called retinol. There's an intermediary step between retinol and retinolic acid called retinaldehyde, and those are the three main forms of vitamin A. There's a form of vitamin A that's used in ingredients called retinol palmitate, but that has to be converted into retinol and then into retinolic acid half its effects. So the most important forms of vitamin A are retinol and retinolic acid. Retinolic acid requires a prescription that's the active form of vitamin A. Retinol is a precursor form to vitamin A, and that's available without a prescription. In nature, there are lots of molecules that have retinol-like effects similar to retinol. They're chemicals that fit into that socket. They're not exactly retinols, but they're close enough that they'll fit into the socket and they can initiate some of these effects. So because, as you mentioned, retinol has some really aggressive effects on the skin. I'll explain what those are in here in a moment. There's been a move to look for some of these molecules in nature that fit into the socket, but will have not the kind of intense effects that you get from retinol. Now, I'm coming from the world of pharmacy, and the world of pharmacy, I look for effects. In pharmacy, we're not interested in being timid. We really want to change the behavior of a cell, and there, while there are ingredients found in nature that will sit into that socket, does that make sense how I'm explaining this? Yeah, that it will sit into that socket that will sit into that receptor. They don't have anywhere near the intensity of real vitamin A of retinol, but because they're milder, there are some benefits for people who have skin sensitivities. Now, as you mentioned, what about people are waxing? What about people have sensitivities? Here's the issue. In order for retinol to activate, to have its activating effects, there is some inflammation that is involved. One of the mechanisms of action is of these vitamin A molecules, retinol and retinocacetids, they have inflammatory effects. Now, if your barrier, skin barrier, is not intact, it's not strong, it's not healthy, some of those inflammatory effects can be very unpleasant, and that can make it difficult for people to use this wonderful ingredient. And so for those people, maybe the more milder forms of vitamin A, milder, retinol-like molecules that are found in nature may be beneficial, but you're not going to get anywhere near the benefits that you are of retinol, which is why if that occurs, you have these sensitivities and it's too inflammatory, it can cause redness or irritation, you don't want to use it. It's much better to strengthen the barrier than to try to go for an alternative that's going to be much weaker. And there are lots of alternatives, and the most famous one is bacochial these days, but there's lots of them out there. To me, it makes much more sense to strengthen the barrier so that you can use retinol. For example, if you want to work out, but you just got out of the hospital, you're not going to sit there on the bench and start lifting 225 pounds. You're going to work yourself in slowly, you're going to get your muscles developed so that you can lift heavier weights. I always use the exercise analogy because there's a lot of similarities between the effects of retinol on the skin and the effects of weight lifting, for example, on your muscles. What you're doing is you're creating an inflammatory stress on the muscles when you're lifting weights, and what is the body's response to that is to get bigger. I don't know if we've mentioned the word antifragil before. Have we talked about antifragil? No, I've never heard that. So there's this concept in biology and systems theory called antifragility. So we know a fragile system is a system that breaks. It's fragile. A non-fragile system is a system that doesn't break. Your china is fragile. A steel bar is non-fragile. But in biology and in certain systems, there's a third category of fragility called antifragil. And this is a system that doesn't break when it's like a fragile system and it doesn't not break like a non-fragile system, it responds to stresses by growing. This is what antifragil systems do. They respond to stresses by growing. There's a simplistic idea that if a system creates an ingredient, creates irritation, or a process, creates irritation, the skin, that's to be avoided. It turns out that in order for a system to grow a stress has to be put on the system. We have this kind of misunderstanding about stress in the sense that we always want to avoid stress at all costs. You can't grow without stress. Your muscles can't grow without stress. Your brains and your synapses can't develop without stress. And likewise, your skin can't grow without stress. Living systems are antifragil. They grow in response to stress. If that stress is done strategically, and by strategically, I mean balance with rest and sustained with nutrition. With rest and nutrition, you can leverage stress. You want to avoid stress. You want to leverage it. You want to take advantage of it. So to me, yes, you can say, oh, I'm not going to use retinol or retinol or regnoc acid because they're irritating. I'm going to use some of these alternatives, but you're not going to get the benefits. The alternatives are extremely mild. They have some retinol-like activity, mostly in a test tube or in a petri dish in real life, in vivo, as we say, very, very mild, almost insignificant benefits from things like bacucchia, which is the most famous one. But there's extracts found in sage and vitex and valerian and marigold and various cypress plants that have these retinol-like effects. It turns out the retinol is a fatty molecule. And wherever you find unsaturated fats, you'll find a certain amount of retinol-like activity. So these plants that I mentioned have these kind of phytonutrients that are fatty. Those have retinol-like activities, including bacucchia, omega fatty acids, fish oil, contain something called DHA, which has retinol-like activities. Even linoleic acid, which is omega 6 fatty acid, has retinol-like activities. There are molecules that are found in dairy and also in meat called phytol and phytonic acid, which also has retinol-like activities. And you can use all of these if you want to orally or even topically if you want to get some retinol benefits, but they're not going to be anything like anywhere near like retinol or retinol or retinol acid. So if you find yourself unable to use retinol or retinol acid, focus on strengthening the barrier. Now, there's a couple ways to strengthen the barrier. Ironically, one of the best ways to strengthen the barrier is to use retinol and retinol acid. So it's kind of like a catch 22. So it's like if you go into the gym, you're going to get bigger if you lift weights, but if you weak, you might get hurt if you lift weights. So what do you do? You start slowly. You build it up. You don't start off with like 0.1% retinol acid. You start off with 0.05 or 0.025 or 0.01 retinol acid. You don't start off with 5% retinol. You start off with 0.5% retinol and you build up the barriers slowly. And we do find that people get used to retinol and retinol acid over time. So you can start off slowly and build yourself up. There are also wonderful nutrients that will help strengthen the barrier. Omega fatty acids have a barrier strengthening effect. Niacin has a barrier strengthening effect. Vitamin C has a barrier strengthening effect. Lesset that in phospholipids have a barrier strengthening effect. Also, if you're not healthy, if you're not nutritionally sound, if you're not absorbing, say fatty, your essential fatty acids or your phospholipids, work on digestion, work on perhaps use digestive enzymes with your meals, lipase with your meals. Pancread and with your meals, lesset than with your meals to improve absorption of these fats. Also, if you have food allergies or food intolerances or leaky gut, work on the digestive system. To say, I'm just not going to use this ingredient because I have a problem, it deprives you of the most powerful anti-aging ingredient that's available with maybe the exception of vitamin C. But even I would say retinol is even and retinoids are even more important than vitamin C. Sure, there's alternatives like a say, phytonic acid or phytol or omega fats or bacucciol or honokayol or valerian or phytics. There's lots of different things that you could do like I say, they're found throughout nature, but you're not going to get anywhere near the benefits that you are going to get from retinol and retinolic acid. So you had mentioned retinol palmitate. Why would somebody choose that over because it's extremely mild? There's many steps that are required for the retinol palmitate to get converted into retinolic acid and retinol. And while it does happen, it happens very slowly and it doesn't happen really effectively. It does happen though. It's also readily available in companies like using retinol palmitate because you do get some skin softening effects. You don't necessarily get the really genetic effects. And that's really where retinolic acid get their claim to fame in terms of effects as they manipulate genetics. And this whole process is really fascinating. So you put your retinol in your body or on your skin, that retinol has to be attached to what's called a binding protein. And that binding protein attaches to the retinol whether you're applying a topoclear or taking internally. And then the binding protein takes the retinol to the cell. And then that cell will take the retinol of the binding protein and put it on what's called a retinolic acid receptor. And then that retinolic acid receptor manipulates the genetics. And this is how retinols have their effect. Most of their effects are affecting at the genetic level. For retinol palmitate to go through all those steps to get to the retinolic acid receptor in order to initiate the genetic changes, the epigenetic changes really. By the time you get that ingredient to the gene, you're going to have trace amounts of it. So it has some effects, very, very little. Most of the effects of retinol palmitate are surface. It's cheap. It's found in a lot of products. It doesn't cause any problems for people. So you'll see it in a lot of skincare in skincare formulations. But you're not going to get the real anti-aging benefits that you're going to get from retinolic acid and retinol. The third ingredient that I mentioned at retinaldehyde is pretty potent ingredient, but it's very unstable. So it's not really practical to use it in skincare products, although there is a form of retinaldehyde that is in a bubble, like a liposone. And that kind of protects the retinaldehyde a little bit. But the problem is you can't get very much retinaldehyde in the bubble. So retinaldehyde contain products. First of all, the company's never tell you how much is in there because it's embarrassing. There's trace amounts of retinaldehyde in there. And you're really not going to get the dramatic effects that you get with retinol or retinolic acid in high concentrations. And pharmacy would say that dose makes the medicine, and you have to have enough of the ingredient. And this is the problem also with natural analogs of retinoids. You don't really get the intense dose that you do from retinol and retinolic acid. There's really no substitutes, even though companies will market them as being gentler and more natural perhaps, but they're really not going to get the great benefits that you do from retinol and retinolic acid. That concludes our show for today. And we thank you for listening. But if you just can't get enough of Ben Fuchs, the ASCP's rogue pharmacist, you can listen to a syndicated radio program at brightsideben.com. For more information on this episode or for ways to connect with Ben Fuchs, or to learn more about ASCP, check out the show notes.