The average women in the U.S. uses over 12 personal care products every day, and the typical man uses over 6 personal care products daily. Hand soap, shampoo, toothpaste, deodorant, cologne, perfume, skin moisturizer, facial cleanser, makeup, etc… We use them to look and feel good and most people never think twice about any of this. 99.9% people have absolutely no idea about the amount of chemical toxins lurking in these products. And I’m not just fear-mongering here. I’m talking about chemicals with known toxicity — we have thousands of studies showing that these ingredients are toxic to human health and they are being put in most personal care products anyway. For example, did you know that heavy metals like lead (which is extremely toxic to your brain, your mitochondria and disrupts several hormones) are actually extremely common in makeup? (See the research here if you don’t believe me.) Did you know that hormone disrupting chemicals like phthalates are extremely common in perfumes/colognes and many other personal care products? (So as you put sprays on that are designed to make you more attractive, you’re simultaneously damaging the very hormones that your health and attractiveness depend on.) And that’s just to name a couple examples — many of these typical personal care products have toxic metals like mercury , aluminum and arsenic, hinder the natural skin production of oils, and many of them also disrupt the skin microbiome, the oral microbiome, and even the gut microbiome (and can contribute to gut permeability.) There are many researchers who believe that toxin exposure through personal care products (and through our food, water, air, etc.) is the single most significant driver of disease. So does this mean that you can’t use any personal care products like facial cleansers, deodorant, moisturizer, perfume/cologne, etc? No, as it turns out there are a few brands of ultra high quality natural skin care and dental care products on the market that support a healthy, beautiful skin, healthy teeth, AND supports your body in maintaining optimal health and energy levels.
In this podcast, I speak with health expert and author Nadine Artemis. Nadine has written the books “Holistic Dental Care” and “Renegade Beauty.” She has also co-founded Living Libations, a natural health and wellness and beauty company. In this interview, Nadine will deliver some mind-blowing information about the science behind personal care products, how they affect our health, and how to find the best skin care products to support your health and energy. This is must-know information for anyone who cares about their health. (I was actually extremely impressed with Nadine’s knowledge and command of the science. She knows her stuff.)
(Personal note: Since recording this podcast a few weeks ago, my wife and I have actually been using her products. They are, hands down, the absolute best personal care products I’ve ever found. The highest quality ingredients with NO garbage/toxic ingredients, and I’ve actually seen noticeable improvements in my wife’s skin in just a few weeks of use. Her skin glows now — it’s seriously radiant. And she gets compliments all the time when we’re at the gym together. Check out Nadine’s product “Best Skin Ever” and read some of the reviews on her site. Also, I get lots of compliments on the essential oil men’s scents. I am a convert. Seriously, these products are the highest end natural skin care and dental care products I have ever found.)
Want to try out Nadine’s products for yourself? (Plus, a discount code)
Go check out her range of natural skin care products here. In addition, Nadine is offering 10% off to all my listeners. Use the code “Energy10” to get your personal discount.
You can also get Nadine’s books, Renegade Beauty and Holistic Dental Care from Amazon.com.
Okay, now onto the podcast…
In this podcast, we’ll cover
- Why your handsoap and body lotion/moisturizer may be toxic to you
- Why your skin bacteria is important to your health (and the best skin care products to support it)
- The best (and cheapest) way to brush your teeth and have healthy teeth (and why your toothpaste is disrupting your oral microbiome and contributing to leaky gut)
- The natural oils that mimic the skin’s sebum and supports skin health
- The best natural skin care routine for beautiful and healthy skin (the methods might surprise you)
- How the ancient Greeks understood the power of natural skin care
- What science says about protecting your skin from the sun (hint: it doesn’t work the way you were told)
- Nadine’s top recommendations of ingredients for different purposes and her recommendation for the 3 best natural skin care products
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Secrets of natural skin care and healthy teeth (and the best natural skin care products and natural dental care products) with Nadine Artemis – Transcript
Ari Whitten: Hey everyone, welcome back to the Energy Blueprint Podcast. I’m your host Ari Whitten, and today I have with me Nadine Artemis, who is a speaker, health expert and author of “Holistic Dental Care” and her newest book “Renegade Beauty” which I have right here. Nadine was kind enough to send this to me and I just read it actually earlier today.
And so a little bit more about her, Nadine is a co-founder of Living Libations, a natural health and wellness and beauty company. Nadine seeks to inspire people to rethink the traditional concept of health and beauty with her paradigm of renegade beauty. And Nadine offers beauty and wellness products that bring out the strength of the botanicals without reliance on synthetics, which we’re going to talk more about. So welcome to the show Nadine.
Nadine Artemis: Thank you so much for inviting me on.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, and I’ll mention now that we’re recording, prior to starting the recording, I was just commenting on how beautiful this view is in the background there.
And I love that you’re involved in forest bathing and you’re practicing a healthy lifestyle. And you mention forest bathing in this book, which I love. And I have to also say that for somebody who’s more in the skin care, cosmetics realm, I was to be honest, kind of anticipating this book to be a little bit fluffy and woo-woo. And I have to say that I’m actually really impressed with what you did with this book. There’s a lot of science integrated into this.
There’s a lot of valuable content. This is not just fluff. You did a phenomenal job with this and I highly recommend that people watching this pick this beauty up for all kinds of do-it-yourself skin care stuff and all kinds of just great health tips.
Really, seriously, excellent job with this. And I really… I’m not that complimentary of a person, I don’t compliment. Most of the stuff that I see in the health field is not stuff that I particularly think is impressive or that I think is worth complimenting. But yeah, you did it. You did a wonderful job with this book. So I’m excited to dig into this material with you.
Nadine Artemis: Thank you. That’s great, we can have a great dialogue since you have read it.
Why natural skin care products are preferred to conventional personal care products
Ari Whitten: Yeah. So toxins in personal care products, and one of the things in your bio here that I just read is you’re focusing on beauty and wellness products that bring out the strength of the botanicals without reliance on synthetics. And I think that’s probably a good place to start, as far as why not synthetics.
And I think there are some people out there who think, you know, who are really impressed with a lot of these fancy ingredients on a… in cosmetics and you know, with all kinds of weird chemical names that they can’t pronounce and they think, “Oh, this must be really good science, that you know, that it’s all kinds of this advanced scientific technology that’s producing these chemicals that are going to have miraculous effects on my skin.” So some people are approaching it from that angle. And you, on the other hand, you’re saying “I’m avoiding synthetics and specifically sticking to natural ingredients.” So why do you think your paradigm is better than that sort of chemical technology, synthetic sort of approach to cosmetics and skin care?
Nadine Artemis: Well, I think, you know when I go into it, to me no pore, no cell is parched for petroleum. You know, it’s not something that we’re depleted in. It’s not something that we need to put on our skin. And I think like, you know, hard to say who knows what, but I think we understand now like the chemicals, they’re hormone disruptors, you know.
We know about the perfumes and the chemicals that they’re making and that there’s petroleum in skin care and there’s aluminum in deodorant and we’ve really had focused previous decades about them being hormone disruptors and finding parabens in the liver or in diseased breast tissue when they test it. Ninety-nine percent diseased breast tissue has parabens in it and you know, and that’s like our daily dose of deodorant or our daily dose of lotion and then it’s finding its way to our breast. So we know that.
But what’s really new and I think really just delivers why we need to use botanicals even more is because of all the research that’s been done in the past few decades about our microbiome and understanding the skin’s microbiome, which is a whole other layer on top of this.
Chemicals are endocrine disruptors. We have a whole new reason to get off the synthetics. And, I think that’s like even more of an understanding because to me, I understand that a cell is like alive, but now we have to like expand our minds to understand like we are teaming with bacteria. You know, our skin is like this tapestry with trillions of bacteria and that like, you know, I think of… so it’s like all there, right now there’s a whole party going on on a microscopic level.
And we got this big hand that comes along, and I just sort of imagine like a comic version, and then we’re like, our hand is delivering those toxins and mutating the microbiome and disrupting their whole life force, their food system. So we’re scrubbing away the sebum that the cells need to, I’m sorry, the microbiome needs to thrive. We’re over exfoliating and getting rid of the food supply that the bacteria needs, so we really got to tone that down and get back to things that are compatible with our bodies, with ourselves and with our microbiome.
Why your personal care products are toxic to your health and energy
Ari Whitten: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a really important angle, that a lot of people don’t talk about it and are unaware of is this idea that we not only have a gut microbiome, all these trillions of bacteria living in our gut, but we have basically the same thing on our skin surface as well and they play a role in our skin health. So I think there’s like, kind of the way I see it, there are three layers, at least three layers, maybe I’m missing one.
But at least three layers to how personal care products, I think, relate to health and, you know, what a lot of people on this podcast… listeners of this podcast are interested in and what I’m interested in, overall health and energy optimization and how personal care products fit into that. Which are endocrine disruption, so potentially disrupting hormonal balance in your body; a lot of these chemicals that are in these compounds, for example, phthalates, BPA or heavy metals have also been shown to be directly toxic to mitochondria in our cells, which are the energy producers in our cells; and this layer of the skin microbiome. And maybe, I don’t know if I’m missing any other.
So, I would love if, maybe, we could dig into some of those other areas and I know you kind of, you mentioned in passing like parabens and some of these endocrine disruptors, but maybe a lot of the listeners are not actually familiar with the idea that there are compounds in, you know, common skin care and personal care products that are having negative effects on their physiology.
Maybe they’re just completely unaware of that. So can you talk, kind of just back up, and assume that the listener knows nothing about any of these topics and talk about some of those key compounds that have been shown to create damage to our health.
Nadine Artemis: Yes, So there are so many, like thousands. And so, you know, we gotta… we can’t talk about them all in a way. But there’s also like, there’s the specifics and then also as a group, we just know like… we don’t want to go there, so the words are going to be all very… Because a product is made really with four different ways.
You have your preservation system, you have your oil, and then you’re either going to add water to that or like a surfactant. So that’s like a modern cosmetic thing where we want to take it, is to just like water, lipids, which are your fats, the medicine part and then the seeds. But that’s a whole other thing. But that’s really all you need. But in this chemical world, we have thousands of chemical cocktails. And then there are the families. So you’ve got your surfactant realm, which could be your sodium lauryl sulfate.
And that’s the stuff that’s scrubbing and foaming, and those disrupt the epithelium in our mouths, which is one layer thick. So you got sodium lauryl sulfate in your toothpaste. And then in our skin we’ve got the dermis and then the epidermis, which is most of our activity where we’re accessing is the epidermis, that’s the very thin top layer of the skin. It’s one millimeter, so it’s like a credit card and in that credit card sideways is four layers of skin layers that are doing a whole bunch of stuff and that’s just the epidermis, not the dermis, and so anything that we’re putting on is going to affect that.
And then, so then within that realm, so you’ve got the foaming things and then you’ve got your… their version of oils which could be your petroleum oil, soy oil or like a polymer, like literally just like plastic polymer things that they’re liquidizing.
And then within petroleum there is like 100 versions of some kind of petroleum thing. And when you’re reading it you don’t even know that it was petroleum at some point. And so those are all toxic to ourselves. And then there’s the preservation system. So it could be parabens, parabens are only used… because that’s always the argument, because a certified organic skin care only has to be 70 percent certified organic ingredients, that other 30… the list is crazy of what is allowed. Like I would never put it on my body… and parabens are allowed and then a lot of people are just like, well, it’s only zero point zero one percent because it is that effective. It’s very potent. It’s infinitesimal in a way and when it’s used, but that’s all it’s ever…
Ari Whitten: Are you talking about parabens?
Nadine Artemis: Yeah. So to make it an effective preservation, you only need 0,01 percent. So it’s minor, but it really, it works. It does preserve.
Ari Whitten: And real quick, what are parabens and what are they doing? Are they put in these formulas because they’re like preserving the product or because they’re intended to do something beneficial for our skin or what?
Nadine Artemis: It’s really just to preserve the product. That’s it’s the main thing. It’s really…. it’s not like a thing like, ooh, now with parabens helping your wrinkles. So it’s just a preservation system. It’s a very popular one, but it’s only ever used in that tiny amount and that’s what’s showing up in our breasts. Right? So we know that different chemicals have different… what’s the… it’s not a shelf life..
Ari Whitten: Like half-life…
Nadine Artemis: Thank you. Half-life. Is it half life? Yeah, so right, like the half-life of mercury versus you know, so I don’t know the specifics, but it’s a tenacious chemical or then you could have like a triclosan in there or something as well, which is within an antibiotic sort of realm. It’s not good on eco… water systems. So yeah, forget the…
Ari Whitten: Yeah, and that one has actually gotten to the point now where there’s so much negative research that’s accumulated that they’ve actually banned that from being in products, which is great, but the problem is that like most people have been using products like soaps and even just hand soaps or hand sanitizers or various personal care products that have it for the last 10 years or 15 years or however long it’s been around.
Nadine Artemis: Exactly, and studies show it makes us more vulnerable to superbugs. It lowers your immune system.
Ari Whitten: Yeah.
Nadine Artemis: Go figure, right?
Ari Whitten: Okay. So parabens, what else is in there? And I’ll mention one thing that I know about that’s pretty shocking and that I think a lot of people would be shocked by is how common heavy metals are in a lot of makeup products. I think makeup especially, like, I mean probably a lot of people listening to this are unaware of the fact that there’s lots of research showing that most common like lipstick brands and many types of very popular makeup brands, mainstream makeup brands have lead in them.
Like lead is a very, very toxic heavy metal that is known to cause all kinds of harm to our body and it is being absorbed through our skin, into our body, disrupting hormones, damaging mitochondria causing all kinds of negative effects. And people just have no clue when they’re putting this stuff on every day that there are heavy metals in there.
Nadine Artemis: Totally, heavy metals and mercury. And then there is mercury in a lot of like bleaching creams. And it should be banned. Like there are regulations on some of these things, but things slip through and now we can really shop quite internationally. So yeah, it’s just, it’s a scary situation and we are… the average North American women are accumulating five pounds a year of chemicals in their body and that’s like if you take, remove the water from the cosmetics.
If you add in the water that goes to like 35 pounds, hard to imagine. But five pounds we are like putting, applying onto our bodies and into our bodies every year. And so also an average woman just doing like a normal day of abolutions in washing her face would have over 200 chemicals applied to her body and I think we think we don’t absorb it or like, oh, it’s our skin, you know. And everything that you’re putting on your skin goes in and it doesn’t have the same filtering system.
So apparently the data is having a chlorinated shower is more toxic than drinking an eight-ounce glass of chlorinated water, it is being absorbed and inhaled into the body. And so when we’re drinking the water that is chlorinated, we have our digestive system, our liver and kidneys to help process it. But when we’re applying it to the skin, it just right into the bloodstream and ends up in our organs.
How the benefits of natural skin care products are backed by science
Ari Whitten: Crazy stuff. I mean, it’s just, it’s honestly just kind of madness that there’s so much nasty stuff in these commonly used products, extremely popular products and most people just have no clue about it. And I also want to mention that there are some people out there who think any talk of toxins in, you know, in these types of products is just woo-woo and nonsense and kind of new age like fear mongering around toxins around people who don’t understand toxins. But there’s actually science every step of the way here. I mean, we know that these compounds do have, I mean, there’s science testing the fact that these compounds do have things like heavy metals and all kinds of other hormone-disrupting compounds.
We know that they do get absorbed through the skin into our bodies that they do actually have hormonal disrupting effects, mitochondria damaging effects, skin microbiome damaging effects. And we know that, you know, all of these things are actually happening. So there is real data showing that this is a very real health concern and I just want to mention that for everybody listening who is inclined to brush all of this stuff off as woo-woo sort of nonsense, like hippie nonsense. “Oh yeah, you and your essential oils, like I’ll stick to my Neutrogena or whatever.” So I think it’s really worth mentioning just that this is actually science-based.
Nadine Artemis: Totally science-based. And also it is the one area, I mean we definitely have control over, which is kind of exciting because you can’t always, you know, the air that you’re breathing or you know, there are things that we can’t necessarily change, but we can literally do that. And the thing is, too, it’s 2018 so it’s not like I’m saying throw them all away and then you’ve got nothing, it’s a banquet what is available and in the realm that you get to like play in. It is so exciting. It’s so juicy. It’s such a celebration of life instead of this lifeless liquid that’s not doing anything. I mean, what really fascinated me when I was like just a teenager and going into all this stuff, I learned that perfumers were the medicine makers and medicine makers were the perfumist in many different cultures. I found that so fascinating.
There was no division between a perfume and a medicine. It wasn’t until the 19th century when we started making synthetics. But then there was that division and then the plant realm became like frivolous femininity, kind of like perfumes and all that. And then the medicines became like the extracts and then those extracts got refined and refined and then synthesized and all of that. But that, you know, perfumes used to be pressed from pedals and what we applied to our skin was just, you know, tinctures and from sap and like all this juicy stuff that was applied to the body.
And then it just became petroleum all the way. How can we use petroleum and bleach it and refine it and fluff it up into a white pristine cream and then just put a whole marketing campaign on it. And there’s nothing in the bottle. Like it’s just so negative to the body, it’s just really nothing for you. There’s nothing in there in these things except there is that feeling of moisture and lubrication or soap. That’s wrong.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, that’s a really, really fascinating observation. And you got my wheels turning as you were talking there because it’s, you know, the way that kind of the most people look at these… I was kind of lumping them into three categories in my head, like perfumes, like scent things that we wear to smell good; personal care products, skin care products, dental products, whatever other personal care products; and then medicines, you know, things we take to make ourselves healthier.
In the modern mainstream approach these are very, very different categories. You know, we have our moisturizers and our colognes and our perfumes and stuff like that. And then we have our medicines, then… there’s no overlap at all in these three categories. But then when you look at what you’re doing and you’re doing certain kinds of things within the realm of personal care products within the realm of sense and things like that.
And then this category of medicine and then you realize the types of products that you’re producing have medicinal effects. They smell good and they’re benefiting cellular health. They’re not just something to smell nice and they’re not only not damaging to like our hormones or mitochondria, our skin microbiome, but they’re actually benefiting our health. They are anti-inflammatory compounds, they benefit brain health, you know, all these different layers of benefits. And so what you’re doing actually is very much this kind of interconnection of these three areas of like, smell good while improving your health while having all these benefits on every aspect of those things.
Nadine Artemis: Yeah, and that, to me it’s fun, it’s convenient and it makes sense, you know, like it’s just such a celebration. You reminded me of the, there’s an ancient Greek word called thymiatechny and it means let perfume be your medicine.
The natural skin care products that are supportive and beneficial to skin microbiome
Ari Whitten: That’s cute. I like that. Nice. So, I want to go back to the microbiome, the skin microbiome a little bit because I think that’s a fascinating topic. I’m curious if you found any particular research around like specific ingredients that, you know, in common, you know, popular mainstream products that are particularly damaging to the skin microbiome. And then the second part of this question after that is have you found any ingredients or products that are really supportive of skin microbiome health?
Nadine Artemis: Yeah, that’s a great question. For sure. There is, I think this is a fascinating one it’s surfactants, which is, you know is soap. So you can still have your natural bar of soap, you know, hopefully you get something really natural made from like a farmer’s market or something. And then you use that for scrubbing your nails and washing your hands and pits and bits, but that’s all you need it for. You don’t need to wash your face with soap ever, like just don’t.
And I’ll tell you in a minute. And I think like the Dial ad or the Irish Spring and they’re lathering their body so much that, just put that out of your head because our skin, no area of our skin needs that. So the fascinating research on surfactant is… because we, right, how do we wash our face in North America, foam it up and that’s how people feel, we think that’s what clean is. And studies show that surfactants, whether it’s from a mild foaming based cleanser from the health food store or your really whatever, I don’t know, whatever they’re selling now these days like from Sephora.
And these surfactants lodge themselves into the stratum corneum, which is the top layer of your epidermis and they stay there even after rinsing. So every day, maybe twice a day, we are just lodging those into our skin and it’s all microscopic.
And then we’ve got this habitual use, and chronic… it will cause chronic inflammation, irritation which may lead to things like melasma, which is hyperpigmentation. It’s certainly not the only cause of it or it could lead to acne or rosacea because you’ve thrown off that whole ecosystem that your skin’s oasis. This is just like totally thrown off by that. And yeah. So we got to ditch the soap, which I think people are surprised at with the skin’s microbiome.
I think what might be more obvious are things like chlorine, so showering in chlorine is really affecting the microbes that keep your skin from drying out. So for… and again, you know, somebody could shower in chlorine and they have a different experience, but one person’s got like dandruff and they can’t get away from that dry, itchy skin or they are having edema. So not everybody’s going to get edema from that, but it just depends what your Achilles heel is and then when you’re combining it with different things. So definitely everybody should be getting a shower filter if you don’t have access to clean water that’s coming from your tap.
So that to me is an obvious one, like chlorine would be pretty obvious. Now when you’ve… then, we create these you know, so we’ve got these skin care regimes with petroleum and different chemicals and then we’re probably going why we spent so much money and we’re doing all this stuff.
But why is the acne still here? Or it worked for a bit, but then it didn’t because we’re getting into this vicious cycle because now we’ve removed food sources, we’ve mutated microbes. We’ve made ones missing, we’re killing off diversity on our skin, all that’s going on and you might venture out to visit like a dermatologist and then they’re going to bring out the harder stuff. So cortisone creams and steroids, you know, either internally or topically and then that is just like further going to deplete your teams of bacteria.
And so really any skin therapy should be working on building diversity in the skin’s microbiome, not further depleting it because again, that might be effective for like a week and then like all the problems are going to come out again and probably a little bit stronger, sort of made the beast a bit stronger.
The best natural skin care routine
Ari Whitten: So what… if we shouldn’t scrub our face with facial cleansers and soap, what should we scrub our face and our body with to, I guess, keep things clean and also support skin and skin microbiome health?
Nadine Artemis: So we go… we look to ancient practices and then what we find is oil, which is so like a mind trip for people, especially if they have acne. They’re like, what? But again, we’re not going to be using petroleum oil, baby oil, mineral oil or some of its names, and we’re not going to use like rancid almond oil or grapeseed oil.
You want to use really good quality, like a pure virgin, organic, real olive oil. Jojoba is my absolute favorite. So you want to get an organic jojoba oil that is good for everybody’s skin type. It’s actually a liquid wax, not a plant oil. So it’s very stable and it’s an oil that mimics our sebum unlike any other oil on the planet.
And so you just wet a cloth, put a squirt of oil on there and then you’re just, you know, it’s like you’re washing your face kind of it, it’s the same actions that you do, you’re just doing it with oil and it lifts up dirt from pores, it unclogs pores, it removes makeup if you need that. And that’s what you do and you can do that to your whole skin. Like you can do it before your shower if you want.
And then you can even use like what the ancients would do with gua sha, and so they would use like a piece of wood or a stone or crystal or like a piece of metal, a strigil was in Ancient Greece, and then they would oil up the skin and then just do this motion with that stick. And then lots of stuff would come out…
Ari Whitten: For people who are listening to this and not watching, I don’t know if there is a good word for that either. But basically like press the object, the stick or the piece of metal or whatever it is, against your arm and kind of, you know, put some pressure on it and then kind of do an upward or… is it only upward or downward motion?
Nadine Artemis: I think upwards is the best motion but it doesn’t totally matter. And you do put a bit of pressure and you can do, you can do whatever pressure you want, but it also a light pressure is more lymphatic. It’ll actually tone the lymphatic system, and then you go a little bit deeper on the pressure and you are working with the fascia. Now that’s a little advanced. So you don’t have to… I’m not trying to say get fancier with your, you know, your morning shower. Because really what I’m saying is quite simple, you’re going to put oil on your face, wash it and then shower and oil up your body and you’re good to go.
Ari Whitten: Well, I like that. This is like you’re killing two birds with one stone, too, because it’s almost like self-massage or self-myofascial release, you know, you’re, it’s almost like massage or foam rolling or something like that…
Nadine Artemis: Yeah, with the oil. And then you’re like toning your skin and conditioning it at the same time. And you know what else is fun? Is even applying oil afterward with a cloth like you’re doing with the face. It gives like the very gentlest exfoliation to your skin and the oil really sinks in even deeper.
The power of jojoba and coconut oil
Ari Whitten: Interesting. So, you mentioned one thing about jojoba oil mimicking sebum. I’m glad you brought that up because I was actually going to ask. I was under the impression that coconut oil was like, I’ve heard people recommend coconut oil because it’s very similar to our sebum. But your opinion jojoba is more…
Nadine Artemis: Jojoba to me is like the king or queen. And definitely I love coconut oil. It’s in many of our formulas. I do find you probably want to dilute it though with jojoba or olive oil just so that it’s liquid unless you’re like tropical or you can keep it warm, and it’s really nice to just even combine them. Coconut oil is a beautiful thing.
Those are like the top three, like just really practical oils that you know are going to be good quality and then you don’t have to go into that peach kernel/almond oil/grapeseed realm because they’re often not real. They’re often rancid and like grapeseed oil is with solvents. It’s made with solvents. It actually wouldn’t be the color it is, it would be a real glaumy, thick thing. And those are the key oils that are often used in the industry.
Ari Whitten: Okay. So jojoba, coconut oil, and extra virgin olive oil, is that correct?
Nadine Artemis: Yeah.
Ari Whitten: A question on moisturizers. I’ve known some people over the years, especially women who use moisturizers, skin moisturizers regularly. I’ve known people, not my wife but friends, previous girlfriends years ago who used like mainstream regular sort of skin moisturizers and also like chapsticks as well.
The same principle applies, but what I’m getting at is that a lot of these people, there’s sort of like an addiction effect from what I can tell where once you start using these things, it seems to me that the skin stops working as it should, it stops producing its own oils and keeping its own moisture properly.
And then you get dry skin whenever you don’t use that stuff regularly and then you get into this sort of vicious cycle where you have to constantly keep applying the stuff for your skin to be properly moisturized. So is my observation on that correct and…?
Nadine Artemis: It is so correct. I love seeing the difference because then somebody will switch over to like a lip balm I’ve made and they’re like, this is lasting me a year, I put it on in the morning and their lips are moist all day.
Ari Whitten: So what’s going on there? What’s actually happening that… what are these things do to our skin?
Nadine Artemis: Yeah, we are creating of those vicious cycles which will manifest sort of differently for everybody. And for many it’s just that common dry, irritated skin so you have to keep putting on this layer of moisture. And those products you mentioned, I mean if it is just a classic cream from the drugstore or a classic chapstick, they’ve got petroleum products in them, you know, and that’s like a layer, it’s like an invisible Saran wrap.
So yeah, from the things we’ve talked about, like endocrine disruption and microbiome disruption, then there’s just, I mean there are so many ways that we could look at it, but then there’s just like a letting the skin breath, don’t forget about that.
So besides our polyester clothing and underwear, then we’ve got the, you know, the creams that are putting on this microscopic Saran wrap and our skin can’t breathe and because it’s a two-way thing. Like would I, I’m always amazed at the stat and I don’t quite know it, but that amount of pounds that our skin sheds every day. It’s like a few pounds and you kinda like where did it, where? Right? So our skin is just this… it’s a breathing, living tissue. I like to refer to it as the moist envelope of our soul, but we’ve been treating it like it’s like a plastic bag or something.
How essential oils work in harmony with your skin and promote skin health
Ari Whitten: Interesting. So the idea of letting the skin breathe is interesting. Now, how does that relate to the oils that you use. Do those still allow the skin to breathe?
Nadine Artemis: Oh, yeah. It’s full… everything’s flowing and breathing and then… Oh yeah, to answer a question from before that we didn’t get to, so we got two new questions, was what isn’t disturbing the microbiome. So that was so fascinating too because I’ve been working with this pallet of beautiful plants for a few decades and the microbiome stuff is newer and so when I get to go into that research because of antibiotic resistance and those kinds of issues right now. Sorry about the not light situation.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, no worries. We get to look at your silhouette with the beautiful background of the forest and the lake behind you.
Nadine Artemis: The sun is setting. It‘s… the microbiome is so fascinating to me as you probably can tell from the book, but it’s so fun because we have a huge crisis right now of antibiotic resistance and so much of science and research is what can… how can we solve this because it’s not more antibiotics. And then the whole world of essential oils opens up and we understand why people have been using these plants forever.
We have the modern science giving us data on, “oh, that’s why people were using frankincense in oral care forever or that on their skin forever.” And so we find out that essential oils are very effective quorum sensing inhibitors, short for QSI, or that would be the abbreviation. And what those are is they inhibit the gene expression of the pathogens in our bodies.
So pathogens are kind of free-floating in our bodies like phytoplankton in the ocean. But then when they gain… there’s other friends in the body, then they can gain traction by like communicating and joining forces and then that’s when they start creating biofilms and creating…
Ari Whitten: The term that you used earlier, just to clarify for people, quorum sensing, is that sort of when there are big groups of pathogenic bacteria that are kind of communicating with one another.
Nadine Artemis: Yes. Thank you for that. And then, so what essential oils do is they inhibit the quorum sensing very effectively. Now we’re going to have different to varying degrees, like clove oil is like 70 percent effective. And then it would depend on what pathogen. So it would be like very detailed. But in general we can say that essential oils are effective at tiding up the pathogens, but working with the friendly bacteria.
So there’s this intelligence, right, that I’m sure we’ll study a lot in science and then they’ll just be, there’s always going to be a certain je ne sais quoi, a certain mystery that we don’t know how it all works, but that’s where the plants come in. So they’re really a true friend right now for us because… and then they can do things that we want in skin care that we’ve been, you know, sold that that’s what we want, like inhibiting collagen destruction or lengthening telomeres or giving us the antibacterial boost we need when we’ve got acne or helping those dermodex mites when we are experiencing rosacea.
Nadine Artemis: So the essential oils are these like… I like to refer to them as botanical biotics because biotics means life. Antibiotic is not life and these are our botanical biotics, which is the botanical medicine that we can then use to really activate this beautiful jojoba or the olive oil. And then that’s the fat, the beautiful fat that’s going to deliver that juice into your skin. And then it’s so fun if that goes into the rest of your body because it works well with the liver and it’s helping the lungs and it’s helping on a cellular level.
And then we’re delivering these really healthy monoterpenes, which is the building block of the essential oils into our body. And having fun at the same time and it smells great. It’s all good news.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, like we were saying before, this kind of interface between perfumes and smells and personal care and skin care and all that good stuff, and medicine actually making your cells function better. So fascinating stuff. So, we’ve talked a lot about stuff that’s not good so far.
Let’s switch to some of the stuff that is particularly good. And I know you’ve mentioned a few of these things in passing, but what are some of the most beneficial botanical compounds when it comes to… we’ll start with skin health and then we’ll maybe shift to some of the other areas of personal care products.
Nadine Artemis: Sure. You know, there’s so many and they’re all like my children, so I love them all. But we have really some classics like frankincense which I just mentioned is so beautiful, you know, for men, for women it’s strengthening.
It’s… I feel like it’s fortitude and fortifying and even good fortune and on a cellular level and then you just go into pub meds and pull up frankincense. You’d be blown away by the stuff that’s going on and what it can do and how it can stop the skin and cells from going down pathways that we don’t want the skin and cells to do.
And how, you know, and I just… it can help just clearing up melasma and hyperpigmentation, just so many skin problems that are so common now and they’re literally, there are answers for it and it’s from the natural world and they’ve been existing forever and they’re effective. And so we, you know, we don’t have to use the petroleum and it wasn’t working anyway.
Ari Whitten: Beautiful. And any other one or two compounds that you haven’t mentioned yet?
Nadine Artemis: Yeah. Rosato is just the steam distilled version of rose is so medicinal. Like, it’s right… rose is so beautiful and it’s so sensual, but at the same time, it’s such potent medicine. It’s also analgesic, it’s like got even a numbing thing. You could even put it on a toothache. It’s really, really exquisite. Immortelle is another essential oil. The Latin name is Helichrysum italicum.
I’ve been getting ours distilled on the island of Corsica forever. I have, you know, we have a reserve list. We only get a few leaders each year. It’s so special at healing scars, you can pour it into like you know, if you have cuts or nicks or anything like that. Essential oils are good at healing old scars and new scars, so if you’ve got something that’s got a keloid you want to work down, or if you just had a situation and then you want to prevent scars from forming, you want to get the essential oil.
So essential oils are generally diluted to use because they’re so potent you are using it by the drop, but there are times when you just want that drop undiluted. So you know, you can pour it right in, clean something. It cleans it, it seals it, starts sealing the skin. And then once the skin is sealed, because they’re all an analgesic, antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, it’s like all the things you want to clean a cut or something like that.
The skin starts closing and then you can… then you start working them with an oil with that, so you could add the frankincense to jojoba and then prevent the scar. So they’re just really, they’re kind of magic, the magic bullet we need.
Treating melasma (hyperpigmentation)
Ari Whitten: Fascinating. So a couple specific questions on skin health. Do you have any tips for hyperpigmentation? I know you mentioned frankincense, but is there anything else on hyperpigmentation and then also for like eczema or psoriasis, do you have any tips for those?
Nadine Artemis: So everything you mentioned, we always have a blend or something for that, and people can also make their own. Because you could even just look on the ingredients that we’re using and then make your own. It’s like that easy. So we make… combos are usually good because always diversity, right? It just helps. But you can also just use a single like frankincense, but for the melasma or hyperpigmentation, some of my favorite oils are frankincense, cypress, immortelle and Rosato.
Myrrh is also good. And sometimes you might want to try something for a while and then switch it up the next month. The main thing is it may take a little bit longer. Like, I don’t know, longer as compared to what? But you just, you got to stick to it, two, you know, two applications a day for like two months. Some people it completely disappears. Some people it like fades and it’s really great, like there’s totally hope for bringing that all into balance and then also I have lots of tips on even how to prevent that in the first place and how it comes… because it could be coming from a birth control pill or your sunblock or eating a lot of canola or Mazola oil.
Those are the three huge areas that are creating melasma for people. So psoriasis and eczema are actually in those areas, that’s where there’s been a drop in microbial diversity. That’s when you get that reaction. And so for that, first you want to start thinking of the symptoms. Usually there’s an itchiness and that’s the biggest thing. So if we can get the itchiness down then that stops the person from making it worse. And peppermint is such a great essential oil because it literally is cooling.
Like it’s not just antiinflammatory and calming, it’s cooling. It’s like you don’t need ice. You got a cut or a bite or sting, peppermint and then you can walk around and you don’t have to put ice on it. Or your headache, now you can just put two drops there and so what that does is it totally stops the itch. So you take a little jojoba, put some peppermint in there, and then the itch is gone. And then to just calm the whole thing down. You know, oils like yarrow, blue tansy, chamomile, frankincense, peppermint, those are really all good at… for both eczema and psoriasis.
Ari Whitten: Okay. Do you, just out of curiosity, do you have a formula for those? Do you have one for hyperpigmentation? Do you have one for… what other kinds of like skin formulas do you have?
Nadine Artemis: We… so we have four beauty realms, and then within them we can chart all the different things… so that we can kind of group things. So there’s that real calming and cooling realm. So things like eczema or psoriasis or like a hive or red, you know, when people… it’s not eczema or psoriasis, but it’s like a red bump or you know, anything that’s sort of like angry and irritated.
That’s that realm, which is the life beauty realm. And in there we have Frankincense Best Skin Ever. And we have these potent skin spot treatments called a DewDab and that DewDab is called Bee DewDab, and it’s even blue, it’s pure essential oil blend and you just take one drop and add it to the area that needs it or your hyperpigmentation. And then for melasma there are two realms because there’s sort of two ways that people experience it.
And for that there’s DewDab or Jewel Dab, we have fun naming things. And then with that you’ve got the Sandalwood Best Skin Ever or the Rose Best Skin Ever. And then we have a realm called the brilliant beauty realm, which is like your acne, fungal, thrush candida, you know, you’re getting those more fungal rashes and that kind of thing. And that one’s, the DewDab for that is Zippity DewDab. For acne, like overnight you just put a drop on or you could mix it with clay. And so we have all the solutions, but we also like to educate people, too, on how they can just get it and, you know, just get their own jojoba and their own frankincense and combine things, too. It’s that easy.
The best natural dental care products for healthy teeth
Ari Whitten: Yeah, absolutely. So I want to shift into dental care, which I know is another big area of passion for you. What are some of the biggest problems with conventional dental care products? And I guess we’ll start with that and then we’ll shift into maybe some of the more beneficial compounds.
Nadine Artemis: Well, we can see a pattern emerging because then we have an oral microbiome which is really a very focused and important microbiome that’s obviously through the alimentary canal hooked up to our gut microbiome and everything that we’re applying on a commercial level is not good. So we’re kind of creating the perfect storm for dental issues. We’re creating the perfect storm for bleeding gums, which, apparently, over 90 percent of the population have issues with their gums or inflamed gums.
And so the sodium lauryl sulfate is going right into the bloodstream. Mercury fillings are throwing off the oral microbiome. Sodium lauryl sulfate is throwing off the microbiome, our alcoholic mouth rinses, totally throwing off the microbiome, not to mention stuff that might be applied or put on at the dentist’s office.
And so, you know, or the petroleum waxed, dental floss, it’s like every facet is no good. So you want to just clear that out and if you just replaced with baking soda, like you could get that simple, you’d be way better off. Now we can upgrade that, we can biohack that, but literally clear that out and just get the baking soda and you’d be off to a good start. And maybe some coconut oil for oil swishing and pulling.
Ari Whitten: Yeah. Actually on that note, I just saw a study a few days ago on baking soda decreasing bleeding gums and gingivitis and plaque formation. So there actually research to support that. This, I mean you can get baking soda for like ninety-nine cents for a five-month supply. So it’s kind of amazing, you know, this is not exactly something that’s some exotic ingredient that you need to go spend a fortune on instead of standard toothpaste. It’s actually cheaper.
Nadine Artemis: Oh yeah. Like, and really what you’d be using in your mouth like in a year is so tiny. And also for interest’s sake, all baking soda is aluminum free. It’s baking powder that’s got the aluminum issue. So you can feel free to get the stuff at the supermarket.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, there’s some… I’ve seen that sort of, the myth around the idea that baking soda has aluminum in it.
Nadine Artemis: Yeah. So feel free, and that’s just one fun thing to do to really help gums is to coat the… brush your teeth first with the baking soda and then just get a kind of really sloppy bunch of baking soda and then you take a teaspoon, half a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar, which is an acid, but baking soda is so alkaline that the sum total is still in the alkaline realm. And then you pour that in. You have like a full science experiment going on your mouth. The kids love it, which is great because they are not good teeth brushers…
Ari Whitten: Are you teaching people how to create an explosion in their mouth?
Nadine Artemis: Yes, and then that lifts up all of the plaque and the first time I did it I was like, my mouth was so clean. It was a travel day too, which feels like you get more plaque on travel days for some reason. I was in LA at that time and I felt like I’d still brushed my teeth like just five minutes ago. It’s so good.
And that method was invented by Dr Paul Keyes, who was a dental surgeon and he was like, how can we stop doing all these gum grafts because they’re… usually you gotta go back and get another one in a few years because it’s not a solution. It’s a band-aid and we, I like to really get into the situations where you’re doing something deeply, hopefully just sort of setting it and forgetting it and then you don’t have to think about it again instead of having a whole system of taking care of our bodies with a bunch of bandaids and it’s just like too complicated and it’s not effective.
Ari Whitten: Yeah. So baking soda kind of scrub with a toothbrush, is that correct? And then while the baking soda is still in there, you’re, you just kind of take a little sip…
Nadine Artemis: Have a round where you’re getting, you know, doing brushing and spitting and then have a round where you’re just sort of like applying it really on there. And then just get that half teaspoon of apple cider vinegar. Close your mouth, swish it around, take the toothbrush again, brush it a bit, spit that out. And so fresh and clean.
Ari Whitten: Interesting. I’m going to have to try that.
Nadine Artemis: Let me know how it goes.
Ari Whitten: Okay, I will. And then you also have some dental care formulas.
Nadine Artemis: Yeah, we go deep into that realm. And so besides like the normal things like paste and all that… we make dental paste, we have swishing serums, which are oil pulling serums with like CoQ10, and then we make really three really concentrated dental serums that are just concentrated and you take one drop and you put it along with your floss for example. And then you’re getting up into that area. You’re getting the essential oils into that area.
Most people that have bleeding gums find it, like they just have to do that once, it’s gone. Some people, depending on the sponginess of the gums, it could take two weeks to clear that up, but like the power is really quite fast for many people and it’s all they needed. So yeah, you’re flossing all the time and gums are bleeding, you know, that’s… your mouth is telling you that you’ve got to change things, but literally even just sodium lauryl sulfate can make gums very susceptible to bleeding.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, and for people that don’t know that ingredient, it’s a very common ingredient in the majority of toothpaste out there. Even natural toothpaste.
Nadine Artemis: Yeah, the majority.. it’s in anything that has a bit of a foam really like your shampoo, your soap, your face… it’s in so many things and there’s like 20 versions of it with different suffixes at the end and you know, it gets crazy in that world of language. Yeah, so like we’re just making our mouth so susceptible.
And for example, strep, which is a bacteria that does cause cavities. It’s in everybody’s mouth all the time, even the people with a perfect checkup. But what is it, how is it causing cavities when it does? Well, that’s because we’re creating the environment where we’re not, you know, we may be stripping away it’s bacterial buddies because it needs… the bacteria needs other bacteria to keep the other bacteria in check, to prevent the sort of pathogen parties that are coming up.
And so that’s where you want to keep that in balance. And then everything we’re doing to our mouths is stripping away that diversity, mutating the microbes or literally killing them off.
And so there isn’t that microbe anymore. So we want to think… when we think of what we want to do for our mouths, we want to stop using the stuff, the alcoholic mouthwash and that sort of stuff. And then we want to seal, which is sealing your gums from bleeding. You want to make sure that that’s all cool. And then you want to get the gums back, like I call it, like having a turtleneck around every gum like a turtleneck around the tooth. And you want a turtleneck neck, not a cowl neck or a v-neck, that’s when the gum starts receding. So you really want to get the gum pockets backup, seal the teeth, and then we want to think about re-seeding. So and that’s…
Ari Whitten: Let me ask you, just on that point of sealing the gum pockets and kind of supporting gum health. What, what in particular does that best?
Nadine Artemis: I feel like the dental serums… we have an ozonated gel which is amazing. Stopping using that stuff like, that alone could stop it for, the bleeding gums for somebody. It’s just like moving to that baking soda and then yeah, really how you’re caring for your body. You know, you may also need to take care of a leaky gut because to me that… when you have a bleeding gum in the mouth, that’s kind of like your mouth’s version of a leaky gut.
The same thing on our skin with psoriasis or eczema, that is like, you know, like a leaky skin. It’s open. Things are happening. So we want to seal the skin, we want to seal the mouth, seal the gut. And so… and also you may need to change up your diet to also seal that mouth, which is, you know.
We also don’t want to be eating things like GMOs because that’s… the thing with the GMOs is that it’s okay because humans don’t have a shikimate pathway, which is what is in the chemicals used in things like roundup are affecting in the plant to be a pesticide.
Nadine Artemis: But now by understanding the microbiome, we now know… no, we don’t have one, but the billions of microbes on us, they all have one. So we don’t want to be eating pesticides because we have our own ecosystem as well.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, absolutely. So…
Nadine Artemis: Oh, mercury fillings can create bleeding gums…
What science says about sun and sun protection
Ari Whitten: Yeah, so there’s a number of other related areas we could go into, but we don’t have endless time and I want to be sensitive to time here. I mean hair and you know, female hygiene deodorant. I mean there’s a lot of different areas of this or kind of deeper into the fragrances and stuff like that.
One area that I do want to go into a little bit is your take on sun exposure and sunscreens. So can you talk about your take on sun and the role of that in skin health and in skin aging and traditional sort of mainstream sunscreens, mainstream thinking on that whole stuff and sunscreen products and how your take on things differs from that.
Nadine Artemis: Sure. I love talking about the sun and I devoted a whole chapter about it in the book. We also really need to undo so much information because I feel like we’ve really been lobbied into this loss of sunlight and it’s such a beautiful thing because we wouldn’t be here if there was no sun. So the fear, this like “ah, the sun,” we’ve got to reexamine that.
Obviously, it can burn us and we don’t want to be burned all the time. But if you do burn your skin once in a while it’s okay. You’re going to be okay. And this is a really interesting thing. Your skin, your DNA deals better with a sunburn than it does you applying sunblock or sunscreen and sitting in the sun for a few hours.
Ari Whitten: Elaborate on that. Explain what you mean by that.
Nadine Artemis: So, the DNA can process the excess heat of the burn and it can deal with 99 percent of, 99.9 percent of the damage from that burn and clean it up. But when we’re putting that sunscreen on us, we’re deactivating our body’s warning system to say, get out of the sun. So there’s that. We’re separating the rays. So we don’t even know to this day all of the rays that the sun has and the wavelengths that it’s providing for us, but we do know some. UVA/UVB for starters.
And what sunscreen is doing, again besides all those chemicals and the hormone disruptors and the oxybenzone, which is not carcinogenic until it is exposed to sunlight, which is the main active ingredient, which for example, Hawaii state legislature is trying to ban… just put in paperwork to have sunscreens with oxybenzone banned from Hawaii to save the coral reef because they are literally killing the coral reef.
Especially around Australia. Wherever there is one, but Australia, Caribbean, Hawaii, they’re losing the coral reef, which is so essential, so we can’t even imagine what it’s doing to our bodies…
Ari Whitten: I just want to interrupt on that point real quick because I just want to mention I’m glad you brought this up because there are so many things that humans do that, we do for whatever reason, either because we think it’s good or just because we’re trying to… there are businesses trying to make money and for the sake of greed even, and they continue to do them even though they’re bad.
But there are a lot of things that we humans do that are not only damaging our own health, but at the same time are also damaging the environment. So there’s this… also this interface between making this switch to this seemingly simple thing of making a switch away from conventional personal care products to natural ones, not only can be more effective and can be more supportive, much more supportive of your own health, but at the same time are actually supportive of the planet and the ecosystem and the environment around us. It’s kind of like you do something that’s good for your own selfish interests and you’re doing good for everybody else at the same time.
Nadine Artemis: That’s so true. I love that it’s a microcosm and macrocosm, you know. We’ve got mercury in our mouths and mercury in our seas and you know, so we got to… if we can’t control a lot of that, we can start with our own bodies.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, sorry to interrupt with that. Carry on with the whole sun stuff.
Nadine Artemis: So the main… this is the main issue that’s so damaging is that sunscreens separate the UVA and UVB rays and the UVA is what we’re getting when we have sunscreen on. We’re not getting UVB. It’s the UVB that provides the vitamin D so we’re not getting that and it’s the UVA on its own that is damaging the skin. So it’s like fully setting… the sunscreen thing is setting you up for many issues. It’s not going to all happen on one day. It’s going to be, you know, over the lifetime. So…
Ari Whitten: Yeah, I want to add one thing on this. There was just a huge systematic literature review. And for those that don’t know what that is, that is a scientific review of basically all of the relevant research on a given topic. It’s the top of the hierarchy of evidence. It’s considered basically the highest level of scientific evidence because it’s basically an accumulation, a compilation of basically all of the relevant evidence. And there was one that was just done on the use of sunscreen and the relevance to sunscreen use and skin cancer. And believe it or not, and most people might find this shocking because they haven’t actually read the research, but the science overwhelmingly does not support the idea that sunscreen use is protective of skin cancer.
So there’s this enormous gap between sort of public thinking and the public conception around “oh, we, you know, the sun is bad, we need to use sunscreen to protect our skin from skin cancer,” and the actual scientific evidence which just flat out does not support the idea that sunscreen use is actually effective for preventing skin cancer.
Nadine Artemis: Yeah, and I would venture to say probably gonna send you down a route you don’t want to go, know what I mean? Like it could be part of the problem is what I am saying. Defiantly not preventing and it could be contributing because, again we’re putting on these things and then we are baking it into our skin. Not so good. And then we denying the vitamin D that is anticancer on every single level, however you slice it.
And so yeah, and then if we are just getting UVA, that’s also when the skin damage starts and all that kind of stuff, you know. So and really it turned, I guess around the fifties or sixties, but prior to that the sun was having a heyday. Now it would go in and out of fashion, and there was definitely times like literally, even in the dark ages, it was also like there was a sort of… it was seen not proper to be in the sun and that kind of stuff too.
Nadine Artemis: But then there was like the renaissance and everybody celebrating the sun again. And then really at the turn of the century, there’s those early, you know, hygienists and natural European naturopathic doctors. And then in 1902 we have Niels Finsen winning the Nobel prize for heliotherapy, which is sun therapy.
And then in the twenties with his great work from Dr. Rollier who was in Switzerland and had these clinics where people were coming from all over and healing their tuberculosis and their rickets to a very successful level. And then, you know, there was, and then even Mademoiselle Coco Chanel the fashion designer was like, you know, every outfit needs a tan, it had its heyday, and then you know, then I don’t know what happened, but it was like “cancer!”
Ari Whitten: Yeah. One more point I want to add because actually sun exposure and light and the effects of light in health is a particular area of passion of mine. But in addition to the study I just mentioned, the review of the studies on sunscreen use in skin cancer, I also want to mention here this fear of sun exposure in relation to skin cancer and all these recommendations have kind of come out of this view of, “oh, you know, the sun has this link potentially with melanoma.”
You know, we have this kind of idea and we’re looking at this very small sliver of the overall research specifically on this one type of cancer and the relationship of sunlight, to this one type of cancer, this little sliver of the pie. But when we open up the whole pie and we look at the benefits, the relationship of sun exposure to all the different types of cancers, not just melanoma, but all of them and lots of other different causes of mortality.
This whole other paradigm emerges, which is that sunlight is profoundly supportive of good health and longevity and disease prevention and specifically the prevention of dozens of other types of cancers. And there was a very big study just published either last year or the year before that was… it was a very rare kind of study where they tracked, I think it was something ridiculous like 20,000 women or something like that. This huge number of people. It was a study in Sweden and they tracked them over like 20 years.
So it’s one of these very rare studies with this huge number of people tracked over a very long period of time. They found that the health risk of avoiding sun exposure was on par, the actual effect size in terms of how much it damages your health, was on par with smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. That’s how damaging it was to your health to avoid sun exposure.
So there is this, just this huge gap between the public’s perception of sun exposure and the actual research around the link between sun exposure and health and disease prevention and longevity. So it is profoundly supportive of preventing all kinds of diseases and extending our life. So anyway, this is your interview. I don’t want to, I didn’t want to take away from it, but I wanted to add that for…
Nadine Artemis: I love sun research so much. And I feel like yeah, there are new studies probably that come out all the time. One of the books I mentioned in my book is written by Dr. Barnard Ackerman, and it’s a hard book to get but it’s called “Myth on Myth” and it’s on melanoma, and he was the founding father of dermatopathology, which is like beyond dermatology. It’s like disease and the skin. And the books like that thick and he goes through every study up until that date, it was like 2009 it was printed in. Yeah, like the sun, and the sun doesn’t actually cause melanoma either. You know what I mean? Like he went deeply into it. He always sported a tan, a skin doctor.
Ari Whitten: Yeah. Even with, we won’t digress too much in that, but even within that one, the link between sun exposure and melanoma is even highly questionable once you start to dig into the research. Obviously getting sunburned regularly is a problem. Getting exposure below the threshold of getting burned is not linked with skin cancer. And there are even studies showing that outdoor workers have lower skin cancer rates than indoor office workers which…
Nadine Artemis: And probably that’s from fluorescent lighting because they’re more susceptible. And when we expose ourselves slowly but surely to the sun, then we build up our melanin, aka the base tan, and we build up our bodies for that. But the other thing is too, it’s lubricating the skin from within. We have thousands of vitamin D receptors on our skin, but in the depths of our body and they were designed… they’re vitamin D receptors, they’re designed to engage with the sun.
It’s literally like as soon as those sun rays hit our skin our cells, our pores dilate to receive those rays, to receive the energy converted into this hormonal precursor and special types of a cholesterol, a cholesterol sulfate. And that sun/skin reaction and communion are creating a water-soluble vitamin D, which we cannot get in the fat-soluble over the counter supplements. And so we can’t just take the supplement and be fine. We need, well you need both if you’re like in the winter. So we need that connection. And I like to think of it as cosmic pollination and we are designed for that. The vitamin D receptors tell us that it’s an ancient relationship and we can trust it.
Ari Whitten: Yeah. Beautifully said. So, real quick, what do you think are some of the most supportive strategies for getting sun exposure and kind of supporting skin health in that process, avoiding skin aging, supporting the skins ability to adapt to that sun exposure, not be damaged by it and to get all the benefits of the sun exposure without any downsides.
Nadine Artemis: Well, you want to be in the sun whenever you can and expose as much of your body as possible. If you still feel a little bit shy about what I’m saying or whatever, put a hat on, hide your face, get the rest of your body and that will create enough vitamin D. But what I’ll do is I’ll lay out for whatever amount of time, you know, whatever, but, and then I’ll put my face in the sun for like maybe five, 10 minutes.
So it comes in at the end and because it does, it needs less sun, my face would get burned earlier than my leg for example. You want to build it up, you’ve got to know your body. Everybody’s different. We could have an Irish redhead or somebody from Morocco that’s got a nice Mediterranean skin tone. So we’re all different. We all live in different parts of the universe.
And I would take, there’s an app called the D Minder and that will tell you your weather, you know, you put in where you are, your geographic location and it’ll figure it out. The weather that day. And it’ll tell you how long you need to be in the sun to get the vitamin D. Now you still may need to build up because you may be that Irish redhead, so it may say 15 minutes, but you need to maybe start five minutes every day for a week. That’s what Dr Rollier would do, you know, just do the calves for five minutes every day and we then build up to the thigh and you just slowly but surely get your body exposed.
And start in the spring and keep going in the fall. And it’s also a great way to energize the body because it’s working on a cellular level. It’s igniting the ATP. It’s helping create microbial peptides. It’s juicy.
The best skin care products for natural skin care
Ari Whitten: Yeah, absolutely. Well, we could go, I’m sure three more hours and I’ve really, really enjoyed this conversation and there’s so much more I think we could talk about with nutrition and other aspects of personal care. But I want to be sensitive to time here.
So, one thing… one comment I’ll make and then one question I have. The comment is I just want to mention to all the listeners how important this is for your health and your energy levels to get rid of this constant bombardment of your body, your bloodstream and all your cells and your mitochondria with all of these hormone-disrupting chemicals; microbiome, gut microbiome, skin microbiome disrupting chemicals; heavy metals; hormone disruptors.
One of the key steps in improving your health is you just, you have to clean up your personal care world of everything that you’re putting in and on your body when it comes to personal care. With that in mind, I really love and appreciate what you’re doing. You… I’ve looked at your products. You’ve also sent me a sample kit. I’ve also read your book and you have like really top-notch products. I am honestly very, very impressed with your products.
My wife has been raving about them and she absolutely loves them. The one thing that I think is confusing is when I go to your site, there’s like so many products that it’s almost hard to know how to navigate that. So I would love if you could just kind of give somebody like a three-minute sort of shtick of maybe some of your most important products that you’d recommend to them and kind of how to think about navigating through this. You know, the 200 products on your site.
Nadine Artemis: Well at first I just would like to say I’m sorry about our navigation, but we’re cleaning that up. We had to… we’ve been designing, redesigning our site and it’s going to be ready in June, July. So just know that and apologies for its issues.
Ari Whitten: Well, I wasn’t even implied that there was an issue with the site. I was just saying that there are just so many products. It’s just hard to know like where one should begin.
Nadine Artemis: We’re prolifically creative and also people really love… when they’re in they are in and they love Living Libations and so I feel like it’s my duty to also say, don’t worry, I’ll take care of every aspect of your body so you don’t have to go anywhere else.
Because people kind of doesn’t want to it. Because, you know, they’re like, well we’re here. This is the best… we can’t… So I commit to really seeing… also I get, questions, thousands of questions a year so I also know what people need and sort of what health issues we’re having on our planet at this time. Like the crisis we are having with melasma. It’s kind of crazy.
Anyway, Best Skin Ever is key. That is called the Best Skin Ever. We do have a few types, pick a frankincense, sea buckthorn. Those are like some good starters and that is like a foundation. That’s your one bottle to do it all. You could… it can act like your most high-end serum or your most, you know, and your basic cleanser. Men can use it as an aftershave. It can also use it even as a shave, and you can use it for a cuticle oil, you can use it on your baby’s bum for preventing a diaper rash. It’s got you covered. So that is essential and that will help you do away with your soap.
Then I would say like a dental serum, perhaps like the Healthy Gum Drops. So we have paste and gels and all that, but you could also just have that one dental serum and it could replace your toothpaste. You can just put one drop on your toothbrush and then do that one drop to floss. I think what people also have to get used to is like this is… we make concentrated, potent.
We don’t like to dumb stuff down. We don’t like to dilute it down per se. And so what people may need to get used to is like, yeah, one drop, you know, it’s not like a big squeeze of something and it’s very effective. So we’ve got that for the oral care, maybe switch over a deodorant to one of our Poetic Pits or Underarm Charms. We’ve got great men’s ones like Radiant Earth…
Ari Whitten: I love the names, Poetic Pits. That’s great.
Nadine Artemis: And it’s great because what it does is it works with your microbiome in your armpit. It makes… it takes your pheromones and then just delivers them in the most like a juicy aromatic package so you don’t have to worry that there’s also some of your sweat aroma mixed in there because it’s gonna make it like a perfume now.
I don’t mean like a feminine perfume but like an “oh my God, what’s he wearing?” People come out of hot yoga and people are like, “oh my God, what are you wearing?” It literally makes men like pied pipers.
Ari Whitten: Yeah. I have one of your men’s essential oil mixes that’s kind of like a scent and it’s got…
Nadine Artemis: Oh, like a cologne?
Ari Whitten: Yeah, like spruce and a number of other kind of foresty, like tree derived essential oils.
Nadine Artemis: Yeah, you’re forest bathing in a cologne.
Ari Whitten: Yeah. And I always get a lot of compliments when I wear that. So…
Nadine Artemis: Yeah. So you could have a cologne, but I think… Yeah, so if you just replace what you just feel like you’re really in some kind of commercial vortex with something and then just break out of that. But we really do, we got shave cream, shampoo, like juicy conditioners that you can leave on. We’ve got clay masks, tiny masks. So once you’ve got some basics, there’s, it can go on for years.
Ari Whitten: Beautiful. I love it. So, one quick question and maybe a request. I’m wondering if you would be willing to offer my listeners a little bit of a discount if we could set up a special link, to offer them a discount if they are listening to this podcast and they want to come buy some of your products.
Okay, cool. And then your book “Renegade Beauty” can also be found on Amazon, is that accurate?
Nadine Artemis: Yes. Like any online bookseller has it.
Ari Whitten: Okay. Awesome. So we’ll get everybody set up with a link to the.. to your store, Nadine, and a special discount code on this page. And I will… I’m trying to think what we should… we haven’t created the webpage for this yet, but it will be theenergyblueprint.com/personal-care.
So we’ll set up that link and then on that podcast page there will be a special link to get a discount in your store. And, you know, again, I’ve been experimenting with your products, they’re great stuff. My wife is like raving about them constantly and I also have closely looked at all of the ingredients of your stuff and it truly is just top notch, the best I’ve seen as far as personal care products, so highly, highly recommended it to everybody listening.
Ari Whitten: And, Nadine, thank you so much for this interview. It’s been an absolute pleasure and really fun to have this conversation with you on so many fascinating topics related to health and personal care.
Nadine Artemis: Thank you so much, it was such a pleasure meeting you today.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, likewise. Awesome. Well take care and I hope this is the first of many conversations and I look forward to doing it again.
Nadine Artemis: Great. Thank you so much. Have a lovely time.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, take care Nadine.
Secrets of natural skin care and healthy teeth (and the best natural skin care products and natural dental care products) with Nadine Artemis – Show Notes
Why natural skin care products are preferred to conventional personal care products (2:29)
Why your personal care products are toxic to your health and energy (6:05)
How the benefits of natural skin care products are backed by science (14:57)
The natural skin care products that are supportive and beneficial to skin microbiome (20:30)
The best natural skin care routine (24:42)
The power of jojoba and coconut oil (27:54)
How essential oils work in harmony with your skin and promote skin health (31:41)
Treating melasma (hyperpigmentation) (39:09)
The best natural dental care products for healthy teeth (43:21)
What science says about sun and sun protection (52:34)
The best skin care products for natural skin care (01:07:33)
Links
Want to try out Nadine’s products for yourself? Go check out her range of natural skin care products here. In addition, Nadine is offering 10% off to all my listeners. Use the code ”Energy10” to get your personal discount.
