How To Protect Your Skin Microbiome

So my research was on how estrogen and estrogen chemicals can impact the immune system and why women had more autoimmune diseases. And when I started my PhD, everybody said, oh, no, hormones is not going to affect the immune system. I’m like, “Have you seen a female, a women during their period?” It affects the brain. I know it firsthand. So it will affect the immune system. And our studies clearly show that.

You are listening to the Dr. Haley Show, the podcast dedicated to helping you optimize your health. Each episode there will be an interview or a message to help you discover better health. We will be featuring health radicals on the show to bring new ideas to the table, as well as doubling down on key fundamentals to support you living your best life. Your host is no other than the founder of Haley Nutrition Dr. Michael Haley.

This is the Dr. Haley Show podcast. I’m Dr. Michael Haley, your show host. And today we’re going to be meeting with Dr. Ebru. Dr. Ebru is an immunologist, a molecular medicine scientist. She is a skincare innovator that well, if you’re looking at her right now, quite frankly, doesn’t look old enough to have done over 25 years of research on hormones, immunity, inflammation, anti-aging, and longevity in 2020.

Dr. Ebru founded AveSeena, the first skincare brand focused on sensitive skin and signs of inflammaging, new word for me inflammaging. I like it. Today, we’re going to tap into Dr. Ebru’s knowledge so we can learn how to better balance our health and hopefully slow signs of aging. Thank you for being on my show. I think this is interesting because our brands actually kind of compete in the same market space of health, wellness, anti-aging. It’s a very big space, and I think we’re going to find that we have some synergy in the things that we offer and how we help people. So man, thank you for being here. This is great.

Thank you for having me, Michael. It’s amazing to be here. And, yeah, I look young and there goes to longevity. I’m 53 years old, by the way, so I got it

your doing great. You’re doing Fantastic, That’s awesome. Well, I want to know some of the secrets. You know, and I think we both come from a similar perspective that, you know. Yes, there’s definitely things we can do topically. And real health comes from the inside out. That’s why I think this is going to be such a good discussion. How did you get into this space?

Well, let me start from the beginning. So, my background, I’m an immunologist and a molecular medicine expert. So my research was on how estrogen and estrogen chemicals can impact the immune system and why women had more autoimmune diseases. So as I was researching that, it made me think that. And when I started my PhD, everybody said, oh, no, hormones is not going to affect the immune system.

Like, have you seen a female, a women during their period? It affects the brain. I know it firsthand. So it will affect the immune system. And our studies clearly show that, you know, estrogen had this ability to induce inflammation, inflammatory cytokines and whatnot. So from that when I was also doing my PhD, you know, how it is, is very stressful.

I started breaking out. It wasn’t fun. And, as I tried to fix it with skincare products, it got worse. And then I started reading into, why is this happening? Because I know the inflammation. I know that acne. I know all that. But it’s supposed to help me. Why is it not helping me? So that’s how I started getting into the ingredients and the science of cosmetic chemistry. And that’s how from immunology to skincare route started. And we founded the AveSeena

All right. Great. We’re going to talk about skincare. But I’m wondering who were some of your influencers along the way that helped you see the, you know, gut connection and, you know, looking to natural things and who really influenced you,

I’m going to say, and this is going to sound weird, it was my father. So my father, he passed away four years ago. He was a transplant surgeon and, you know, and my mother is a pathologist and, we used to talk to him, together on the project, how estrogen impacts all that. And he would bring what he was seeing in his transplant patients. And then this is the time when I was doing my research.

This is the time when the microbiome was being talked about. But there wasn’t a lot of research on it. So there was one particular research when they, transplanted the gut microbiome from mice to autoimmune mice, I think it was lupus and they got better. So don’t quote me on that. I have to find you that paper.

So when I told him that, he said that kind of makes sense. So we started talking about all the older systems. So the older generation of MDs were trained to look at the body as a whole, not organ by organ. So he started his training as a general surgeon, and then he moved into to transplantation. He was trained that in NYU and then Jefferson and all that.

So transplantation of what

kidney. He was transplant kidney. He’s the first guy who did the transplantation live to live in Turkey. So he we went back there. I was born here. We went back there, he started it, I came back, so that’s my story.

But he always said, you have to look at the system as a whole. You can’t look organ by organ because all of them are interacting with each other. And my research show that it’s we’re not a closed system. We’re an open system. We’re affected by everything. So natural synthetic microbiome, everything is connected. Everything response. Otherwise we would be dead by now if we didn’t respond.

What do you see as the biggest hindrance, or the things that get in the way and mess up people’s microbiome and hormones? And what those people out of balance the most?

Well, I would say the stress. Stress is our biggest enemy. because when you’re stressed, your brain doesn’t know if you’re fighting or running away, it just increases the cortisol and it tries to put you into a survival mode.

So with us and we don’t get a break these days, it’s one stress after another after another. And we’re always like on the run. Like this car, the engine is always on the run. Like your cortisol is always up. So what does that do? It clearly affects your microbiome, your gut microbiome, your skin microbiome. It affects everything because it is in survival mode. So that’s one thing with the stress we go for easy foods, fast foods. And that also doesn’t help. Because all the balance inside the holistic balance is disturbed.

All right. You said a couple things that, well, people might be hearing for the first time. You said skin microbiome. And, you know, we’ve studied the microbiome and we know that the things that we eat affect the microorganisms inside us. What is the skin microbiome.

So the skin microbiome, let me start like this. So everybody talks about skin barriers these days. Right. the skin barrier makes it when you use that word makes you think like it’s a physical barrier but it’s not. skin barrier microbiome is just one of those barriers. Think like a community of good microorganisms, good bacteria that lives on your skin.

And it’s not only bacteria. You have good fungi, good viruses, but archaea. They all live on our skin. It’s kind of sounds scary, but we need them. So these microbes or this population performs a very critical function, including defending the skin from the pathogenic bacteria and regulating inflammation and talking to the immune system. The skin immune system, and maintaining the skin homeostasis.

So think this group as a wall in front, like at the top of your skin, let’s say. And then a bad bacteria comes in and it goes like I want to get in. And so you can’t get them because they’re shoulder to shoulder. They’re not allowing this bacteria to get in. So this healthy skin microbiome supports the skin immune system and contributes also to the skin’s repair ability from daily damage.

So it’s talking to the skin immune system and saying, oh, I have something going on here. Can you come. So because sometimes this wall has a crack or a hole and the bad bacteria gets in, and that’s when your skin microbiome calls to your skin immune system, say, I have a problem. You better come here and defend me.

That’s interesting. The way you put that, I’ve always thought of the skin as kind of continuous with the digestive system. You know, where this. Our bodies are almost like this squish bag that, you know, the ones that used to roll on your finger, that, you know, it’s a bag with a hole in it, and the outside is kind of continuous with the inside. And you can roll it, and what’s on the inside can become the outside. That doesn’t work with us because we have this bone structure. But if you think of it that way, you realize that, wait a second, my gut ingests and excretes and so does our skin do those things. And doctors will even give medications through the skin patches for hormones and pain relief.

They wouldn’t. They couldn’t do that. If your skin didn’t absorb. So when we start thinking of it in terms of that way, all of a sudden the microbiome becomes a lot more important to us when it comes to what’s on the inside. We’re destroying our microbiomes with chemicals in the food, with antibiotics and all kinds of things. What are people doing to their skin that’s messing the microbiome up?

Oh, God. TikTok trends I hate TikTok trends because, oh, I’m going to tell you the weirdest TikTok trend I saw. There was this influencer who she took her poop and smeared her face, and she said, oh, my face looks better and I have to do this. I’m like, oh no, you just destroyed your microbiome. I mean, it doesn’t help. But really, some people tried this, so stuff like this without like just looking at someone and say, oh, she did it. It works for me. Doesn’t work that way. You need the science. You need the information. That skincare routine, that’s one of the worst things you can do.

Ten step Korean skincare routine. Ten step. I mean, you’re applying ten things to your face during a routine. Like, you know how it is, your skin’s not going to like it and break out, which I tried because I was curious. It took me a month to fix my face back because I was breaking out so bad. So anything extreme skin doesn’t like it.

So you need to go for a skincare routine that is gentle. That will work. That’s multifunctional multitasking so you don’t have to touch your face every time. Oh, I need to apply this cream to solve this one problem. No, you shouldn’t have a cream that solves multiple problems. That is cost effective and that’s health effective. So and you’re absolutely right.

The skin microbiome talks to the gut microbiome. And the gut microbiome talks to the skin microbiome. Everything talks to each other. So they talk through this gut brain skin axis. It’s a bi directional communication. And it involves a lot of immune signaling hormone signaling metabolic pathways is just amazing.

Yeah. The first time I heard about that I was already out of school. I’m a chiropractor. And we were taught that the brain controls and coordinates all the functions of the body, and it’s responsible for all the communication. And then it was discovered after I got out of school, that no things are actually happening where cells floating around inside you on you are actually communicating to each other and directing things like an immune response to an injured area. As an example, this is these are things that we’re actually just figuring out in the past 20 years, and it’s amazing.

What would you say some of the horrible ingredients are in the cosmetic industry that we’re finally starting to phase out, but a lot of them are still in the products that we should be aware of.

Well, that’s hard to name because there are at least 1500 of them. So which 1 a.m. I going to talk about? That’s an interesting one. First of all, I hate fear mongering, so I’m not going to do that. But, there are certain ingredients I personally do not like, like the SLL, SLS, you know, the, surfactant group. That’s really bad for my skin. It breaks me out. I, I don’t like talc at all. That breaks me out. And these are my personal experiences.

Parabens were very hot at one point. I remember, and there’s a lot of studies, scientific studies on those. And then there is also another point of view saying that, oh, it’s not estrogenic. It is estrogenic. It mimics certain parabens. Not all parabens, by the way. Certain parabens can mimic estrogen and can bind to the estrogen receptors and can stimulate the pathway.

But one of the things I am against completely, 100% in skincare is using hormones on your face. There are certain brands that are coming up and adding estrogen or estradiol into the facial creams. In the promises of saying that, that’s going to make you look younger, but they’re not taking into consideration what if that person who’s using it has estrogen receptor positive breast cancer and even she doesn’t know or she is, predisposed towards autoimmunity, like lupus or Hashimoto’s thyroiditis?

We know for a fact that estrogen has a role in these autoimmune diseases, prognosis and how it goes. And what if this person doesn’t know and she starts using this cream, these kind of things needs to be, given or prescribed by a dermatologist. However, there’s also these creams for hormone replacement therapy. Again, that needs to be done by an OB-GYN And that’s the way to go because you don’t know your history. What’s gonna stimulate. So that is my no, no, my red line where I said no, never using this cream or never using this ingredient.

you enjoying the show thus far? One of the many health secrets that we have covered on the show is all around aloe vera. Specifically drinking raw aloe vera. Our aloe vera has helped our customers effectively heal their gut, increase their intestine health, lower inflammation in the body, eliminate and or decrease acid reflux, have glowing skin and hair, and so much more.

Now, as a frequent member of our audience, you will be exposed to exclusive specials and coupon codes for the awesome products manufactured by Haley Nutrition. That’s right, for simply being awesome and tuning in. You can get a mini discount to help you optimize and better your health. To see how we can help and support you on your health journey. Tune in to the episodes and listen for coupon codes that you can use at haleynutrition.com. Before you make your orders of raw aloe vera. Once again, it’s www.haleynutrition.com. Now back to the show.

Yeah. When you mentioned the parabens, if I recall, parabens are there just as a preservative. Is that correct?

Correct.

And whether they’re hormone disrupting or not, we would probably look at that and say, how much preservative? I think the reason they used it was because it was a strong preservative, very effective for many, many years.

Yes.

But what is happening to our skin microflora when we’re lathering on these antibiotics called preservatives?

Well, we can’t call them as antibiotics because it’s a complete different mechanism. How it works. And if you don’t have a preservative in your, personal care product, you will have either mold or yeast or some other bad bacteria growing in. And then you will be smearing that on your face, which is worse. And especially there is some studies on PubMed that shows that Mersa, you know, the, antibiotic resistant bacteria can grow in, personal care products that are not preserved adequately. So that is a scary thing. You don’t want that.

So, one might think that having a product with a preservative and you’re putting it on your face will kill the microbiome. No, it doesn’t work that way. So it is designed for that particular formula. And you do a challenge testing one way to see if anything is going to live, because sometimes if it’s not adequately preserved. And let’s say you pet your dog and you put your friend into the cream without washing it, something can grow, right if you don’t want that. So stuff like that.

So yeah, I tell you a little funny story, because I’m kind of in the skincare business as well, a little bit. And an earlier version of this product. You know, we did the challenge testing and all the pre formulations and tests and stuff, and the chemists came up with a product that seemed to work and kind of met our standards with what we would allow in it.

And about the, you know, a day or two after we got this, got pallets of this stuff delivered to us, I’m squeezing the tube. I’m saying it’s feeling a little firm. I think it’s expanding. And within the next few days, everything exploded. It was probably contaminated with at least a yeast and didn’t have enough preservative in it. So we of course had to throw everything away and start over. If you had any, interesting challenges in your product creation.

Sure. I mean, that always happens, by the way. And it’s a bad thing. Like, for example, I’m not gonna name a brand, but one of the very famous brands who’s clean and natural was selling in Canada and Canada. They had to recall three times in Canada because they had a mold growth after they opened up, you know, and it was being used.

So the main thing and, in formulation and the good formulator can do that. The main thing is to do hurdle of technology in your formula. And I learned this the hard way because hurdle technology didn’t come up until like 2000 maybe. So what it is you gel the water phase so there’s not free water for the bacteria to grow. Okay. And then you put your chelator in so that chelator takes away the cofactors and the, necessary ions for the bacteria to grow. And so you’re stealing food from the bacteria. So that’s your water phase and your oil phase. Nothing can grow in it technically, but when you combine them and emulsify them, then you have to preserve again.

So you have nearly two or at least three steps on preservation. So sometimes also some preservatives don’t work with certain ingredients. Good. Formulator will know that and also, after you produce it what you can do a good formulator can do. You produced it right. You can run an in-house microbial test and see okay. Is this okay before you put it on the market.

Sure.

Most of the big set ups don’t do that because it’s time consuming. However, to be on the safer side. Yeah. So that’s what we do. That’s what I love to do because I want to see everything is correct. So this can happen. And then you can end up with stability issues. Right? It can happen, all of a sudden and this happens. And so for all the time.

Yeah. The other big lesson we learned is in making our product paraben free, not adding any parabens. We ordered our ingredients and had our product made, and then we found out that the ingredients that we ordered were preserved with parabens. It’s like, okay, this didn’t go as planned. But you know, you live and you learn what’s the first skin product that you created and why do you make it.

First one was my cream not the current one, but the first one I created for myself was the cream because I was tired of, buying all those skincare brands and paying all that money and seeing it not work, you know? And I love reading ingredients. You know, I like. Oh, okay. What do they have every time we go to a retailer with my husband, he hates it because I’m like, oh, this is crap. This is crap. Oh no. No, you know, he hates me. He’s like, just buy one thing. I’m like, no, I’m not going to buy this.

Because once you learn what each ingredient does and when you learn how to read the ingredient listing and when you formulate, you know. So the cream was one of my first and it was the grandmother of the current cream. We have the is this perfection cream, which completely works. So yeah, but formulation is a hard thing.

Well, so your first product you called a cream. Was it just for main purpose being moisturizing?

Oh, a lot of stuff. Because I made it for myself because I was going through acne phase, not a fun phase. I don’t wish it on my enemy. You know? So I was, adding lots of niacinamide, oats extracts, you know, that kind of stuff to calm it down. That was my main thing. To calm it down as much as possible.

Now, the current version of that product, what’s it called it?

Ageless Perfection cream. And it’s a very, very upgraded version. This is like ten years ago, by the way. I made it for myself. And, that was the thing that starts like, okay, this is doable. I mean, a better product can be done. And when you bring the science into it and the understanding of it, things change.

So, the current cream is ageless perfection cream. It’s a multi-tasking, multi functioning, moisturizer. And, it has peptides. It has calming ingredients, anti-inflammatory ingredients we like. And the main point that it was made for to combat the signs of inflammaging and help sensitive skin because as you said, and as your products also talk to the sensitive skin because anybody can become sensitive at the end of the day. So, I love that you’re doing what you’re doing because we need more brands like us in the market. That doesn’t focus on the money, but focus on the science and the gift.

Yeah, yeah. Tell me about the calming effects. How does that tie in with the inflammation and inflammaging?

Okay, so, I want to make a little side note here. Unfortunately, these days, the beauty market is pushing inflammation as something bad. Inflammation is not bad. We need to classify it. So an acute inflammation helps you to defend you against a cut a bacteria, a virus and then induces healing after it gets rid of the bacteria or the culprit. However the chronic inflammation is the bad one. Chronic inflammation is your inflammatory pathways are always online, always active, and cannot turn down or turn off to go into the healing phase.

So what does that do? Chronic inflammation. It can lead to human diseases. It can lead to even Alzheimer or cardiovascular problems. And then between these two there’s something called inflammaging. So it was first defined by Franceschi, at all in around 2000 with the first paper that putting out inflammaging is a combination of two words inflammation plus aging.

What he found and his group found was, the inflammaging is always there is like a chronic micro inflammation. So it’s not acute. It’s not chronic but it’s in between. So stress lifestyle factors can induce this. What does it do. As it says aging , premature aging. So think like you left your car on And it was it’s always on gear one and it’s always working, you know.

So that’s how inflammation is. It’s always working. So what happens? You wear down the car eventually. You know, you’re putting your immune system in a stressful condition. So what does that do. That smearing on the skin is dullness, fatigue, premature aging all kinds of problems in your skin microbiome becomes unbalanced. It affects from top to bottom inside out.

So what are we trying to do with our skincare line. So by combining the right ingredients that works together and creating a product that focuses on multiple challenges of all signs of inflammaging you’re using one product to solve multiple problems. and they’re all dermatologist tested, all ingredients selected based on publications on PubMed. And that helps, signs of sensitivity in the skin.

Anti-Aging. I am curious what you think about a lot of these products that are being promoted. I don’t know what’s in them. I don’t know how they work, but they do have an instant appearance of anti-aging through a tightening effect that happens within seconds of applying them. Do you know what’s going on there? And

well, there are certain ingredients that does that that’s specifically designed for that. For example, there is a silicone elastomer that you can put it on and it completely blurs it. it’s fantastic. It’s synthetic. That can do that. You can have, a there’s another ingredient. It’s an algae based. So if you keep it in a water based formula, it pulls up the skin because it dries out. So those are all temporary.

And it makes you feel good and I’m going to say it, I like it too sometimes, because when you’re looking tired and it’s like, I don’t want to look like this, you use it. You know, I’m a little vain on that one, but it doesn’t solve the problems. It’s just a temporary fix.

Yeah. So do you have some of those ingredients in your products?

No we don’t.

You’re focused on the prevention and slowing healthy aging.

Yes. We’re focused on prevention. Signs of inflammaging calming the symptoms down so you can take a breather. Your skin can take a breather. That’s the main objective.

Okay. And do you only have skincare products?

We also have candles. And the story is funny about that because I have a lot of influencer friends and they’re like, I’m doing all the skincare, but I do it after I cook my house, so smells like onions or fries. Can you come up with a clean candle? So I can, you know, light it up when I’m doing my skincare? And she has a point, you know, I have the same problem sometimes because, you know, all of our kitchens are open kitchens. We don’t have a door to close it in. In the houses.

So we came up with a clean burn candle without phthalates, coconut, apricot based wax. And it works great. I mean, the main thing over there is to calm down the stress, to take your mind off something. Because we’re bombarded every day. We’re bombarded, especially these days, even more bombarded with stuff. And you need a break. You need the break. This break can be looking at a flower, smelling something nice or just laying down on the floor, looking at the ceiling, doing nothing. So and it helps to have a nice smelling candle while you’re doing that.

And are they scented? And if so, with what?

Yes, they’re scented. We have natural ingredients and nature derived fragments, molecules. And sometimes we use essential oils. But we’re very careful about that because not every essential oil can be used in the candle.

Yeah. I mean, if I was trying to get rid of a food smell, I don’t know if that would work, because I’d probably want a candle that had another food smell, but probably maybe different, maybe vanilla cocoa or something like that one.

We have, cocoa cashmere that smells like chocolate. And we also have in the Neroli Madeleine that smells like a Parisian cafe baking madeleines and orange flowers.

Yeah, that smells good.

Oh, yeah, that sounds nice. That sounds nice. I’m curious. What do you like about what you do the most? What gives you the biggest reward?

I’m sharing the science. I’m sharing everything I know. And you know, in science, academia and in the beauty industry, people try to keep the knowledge very close to their chest. Like, you know, when you’re playing poker, you keep your cards close to the chest. I don’t believe in that. Knowledge doesn’t belong to me. I learn it, and my duty is to pass it on as much as I can.

And I like sharing, I like teaching, I like answering questions, and it needs to be done in a happy way. I mean, science is nothing to be afraid of. It’s not hard. It’s fun. Actually. The other day I was watching new, electron microscopy video, and they had two really tiny veins, and the macrophage came and it combined them. It was so amazing. I was like, cool. This is why I love immunology. You know, we are amazing. I mean the whole thing is amazing.

Are you enjoying this podcast? Did you subscribe? If you’re watching this on YouTube, let me know what you think about it in the comments. Throughout the month of May 2025, get $10 off your purchase of $100 or more at Haley nutrition.com. The coupon code is xxxxxxxxx. That’s XXXXXXXXX. You can use this coupon with on sale and already discounted bundled items. Enjoy the rest of the show.

I learned a little bit from doctor Natasha Campbell McBride and she was talking about yeah, she’s the author of The Gap Diet the Gut and Psychology Syndrome. She was talking about the, microbiology that’s inside us and mentioned all the things that you had mentioned from archaea. And you know, maybe even added some things like worms and, all kinds of things that are living inside us. And she kind of made the connection of how the soil outside needs all of those things. And not only are these things communicating inside us, but the fields that we grow our fruits and vegetables in, our kind of communicating through this network of fungus and, all kinds of neat things.

To me, it’s a fascinating discussion as you realize that we are so outnumbered by these micro organisms, and we’re completely dependent on them for our health and our life, and they’re communicating with this immune system, keeping everything in a perfect balance. It it’s fascinating.

It is. You know there’s mites on our eyes at the bottom of our eyelashes.

Had no idea.

Yeah. Well one day I was, you know, just doing my experiments. One of my, professors, he called me in his room, and I hate bugs, by the way. That’s my pet peeve. He is like, I’m going to show you something. And he showed me this electron microscopy picture of a mite at the bottom of an eyelash.

And she was like, what? And I was like, oh, my God. You know, I was like, what is this? He said, there is mites in like around your eyelashes that eats those little pieces of dead skin so it doesn’t go into your eye. And that was a new study by you where he just saw it. And you want to scare me with the picture? But that eats those cells, dead cells. And it doesn’t go into your eye and you don’t get infected. Oh, I can I can handle that. That’s okay. They can live there.

Yeah. When you’re, What would you rather have, the mites or the pinkeye?

Yeah, just did your.

Well, that’s that’s fascinating. And electron microscope. I don’t know much about them. You know, I have a microscope. But I would imagine, you know what? Maybe someone plucked a follicle and saw that on the end of it.

Or it could be. I don’t remember the study. I never worked with electron microscopy, but it was fascinating seeing that picture. And I freaked me out.

Yeah. These things that you can’t see with the human eye, and then you blow them up and they look like, you know, large insects, with all kinds of, you know, grabbers and stuff.

Yeah. And we need them.

Yes. what do you think we did when that, you know, I don’t say this word on the podcast because you never know what’s going to happen to YouTube, but that thing that was going around where everyone was wearing the masks and bathing in the, what’s that stuff that you put on your hands? The sanitizers and stuff? Do you think we did damage to our skin? Flora?

With the sanitizers?

Yeah,

not that much. I mean, skin microflora is very strong. It can, regenerate itself, but with everything extreme. Yeah, it’s not good. So hand sanitizers and Cologne, like, 70% ethanol. You do those when you don’t have access to clean water and soap. That’s your last resort, like when you’re outside. So that’s what I like. I mean, if I’m working in a lab, I prefer the soap and the clean water instead of ethanol.

Okay. Any tips for cleansing our people over cleansing?

Oh, yeah. Please don’t. Over cleanse. So, choose your cleanser very carefully. Check the pH. Check the ingredients. Try to choose ingredients that are very gentle. It like, if it’s bubbling too much, it doesn’t mean that it’s cleaning up too much. It means there’s a lot of surfactants in there. So for example, when you’re using baby shampoo. Now, I know because I have a four year old, I’m learning the baby shampoo part. It doesn’t foam as much as an adult shampoo, but it still cleans because it’s made with, gentler surfactants. So you can if you want, you can go that route or choose a brand that makes gentle cleansers. So yeah. And please don’t. Your soap on the face. Please don’t.

Don’t do what on.

Please don’t use soap on the face because soaps are, pH around 10 or 11. And what it does the soap, it binds to the oily or the fatty part of the, dirt. And then that’s how you remove it. So your skin, your face has something called sebum, and it has oils in it, like squalene, fatty acids, that kind of thing. And you need them. But if you use soap too much on your face, you’re stripping your face.

What’s our skin? PH.

It’s around, four and a half and five and a half in between.

Okay, so it’s on the acidic side and.

Yeah.

And acidic people would be using alkaline izing. What’s supposed to be slightly acidic.

Yeah.

By over soaping.

once or twice is not bad. But sometimes some people do it every day. Then you’re hurting yourself.

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. tell us about some of your favorite products that you make and the ones that are so important that you use them every day and have to travel with them, even.

Okay. So we have six products. We have the gentle cleanser. I’m not going to go into the long names right now. They’re all available on the aveseena.com but we have the cleanser, we have the cream, we have the serum, we have the facial oil, we have the eye concentrate and we have the honey mask. So, what I cannot do without the eye concentrate. I love that stuff because it’s so light, but it’s so powerful. And it’s in the bottle. The cream Even during summer. I need the cream. And I travel with them all the time.

Honey mask is my indulgence. I do it maybe once a week just before shower. I just put it on. It’s sticky because it’s honey, but that thing works. It’s really good.

Yeah. What are some of the benefits of the honey on the skin?

Well, honey has been used even by the Egyptians and the Romans, like, I don’t know, for years now, but, honey by itself has these enzymes and also antibacterial and antiviral ingredients. And it’s great on the skin. It helps to remove the really dead skin very, very gently. And it nourishes it. I like it overall.

Yeah, I know honey is not necessarily anti-microbial, but it’s not pro microbial either. It’s not like feeding sugar where they’re gonna, you know, grow like gangbusters. And my understanding is you can keep honey forever because it’s somewhat self preserving, lasts a long time. And then, is propolis a natural ingredient in honey? Or maybe that’s something that’s separate from bee venom. Or something like that. Use as an anti-inflammatory.

Yeah, it propolis is separate. It’s produced by the bees. I don’t quote me on that. I’m not an expert on that one. But yeah, it’s separate from the honey as it’s related. But yeah, I think they maybe put that in some with the honey products but.

Interesting. Do you have any favorite testimonials that people that use your products and just fell in love because of what it did for them.

Oh man. One of them is from Saudi Arabia. That was interesting. And she found me on Instagram. She found me on my personal Instagram, by the way. So, like, I don’t have to tell you this also, what’s going on? I purchased your product when I was in the United States, and I was using it myself, and my, son had some kind of a rash on his face, and then, it was too dry. So she applied it. It was done. I was like, I can’t write this anywhere. You know that, right? Because it’s considered, you know, the physical change, it’s just like, I’m just wanting to tell you this was like, okay, are you happy? It’s just like, I’m very happy. Like. Yeah.

And, one testimonial from was from my dad, actually, when I started first doing this because, he was a cancer patient and he had to use certain creams because his skin would get really, really dry, you know, after treatment. And, I got him Eucerin, and I went back home and he put it on, and he turned red, and he’s yelling at me. You say you bought me the wrong stuff. And I’m looking at the ingredients says the exact same thing. And I was like dad like, look, ingredients are in the same. But the lot number is different of course. So that means that one of the ingredients could be different or could be purchased some from somewhere else. You don’t know, but red.

Okay. And he’s a transplant surgeon. They’re the worst patients okay. So I gave him the cream. I said that put this on because this calms me down. Maybe it will help you and I run into my room. I’m watching like, some movie on my laptop. He’s like, Ebru come back here. Like he shows me his arm. What did you do? I’m like, what did I do? And he’s better. It’s better. It’s gone. Oh, he said, you’re on to something, kid. Keep on going. Share the science, shared knowledge. So that was two very good testimonials. You know.

Yeah. I visited your Instagram channel and I saw some testimonials on there, that look amazing. And people saying I’m not being paid. This is my experience and I absolutely loved this. I thought it was really cool, very authentic, very genuine. Good stuff. Where can people go to find out more about you and your products?

They can visit you because we had an amazing conversation today. So and also to learn more about the products they can visit, aveseena It’s a v e s e e n a . com our Instagram is very entertaining. They can find us there at aveseena as well. We have a YouTube as well. And we have a lot of we share a lot of information on our website under doctor’s notes. So if they visit there, they can read more about the inflammaging And they can also see the scientific publications that we refer to where we got the knowledge from. And they could click on those and read those as well.

Oh good stuff. And I didn’t know you had a YouTube channel. I looked for it. I didn’t find it. I will find it and I’ll make sure that there’s a link to it, below the video on the blog page and all those wonderful places, depending on where you’re consuming this podcast. Dr. Ebru, thank you so much for joining. Did I leave anything out? Was there anything you wish I had asked?

No. And I think one thing I want to tell everybody, please read, please ask. We’re always here and we’re here to share the knowledge. Dr. Haley is here to share the knowledge. I’m here to share the knowledge. And please ask us. I mean, we’re here always to support you. And please do not follow trends. Those trends are temporary, and it will hurt your skin. It will hurt your body.

Yeah. I’m not going to try that TikTok trend that you mentioned, that’s for sure.

It’s stinky.

Dr. Ebru Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me.

I hope you enjoyed that episode today on the Dr. Haley Show. Make sure to hit subscribe on whichever platform you are listening to this. If this episode made you think of someone, go ahead, take a screenshot and share this exact episode with them. You can catch the show notes for this episode on drhaley.com. If you want to geek out with Dr. Michael Haley on other radical health topics. Be sure to check out his YouTube channel where he posts exclusive video content. All the details are at drhaley.com and we can’t wait to hang out with you on the next episode.