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---Transcript---So can you really slow down the aging of the skin? The answer is absolutely. So I took all the women in my family to a spa for mother's day recently. It was my wife, my mom, my grandma and my niece was there as well. And my niece is in her 20s and grandma is in her 80s and I asked them to stand next to each other and turn their backs to the mirror. And then I told them to turn their heads around and look at the skin on their backs. And guess what. Very little difference in the way the skin looked even though there's 60 years of age difference between the youngest and the oldest.  So the big question is this - What do people with great skin do differently to have that? How did they achieve a great look without using celebrity beauticians or spending a paycheck to re-stock their beauty cabinet? What are their mindsets, their approaches, their rituals, the products and tools they use? That is the question and as podcast will give you the answers. My name is Damyan Nikolov and welcome to Skincare Secrets.  Hey everyone. Welcome to episode six of the Skincare Secrets show. So when we're at the spa center and I asked them to turn around and look at the skin on their faces obviously a huge difference. Why is that? Because their backs almost never see the light of day. Could exposure to the sun actually account for all this difference and yes it's pretty much yes. There's a number of studies that show that 80 to 90 percent of the aging of the skin is due to the sun. So UV light causes what they call photo aging. So wrinkles, dark spots, sagging of the skin, the loss of elasticity 80 to 90 percent of that is because of the sun. This means that only 10 to 20 percent of the aging of the skin is due to purely time and other factors. How's that for amazing?  Now let's understand how this process happens so we can figure out what we can do about it. So basically the sunlight when it hits your skin it produces free radicals. Those few radicals then damage the DNA of your skin cells. And when the DNA is damaged when the skin cell replicates itself the new cell is not an exact replica of the old cell. And over time, as this process goes on and on, the skin structure changes. And this happens pretty rapidly because your skin actually regenerates itself approximately every 28 days. So you start seeing all the signs of aging that we just talked about. Now what can you do about it? SPF is the obvious answer and it's correct but it's only half to answer.  So SPF depending on the ingredients can either absorb the sunlight or reflect the sunlight. Either way it offers a significant protection against the sun. And yes you should apply SPF every day including in the winter because even on the coldest darkest winter day some 40 to 50 percent of the UV radiation still reaches the Earth. And there's a lot more you should know about SPF to be able to pick the best one etc.. But I'll do a separate episode on this one for now, just know that you should be applying your SPF every day.  OK. So far great. But why is SPF have the answer? Because there's other studies that actually show SPF only prevents around 55 percent of the free radicals caused by the sun. So SPF is not perfect. And what do we do about the other half? So the free radicals are also called oxidants by the way. And the obvious answer is we fight them with antioxidants. Our body's natural carrier but not naturally carry a bunch of antioxidants like vitamin C which is the most abundant antioxidant in the human body. And antioxidants basically chase the free radicals and neutralize them. They work a little differently than SPF. So SPF obviously you need to reapply it especially if you're out on the beach. But SPF continues to work for a while. With antioxidants, one molecule of the antioxidants neutralizes one free radical and then that's it. So you get used up much faster.  So the key to antioxidants is to get as much as possible. Obviously, through food but also through skincare products. Especially, with vitamin C if applied topically on the skin you get up to 20 times more than if you take it with food or supplements. So even though antioxidants are not classified as sun care by the FDA and they don't have an SPF factor they are equally as important.  So to summarize 80 to 90 percent of the skin aging is caused by the sun. You can absolutely slow down this process. Just look at the skin on your grandma's back and compared that to the skin on her face. The best way to go about it is wear your SPF daily and add antioxidants to your skin carotene. My personal choice is Vitamin C and the reason is because it's most prevalent in the human body and there's a reason why it was put there.  So that's it for today. Thank you for joining. Please don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and tag a friend who should listen to this and I'll see you next time.