Summary: 

Dr. Yug Varma, a scientist with a background in microbiome research, joins Wellness your way to discuss the importance of skin health. He explains the concept of the microbiome as a rainforest of microscopic bacteria, viruses, and fungi that live on our skin and protect us. He highlights the importance of a balanced skin microbiome and how disruptions in this balance can lead to common skin conditions like acne and eczema. Dr. Varma emphasizes the need for products that restore this balance without causing further disruption, which is the focus of his company’s Phage technology. He believes this technology holds the key to addressing skin concerns at their root cause, leading to healthier and more resilient skin.

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Transcription:

Megan Lyons: Oh, thank you so much, Dr. Yug Varma, for coming on Wellness your way. I am very excited to talk to you and learn about skin health today.

Dr. Yug Varma: Thank you, Dr. Megan, it’s always a pleasure to be here.

Megan Lyons: Of course. Well, you have a very interesting background. Please tell the audience a little bit more about what landed you here.

Dr. Yug Varma: Yeah, so, you know, I’m, I find myself in skincare now, but I’m actually a scientist. My background is science. I got my PhD from Johns Hopkins, did a postdoc at UCSF and I actually spent more than a decade in academia studying all sorts of things. More recently, the bulk of my career has been studying the microbiome. I’ve been studying the microbiome for 14 years and I’m sure a lot of your listeners are familiar with the microbiome in the context of the gut. That’s where I started doing research and then I switched over to the skin because there were some really compelling sort of pieces that I wanted to study. I, you know, have been passionate about this, this technology that, that we’ll be talking about that my company is built around called Phage technology and it’s been the work of the last eight years of my life to kind of advance the technology, advance the science, bring it into existence, really, and build products with it so that people can benefit from it in their daily life.

Megan Lyons: That is amazing. Well, your passion is about the microbiome. I think, like you said, the audience is familiar with that, at least if they’re not brand new listeners. But I’d love to hear your take. As someone who has studied it for 14 years, how would you explain the microbiome to someone walking down the street?

Dr. Yug Varma: Yeah, I see the microbiome as a rainforest. Right. It’s this rainforest that lives on our skin, in our gut, it’s in different parts of our body. And this rainforest is invisible. And so most of the time we’re not even aware that it exists. It’s invisible because its trees are microscopic. They’re made of bacteria, viruses and fungi. And all of these microbes together form a community, intertwined, enmeshed, that lives on us, lives with us and protects us. So the most sort of well known microbiome is the gut microbiome. Right? Trillions of bacteria living in our gut and not just existing, but coexisting with us. Which means that they talk to us, they talk to our body, they talk to our immune system, they perform advantageous functions. They’re of course dependent on us because what we eat is what they see is food. But in many, many ways, and that’s what the last couple of decades of microbiome research has shown, is that there are many ways in which it can protect us, but also in cause disease. Right now, everyone’s microbiome is different. Your microbiome is different than mine. And we may both be healthy, but when we’re healthy, our microbiomes, even though they look different, share a common trait, and that is that they are in balance, right? When we get a chronic disease that’s driven by bacteria, what happens is one bacteria typically overgrows and causes a disease or cause an imbalance, and your body picks up on it, typically the immune system, it senses that and it tries to, you know, provide inflammation as a way to redress that balance. And so a lot of the inflammation definitely in the gut, you know, with ibd, ibs, Crohn’s, that that is kind of the source of it. And of course, you know, that can lead to the breakdown of the gut barrier, like a leaky gut, right? And so you have now a worsening of the situation where this imbalance is now seeping in. They’re literally like molecul that are signaling this imbalance that are seeping in through the gut lining, further causing problems, further inflaming, circulating in your body. Then you have systemic inflammation, blah, blah, blah, right? So now, zooming out of the gut, there is also a microbiome on our skin, right? Skin’s our largest organ, heaviest organ, has the most surface area. It is the organ with which we primarily sense the world, right? We touch things, we feel things. And as you can imagine, our skin comes in contact with a lot of bacteria. Every surface is covered in it, right? And so it’s kind of a minor miracle that we don’t have all sorts of weird stuff growing on our skin all the time. And that really is in large part because of our skin microbiome. Again, this protective barrier, this rainforest, right? And so it’s really important to A, have a. A balanced skin microbiome, but B, also have a resilient one so that it can withstand whatever is thrown at it, right? So that small perturbations can be overcome and withstood. And in the case of many very common skin conditions like acne and eczema, this balance is disrupted and this normal function of the skin microbiome is interrupted. And so our company deals with how do you restore that balance? And in many ways, unfortunately, although we have sort of powerful medications to treat all of these, acne, eczema, et cetera, they don’t actually get to the root cause and restore that balance. It’s all about, unfortunately, a little bit further disruption, which is why you get so much, so many side effects, relapses, things stop working and it’s very frustrating. So we’re trying to fix all that.

Megan Lyons: Well, you’re doing great work. Oops, I hear myself echo. I think, I think it is clear now, so I’ll say it again. You’re doing great work and we’re going to get into your product, but I want to take a step back and repeat some parts of what you just said. So we have this gut microbiome which needs to be imbalanced. We have bacteria that are doing all kinds of different functions for a whole body. People are familiar with that in large part, but what they don’t know is we have the skin microbiome as well. And when the skin microbiome is out of balance, that can be a root cause of acne. So can you just take that statement, skin microbiome being off balance is a potential, or maybe the. I don’t know what you’ll say, root cause of acne. And can you elaborate on that?

Dr. Yug Varma: Yeah. And so, you know, how do we know that acne is driven by bacteria? Right? Well, we’ve known about this one bacteria called cutie bacterium acnes or C. Acnes that, that has been a part of acne pathogenesis for about 90 years. 80. 90 years. Almost a century. So what we’ve known is very old. The recent advances in microbiome science have kind of shed a lot further light on it and shown us like, exactly what’s going on. But, you know, the first thing you notice is that acne hits us at puberty. Right. And it doesn’t affect like little kids, Right. Seven and eight year olds don’t typically get acne. Right. So it turns out that C. Acnes, this acne causing bacteria, isn’t really part of our skin microbiome until we hit puberty. So for those young kids, there’s really not much sea acnes on their skin at all. What happens at puberty is you start having all sorts of hormonal changes, right? And one of the results of those hormonal changes is your skin gets remodeled. What that means is your pores get deeper, the sebaceous glands, which are these oil glands on your face, get activated, and as a result, your skin starts looking a little bit different and it becomes an ideal place for this acne causing bacteria to take root and start growing. So for example, these Acne growing, bacteria causing bacteria are anaerobic, so they need those deep pores to get to the bottom and have that pore plugged so that they can start growing. If they’re exposed to oxygen, they don’t grow. And the other thing is that of all the bacteria on our skin, they’re uniquely adapted to the oils that our skin produces, and they use that as a carbon source to live and grow. So unlike every other, or more than every other skin bacteria, they are like really, really well adapted to that. And so once you start producing more and more oil, that becomes literally the food by which they grow. And so as a result, because of this colonization, at puberty, you start seeing a massive increase in acne and puberty. And the last thing is, you know, we’re all familiar with where we get acne right on our face, on our upper chest, our back, right? You don’t get acne on your knee, you don’t get acne on your arms. And that is because as an, you know, from puberty onwards, see acnes, this acne causing bacteria is a big part of the microbiome on our face and our upper chest and back, but it’s not, it’s present in much lower quantities in other parts of our body. And so these are kind of circumstantial pieces. And of course, a lot more research has been done kind of taking this apart, but this kind of helps us understand the links between where the bacteria is when it occurs, and the pretty immediate kind of effect that you see, which is that, you know, more and more people get acne.

Megan Lyons: Really interesting. So more and more people get acne around puberty. Yes, but there are those unicorns that never got acne at puberty. And then maybe they get acne later in life, or maybe they don’t, or maybe they had it in their teen years and then it went away in their 20s and 30s and it came back. So why do some people get it and some people don’t?

Dr. Yug Varma: That is actually a great question, because 85% of us get acne at some point in our lives. So it’s a nearly universal condition, Right? It’s a human condition. But there are those 15%, the really annoying friends that we all have who have perfect skin, never wash their face, but somehow, like, oh, I just never got acne. I never, you know, I just skated through my teens with great skin. So there was a study done in 2016 out of UCLA where they looked at people with acne and people with healthy skin, and they tried to they did very deep sequencing and tried to figure out what’s different between their microbiomes. Is there a signature, right, that can predict if you’re going to get acne or, you know, whatever? What they found was the only difference that really stood out, the most significant difference was there are these organisms called bacteriophages or phages that eat bacteria. And the phages that eat the acne causing bacteria are quite common on the skin of healthy people, but they’re very rare on the skin of people with acne. Right. In other words, those annoying friends of ours with the perfect skin, chances are that their skin is acne free because these phages are on their skin and they’re naturally balancing their microbiome by preventing the acne causing bacteria from overgrowing. Because the moment it overgrows, the phage find their food and they kill the bacteria and they redress that balance. So that is the technology, that is the organism that we are working with. And these phages are incredibly specific, right. So they’re not going to kill any other type of bacteria on your skin, they’re just going to kill that one bacteria that they’re kind of evolved to kill and eat. And what that means is, unlike antibiotics, right, where it’s like dropping a bomb on your system and anyone who’s ever had antibiotics for diarrhea or any gut issue knows this, that it causes more issues, right? And it’s a while before your system stabilizes, sometimes it knocks you sideways and you have like other issues, right? That’s because antibiotics are broad spectrum, so they’re killing the bad bacteria, but they’re also killing the good bacteria. They cannot discriminate. And as a result, they’re kind of stripping away this, this protective layer, this rainforest that we have, right? Turning it into a desert. So instead of that, like I say, you, if you have an invasive species in your garden or in your forest, you’re not going to burn down your garden, right? Or well, it’s not ideal, I’ll say that. And that’s what antibiotics are doing. They’re setting fire to your microbiome. Instead, what you would do is you’d, you’d, you’d prune that, you know, the invasive species, you pull it out by the root and that’s what the phage technology does. It kills only the bad bacteria without hurting the good.

Megan Lyons: Amazing. So phages are these little Pacman like things that only eat the bacteria that causes acne. And the people who have less acne or no acne, the microbiome Studies show that they naturally have these phages where 85% of people who get acne, they don’t have as many of these phages. So I want to talk about your technology, but first my brain is stuck on, well, why do some of these people have the phages and not, is it modern lifestyle? I’ve seen research about this culture in who knows what land. No one has acne. Zero percent of people has acne have acne. So I don’t know, what’s your thought on why we’ve lost these phages or we don’t have them naturally?

Dr. Yug Varma: Yeah, I mean, there are so many factors. What we do know is from the microbiome point of view, you know, you, you mentioned these very fascinating studies, which, by the way, I mean, I, I commend you on your research because in the microbiome space we, it’s somewhat well known, but it’s, it’s, it’s all, you know, often very deep in primary literature, which I think is why podcasts like yours are so important and useful for people because it helps bring all the science to the general audience. Right, yes. So there are, like I said, 85% of us suffer from acne at some point in our life. This is true. Whether you’re in North America, South America, Asia, Africa, Europe, around the world, it’s remarkably the same. But as you said, there are some populations on Earth where acne is either very rare or it’s non existent. So one such population is the, this, you know, very kind of hunter gatherer tribe. They live the same way they’ve lived for tens of thousands of years, called the Yanomami in the Amazon basin. And they don’t get acne. The kids don’t have acne, the adults don’t have acne. It’s not a thing. The difference is that their microbiome diversity is off the charts compared to ours. And what we’ve learned is living in built environments, living in modern life, where we’re so, you know, definitely sheltered from the elements, but we’re also sheltered from things like dirt and you know, just the outside that results in us having a much, much, much smaller microbiome and very, you could say, stunted. Yeah. And you know, a lot of my research and a lot of research in the microbiome field is about discovering A, how that affects our general health. Right. Which I think in general you could say is poorer for the lack of it, and B, can we find, you know, individual bacteria or organisms that are, you know, keystone species, in other words, their presence Adding that one or a few bacteria measurably increases your health by a lot. Right. Because, you know, if there’s, if we’re missing hundreds of bacteria, maybe there’s two to five strains that are really important and the rest are, you know, somewhat important. But, but those are the real key. So what we’ve, you know, what we’ve been trying to kind of put out there is that this balance is also really important because, yes, it’s great to have incredible microbiome richness, but, you know, you don’t have to live in a completely different way in a completely different lifestyle. If we can balance the microbiome, it can deliver a huge amount of benefits.

Megan Lyons: Yeah, really interesting. So in context of the gut, I’ll compare that to, okay, our modern lifestyle, meaning processed foods and antibiotic usage and stress and connectivity and all the things. This is depleting our rainforest, in quotes, our microbiome. So we have very few species relative to our ancestors. And now we’ve identified, we, not me, the scientific community, be a couple. Maybe it’s Lactobacillus acidophilus, and maybe if it’s a Bifidobacterium, maybe it’s Saccharomyces boulardii, something like that that we can use to support the microbiome, even though it’s not the whole rainforest. It’s like, these are the really good guys. So we’ll give those to you in a probiotic. The, the corollary is for the skin. You’ve identified this phage, this specific phage that, that is maybe not going to make everyone’s rainforest perfect as it was thousands of years ago, but it’s going to get us the result we want. Is that true?

Dr. Yug Varma: Exactly right? Yeah.

Megan Lyons: Okay, very cool. So now let’s talk about this specific phage and how you’re using it in your products.

Dr. Yug Varma: Yeah. So phages are tiny viruses that kill bacteria. They’re everywhere. They’re in seawater, they’re in soil, they’re all around us, and in fact, they live inside of us. So billions of phages pass through our body every single day, and they’re very harmless. They basically don’t interact much with human cells at all, but they’re nature’s best defense against bacteria. They are the most efficient killers of bacteria that we know of. And they are also very, very specific, like I said. So a bacteria that kills E. Coli will kill E. Coli, but it actually is incapable of killing other bacteria, even closely related bacteria to E. Coli. Right. And so you can use a phage against a particular bacterium and kind of weaponize it, right, to fine track and kill that one bacteria very surgically. It’s a technology that’s very old. It’s more than 100 years old. It’s actually one of the oldest forms of biotechnology that we have, and it has a very interesting scientific history. But in the case of chronic diseases, where one kind of bacteria causes the problem, it’s a very, very potent weapon that we have. So I’ve been very interested in this technology for about 20 years now, and I’ve been following the science, I’ve been following the state of industry around this technology. Um, and it. It’s been great sort of creating these products around this technology. But fundamentally what we’re trying to do is, you know, people with acne have a few options in front of them, right? They can use Benzoproxide, which is 1950s technology, antibiotics, which is also around 1950s, 1960s technology, or the latest and greatest, which is stuff like Accutane, right, which is 1980s technology, which works. But it’s, you know, all of these products give you horrible side effects. And so as a result, the person suffering from acne kind of is like, oh, this is all there is. These are my options. Each one of these is going to give me horrible side effects like redness, dryness, irritation. In the case of Accutane, of course, it’s much worse. It’s liver damage and birth defects and all that kind of really serious stuff. We are trying to provide them a completely new option, one that’s completely free of side effects, one that works by balancing your microbiome and gets to one of the root causes of acne so that you’re not causing collateral damage, you’re not causing relapses and side effects. And relapses are really caused because when you have an imbalanced microbiome and you’re trying to set fire to it to get rid of the bad bacteria, you’re depleting this. This layer that protects you. And so after a while, you know, you stop taking benzoyl peroxide, you stop your antibiotics because they’re harsh and you can’t use them forever. And when you stop, right, the bad bacteria starts to grow back. But now it’s not. There’s nothing holding it back because you’ve already destroyed the good bacteria in your microbiome, so now it’s growing unchecked, and that’s really what causes these relapses. So for us, that’s really important because a lot of our Customers are people who’ve tried everything. They’ve tried all of the brands over the counter. They’ve gone to a dermatologist, gone through one, maybe a few, you know, sort of courses of drugs. And they’re still suffering from acne, they’re still struggling with it. And so when they find our product, you know, a lot of the time, because it’s very heartening to hear that they’re like, oh, I’ve been struggling with for many years, sometimes over a decade now. I finally find something that works and I’m so thankful. So it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s gratifying to be able to help people, of course, other than my own interest in this technology. But it’s for us the first step because as I said, we’re starting with acne. But we don’t see ourselves as an acne company. We see ourselves as a biotech company. Acne is sort of the first stop.

Megan Lyons: Very cool. As you were going through all of those treatments, I was recalling this was probably seven years ago, but you would have shuddered. I had a college age client who was literally putting Purell like hand sanitizer all over her face every day in order to quote, treat her acne. And it was actually working. But oh my goodness, her poor skin microbiome and the dry skin and all of that. We went through a nutritional approach to work on it, but it was hard for her skin to come back after stopping the Purell on her face every day. So I guess I say that just to say, yes, people will try anything.

Dr. Yug Varma: Yeah. And you know, I think what that signifies to me is that people with acne are really motivated to treat their problem. And I see it not just as a skin disease, but as a mental health issue as well. Right. Because if you think about, you know, harken back to when we were all teenagers and you’re trying to figure out who you are, you’re trying to figure out your place in the world and you know where you fit in it. And then this thing happens that’s on your face. You can’t hide it, you can’t hide from it. And it almost changes your relationship with the world because you feel self conscious, you feel like people notice your acne but not you. Right. And then to struggle with it for many, many years because acne is a chronic condition, it does affect you over many years. It can be really hard. And there have been studies showing that people with acne suffer from mental health at almost 2/3 a higher rate. So 66% higher rate than people without. And so it’s a really serious problem. And that’s another component for us that we try to help as much as possible, knowing that we’re not really a mental health outfit. But any kind of support, just seeing people where they are and trying to help them with anything else is part of this process as well.

Megan Lyons: Amazing. That is a powerful statistic. I was not aware of that. So thank you for sharing. And now I’m curious because of your background and the gut microbiome and your current interest in the skin microbiome, talk to us about the connection here. And if we use a phage based product topically on our skin, I’m biased to think there’s probably still something going on with the gut microbiome that’s all related to this acne. So take this wherever you want to go.

Dr. Yug Varma: Well, different skin conditions have different components. Right now you’re right that the gut skin, it’s called the gut skin axis. So the gut and the skin are connected in many ways. So the gut microbiome obviously has the most bacteria. Of all the microbiome sites in our body, I think the skin is the second most populated and the gut and the skin are the two most immune surveilled places in the body. Which means that on the other side of the bacteria there’s, there’s an army of immune cells always patrolling, always on alert because it knows that there’s a lot of bacteria on the other side. And if we don’t watch very carefully and guard it, any small infiltration of bacteria can be life threatening. Right. You could get sepsis and blood infection. But it’s also because all these immune cells are so concentrated around our gut lining and our skin lining, there’s also a lot of crosstalk and a lot of it is friendly. Right. Of what’s growing, what’s going on is everything in balance. And so the gut and the skin kind of share a lot of these common traits and we’re uncovering ways in which they literally talk to each other. Right. So there’s bacterial products that are rele the bloodstream from the gut that end up like affecting things on the skin and vice versa. In the case of things like psoriasis, we know that there’s a much more strong gut skin connection. In the case of acne and eczema, we haven’t really uncovered one yet. But there are tantalizing things, sort of clues or observations that we’ve made. So for the most part, you know, let’s talk about Diet, Right. So we know that diet affects acne in certainly in some cases more than others. Right. So some people are sensitive to their diet, and that triggers their acne. The chief way we understand that that happens is whatever your trigger is, it can be different, right? Spicy food, oily food, chocolate, blah, blah, blah. But whatever your trigger food is, if you eat it, what happens is your body responds by producing more oil on its skin. And the oil is food for the bacteria. This particular acne causing bacteria, the bacteria overgrows, you get acne. Right. Food is not a trigger for everyone who has acne. And so it really is your body’s individual response to different substances. There is this one observation that I saw and I’ve been very curious about. I think it’s in a Netflix documentary about this woman who had a lot of gut issues, Right. And she was kind of trying to do a fecal transplant to cure herself. And because she wasn’t able to get a doctor to do it, she kind of did a DIY thing right at home. And so I’m trying to remember this. I think she first tried her boyfriend as a do. As a donor of fecal matter. And then she. She did that, but she got symptoms of depression.

Megan Lyons: Wow.

Dr. Yug Varma: And he had depression.

Megan Lyons: Yeah.

Dr. Yug Varma: And so it got transmitted through her, the gut microbiome. So then she was like, well, this sucks. I don’t want to do this. Then she asked her brother for a fecal. For fecal matter to donate, and she did that, but her brother had acne, and then she started getting acne. Right. So this is one case where clearly, like, it was carried through in a fecal transplant. And. And we know that there is, like, systemic inflammation can lead to acne. Right. Where you just have inflammation that’s coursing through your body, your skin responds to it, and you get acne. So I would say, in summary, that there’s a lot of strong evidence that in acne particularly, it’s largely the skin microbiome that’s at play. But like I said, there are individual cases, and I think it’s just dependent on individual variation where the gut might be in play a little more as well. But certainly, like I said, eating healthy, just increasing your general hygiene, all of these will have a measurable impact on your acne because inflammation and general bacterial overgrowth are such a big part of it.

Megan Lyons: Really interesting. So a couple things there. First, highly do not recommend doing a fecal microbial transplant on your own at home to the audience. I do actually think that’s a cool Emerging technology that I’m looking towards in the future. Hopefully not for myself, but I think it’s really interesting. The, I would say seminal study on that was done on mice or rats where they gave the bacteria the fecal matter from an obese mouse to a thin mouse and the thin mouse became obese and vice versa. So people have may have heard about that. Now we’re seeing it like in this documentary in humans, which shows that there’s just so much going on in the microbiome that we don’t completely under. You probably understand a whole lot more than we collectively do, but still we don’t understand all of it. So that being said, going back to the phage technology, this is going to help whether the root cause might be systemic inflammation, it might be hormonally driven acne, it might be a food based trigger, it might be any of this. The phage is still going to non discriminately eat that acne causing bacteria, correct?

Dr. Yug Varma: Yes.

Megan Lyons: Yeah. Okay, amazing. And then maybe it makes sense if someone knows, oh, my trigger for acne is dairy. Well, cool. I’m going to use phyllobiotics. I don’t think we’ve even said the name of the product. You’re welcome to talk about the name and talk about the specific products, but I’m going to use phyllobiotics and I’m going to reduce the dairy in my diet because I know that’s a trigger. So it’s not necessarily just a band aid approach, but a complimentary approach. Is that true?

Dr. Yug Varma: Absolutely. And you know, for a lot of people, you know, you have to kind of learn all this about yourself. Right. And everyone has their own acne journey. Hopefully we help you reach the end of that journey a little bit faster. But like you said, in many ways it is a comprehensive approach of learning about your response to certain foods. Or you know, there are people who exercise a lot and say, oh man, I’m sweating a lot. I mean, certainly exercise is not a bad thing. If you get back acne or chest acne or whatever, or if you break out on your face because of it, then we can absolutely help. But we’re going to be that part of your, like that tool that helps you continue a healthy lifestyle. Right. And I think, yeah, the concept of balance, I think is so important not just in the case of your microbiome or acne or a product or whatever, but in your life, which is have a balance of healthy habits, have a balance of a variety of habits. And hopefully products like ours help you help to enable you to do that.

Megan Lyons: That’s really amazing. So I do have a couple, one or two other questions about those tangential factors for lifestyle, but let’s actually just get a, maybe not a pitch because I don’t like to use that word, but let’s get your take on the amazing products that you are offering. Can you just tell us more about the suite there?

Dr. Yug Varma: Yeah. So our company is Phyla P H Y L A. We’ve kind of centered around this bacterial phase technology. We have three products, a cleanser serum and a moisturizer. The cleanser has salicylic acid and tea tree oil. It’s a very gentle non foaming cleanser. And what it does is it opens up your pores, it gently exfoliates and it allows the phage to get deep in the pore where the bacteria insulate. Can work, Right. So it is, you know, like a non foaming gel cleanser. If you have makeup or a lot of dirt, we recommend you use just soap or you know, like a foaming cleanser to take that off and then apply the cleanser. The next one is the serum serum that has our phage technology. It’s in the green bottle and that has, you know, millions of phages that you can apply to your skin, which they immediately get to work. They get into your microbiome, they find a bacteria that’s imbalanced out of balance and they, they start bringing it back into balance. The final product is a moisturizer. You know, we know that a lot of people with acne have chronically dry skin and it’s a very, very light, kind of whipped texture moisturizer, very hydrating without providing oiliness. And so that locks in moisture. And all of these products have been built from the ground up to be compatible with the phages but also not cause big changes in your microbiome. So they’re, you know, they, they will leave your microbiome balanced. And the key, you know, that I should mention is regular use, right? Because what you’re going to be doing is taking your microbiome from an unbalanced state to a balanced state. Your microbiome does not want to do that. Your microbiome is what we call homeostatic, right? So it always wants to be in that present configuration. So you want to slowly change it. Your skin is going to, you know, recognize those changes and there may be a period of flux when, when you just may have a breakout or whatever. But once your skin gets used to the new, more balanced microbiome, and calms down, then you’ve got a balanced microbiome. And if you maintain it in that way, you can have, you know, clear skin not just for the next month or the next couple of months, but for life. And that’s really our goal, is we’re not a quick fix, we’re not an overnight, you know, miracle. We will get you to good skin for the rest of your life, and we hope you’ll keep it that way.

Megan Lyons: Wow, that’s a powerful statement. I love that. Now I’m putting myself in the shoes of some of my clients. I will say I don’t relate. I’m a simple person. If you give me more than, I don’t know, three bottles, I can’t handle it. But I know some of my clients are using, no joke, like 25 different products on their skin. My suspicion is if they’re going to try Phyla Biotics, you would say just give it a shot for a few weeks or I don’t know how long with just these three products. Is that true or false?

Dr. Yug Varma: That’s. That’s true. So let me put that in a little context. There was a study that was done that showed that the average woman puts 500 ingredients on her skin every day. Right. That’s a lot.

Megan Lyons: Yeah.

Dr. Yug Varma: And I’m going to wager that not every single one of those ingredients is essential on your skin. Right. That your skin couldn’t live without. But, but if you think about it, you’re. You’re leaving these products on your skin, these 500 ingredients, your skin is kind of bearing the weight of all of these. Right. And it might be kind of suffocating your skin. So it’s really important from, again, it’s our point of view is to be more minimalist.

Megan Lyons: Yeah.

Dr. Yug Varma: To have less things on your skin, to let your skin breathe a little bit, to let your microbiome just be a little more diverse, a little more balanced. And so we always recommend putting less products, putting fewer products and you know, you know what works and what doesn’t. Because if you put it, put 20 things on your face, right. And then your skin starts to improve. What worked? Which one of those 20 things or which two of those 20 things actually work? Which do you stop, which do you continue with? And for us, it’s more of a hassle. Right. I mean, it takes time out of your day to layer all these products and it’s expense. You’re spending a lot of money on skincare. What if you could only spend half of the money and have the same effect or maybe even better. And so from that point of view, we always say, less is more.

Megan Lyons: Yeah, great observation. Love that. And I think if someone’s even more simple than me and they’re just using one thing right now, well, a cleanser and a serum and a moist moisturizer, that’s not that bad. I think we could all get behind that. So I love that you’ve made it. You’ve laid it out that way, and you’ve explained to us the purpose of each one. Now, I for sure want to end with you telling people where to find the product and all of that, but let’s just throw in one other tip or thought on some of the lifestyle factors, whether it’s stress or sleep or exercise or anything, you want to cover what’s important in that area as it relates to skin health.

Dr. Yug Varma: I would say staying hydrated is very important. And that takes two forms, right? Which is drinking a good amount of water. And I think especially as we get older and our skin doesn’t bounce back from a late night or, like, less sleep, we’re like, oh, wow, I’m dehydrated, and it shows on my face. Right. Or it shows on my skin. The other part is moisturizing. Right? So putting moisturizer and even sunscreen is. Is really important, especially if you’re going out in the sun for long periods of time. And it’s really important to keep those layers of skin hydrated and by the way, you know, dry. Like we’ve talked about how the oil is the food for the bacteria. A lot of people say, oh, if the bacteria is the cause of the problem, let’s starve it by stripping my body of the oil. Right now, that’s not good, because your oil, your body’s producing oil for a reason. It hydrates your skin, layers, it. It seals the moisture in. And when you remove that, it causes a lot of premature aging, fine lines and wrinkles, and general degradation of your skin layers. So, again, you know, we’re trying to balance your microbiome without stripping the oils from your skin. And that’s why our products are gentle. They’re really formulated for very sensitive skin. And so hydration is really important. And then I would say, you know, sleep and good exercise. Again, very banal prescriptions, but they do work.

Megan Lyons: Yeah, cliches are cliches for a reason.

Dr. Yug Varma: They work.

Megan Lyons: So you’ve heard it here. Hydration, sleep, exercise, all very important. And if you need something beyond that to help get your skin microbiome in line, you could definitely check out phyla biotics. Where would people go to learn more about the product?

Dr. Yug Varma: So we are at phyla.com, you can learn about our science, you can learn about the clinical study that we ran where we got clinical data supporting our technology, our mechanism of action and all that. We are going into retail soon. So we’ll be in Sephora in early January.

Megan Lyons: Right. Congrats.

Dr. Yug Varma: Excited about that. But yeah, those are the places where you can find us. We’re also on socials at phylabiotics everywhere, on Twitter, on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok talk. We try to put out a lot of, you know, useful information, myth-busting, answer people’s questions. And so yeah, if you have acne, if you know someone with acne, that’s where you can go to find the best information and make the best decision for yourself.

Megan Lyons: That’s great. We will link to all of those in the show notes. So scroll on down and find the channel that you prefer. I highly recommend checking out more of the information that they’re putting out. It’s your team. You and your team are doing a really great job of making this information digestible always. Pun intended. So thank you for that and thank you so much for your time and wisdom today. I appreciate you coming on wellness your way.

Dr. Yug Varma: Thanks Megan. This was a blast.

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