Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
Today we are discussing skin health.
Our skin is an incredibly important organ, not just for our appearance, or because it serves as a barrier to the other organ systems of the body, but because it actually reflects the health status of all the other organs and systems in our body, including our brain as well.
You'll learn today about the direct and reciprocal relationship between the immune system and our skin.
And if you think about it, you've seen this relationship in action before.
When any of us is feeling fatigued or sick, the color, the tone of our skin tends to be a bit quote unquote off, at least for us, relative to what it normally is.
Conversely, when we are feeling particularly well rested and vibrant and healthy, our skin reflects that.
So today we will discuss the skin as an organ.
We'll talk a little bit about the biology of skin so that everybody's on board, the nomenclature of the different cell types in the skin and how they're affected by various things.
And then we will discuss those things such as sunlight and sun exposure as it relates to skin cancers.
We'll talk about sunscreens, of course, something that I know garners a lot of interest these days, and even some controversy.
We will talk about common conditions of skin that concern people such as acne, rosacea, psoriasis, eczema.
And of course, we will talk about so called anti aging treatments for skin.
That is, the things that can be done to help reduce the degradation of the protein components in skin.
Things like collagen, things that you can do to improve collagen turnover, as well as elastin.
These are other proteins within skin that give skin its youthful, or in some cases, where its degenerative, non youthful appearance, things like wrinkles and sagging skin.
So, well talk about all of that.
Well also talk about the various products that have been developed in order to treat wrinkles, treat sagging skin, reverse acne, et cetera.
We'll talk about which ones are safe, which ones are not safe, and which ones for which.