271. Dr. Mamina Turegano: What Your Skin Reveals About Your Health, Aging & Hormones

Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast

Dr. Mamina Turegano discusses the critical connection between visible skin changes and underlying systemic health issues like cardiovascular

Key takeaways

• Psoriasis can be a clinical indicator of increased risk for cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome.
• The presence of multiple skin tags is often a legitimate sign of underlying insulin resistance or prediabetes.
• High sugar consumption accelerates collagen breakdown and increases inflammation via reactive oxygen species.
• Topical copper peptides and Matrixyl 3000 are effective ingredients for stimulating collagen remodeling.
• Non-melanoma skin cancers, such as basal cell carcinoma, are significantly more common than melanoma in Americans.

Main topics

• Skin as a window to internal health
• Pregnancy and hormonal skin changes
• Autoimmune diseases and dermatology

Notable quotes

Psoriasis is almost like a blessing in disguise. It's actually your body trying to tell you something.

Conclusion

This episode provides valuable insights into using dermatological heal

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:05) Okay, welcome to Biohacking Beauty Podcast, the podcast arm of Longevity Skincare. And in this episode, we are joined by Dr. Mamina Touregano, triple board certified dermatologist, internist, and derma pathologist. Yeah, Speaker 3 (0:25) and today we are getting into what your skin can reveal about serious disease long before anywhere else in the body. what her training taught her to actually look for under the microscope and why so few people know how to tell the difference between something harmless and something worth real attention. We're also getting into all of the questions that you guys want to learn, be it supplements for skin health, aesthetic procedures, heart-take-on lasers, peptides, it's all here. So by the end of this episode, you'll know. Speaker 2 (0:59) You're going to know what you know. But you're Speaker 3 (1:01) going Speaker 2 (1:01) to know more than what you know. Speaker 3 (1:04) Yes. You Speaker 2 (1:05) don't even know what you're going to know. Speaker 3 (1:07) I think you're going to love this interview and it's so insightful. So without further ado, please welcome Dr. Mamina Turegano. Speaker 2 (1:15) Please welcome you know who. Speaker 2 (1:22) Mamina, welcome to Biohacking Beauty Podcast. My voice is messed up. Yes, Speaker 3 (1:28) we're huge fans. Speaker 1 (1:31) I was going to say, thank you so much for having me. Speaker 3 (1:35) It's really our pleasure. And with your extensive background, I think it's such a treat for our listeners to really get a different perspective on the role dermatology can play in overall wellness, medicine, longevity. Speaker 3 (1:52) Yeah, and really like someone's health and detecting diseases, etc. So we'll get to all of that. And we'll start by kind of like this notion that most people feel like if they would have something internally wrong, they would like automatically feel it. But I think, you know, dermatology might say otherwise. And sometimes the symptoms can present themselves before people. people even realize or could even have a chance to realize that something is off? What do you think? Speaker 1 (2:24) Oh, yeah, definitely. A lot of times people don't know what's going on internally. It can take decades for things to show up later in life. I mean, like, just think about something like, even something like cancers or Alzheimer's disease. Like, a lot of these processes start when you're younger, but you don't feel a lot of these things. High blood pressure, you don't really feel it, you know? The beauty of derm is that you can see, you can see things right away. And people are like motivated to come and see the dermatologist and like take care of their skin. Whereas people aren't as motivated to like fix their blood pressure or their high cholesterol because they can't really see those things. Speaker 2 (3:03) Yeah. Or their gut microbiome, you know, they can't. Speaker 1 (3:05) Exactly. Yeah, for sure. That's Speaker 3 (3:09) a Speaker 1 (3:09) great example. Speaker 3 (3:10) And if I understand correctly, you're trained to specifically see. on the skin, some of those potentially not necessarily skin-related diseases, like overall illnesses, and you're able to alert the patient like a lot earlier? Like how earlier are we talking? Like, because you mentioned like it could be decades, I don't know, maybe you have some particular case you want to highlight of, you know, being able to detect something, some internal issue by observing someone's skin. Speaker 1 (3:42) Yeah. And I think that it's becoming more and more, I think, brought to light in dermatology training. You know, we focus so much on the skin, but now we're really connecting a lot of skin issues with a lot of internal issues. And I would say one of the most common examples that we see is psoriasis. When you see psoriasis, it can be a sign that you are, well, in general, you are at higher risk for developing. cardiovascular disease. So these include things like heart attacks, strokes, metabolic syndrome, which also includes like insulin resistance, you know, so higher increased risk for diabetes. And you can't say like how many years down the line these things are going to show themselves. That's a little bit harder to predict, but you can definitely really prevent a lot of these things from happening when you diagnose somebody with psoriasis and they're otherwise seemingly healthy. But, you know, if somebody comes in with psoriasis as a new diagnosis, I am, you know, I really try to make sure that they are also seeing their primary care doctor to make sure that they're checking their cholesterol, their blood pressure, because they are at higher risk for those things. And even their thyroid, too, I do find that hypothyroidism is common with psoriasis. But, you know, like we mentioned, people could feel perfectly fine. They just have this annoying looking rash on the outside. Don't think that anything is going on. So sometimes I tell people psoriasis is almost like a blessing in disguise. It's actually your body trying to tell you something, like there's something that's impending in their future. Speaker 3 (5:17) I Speaker 2 (5:17) remember going to like a keto conference. I don't know, 10 years ago or something. Speaker 1 (5:26) And Speaker 2 (5:27) someone's saying that skin tags could be hinting at insulin resistance. How much science is there to support that? Or how much is it like keto bro science? Speaker 1 (5:39) Oh, yeah. No, that's actually another legitimate skin finding that really is indicative of insulin resistance. That's the first thing that comes to mind when I see somebody with multiple skin tags. There is a genetic component for sure. And skin tags does not... always equal, you know, prediabetes or insulin resistance. But when somebody has skin tags, I always ask if they've been screened for diabetes and to, you know, I ask about their family history of diabetes and to definitely keep that in consideration. We also see it when people, you know, gain weight, you know, pretty quickly, but that can go hand in hand with insulin resistance. So yeah, no, that is totally legitimate and not just keto bro science. Speaker 3 (6:17) So when I was pregnant with our first, I got a lot of skin tags, which were very annoying on my neck, on my chest. It was like really annoying. And now that I'm pregnant with the second one, they're back. Speaker 1 (6:32) Is Speaker 3 (6:32) there anything that you can do preventatively? Like my first one and this one doesn't have, what's the call? Like diabetes for the baby? Like gestational Speaker 1 (6:43) diabetes? Yeah, Speaker 3 (6:44) that one. I forgot the Speaker 1 (6:45) name. Speaker 3 (6:46) Yeah. I remember with the first one, I was worried that maybe that's the reason I'm getting those skin tags, but we were good. Yeah, so is there anything you can do preventatively for maybe somebody pregnant, listening or planning pregnancy? Or Speaker 1 (7:00) talking Speaker 2 (7:01) to you for that matter. Speaker 1 (7:02) Yeah, yeah. Speaker 3 (7:04) Well, Speaker 1 (7:04) no, that's a great question. So skin tags is very common in pregnancy and a lot of it is related to just the surge in these other hormones that we have during pregnancy, you know, estrogen, progesterone. And those can play a role with skin tag development. A lot of different growths happen. Moles get darker. Skin tags come out. Angiomas, those like little red dots we see in some people. And that's like very hormone driven. And a lot of that is out of your control, unfortunately. And there's a genetic component as well. But yes, insulin resistance can play a role. And it's wonderful to not, you know, have gestational diabetes. But you're... when you're pregnant too, it's your insulin and the whole way that it's trying to manage their glucose is you're pushing that a little bit harder when you're pregnant. So even if like on your blood test, you passed and you don't technically, it's like your body, it could physiologically still be, you know, in a different state with the way your insulin is handling your sugar. So I would say the main thing is, you know, eat a balanced diet, sometimes those cravings can be just out of control. It can be hard to manage cravings, but yeah, try to like minimize the sugar as much as you can. And people have perfectly healthy diets during their pregnancy and still get gestational diabetes. It's just like, there's just like a huge genetic component that makes them at risk. Their bodies just really change with the way they secrete insulin during pregnancy. Speaker 2 (8:34) Look, last night I woke up with her chewing on my shoulder. Speaker 1 (8:39) Pregnancy does strange things to you. Well, Speaker 3 (8:43) I will say that I made it through my first pregnancy without ever craving a pickle or any of those weird things. And the second one is a little different where I'm more into pickles. So every pregnancy is different. But actually... Yeah, I don't know. I don't want to toot my own horn, but I'm always the healthiest when pregnant. I just have like this huge weight of responsibility of like, okay, I'm nourishing this baby. So yeah, I don't think it's from the diet, but yeah, you mentioned all these other factors that probably that's what Speaker 1 (9:13) plays Speaker 3 (9:13) a role. So Speaker 1 (9:14) I guess Speaker 3 (9:15) a preventative would be healthy diet and I'm already doing that. So, you know, not much else I can do. But actually. I wanted to bring up that you've mentioned in like some interviews that we watched and that it's the rheumatology rotation that kind of pulled you towards dermatology. And we're wondering, like, what did you see there that most dermatologists that wouldn't get this training or as much time in this training would likely miss when they're seeing patients? Speaker 1 (9:46) Well, rheumatology, you know, is a subset of internal medicine that looks at autoimmune diseases. And what drew me to Derm when I was doing my rheumatology rotation was just seeing how debilitated these patients were. It really, I mean, affected so much of their everyday quality of life. I mean, their skin, like with a condition called scleroderma, your skin gets attacked, your collagen gets attacked. So your skin gets really tight and taut and it's like hard to maneuver and like even just do basic things. And with lupus, Not only are you having all these skin issues, but there's so many other internal issues. Same with all these other autoimmune diseases. There's Speaker 2 (10:30) a Speaker 1 (10:30) new study Speaker 2 (10:31) showing that lupus, you have a higher mortality risk when you're diagnosed with lupus, right? Speaker 1 (10:39) Definitely. It's like a multi-organ disease. Kidneys are a big organ that gets affected. And when you don't have kidneys working well, that really... affects so many things. So yeah, and I was just so drawn to these patients. And the skin is like, you could see how much it also bothered these patients. And I had so much empathy for them. And I was really also drawn to this aspect of how the skin is part of a full body presentation of Speaker 1 (11:15) inflammation of imbalance like it shows up everywhere including your skin and so when you're looking at skin it's not I don't like to think of only the skin as the place where inflammation is happening I really like to look at the whole body and and understand that that there is internal inflammation going on too and I think that that's like the perspective that I take into dermatology yeah when I see patients yeah Speaker 3 (11:39) and Speaker 2 (11:40) I think it's also you know it's also interesting that I wonder if it was like how it presented itself earlier in your life, because obviously you're a derm. You started being an internet, social media personality, internet personality, whatever you want to call this. I don't know what the Speaker 3 (11:58) best Speaker 2 (11:59) term is, but before it was sought out by most derms, which now, you know, we have friends who do it more, et cetera. We've talked off air. We've met in a biohacking conference. You know, you've, You've been interested in wellness, whole body wellness and its effects on the skin before... Speaker 3 (12:20) It became mainstream. You Speaker 2 (12:22) know, before longevity, skin health became a thing like it is now. Speaker 1 (12:28) So Speaker 2 (12:29) first of all, it seems to me that you are a person that, you know, thinks outside of the box or is a little bit like an avant-garde type person. And I wonder... How it was, did it show up before going to medical school? Is that something that you've, you were like that, you know? Since before, yeah. Speaker 1 (12:54) Yeah, I was. I know. I think I was inspired by my mom. My mom is Japanese. And just growing up, she would always take alternative approaches to health. Like if we had a fever, she never wanted us to get Tylenol. She would just make us sweat it out. And she would make random Japanese concoctions. I had no idea what they were in them. I remember one of them had sake and a raw egg. Speaker 1 (13:22) But, you know, just different things like acupressure. Like if we had constipation, there was like a specific point on our finger that she would massage. And so it really opened my mind to other approaches to healing. And she was also a complete health nut when it came to nutrition. And I was always so embarrassed about it just growing up. But it has been a huge part of me. I think it's been really ingrained in me. And when I went to college, I became even more interested in nutrition and in health. And I started thinking, okay. Do I want to be more like a naturopathic doctor? Functional medicine as a field wasn't really a thing, but integrated medicine was a field. And naturopathic medicine was, of course, like a whole institution. And I was like, do I want to get my MD, which is like the allopathic medicine route versus naturopathic? And I was like, you know what? If I have my MD, I can always... I could always practice more functional integrative medicine. And I was really inspired by a physician back then. His name was Dr. Andrew Weil. People call him like the father of integrative medicine. And he had an MD. So I was like, I want to do something like that. But yeah, my interest has always been there from a young age to really like incorporate other modalities of healing and to look at the patient more holistically. Speaker 3 (14:36) I love that. And I love how... I feel like it's coming full circle. Like I come from Eastern