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I had the great pleasure of sitting down with my dear friend, Dr. Bobby Buka, a renowned dermatologist with a very unique perspective on healing on this week’s episode of Dear Gabby.

Our decade-long friendship began on a yoga mat in Austin, Texas, and has grown into a deep connection rooted in our shared passion for optimizing and democratizing health and wellbeing.

Dr. Buka champions a collaborative, holistic approach, blending Western medical science with Eastern wisdom, and breaking down barriers between doctor and patient. 

This inspiring conversation is packed with insights and practical tips to elevate your health journey.

In this episode you’ll learn:

  • Tips to transform any environment into a soothing sanctuary of healing.
  • Unconventional East-meets-West skin solutions.
  • How to identify compassionate providers and communicate your specific needs.
  • The most important things that we can be doing for longevity for our skin.
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disclaimer

This podcast is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your personal journey towards inner peace. I am not a psychologist or a medical doctor and do not offer any professional health or medical advice. If you are suffering from any psychological or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified health professional.

dear gabby #212 Jun 24, 2024 physical wellbeing

skincare secrets with eastern and western medicine for optimal holistic healing

[00:00:00] The following podcast is a Dear Media production. Hi there, Gabby here. This podcast is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your personal journey towards inner peace. I'm not a psychologist or a medical doctor and do not offer any professional health or medical advice. If you are suffering from a psychological or medical condition, please seek help from a qualified health professional.

Hey there. Welcome to Dear Gabby. I'm your host, Gabby Bernstein. And if you landed here, it is absolutely no accident. It means that you're ready to feel good and manifest a life beyond your wildest dreams. Let's get started.[00:01:00] 

Welcome back, my friends. Welcome back to Dear Gabby. Before we dive in, I want to thank everyone who has pre ordered their copy of my new book, Self Help. This is your chance to change your life. The book is out on New Year's Eve, which is so cool. And anyone that pre orders gets a free ticket to my live online full day masterclass, which is a event where we're going to bring the book to life.

If you are somebody who definitely knows you're going to order the book and you're thinking, well, yeah, maybe I'll pre order it. Then definitely don't miss deargabby.com/selfhelp and pre order because when you pre order, you get a free ticket to this live online. Masterclass. It's a full day.

You can join at any time or you could join the whole day, whatever you want. And you can be with me learning the tools from the book a month and a half before the book even comes out. So head over to deargabby.com/selfhelp. This is a book that is going to absolutely without a [00:02:00] shadow of a doubt, change the way you perceive yourself and the world around you.

And I'm excited that you're going to have it. Now, let's talk about today's show. I am really excited to have my very close friend, a family friend, someone who his family and my family traveled together. We have been friends for many, many years and his name is Dr. Bobby Bucca. I call him Dr. B. I love him dearly.

He is a renowned dermatologist. and not an ordinary dermatologist. He's a very unique doctor. He has a unique approach to medicine that applies his own practices, his own mindfulness practices, and believing in the balance and the blending of Western medical science and Eastern wisdom. Dr. B, Dr. Mucha, breaks down these barriers, and he also is one of the more compassionate doctors I've ever met.

He has Eggs in his offices. He has the universe has your back sitting at the desk in the office. He has a mindset [00:03:00] around medicine that is quite unfamiliar, truly, because it's different than most. And so today on the show, we talk about vitality and longevity. We talk about how to get the most out of our health and the different kind of hacky things that we do to elevate our skin, our inner body, our outer body, the whole vibe.

So You're going to love this episode. Enjoy the show with my dear friend, Dr. Bobby Buca. Dr. Bobby freaking Buca. Hi, Gabby. Bienvenido a casa de Gabby. Oh, I didn't know. Is that new? Si, hablo espanol, amigo. Claro. Yo quiero hablar contigo mucho. Vamos. Yo necesito practicar. Okay. No, I'm seriously speaking Spanish.

It was my big thing. The two things I want to learn this year are Spanish and I get really good at tennis, which by the way, are the two things that you love most. I do. Well, I don't know if Spanish is one of them, but tennis, that's fine. Tu es mi maestro. Yeah. Está bien, amigo. And Zach plays as well. Yes, bro.

We're going to [00:04:00] play. Okay, good. So those are my two goals and you can teach me everything. Great. And that actually brings me right to where we first started. Because, in this room, not only is a dermatological expert, major business man, truly, you're the only person that I know, you're one of the only people that I know, really, truly, that has a law degree and a medicine degree.

Medical degree, yes. from Northwestern. Bro, I don't really, I can't really contemplate the level of desire and commitment to go to school for that long, but good for you. God bless you. Thank you. So Dr. Bobby Bucca and I met in Austin, Texas. That's right. on a yoga mat, you were like, yogi man, hair in a ponytail.

And at the time I'm like, oh, who's this yogi guy? And they pair us up, Baron Baptiste is leading the class. They pair us up with whoever's next to us, truly. And you and I are then like, full on [00:05:00] Barron's like hug each other for four minutes and then I gaze for four minutes. So I'm staring in your eyes and we're looking at each other and like right now, like right now and totally connected.

Later, I find out that you're this big time dermatologist in New York city. And I'm like, the guy's looking at all my wrinkles, all my collagen loss. And I was then like five minutes later, I'm asking you every question I could possibly ask you about skincare, but really fast forward. What is it now? Next week will be our near.

It's a little different because I stop off for coffee, which not a lot of yoginis do and everyone else was in the room and there was one mat left. And now I know why there's one mat left. So I took that mat. We started the eye gaze and someone said, okay, now it's time for bestselling author Gabby Bernstein to come up to the stage after we just finished our four minutes.

And you start to get up and I think, Oh, what an awkward time to go to the bathroom. You're going to miss the [00:06:00] speaker. She's about to come up. And then you start walking towards the stage and it's like, Oh no, she's going the wrong way. She's looking for the bathroom. And that's it. And then it wasn't until you took that first step on the rise.

I was like, Oh, That's Gabby Bernstein. That's the eye gazer. So I realized you're this dermatologist staring at my wrinkles and you realize I'm going to go on the stage and speak. That was nice. But the thing is, is that we became friends right away. Oh, this is pre Oprah. I think you were writing The Universe Has Your Back at that point.

I think I was. That's a really good point. I think I was. But we've become really close friends, like family friends, like our boys are friends. Your wife is my friend, dear friend. We're here now. And I really just admire you for so many different reasons, but you remind me. of this one quality I have in myself, which is just sort of like an F it, let's go kind of man, right?

So if you want to do something, you're going to set out and do it. And that goes for your building a farm and like having, you know, making all these eggs and having this land and doing [00:07:00] all that kind of work, but also creating a business around really changing how healthcare works and the landscape of healthcare.

And that's so major right now, because I'm someone who goes in and out of doctors or yesterday I was at the hospital getting a scan for my cholesterol or whatever it was. And I'm looking at this whole system and it's just a nightmare. And so I've just have so many beautiful conversations with you over and over about how the healthcare system can be changed and also how we can marry both the non traditional Western medicine, non traditional to Western medicine with other Eastern philosophies.

Yes, great. And I want to dive into that right away. Yeah, I think a focus for me has been how do we heal, right? And what are the best ways to go about healing? How do we optimize that? And I was listening to one of your podcasts. I think you're, you had this watershed moment, 2005, I think it was October, right?

And I was thinking about if I had anything similar where I realized, Oh, we're healing in a way that's really backwards and doesn't benefit us on our highest use case. And when we were first opening the [00:08:00] practice, We called around to other dermatologists and we said, Hey, can we get a patient in? Cause we weren't open yet.

We're still in the construction. If I called with someone that had psoriasis or rosacea, the average wait time was three weeks to an appointment. But if I called and said, Hey, someone wants to have Botox done. They could get them in three days. A day. Yeah. And I thought, how backwards is this? The folks that are in the most need of care, not the ones that are doing elective procedures, but ones who really need us can't get in to see a doctor.

And so that was a focal point for me. And that was an aha moment where I thought, okay, I want to change the way we heal. And it starts with access. We had one of these Medicaid linked plans call us and say, Hey, do you want to be one of our docs? And I said, absolutely. And the insurance consultant at the time was like, are you sure you want those patients in your waiting room?

What's going on here? The fact that you've got to show up in a certain way or be sufficiently quaffed or meet some sort of socioeconomic threshold in order to be healed was so backwards. And so this was like, okay, [00:09:00] this is the direction we're going to run, right? We're going to be ground floor. We're going to be accept all insurance.

If you don't have insurance, let's do a sliding scale. Let's be open on weekends when folks need to see us. Or if you're a single mom of three and you have to go after work, let's be open late as well. And that was sort of that access point. You know, because to start the healing process, right? A, you got to find someone that fits.

Yeah. B is, is the environment in which we heal. And you and I talked a little bit about this, right? But if you go to a hospital today, there are tremendous impediments to healing. Right? Well, I was there yesterday. It was disgusting. There was like blood on the wall in the bathroom. Yeah. I'm not kidding.

Right. And so that doesn't bring you to a place where you feel comfortable, a place where you can really reach inward towards your immune system to fix whatever's. No, you're going to get sick when you go there. I know Zach is more of a TV guy than you are. I was watching this world war two masters of the air.

And they, and they have, when the pilots come back from their bombing runs, [00:10:00] they're placed, the ones that get sick are placed in this giant theater, right? It's like 50, 50 beds and everyone heals together in a shared communal experience. And what happened was, is we realized, Oh, there's airborne disease.

We've got to isolate patients. And so we swung the pendulum in this extreme other direction. If you go to the hospital now, you're limited by the number of people that can see you, you know, loved ones and friends only one in and one out at a time. There's oftentimes a lock on that ward. So you have to see the nursing first or security.

Then there's a nursing station to get in. Once you cross the threshold of a hospital room, you may not even have a window. Right. You're surrounded by plastic. I've got a million dollar idea for one of your listeners. Why does everything in the hospital room go beep? Yeah. Couldn't it make a really nice tone?

Why doesn't an IV pull or an EKG? of a swoosh? Right. A swoosh. Yeah. So you're surrounded by this cacophony of noise. That's a genius idea. In a plastic room, may have a window, if there is a window, chances are those windows don't open. That's right. There's [00:11:00] no fresh air. There was a tremendous work done at a Clemson university where they found ICU patients.

Ones that had a window in their room, ones that didn't have a window in their room in this particular hospital. Yep. The rate of anxiety and depression, way higher if you didn't have a room, and your risk of mechanical intubation, of, of having, being attached to a breathing machine, went, was double if you didn't have a room.

Mm. That's huge. You actually just gave me an idea. Because not, not just the sounds and not just the windows. What if there was some form of guidance, like a meditative guidance or a voice or some kind of connection, right? Because it's, it's the lack of light. It's the beeping sounds and there's no connection.

Yeah. No connection. You're surrounded by strangers. Strangers are coming at three in the morning to take your blood. Yeah. So you're alone. You're essentially put on an iceberg out to drift and it's very isolating and it's too far of a shift and we [00:12:00] need to redesign our healing spaces. I have a lot of trauma around the hospital too because I went, went back into the same hospital that I had to have, uh, D a D and E for my son.

When some people on the show know that I was five and a half months pregnant, I had to have an abortion. And it was in the same hospital that I was in yesterday. And it made me realize one, how much PTSD I still have from that experience. Cause I was going up the same elevator and I started having like a panic.

Yeah. And how much I haven't processed and tucked away. But also it's reiterating everything you're saying. I was in the, the hospital room having this procedure the day before you have a D. N. E., which is a very painful procedure. I'm not going to get into what it is, but as I'm having the procedure, I'm looking at the wall in front of me and there's a picture of a woman holding her baby.

And it was so insensitive, like, do not, like, think these things through. And so I started screaming in the middle of the procedure, I was like, get that off the wall, and [00:13:00] they ripped it off the wall, like, tape came off the wall. And so I just have to really emphasize what you're saying, which is that it's not a conducive environment for healing, and energetically, they need to see it.

Sage the out of this hospital. Thankfully, I have a very close family member who's very high up at that hospital. I'm going to talk to him about this. I remember when Jessie had her firstborn and the look on her face when the charge nurse said those fluorescent lights, they don't turn off and they don't dim.

Yep. And so for our second born, we took a bunch of floor lamps with us. Yep. Yep. The first one, you bring all the stuff that you don't need. And then the second child, we were like, okay, we're just going to bring floor lamps so the fluorescent lights can come off and it can be a more peaceful environment.

Now, can I say that the lack of decelerations and the zero talk of C section with the second child is related to lighting? No. But I know that calmer mama means calmer outcomes. That's exactly right.

Hello, my friends, I got some cool news for you. This is Gabby [00:14:00] Bernstein of the Dear Gabby podcast. And if you are ready to prioritize your wellness, and maybe you want to make more informed decisions, or you want to understand the science behind all these new wellness trends, then I want to introduce you to my longtime friend and favorite new podcast, Health Hacks with Mark Hyman, MD.

Some of you may already be fans of Mark Hyman. If you are, He's a wellness expert who provides science backed guidance on how to live a longer, healthier life. In his new podcast, Dr. Hyman helps you wade through all the health fads and all the sound bites by bringing you the latest science along with practical tools and insights to help you make informed decisions.

So if you're ready, new episodes release every Tuesday on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast, just search for health hacks, empowering you to live longer. Well, I love Mark. I love this show. Check it out. I'm sure you've heard about this next sponsor, Hill House Home invented the Viral Nap Dress.

Okay, so I have a girlfriend, Carolina, [00:15:00] and she is always in a nap dress. I'm not kidding you guys. Girl loves a nap dress. And one day I was with her at the pool and I was What are you wearing? It looks so comfortable, but it's also super sexy. And she's like, you don't know about the Hill House Nap Dress?

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It's breezy. It's just cute. It's just cozy. It's everything for me. It's got to be easy. It's got to be effortless. It's got to be comfortable. And I love putting on my Hill House now after I was just sitting outside on the patio and just relaxing. So my friends Hill House is not just about the dress. It's super cozy and it's nice with.

They've got bathrobes, they've got pajamas for adults, they're just soft and everything is delicious. They also have a ton of different dress styles for little kids and now they [00:16:00] have swim for kids too. And get this, even Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo have been spotted in their hell house So cool. Get 15 percent off your order of 100 or more at hillhousehome.com with code Gabby. Again, that's code Gabby for 15 percent off your order at hillhousehome.com. So my friends, it is the most luxurious, cozy, and sexy dress. That's code Gabby for 15 percent off your order at hillhousehome.com.

So one of your first locations was in Soho, right? And I went in. Was it one of your first? It was like a handful, right? Yep. And I walk in early, a decade ago, when we first became friends, I'm like, I'm going to go see Dr. Buka. And I walk into your office and not only do you have my books laid out everywhere, like, not just championing your friend, which you were, but also really sharing spiritual wisdom in your office.

You have eggs from your farm. Today, Dr. Buka shows up with his cheese that he made and [00:17:00] his honey and that energy and that sort of simple little touch. goes so far in that healing environment. It's so important for me. It's so important. Put some rugs on the floor. Yes. Turn down the lighting. Make it a place that you want to be.

Make it a place that you want to be. There's less distance between you and your disease process because you're in a foreign environment. There's a tremendous charity I want to highlight run by the superstar Diane Brown called RxArt. And they take some of the best contemporary artists, Jeff Koons and Murakami, and they bring them into hospitals to decorate, decorate an entire wing or do an MRI machine.

Jeff Koons did a terrific MRI machine in Chicago. So this is all the concept of making patients feel safe in an environment where they're supposed to dig deep and bring as much of their healing power with them. Safe is the word. Make them feel safe. I'm gonna donate my app to the hospital. That was the idea I had right here.

Yeah, it just happened. Yes. Thank you. But this is you talking about this is like sparking, right? So our listeners are a lot of healers and yogis and this might be inspiring [00:18:00] them to do something locally in their environment. Right? So is there some kind of gift you can give? Is there, do you have a card deck you want to donate?

Whatever it is, or a book. No, it's so, it's so true. And I'm going to just leave some books around too. That's The third piece to healing is your relationship with your, whether that be a doctor or a doula, how you connect with your healer is so critical to how we heal. And this is in response to those docs that wear white coats all the time that makes the parking attendant call them doctor, or he has got 20 diplomas on the wall.

And there's. There's sort of like an us versus them from the healer versus patient mentality. And that's hurtful to a patient. I mean, if you're a patient and you're dealing with chronic disease, you're navigating this environment with your own, your own relationship with your own disease process. And then to also have to navigate this hurdle of like, I don't get this doctor, he's affected and he doesn't feel like we're in a shared space of how we're going to approach this disease process together.

It's a real challenge. Do you think that [00:19:00] you'll be at any point speaking about this or teaching this sort of energy of compassion that you have for your patients to other doctors? I'd love to. I think you should. I mean, it's the point that you raise it like there's this trench warfare between Eastern practitioners and Western practitioners and the Western practitioners just said, Oh, those Eastern traditional docs, they don't have double blinded placebo controlled studies.

And the Eastern docs are saying, Oh, the Western docs say the antibiotics ruin your gut flora. And. No one wants to be centrist here. Right. And yet there's so much fertile ground. There's so much synergy. If we say, okay, for hair loss, let's bring in curcumin and minoxidil. Yes. Let's bring in saw palmetto and finasteride.

Let's take the best from both worlds and use those collaboratively. As opposed to saying, Okay. Holding grenades at the other side and saying, Oh, I would never touch anything of the Eastern. Or I'm going to give you an antibiotic, but I'm also going to suggest a probiotic and a aloe for your gut and a food plan for the next two weeks.

So you don't go off and get, you know, yeast in your digestive system. Right there. There's connection with your healer where [00:20:00] it's not a, you've got the white coat and I'm something that I'm this, this thing that is going to be patronized to you. I'm a patient who needs to be treated. educated, right? It's going to be, we're going to end this together.

Yeah. Right. We're on this journey. We're on this pathway together to get better. But you know, you and I have had a lot of conversations just to speak to sort of merging both worlds and having that open conversation about what you could do on that supplemental path as well as the medical path. You and I've had a lot of conversations about gut health and skin.

And so if people are out there and they're struggling with any form of skin condition, whether it's acne or rosacea, Oh my God. It's funny that you're with me. Bobby and I were in. Australia, when I realized I had rosacea, the universe had my back. I'm on vacation with like the leading dermatologist, and my hair is falling out because I just went on um, a levothyroxine for my, my pregnancy, and Then I have this inflamed face and I have a talk that week.

Literally my whole face is breaking out in hives. I have no idea what's happening. And it's, and you're like, honey, you got [00:21:00] rosacea. And so here I was with you. And also you and Jesse, your wife, we're just talking back and forth about this. Try that. Exactly. She was saying, okay, let's stay with some of the inflammatory nightshade vegetables.

Yeah. I was saying, great idea. Let's also do some oxymetazoline, some Western medicine. We put those two together. And I think you were in good shape by the time the time I was in great shape by the time. I also remember, I think I manifested through my Instagram, a dermatologist, you'd prescribe me something cause you couldn't prescribe anything for me.

You were like, you can go get this over the counter, but we figured out a way we figured it out. And it is a combination, right? Because well, for me, I live that way, but. When you think about skin quality, whether it be rosacea, whether it be even just wrinkles and aging, how much of, do you believe now, that the gut plays a role?

It's huge. It's huge and it's probably the least studied portion of the Western medicine cohort of education, right? It's something that they train us the least amount in, right? And yet, we know that gut health and [00:22:00] the inflammation that exists in the gut, manifests on the skin. I mean, Chinese medicine is terrific about reading interior health based on the status of your skin and also your tongue.

We can do a much better job in the Western medicine side saying, Hey, how are we going to incorporate low inflammatory regimens into our patients that have flammatory diseases like rosacea or psoriasis or atopic dermatitis? What are three things that someone could do right now to support that?
inflammation to support those conditions on the gut side on the gut side and even on the medicine side. Let's hear both because you speak both sides. Yeah. I mean, it depends on the condition we're talking about. You don't want to prescribe to everybody, but I would say the anti inflammatory pitch makes a lot of sense when we're talking about gut flora.

The probiotics make a ton of sense. The decreasing candida also has been helpful. Yeah. I know you've had a struggle with that for the years. Yeah. So he's talking about like overgrowth of yeast in your digestive tract. Yeah. Yeah, that's really can help with and that would mean cutting out sugar, cutting out gluten, cutting out.

That's right. We're also finding [00:23:00] that inflammatory states, whether you have psoriasis or you have atopic dermatitis, those inflammatory states could affect other organs. So it works the other way too. If you've got a skin condition, your gut's also going to be inflamed. You're going to, you're going to have circulating inflammatory complexes going through your serum that leads to more atherosclerotic disease as well in the heart.

Yeah. So an anti inflammatory scenario with actual topicals, what would that look like? So we've got a bunch and I, I, I hesitate to go straight to the topical anti inflammatories that everyone knows best, which are steroids. Yeah. Because then it's just going to make it worse along down the road. So there are ways and there's some new, these are, they're called Jack inhibitors.

There are new anti inflammatories that we use specifically for some of the conditions that we've mentioned when you have facial inflammation and you want to avoid any topical steroids. Thanks. Those make a lot of sense and wouldn't really have an impact on other inflammatory states throughout.
What would someone ask their doctor for if they were going into like, what, or what would the, not necessarily specifically the medication, but like anti inflammatory topical, non steroidal anti inflammatory.

Non steroidal. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I know something else that we've talked about in the past is HBOT hyperbaric oxygen, bro, which I'm super excited. You have one, right? I have one. at the farm. And I, I'm coming over. Let's do it. And I think that there's, there's so much soft medicines out there. There's so much soft science, right?

And I, I don't want to dismiss it, but I want to find the stuff that really has the best data behind it. And this really made sense to me. We talk about delivering oxygen to tissues. We know the basis of a lot of disease processes, whether that be dementia or that'd be Parkinson's or that'd be osteoporosis.

A lot of those have to do with poor delivery of oxygen to those tissues, right? Okay. So if we can drive more oxygen into those tissues, we can stave off a lot of these conditions long term. Not FDA approved for any of those indications. It is FDA approved for things like the bends, right? But the pathophysiology and the concepts are the same.

What is it for? The bend? The bends, like a nitrogen sickness. if you're a diver and you stay down too long. Got it. And hyperbaric oxygen chamber. Tell people what is it so that people can understand. It's breathing a hundred percent [00:25:00] or close to a hundred percent oxygen while under pressure. Yeah. And they have it in these different pop ups throughout the city and stuff, which, I mean, probably are nearly as good as the one that you have, but like.

Just like a soda can that is not carbonated until you release the pressure. When things are under pressure. I was prescribed it from Dr. Daniel Amen, who we've had on the show for, um, inflammation in the brain. So just really going in regularly to take down that inflammation. Makes sense. It's also quite relaxing when you're in that thing.

Oh my god. Jesse finds it claustrophobic. Well, yeah, there's different types. Like the one that I went in was not, it was larger. Yes, I might find it a little claustrophobic. It was tighter. But for someone who doesn't have access, which is most people don't have access to HBOT, right? Is that what you would call it?

HBOT? Yeah, HBOT. Yeah. What are other things, sweating, right? Just, Yeah, but certainly there's spas that are doing it at not expensive prices. There are. There are. [00:26:00] You can go in, there's one place in the city I think you can do it for like 30 or 40. Yeah. So I think that there is access there because access is again one of the things we talked about.

Yeah. It's coming. In terms of sweating, yeah, I think saunas and steam rooms are also, that would be my number two on the longevity space side. So HBA and sweating. HBOT sweating. I think Peter Tia talks a lot about the cold plunge, right? Which is really in vogue right now. Do you have one? I don't have one, but I think those would be my top three in terms of a nice mix of like what, what Eastern approaches and traditional medicine have brought to Western approaches.

I think there's a good collision there.

I was talking on today's show with my guest, Dr. Bubi Buka, and one of the things that we discussed was hydration. Hydration is key, and that's why Sports Research Hydrate Electrolytes are perfect for daily on the go hydration. They come in these super handy little packs that just mix with water, and then you have just this delicious drink.

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This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. I love that BetterHelp is a sponsor on today's show. It serves as such an awesome reminder to myself to just take a moment and think about all of the positive change that I have created in my life as a result of being on a journey of therapy and a journey of personal development.

And therapy, my friends, is probably been the cornerstone of my personal recovery, my well being, my day to day experience of happiness. I know that some people right now are suffering not just from the day to day dramas of our lives, the experiences from our past, but we're also just suffering being alive.

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So there is some busy mom out there listening to the show right now and she's like, you know, make just enough money to get by. And she's like, I have no access, Gabby, to a sauna. I have no access to a cold plunge. I don't have access to an H Bot. Like this [00:30:00] is, this is, you know, maybe like, well, maybe we're pissing her off.

What can she do? Great question. I think on the HPOD side, we've talked about some of the areas with some spas that you can go to where it's not expensive to do that. On the heat side, you can do that in a shower. Yeah. Yeah. This is easily. Or just go exercise and sweat your ass off. you could be dripping sweat at the end of a really good cardio workout.

And sometimes when I'm in the sauna, I'm sweating as much as I might be at the end of a really hardcore cardio workout. Yeah. And then on your third piece, without a cold plunge, getting a cold shower. That's what I do. Yeah. So if you have well water, often the water that comes up is very cold. Yeah. So I will go and work out really hard and then I'll go and jump in the cold shower.

I'm told that doesn't do the same thing to the brown fat that's surrounding the liver, but But I feel more alive. Oh yeah. I feel more alive. Oh my god, I feel just so awake and alive. Movement, physical exercise, how much, I mean we know this, we know this, we know [00:31:00] this, but for anti aging, how important is physical exercise?

Your body goes into a state of deconditioning if you're not staying active. And so with deconditioning is going to come weaker collagen, weaker elastin, more wrinkles, sagging countenance. So all of those things happen if your body's not in a, Hey, I'm still active. I'm still, I'm not drinking too much alcohol.

I'm getting enough sleep. I'm exercising. That's your, your body's most youthful state and your skin is going to take cues from that. Is this time for senescence and everything's going to start to sag or am I still very much in the game? Right? And your body, your fibroblasts are going to respond accordingly.

Yes. I feel like getting back in the game has really helped me at this ripe age of 44 that I'm at. And what about, do you have patients coming in with perimenopausal symptoms? I think a lot of the audience is dealing with that. We're asking for a friend. Yes. Yes. Yes. What kind of stuff are you seeing? I mean, they can range, right?

From that flushing. That's an annoyance. [00:32:00] Got it. I started getting it last week. Right. I literally, it was like heat in my chest, heat in my face. I think because of all the IVF, it's coming on a little sooner for me, is what the doctor said. Man, it's freaking annoying. There is. More traditional HRT. Yep. Yeah, everybody can help with that.

Do you think and I've been hearing that it's some people say it's better to start it before menopause some it's like another verdict Isn't out yet the studies that I've read really don't point to any increased risk of cancer There was a small risk associated with endometrial cancer Mm hmm, but most of the studies have said it's gonna be a negligible change endometrial cancer ovarian cancer, so I think it's a nice added especially You I wouldn't do it proactively, but once those symptoms start, whether that be dry skin or genital urinary issues, certainly that's reasonable to start.

Like if it's bad. Yeah. You're in that Perry phase. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I think like when it's manageable, you probably wouldn't want to go inquire about that. But when it's getting bad. That's right. Yeah. Always less medicine is better. Right. Exactly. And find these things like HPOD or [00:33:00] saunas or cold plunges that don't involve.

Do those kinds of things help with perimenopause, the sweating and the HPOD? Oh, absolutely. Okay. Okay. Okay. Perfect. Okay. Yeah. For the same reasons we mentioned, right? Oxygen delivery. That, okay. Okay. Daily sweating, okay? Yeah. Daily sweating. Sure. Okay. Great. Some of those things may trigger that flush blush.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Now. Yeah. So skin, right. As we age. Yes. I think my audience is all people listening. All mostly women are probably quite interested in what are the most important things that we can be doing for a longevity for our skin. Yes. Every one of my patients over the age of 30 will be on some retinol based topical.

Right. There's retinol that's over the counter and then there are retinoids that are prescribed. But if I had to pick a single most important element to keep fibroblast activity steady, to help the collagen architecture stay fresh, it would be using that before bed. Not on the rosacea though, right? like keep it off the rosacea?

Once you get your [00:34:00] skin accustomed to it, it should be fine all over your face. Okay. But yeah, in that initial stage while you're still gonna, you can use it every other day. Okay. You can cut it with moisturizer, so it's not. I put it over my moisturizer. Is that? I want it on first. On first, okay. And then moisturizing goes second.

Okay. Second one is a boring one, which is sunscreen, right? Yeah. When I'm on vacation with you, I've had a lot of vacations with you, Dr. B, you turn over and dude's got like a hundred. You've got like a hundred. No, wait a second. Wait a second. It was a gift to you. There are dermatologists worse than me that come in with the wide brimmed hats.

Okay. Okay. And the face veils. No, you're living life. I'm trying to live life. And the Zinca all over there. Yeah. I'm not one of those, but yeah, do I think SBF 30 or higher makes sense when you're on the beach? Absolutely. 30 or higher. So some people were like, Oh, anything over 50 doesn't matter. But so for your geeks in the audience, there's an asymptote over 30.

So if you go to 31 or 50 doesn't matter that much. But anything under 30, it's a direct proportional curve. So that's when you need to get up to at least 30. 30. Got it. Okay. And every day. Put it in your [00:35:00] moisturizer, yeah. But you can make it a morning thing. Yeah, I wear it, I put it as like my tint on my skin, yeah.

Every single day. Yeah. Okay, what's another one? Retinoids, sunscreen, huge on the basics of hydration and sleep and exercise we've already talked about. Hydration. How hydrated do we need to be? I mean. Half your body weight in ounces? I know that's the classic teaching. I think as long as you're walking around with a water bottle all day, that's, I'm happy enough.

Yeah, you rocked up with your water bottle. And as long as you're putting sunscreen on once a day, some people say you got to reapply if you're sweating. Eh. At least once a day. is fine. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So that's, and then the rest of my skin council is going to be directed to specific issues. Right.

You may have a bumpy face or you may be acne prone or you may be rosacea, and that's going to be more dedicated therapy. But I think my, my catch all things are the things that we mentioned. Okay. And collagen production, all these things. Yeah. Yeah, that's what we're talking about. So we're, you know, we start to notice severe atrophy after the age of 50 and 60 years old.

And that's when you [00:36:00] may need some of that elective cosmetic stuff we talked about earlier in the program. Right. But, but for the most part, doing the things we mentioned, your own body is perfectly capable of maintaining a great volume, full face well into your forties. 40s. What about after 40, Bobby Bucca?

Come see us. Come see us. We have other things for that, too. And we'll take you at the same day. We'll take you for your Botox the same day you're taking for your rosacea. With a doctor not wearing a white coat. That's right. And you can get your eggs and your self help books. Oh, it's so weird when we, so we bring all the cheese down from the farm and we put it in the waiting room in one of the fridges there.

And there's a bit of confusion when patients are checking out because they get the cheese out of their fridge, out of the fridge. And they They're not quite sure how that fits into their appointment. Are they supposed to put it on their acne? Are they supposed to eat it to help with their skin? But now it's just a nice thing to get.

It's just a nice thing to get. A bit of a non sequitur. So I have this vision for you. And so you've got this this big business, which is really serving souls. It truly [00:37:00] is. Derm Specs. Thank you. Yeah. Dermatology specialist. We've we're trying to go into neighborhoods where there has never been a dermatologist before.

Which is wild, right? There are communities in deep Brooklyn and in the Bronx where no one knows what a dermatologist is until we get there, right? And a lot of other dermatologists have chosen not to, you know, there's this huge glut of dermatologists on Park Avenue on the Upper East Side and we're going to communities that are just starved for great care.

medical care in an easy environment, right? We're trying to do this catch all thing where we say, Hey, you want great care in a relaxed environment where you're, where you're go to. And we're available. Yeah, we're available. I'm really proud of you. How many different doctor's offices do you have in New York?

50. 50 all in New York? No, we've got New York. We're now down in Delaware, Philadelphia area, and headed up to New Jersey. Dermatology specialists. Yeah. So 50 locations When I first met you, it was like five or less. I'll tell you Gabs, and this is good for your [00:38:00] entrepreneurial listeners. the hardest one to open is the first one.

It's the first one. Yeah. Yeah. Cause then you cut your teeth. You see what's working, what's not working. And then you just lean on the stuff that's working, which is the stuff we talked about. Yeah. Like what are folks gravitating towards? You're gravitating to getting a same day appointment. Yep. You're gravitating to liking their doctor instead of being talked down to by their doctor.

That's right. It's so easy to me. That was like, why isn't everybody else doing this? Yeah. Well, that's my vision for you. Easy reflex. I feel, and this is a psychic vision, Ooh. Joyce. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We got to touch on that. Yeah. Your mom, your mom is loud in the spirit realm. She's a loud, loud woman. She's loud in the IRL world.

She is a loud woman. And I have a little background information about her, but I feel her very present in this moment. And so I think that she wants you speaking and teaching. And what I'm seeing personally, I feel this too, but it's a collaboration right now. And what she wants to see, I see you on a screen.

[00:39:00] you lecturing with your energy and expressing this energy, speaking to the doctors, but also the business owners, like the owners of the practices or whoever is in the business realm. That's, that's, you know, selling these, these kinds of practices about the value and also the metrics, right? So like you're showing the, the, the data behind it as well, like you did with that study of the windows open and not the windows, right?

And maybe there is even some studies that you're going to put together on your own, but you're teaching. Compassionate health care. I like that. It might even be a book. Yeah. Compassionate health care. And it's not just for dermatologists, but it might start in that niche. It's a huge next step for you. And it's, and she's really like, she's showing me who is an actor.

She's like, you're an actor, Bob. You know, like you got an actor, Bobby, like get on that, get out on that. stage, right? And she's like casting you, right? But, but it, but I really, really, really mean that. Like I see it very clearly. So it doesn't mean to do anything with that, but just take that in and see it unfold naturally because it's going to just happen very naturally.

You might start being asked [00:40:00] to speak more publicly soon. Like, can you speak on this? Can you speak? And you're just going to start dropping it in. Okay. And. And it is how you take this mission beyond all the 50, you know, 50 offices that you have and so many more that you'll create, but it's really carrying the message and giving some sort of simple adjustments to different doctor's offices that can make those, those emotional connections so that people have greater care.

That sounds beautiful. It's clear as hell. Let's do it. It's clear, it's clear as day. You used to say whenever a robin came by, that was mom. Yep. And also with the lights flickered. Yep. The lights are going to start like flashing right now. But, but your mom's always around you and you know that and you can feel that and she's so loud that she's saying like, talk to me so that you can hear me more because you almost have to ask and invite that relationship in so that it can come in more frequently.

And she's with your kids, she's with the boys. Especially, especially, especially Benji. She's like really, really with him. [00:41:00] Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That is a deep regret that they never got to meet, but it's nice to hear she's there. She's like, I know him. She's like, I'm in him. I'm around him. Yeah. Sweet. Yeah.

Yeah. She's really with you. And she's gonna, she really, the real message and we'll close on this is, is that she's gonna, she's gonna, she's like, I'll put him on the stage. Like, you know, she'd be like, you know, I'll put that person in that show. I'll put that person. She was a casting agent, right? Yeah. Yeah.

So she's going to put you on that stage. Okay. And it's really mission driven and it's going to go far into your later years. Like you're going to do lots of these kinds of talks, like wisdom 2. 0 kind of things too. Like, like non traditional, like a Ted talk kind of vibe too. Big time scams. I feel energized already.

We need you. We need your vibe out in the world. So. There's so much that people can take away from this, but I think that the most valuable message is that when we care for ourselves and we care for our inner world and we feel that we have some kind of compassionate connection to our doctor and shared experience and [00:42:00] shared experience and also to speak up in your, in your medical environments, tell the doctors and offices what you need.

Absolutely find a provider that resonates with you. Yes. Making sure you talk about this blend of East meets West. Yes. Making sure the environment is conducive to whether you're healing at home or you're healing in a hospital, you're healing in an outpatient setting, make sure that environment speaks to you as well.

Yeah, it's a job. It really is a personal job to get the right health care. Yeah. Well, I love you and I appreciate you. And where can people find you? They can find us on many streets, ground floors in your city and, and on Instagram. Yeah. The Derm Specs. And you do lots of cool videos on your Instagram.

People should totally check you out on your Instagram. Yeah. Thanks. You're really teaching. And just, if you're in New York, Jersey, or what was the other, Delaware? Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania. Yep. And headed up to New Jersey. Get your butt into a dermatology specialist. Get your butt in there, guys. I don't think anyone that's going to a dirt house is never going to go anywhere else now.

I'm like running over there. Oh my [00:43:00] God. Because the Buka vibe is totally through every single spot. Yeah. It's a relaxed environment and it's the best way that I know to get people better. From a yoga mat to a podcast studio and many places in between. Many places in between. I love you so much. Thank you.

Thanks. I love you too, Gads.

If you made it to the end of this episode, that means you're truly committed to miracles. I'm really proud of you. If you want to get more Gabby, tune in every Monday for a new episode. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss any of the guidance or special bonus episodes. Your experience of this show means a lot to me, so I really want to welcome you to leave an honest review.

And you can follow me on social media at Gabby Bernstein. And if you want to get in on the action, sign up for a chance to be Dear Gabby'd live at DearGabby.com. See you next week.

Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and [00:44:00] advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.