Avoiding a Facelift... or Maintaining the One You Have

In this episode, Julia shares a science-based approach to maintaining youthful, resilient skin by strengthening the skin barrier from the inside out. She introduces her four-part framework—Builders, Activators, Protectors, and Generators—to support collagen production, reduce inflammation, defend against environmental damage, and promote healthy cellular aging.

You'll learn:

• The nutritional foundations of healthy, vibrant skin
• How collagen, healthy fats, and anti-inflammatory foods support skin structure
• The role of retinol, peptides, and red light therapy in collagen production
• Why sunscreen, antioxidants, and hydration are essential for skin preservation
• How supporting your skin barrier benefits your overall health and longevity

Transcript

Hello everyone. Welcome to the Jolie Like podcast. And today's going to be super fun because we are talking about four ways to avoid a facelift. And if you are like me and want to avoid a facelift, this podcast is for you. And if you've had a facelift but you don't want another or you want to make sure that the work that you have had done stays and lasts for as long as possible, this podcast is for you too. And let me just preface this by saying I am completely pro- plastic surgery. And if you choose to have plastic surgery, the thing that I'm most interested in is that you have a really strong skin barrier so that the transformation that you achieved will last for as long as possible. And if that's not in the cards for you to have plastic surgery, that what you have, what Mother Nature has given you, that it lasts for as long as possible, looking as beautiful, radiant, and healthy for as long as possible.
(01:23)
So we have to deal with the reality that there's gravity out there, that we have expressive faces that our skin endures all the wear and tear from life. Whether that's environmental like car exhaustion, smog. Last summer it was smoke from wildfires. All of those environmental things take a toll on your skin. We are expressive and you definitely should be an expressive person. That's like one of the joys of life. And so we get lines, we get laugh lines, we get worry lines, we get crow's feet, we get all of those things. There's the sun. The sun is wonderful. It's summertime now. I love the sun, but the sun also and summer as well as in winter can be very damaging to our skin. There's our emotional life. It all shows up on our face. Our worry, our concern, our stress, all of that shows up on our face.
(02:25)
We have wind, we have heat, we have cold, our skin endures it all. So I'm going to share with you how to strengthen your skin barrier. We're going to concentrate on facial skin, so the face, neck, and declage and the hands because that's where our age shows. But everything that we talk about today is completely applicable to the rest of your body. So for instance, this year I'm really working on the skin on my thighs, which for some reason is not of the same quality as the rest of my body. And so I'm really working to enhance that skin barrier.
(03:09)
The other thing that stresses out the skin is weight fluctuations. I didn't mention those, but whether they're good ones or bad ones, so you're pregnant, you gain weight, you have your baby, you lose weight, your weight goes up and down. That too affects the quality of your skin barrier. That is my problem because I've had so many children. There were so many weight fluctuations. It's crazy. So stay tuned to the end because there's going to be a very special reveal that's going to make all of this worth it. I'm Julia. I'm the founder of Jolie Life. I studied nutrition at Sanford University and ever since my time in undergrad as well as grad school, I have been a super studier. I discovered at Harvard that I love academia. I love diving into the literature as they say. And so I bring that to you. So let's dive in.
(04:08)
Four steps for ways to avoid plastic surgery, a facelit. We are dividing this into four categories, the builders. So things that build your skin, the activators, the protectors and the generators. So I want you to think of there are four aspects of your skincare routine and we're mainly focusing on what you do for yourself, not so much on treatments like resurfacing or that type of thing. Builders, activators, protectors and generators. So let's start with builders. Builders are the actions that will help build your skin. So your skin is generated from the inside out, which tells us something that what is happening on the inside affects what we see on the outside. And a key way that you can influence the inside terrain of your body and thus affect the outside of your skin and the health of your skin is through nutrition. And when we think of nutrition to hold our facelift or to avoid a facelift, we are thinking about nutrition that is anti-inflammatory because inflammation shows up as rosacea.
(05:36)
It shows up as skin eruptions. It shows up as puppiness. That's inflammation. It shows up as uneven skin tone. So we will focus on inflammation. One of the reasons why inflammation shows up in this way with your skin is because inflammation equals cell damage. An inflammatory response, whether it's acute or chronic or systematic like all over your body, it's happening all the time. It is destructive to skin cells. And so when we have high inflammation levels in our body, our skin suffers. So our nutrition to build the skin is going to be focused on anti-inflammatory foods. In addition, we want to build, we need the building box. And so that means we need collagen and that means we need fats or lipids, as I like to say. For collagen, we're getting that collagen through bone broth. We're getting that collagen. There's a marine broth if you don't eat bones, so you can make a fish broth.
(07:00)
I mean, if you don't eat chicken and beef and that type of stuff, you can make fish broth. And there are some broths that are made from seaweed that will also help to build your collagen if you're vegetarian. We need lipids. And so in our diets, we need to have olive oil. We need to have nuts and seeds and we need avocado. You don't have to have all of those things. Let's say you don't like avocado or you have an allergy to it. Then you're going to double down on your olive oil. That will become your primary salad dressing, your primary drizzle over your food. Your snack will be some olives or an ounce of walnuts or some macadamia nuts. That will be your skin food that you're giving yourself. Anti-inflammatory, I want to spend a little bit more time on the anti-inflammatory builders because collagen is something where you can add bone broth, check.
(08:06)
You've done that. The lipids, you can start using olive oil, primarily check. You can put avocado in your salad, check. You can eat a few walnuts, check. You can have olives as a snack check. So you're all good with that. Anti-inflammatory foods. So when we think of anti-inflammatory foods, we are mainly looking at foods that show color. And when you go to the supermarket, when you look at your Julie-like plate, when you go to the farmer's market and you see colorful things. So there's our regular old potato and then there's a purple potato. We're going to opt for the purple potato because it has more anti-inflammatories for our skin. When we have a choice of a red pepper, a yellow pepper, a green pepper, we're going to go for red or yellow. If we have a choice of a white carrot or an orange carrot, we're going to go for the orange carrot.
(09:07)
So we're going to look for things that have color because color is our signal in the grocery store that this food is going to have anti-inflammatory impact when we eat it. And so think about with every meal that you have, add something colorful. So with breakfast, it might be some berries with lunch, it might be some cutup peppers, tomatoes, things of that sort. So we're looking for anti-inflammatory foods. So we have our colorful vegetables and our colorful fruits. We are going to look for green leafy things in our diet. The more green, leafy things we have, the greater the anti-inflammatory impact we will have within our body. So whatever you like here it doesn't mean that you need to eat kale. Maybe you love lettuce, then eat more lettuce if you love arugula up for rugula. If you love a green juice, have a green juice once a day, but we're looking for things that as many spaces in our diet where we can add an anti-inflammatory food, nutrition, then we want to put that there.
(10:27)
The other way that we help to build with an anti-inflammatory diet is we take out things that we know are inflammatory. So if there are foods in your diet that your body always has a reaction to, maybe it gives you the runs, maybe it gives you a little bit of itchiness in the back of your throat. Take those foods out. They are not worth it because they are pushing inflammation instead of subtracting inflammation. The other things we can do to amplify our anti-inflammatory diet is to take out foods that are processed. So we're taking out more of the things that we would buy for convenience and I'm all into time saving if you don't know me, maybe you don't know that, but I'm super into time saving. So I'm not saying that you need to make everything from scratch. What I'm saying is we're taking out highly processed foods.
(11:30)
So when you look at a food label and you don't understand what's in it or those things that are in your product are not in your cabinet or couldn't be or not in the grocery store, donate those things because that is going to cause more inflammation. And for our skin, we want to really roll back inflammation. Doing the building step is primary because here we're talking about the creation of the barrier. And when we have an anti-inflammatory diet, our skin will have to work less hard to defend itself against invaders and it can spend its energy on the activators, protectors and generators. And so let's now move to activators. So activators are things we can do, products we can use, food that we can eat to help with collagen production. Collagen is, think of it as the scaffolding of your skin. It is what makes your skin full.
(12:49)
It's what makes it strong. It's what makes it plump. Collagen is what works against wrinkles. Collagen is what works against gravity. Collagen is what works against jowls and droopiness in your face. We want to build up our collagen. And so we want activators from a dietary perspective or a supplement perspective, an activator would be collagen, which you can take as a supplement. When we're taking collagen supplementation for activation of our skin, we want to use twice as much as they say that we need. So if it's like one serving, you do two servings because we want transformation here. Collagen is this space where you can have more than the one serving where more is better and some places more is not better, but with collagen, more is better. So we have the activator of collagen and we can get that through supplementation times two or bone broth.
(13:59)
Another activator that is super important is retinol and retinol is an activator because it simulates collagen production and so that is very important. And you have choices with retinol. You don't have to have prescription retinol. You can choose other forms of retinol. So you might choose an over-the-counter retinol that is less strong than prescription grade retinol. With retinol is something that you want to use regularly, but you don't have to use it daily. I would suggest if you're new to retinol or if you find that retinol is drying your skin out too much, that you start with every third day or you start with every other day and then you build yourself up. Retinol is applied at night and on top of retinol, you put a really, really good nightcream because there are two primary complaints people have with retinol. One is that it dries your skin out and so we apply our retinol and then we apply a really good nightcream so that we reinforce our skin barrier.
(15:19)
And the second complaint is sensitivity to the sun. So when you are using retinol, you will double down on your protector sunscreen. When we get to protector, sunscreen is a non-negotiable, but I want to touch on it with retinol. If you are in the clean beauty space and you don't want to use retinol, there's bucanol, which is a plant derived retinol. It works in studies putting the two together. It works just as well. However, it works more slowly and that you find very often with botanicals that they can rival pharmaceuticals, but it will take longer for them to work. The thing with bucanol, however, is that you can just start using it and you will not have as much sensitivity as people have with retinol. Still with bucanol, I would add extra moisturizer and you are always putting sunscreen on, always, always, always. So that is our first activator's collagen.
(16:31)
Our second activator is retinol. Our third activator is red light therapy. And this is something that if you can have a red light at home, whether it's the mask, whether it's a Lima laser, that is going to do wonderful things for your skin to activate collagen protection, collagen production. I'm sorry. The thing that I love about light therapy is that light therapy penetrates more deeply into the skin and through that penetration it can impact what's happening in the production centers of the skin. And so a lot of the creams are more topical. Light penetrates deep into the underlayers of the skin. So it helps just as your nutrition helps to strengthen the skin from the inside out. And so red light therapy is something that I highly recommend. I love the at home red light therapy because the more you do it, the more benefit you get.
(17:45)
And so to be able to do it daily, like I do mine in the morning, it's part of my skincare routine. Some people, it's easier for them to do it at night, but when you do it daily, you are going to see the biggest impact. You are going to see fine lines start to disappear. You're going to see I started it because I was concerned about two lines in between the 11s, the two between your eyebrows and literally over the past 18 months, two years, they have gone away.You cannot see them at all. This is what happens when we activate collagen production.
(18:31)
In terms of activators, we have peptides that are activators and peptides usually come in the form of a serum. The primary peptide that I recommend is copper because copper activates the fibroblast in your skin to create more collagen. And so it's going to be very, very helpful for you in terms of creating more collagen in your skin. There's also the Mitrilic mitral style peptide, which is also very, very helpful. And we will list these in the notes. Those peptides also help to simulate collagen production. And so our activator peptides we're using to activate collagen production. So to think of all your activators are really aimed at enhancing the scaffolding of your skin. And why are we so fixated on enhancing collagen production? It's because when we get older, especially when we go into menopause, our collagen production begins to slow down and our body would naturally without any intervention produce less and less and less collagen.
(20:10)
And so the skin becomes thinner and thinner and thinner and the skin barrier becomes weaker and weaker and weaker. And if you're a man, the corollary to this is when your testosterone levels start to decrease as you age. Here is where your collagen production will become less and less and less. And so we really want to hone into our activators, particularly if you are like 40 to 60. We really, really want to hone into that and to make it habitual. Our activation of collagen goes into our 80s, 90s, 100s.
(20:56)
Step two are our activators and to summarize your red light, your collagen supplementation, your retinol, our butucanol, and your peptides. Third is protectors. So it's important that we've built the skin, we've activated collagen production, and now we need to protect the work that we've done. When we're protecting, we're thinking of two things. We're thinking of moisture and we're thinking of stabilizing skin cells. Moisture protection are your topical moisturizers. So a really good day cream, a really good night cream. I have one cream. I don't have a day and a night cream. You can do as you wish. The nightcreams tend to be heavier. I'm a big proponent of oils and so mine are just fine, but you need something to lock in the moisture. This is where hyaluronic acid comes in because it helps to draw moisture into the skin. This is where misting comes in.
(22:10)
This is really big in France, you mist yourself throughout the day with water or with a hydrosol. I love misting because it's a way of just adding dewiness to the skin and it can absorb into the skin. And it's something that I will do to set my makeup. It's something I'll do after I wash my face before I put on serums and my day cream. It's something that I'll do in the middle of the day if it's particularly windy or if my skin seems dry or dull, I'll give it a gentle misting. I love rosewater mist because you get that misting, but you also get a little activation from rose, which helps to moisturize the skin and helps to calm the skin. So we want moisture and you're going to do this with your creams that go on top and you're going to do it with hyaluronic acid and you're going to do it with mistine.
(23:17)
The second is stabilizing. So the protectors stabilize the skin.
(23:25)
Why do we need this? And the stabilizers are antioxidants. We need it because in natural cell activity, they're free radicals that get ejected through metabolic activity. There's also the sun. When the sun hits your skin, it energizes your cells, it energizes molecules in your body and it releases free radicals. These free radicals, whether it's from sun exposure or if it's from cell metabolism, are destabilizing to the cell. Destabilizing is code word for damaging. And so we want antioxidants to bind with these wild electrons so that our cells remain stable. Your top antioxidants are your vitamin C both in your food, so you're eating it and you're giving it to your body from the inside out, but also topical vitamin C and that you apply in the morning is super effective and important in terms of stabilizing the skin and vitamin C soaks into the skin.
(24:44)
Vitamin E is your other antioxidant that's super important for stabilizing your barrier. And I would also add into this that your grape derivatives are also important for stabilizing the barrier of the skin. Risverasol is one of those grape derived ingredients that also help to stabilize the skin. So those are something that you want. You want your vitamin C, your vitamin E, resverasol and the other big protector is your sunscreen. Sunscreen protects you from the rays of the sun that destabiliz your cells. This protects you from wrinkles. It protects you from drying out. It protects you from skin cancer. Sunscreen should be applied every day, whether it's sunny, rather it's not sunny, whether it's winter, whether it's rainy, whether it is summer and especially when you're at least thinking about it. So sunscreen, you apply it in the morning, but you might reapply and there's so many wonderful products that make it easy to reapply your sunscreen.
(26:04)
There are sunscreen mist, there's powdered sunscreen. So those are ways that you can reapply during the day without messing up your makeup if you're wearing makeup. If it's a snowy day, you need to reapply because you have the sun coming down from above and you have the reflection of the sun. If you're going skiing, you need to constantly reapply. If you're on the water, if you're on a boat, if you're on a lake, if you're fishing, you need a lot of sunscreen because you have the sun coming from on top and you have the sun being reflected back to you. So these are important things to remember. And now we are at the generators. The generators stimulate your mitochondria. Mitochondria in everything and in your skin, health of your mitochondria determines the health of your cells. And so we always, always, always want to look at how do we really accentuate the activity of our mitochondria.
(27:04)
So this is the generation, the inner powerhouse. And we do this by light and bypeptides. Light therapy, it helps to regenerate your mitochondria so that your mitochondria is more active and more efficient. And there are peptides, particularly the copper peptides that also help to stimulate mitochondrial activity. At the same time, we want to decrease senescent cells. So these are cells that are like zombie cells. They're not alive, but they're not fully dead either and they really get in the way of the function of the rest of your skin barrier. And so the main way that we get rid of these senescent cells or decrease them is by stimulating the mitochondria so that cells do not go into the zombie state. We also do it through step one, our building step by giving our body lots of anti-inflammatory, really, really good foods because that impacts the activity of the mitochondria and prevents senescent cells from forming.
(28:19)
And so we want generators, we want to use our light, we want to use our peptides and those will help the engine of our skin cells to run hotter and more efficiently, which will keep us younger for longer. It will give us glow, it will even out our skin tone and it will help us to be plump and to avoid crepey skin. So that's what the generators do. You can easily put these into your day, your builder nutrition, your activators for collagen production, your protectors for moisture and cell cell stabilization and your generators to really stimulate mitochondrial activity and keep senescent zombie cells at bay. And here is your reveal. The cool thing about when you work to prevent your facelif or to make your facelift hold for as long as possible is you help your entire body prevent the onslaught of aging because every single one of these things that you're doing for your skin is going to build the rest of your body and it will do it by two ways.
(29:50)
The supplements, the nutrition is going to have the same positive effect on every cell of your body because they're all exposed to this really positive building, anti-inflammatory nutrition, collagen building, all of that mitochondrial zest that we're giving it. Also, your whole body's going to benefit because your skin is your primary barrier to the outside world and your skin is an immune system organ. And so by amplifying by supporting your skin barrier, you are supporting your immune system. And as we age and literally from birth to death, our immune system is our gold. It's what keeps us well. It's what protects us from disease, colds, bacteria, viruses, all of that. And so everything you're doing here, which might be aesthetic, is actually serving a deeper purpose and that is keeping your whole body better than ever. So that's it for today. We have all of our ways to avoid our facelift or to make our facelift hold for as long as possible.
(31:09)
Please practice these and you are going to see amazing results. Give yourself three solid months of practice. Take a picture today, take a picture three months from now and you will be amazed by how glorious you look. That's it.