Skin Care Inside and Out with Celeste Hilling

DR. MIKE MORENO: Welcome to Wellness, INC. I’m Dr. Mike Moreno. We’re taking a deep dive into big business of wellness from my perspective, after 24 years of practicing medicine. I’ll be exploring apps, gadgets, discoveries, and everything new in this booming space, I’ll be talking with the innovators, the CEOs, physicians and all the experts about what works and what doesn’t.

We’re going to be talking skin today. My guest is a giant in the skin. This is unreal. One hundred and forty billion with a “B”, billion-dollar industry. She has shared her passion for skin on so many outlets. The Doctors, MSNBC, ABC, Huffington Post, New York Times. You name it, this woman is doing it all. Please welcome Celeste Hilling. Celeste, how are you?

CELESTE HILLING: I’m excited and I’m even better now that I’m with you.

DR. MIKE MORENO: This is great. This is great. I mean, listen, you are literally doing it all and I mean that literally because you are the co-founder, the CEO, product formulator of the Skin Authority. Remember that folks remember those two words, skin authority. We’re going to be diving into this. I mean, you’re doing all of this. First of all, how do you keep it all straight? That’s a lot to be doing.

CELESTE HILLING: Well, I have to say, you know, because you have your hands in a million things, too. But I think all of us, everybody listening does as well. I think it’s just about passion and more importantly, I’m kind of on fire now because this is honestly the best time to really be engaged in skin health simply because with everything that we’ve done with researching stem cells, which, as you know, the skin is the only body that has its own non desiccated organ in the body. At the end of the day, we’ve just learned so much in the last ten years, not only about how to look cosmetically more beautiful and youthful, but how to really keep skin as an organ, that front line of immunity, especially in time at things like covid and vitamin D. So, I feel that I’m more, if it’s possible, I’m more excited to be doing what we’re doing and that sort of feels me because you do have to have your hands and all the aspects. If you’re going to be formulating, you have to be engaged in the research community. In my opinion, you can’t do those two things exclusively.

And more importantly, you have to engage with the consumer because, you know, we really have to be listening to consumer designs, most of our products, by communicating what they need. So, you really have to wear all of those hats in today’s world to have an authentic brand that’s engaging and helping to guide people to the ultimate skin health.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Well, and you said it, you have to really listen to your audience. We’re going to get into that because you do that in a very unique way, which I think is fascinating, but I wanted to be sure, one hundred- and forty-billion-dollar industry?

CELESTE HILLING: Oh yeah. And by the way, that number is conservative. The reason I say that is that number comes from things that can be reported. When you look at what’s happening, I mean, right now there are over one hundred thousand skin care brands out there that are growing every day. I think that’s a lot of why this conversation is important, because there’s a lot of noise out there. Right? There’s a lot coming at consumers every day and a lot of people jumping in the fray. It’s important, to help, we always say, help guide people who self-diagnose down the aisle of Target and Rite Aid to really have great education about what they’re looking for. That market will explode simply because one of the things we’re seeing now is when we talk about vitamin D and we talk about growth factor technology, there’s a lot that’s going on with how you can topically administer things that maybe not today, but five to six years from now. We’re not even talking transdermal patches. We’re talking about true application on the skin of things that can help with your immune function. So, I think you’re just going to see that number just continue to explode.

DR. MIKE MORENO: And clearly, you know what you’re doing because, you know, you’re approaching about a two hundred percent growth in direct consumer sales this year. You know, that’s an amazing figure. I mean, you’re talking double. That’s got to be pretty exciting.

CELESTE HILLING: Yeah, it is super exciting. And it’s also humbling at the same time, because one of the things that’s important with that kind of growth is making sure we don’t sacrifice the experience and the engagement that we offer. And more importantly, we don’t sacrifice you know, we formulate our products without fragrances, DYS, paragons, all of those kinds of things, which means we need to do a lot of compatibility, testing, a lot of environmental tests and all those things before something goes in the bottle and before we ship it. So, when your volumes start to increase like that, you’ve got to really be looking at ensuring that all your processes you can really keep up at that quality level and a lot of the things that we produced go through FDA approval. So, there’s no way to speed that little engine up. So, we have to be better and better. But I’m humbled by that. And more importantly, I think it just is a reflection, particularly with everything that’s gone on, with people working from home and being more virtual.

And I know we’ll talk about it, but we do something called skin coaching or virtual coaching like you and I are doing right now where we’re looking at each other and we’re having a conversation where our certified professionals can look at your skin, have a dialog with you, and really hear the human side of what you need, not just the database telling us this is your skin type. I think people want that human connection now more than ever. They also want to know that whatever you’re delivering is personalized. You know this as a physician, what you can accomplish, sitting down and listening to your patient and gauging their facial expressions, looking at them visually, there’s so many cues you get from that, that help you with your diagnosis and how you guide them. I think that’s what we see in that dialog, is we hear a lot about what you aspire to. When we can take that information and work backwards, we hopefully can make it something that really means something to you and accomplish your goals, and that leads to a longer term, higher growth business.

DR. MIKE MORENO: You know, it’s interesting you say that because one of my mentors, when I was in medical school many, many moons ago, I learned that from him. When you walk into an exam room and you see a patient, it may be someone you’ve been in for 20 years or maybe the first time you meet them, but it’s really right away. Within 30 seconds a minute, you find a way. How are you going to relate to this person and the visual just being able to sit and speak with these people, it’s so valuable. So, your techniques are amazing. Now you were in the tech industry for years and then you just said, okay, I’m going to make the switch to the skincare line and I’m going to do this. Why don’t you why don’t we kind of go back a little bit and take us through that? How do you go from one thing to the other that gets pretty dramatic?

CELESTE HILLING: Yeah, it was, and if you would have asked me back then if I would have been doing this, I would have laughed. I would have said, are you kidding me? No. It’s so traditionally female, I would not have done it. I have a technology and research background. I was fortunate enough to be in Silicon Valley at a time where everything was exploding with the growth of really digital, everything that was digital and mobile technology. So, I had the great fortitude to work with some super talented people and we actually developed software technology that was, is, the platform for a lot of what we’re using today. Even talking right now, our two-way video, we developed a lot of the core technologies for mobile applications, and my company was acquired by Compaq Computer. I ended up running Compaq Consumer Division Software worldwide for nine years so, we went from, when Compaq acquired us, it was chugging along to 10 billion and we were 40 billion within two years. So definitely it was a moment growth, but to your point, what occurred during that time is we were doing a ton of research.

We partnered with a company called Fisher-Price to do development digital tools for children. We patented something called Wonder Tools, and the reason I’m saying this is we do Fisher-Price does all this research in the home of, you know, everything from the safety of something for children to how it impacts their health. So, we did a lot of research on how the digital technology was impacting the family.

One thing that sort of came out of that process is we were learning a lot about how we would encase all this radiation that is in these little digital devices. If you think about that, you hear stories of an iPhone catching fire in somebody’s bed, well, you know, there’s a lot of heat and radiation that’s in a mobile device. We would always spend hours and casing these mobile devices so that the parts would wear down or get irradiated. I never thought about the person holding the device. I never thought about whether anything from this blue light on this screen or the wireless technology and 5G emitting these wavelengths of light. What happened is some of my friends, some people that I loved, and it parallel my parents and some other friends within a year, all had cancer of different types.

All of a sudden I started looking at the environment and what impact it had because some of these people were not genetically marked for this. It was sort of what’s in the environment that might be contributing. For my parents in particular and for other friends of mine, vitamin D deficiency was at the core of a lot of the similarities that they had, even though their cancers were different. So, vitamin D is made in the skin. So, for the people listening who don’t know that it’s made in the skin, it acts like a hormone and it has a lot to do with how the immune system functions. We’re hearing a lot about that with Covid, for example, but I started looking at that in the more that I lived in those research labs and the more that I learned and got involved as hopefully being an ambassador for people I cared about, I learned that wow, the skin, there’s so much going on understanding vitamin D and factor technology, all these things that help with immunotherapy and your body performing. Why isn’t a skin care company looking at this and really leapfrogging the technology that today to this more advanced wellness approach? I call it health inspired skin care. So there really wasn’t anyone. I actually tried to pitch people to do it and they didn’t.

DR. MIKE MORENO: So, you put your lab coat and your goggles, and you went to work.

CELESTE HILLING: And I went to work simply because I felt, I was a mom, I had my child at the time and I thought, wow, you know, everyone should care about prevention. Everyone should care, just like you talk about with weight and health. It’s a big part of staying healthy and living longer and I, I want to be vital just like everyone and a long, healthy life. So, I felt there was a huge opportunity for someone to come in and not only use all of the health inspired technology that’s out there that applies to skin and create a new type of skin care that was really about tricking and working with your body to produce its own resources in a powerful way, because the hyaluronic acid, the collagen that your skin produces on its own is so much more longer lasting, so much more vital than what I could inject in you. So how do I really help that happen and what are the things we can do to trigger that type of beautiful cosmetic response, as well as the health response that comes with making all of those things?

So that was really what drove me there, but at the same time, the cool thing was that digital was there. I understood how to use the technology because the other part is all of that is meaningless if you’re not educated about why it matters. Because if somebody tries to sell you for skin care products and get you on a routine and that’s what most people do, you don’t really understand why it’s beneficial and compliance. As you know, as a physician, compliance is ninety nine percent of the result.

So, it’s how do I convince you to be compliant and do it every day? And if I can give you those sound bites that hopefully get you to understand the why, then you’ll do the how every day. So that was really where the technology and coaching could help us have a dialog to hopefully share what we were learning.

DR. MIKE MORENO: And that takes us to what you do and how you do things. I think the customer service, and this is free that you offer. So, take me through this. How would this work? So, let’s say that I am an individual who wants to go through this process, tell us how we would do this and kind of describe the process, because this is fascinating.

CELESTE HILLING: Yeah, and there’s all kinds of entry points to it that’s even more fascinating because we partner, we sell direct to consumers, but we also partner with amazing medical spas and day spas and resorts all over the world. Our coaching technology is accessible in all of those places.

So, for example, in places where we’re at retail, like Pharmica, you can go in and there’s an iPad sitting there, you can push a button, or you can take care of your phone and you can push a button through my skin authority app, and you can basically immediately be connected with a certified coach. You could be standing in front of the shelf saying, which of these is best for me? We can do a consultation and help you pick the right thing off the shelf because I want you to go home with the right thing, the thing that’s right for you and to be educated about that so that that’s how we sort of transform retail. In a Covid world, you can go on SkinAuthority.com. You can download our app and it says connect with the coach and you can choose. Do you want to have a two-way video chat? You can push a button and be able to have that happen. Do you want to just talk via phone because you’re not sure you want to want to see you? You can click a button and it automatically connects you through a cell line. If you want to schedule a time because you’re not ready and you want to get home, you can click and schedule an appointment.

So, at the end of the day, through SkinAuthority.com you can schedule all of those things. The power of it is that what we find is right now I’m looking at you, and as someone who formulates products and has spent many years auditing all kinds of esthetic classes, I might look at you and say, hey, I really want to fix that eleven sight. You don’t have one but, you know, I might say, hey, I want to fix that. Then I might ask you, hey, if I have a magic wand and I could solve something for you in this conversation, what would it be? Nine times out of ten, it is not the thing our professionals are looking at. It’s something else. Every coach will tell you that. They’ll say, oh, see this here? And you’re like, no, but at the end of the day, it’s what matters to you that is important because that’s how your self-esteem sees you in a mirror.

So, the coaching session not only gives us a chance to visually see and assess your skin and to hear what you have to say, but it also gives us that soft data that says, what do you think about yourself and why this is so important? Because at the end of the day, this is about your self-esteem. Everyone cares about what they see in the mirror. And just like you talk about weight being a part of that, people perceive how others perceive them through what they see in that mirror. I think we know that if we can make you feel better about what you’re seeing in that mirror, it will have all kinds of halo effects for other aspects of your life. So those coaches really listen.

DR. MIKE MORENO: When you think of Zoom, the whole idea of Zoom, I’ve never looked at myself in the mirror or in a video screen, we are now more than ever aware of what we look like all the time. I think we’re mostly just like doing our hair and running out the door. Now we’re actually looking at ourselves in meetings. It’s happening all day. I’m still stuck on that that point you made about the one thing that people want to fix is the thing that they…that’s fascinating to me. But it makes sense.

CELESTE HILLING: But it’s what you’re saying, too, because especially if you’re around people who are super active, not only on Zoom and for traditional things, but with social media where you can filter everything immediately, so people want to walk around. They now expect their face and their body to look filtered the way it does through technology and when it doesn’t, they’re extremely self-conscious and truly self-deprecating in that way. So, I think for us, we’ve learned that the most important thing we can do is sort of give you that immediate cosmetic pop.

So literally, I tell every chemist and I drive all my chemists crazy because I go in and I say, no, if it doesn’t make a change upon application, we need to start over because people will not give it time. So, you have to get them to see that change and then you pull them in with the health part. So, I think it’s really about giving people that, but more importantly, you know, also being able to say, hey, look, you know, in the long run, everything you see that’s not looking beautiful cosmetically is just a sign of your immune system not functioning properly at a skin health level. So, let’s correct all the health pieces and you’re going to see that the cosmetic piece just starts to fall into place. The beauty of these conversations that we have is we built a relationship of trust and then we can start to guide them.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Right. When you think about lifestyle change and whether it’s losing weight or starting an exercise, and that’s the kind of the world I deal with, the one most important thing, in my opinion. Again, this isn’t a fact, my opinion is confidence, self-confidence, when you give somebody the confidence that they can lose weight, that they can get healthy, that they can lower their blood pressure and sugars through diet and exercise, that they can change their lifestyle, that confidence level is a fuel to the fire. So, what you’re saying is absolutely critical for everything. It makes perfect sense. I think what’s great about what you do is I don’t think this is happening in the skincare world very often.

CELESTE HILLING: No. And, you know, let’s be honest, this isn’t cheap. Like when you look at it, most of the world is moving towards and, you know, I’m a technologist, so I love technology, but they’re using technology to scale out the most expensive proposition, which is the human. So, at the end of the day, you’re right in that most things are going to show some form of a robotics database mongering where I can replicate through a bot this cut this conversation, but what we’re doing is very expensive because we’re putting the human in the mix and we’re using technology to scale human knowing versus the other. So that’s why you don’t see it being done a lot, because it cost a lot, but at the end of the day, what we see and I say it all the time, you quoted our growth, but outside of that percentage growth is also our average order value is three times the average order value of another brand on the market. A lot of that has to do with when you see results and someone’s giving you something you need, then you’re going to invest.

There’s no one more important to invest in than yourself, you know that. I think that we see that, yes, do we earn money through the first sale with you? No, but we do over a year or two years, begin to really see that turn when we keep you and we have a seventy five percent retention rate of people who’ve been buying our products over five years. That’s crazy. So, what it says is not and I’m not saying that because we’re wonderful, it’s that we just understand that we need to earn your trust and we need to earn the right for you to stay with us and we work hard to do that. We also work hard to be your skin authority because we don’t want to take the place of a physician or a dermatologist. What we want to do is make sure that…the average person right now is spending over two thousand dollars a year on skin care products.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Ouch that’s a lot of money.

CELESTE HILLING: Well, the higher end people are spending $20k-$25k a year, the prestige market. When you look at that, that’s a big investment and we want to make sure that you’re investing in things and everybody has the story of the counter under their sink that’s full of things they throw away that don’t work. So, I think in a time where people care about value, we want to make sure that what you’re selecting is going to work for you and that you’re going to want to do it again and again. And that’s what that human connection lets us do.

But we also are automated in so many ways, we just started something called Facial Club, which I’d love to take credit for, but I didn’t, which is all of our customers like, gosh, you know, I can’t go in and get a facial because I have to wear a mask, and why wear a mask to get a facial, we’re just massaging my eyes. So basically, can’t you develop your professional products in a way that we can do it at home? So, we started facial club, which sends a facial home, but a coach takes you through the facial like this so that you’re not doing it yourself. We’re guiding you through that outcome. Technology lets us do things like that that are super cool, that make sure you can still have that human expression of treatment.

DR. MIKE MORENO: So, let me ask you this, so let’s talk a little bit about the innovations I want to get into the ingredients and tell me a little bit about the research. How do you do that process?

CELESTE HILLING: Yeah, so it’s really different today than when we started. So, when we first started, as I shared with you, I was doing a lot of vitamin D research and actually human growth factor research and two immunologists and oncologists, I was on the board of Scripps La Jolla, they were doing some research on sutureless healing with wound healing and with growth factors that are just crazy because it’s affecting all the skin around it. They said the area around it is completely rebirth, but we don’t know what we don’t know how we would commercialize that. I said, well, I’ll take a look at it with you. So, we started looking at that and obviously I was like, I can help you commercialize it.

DR. MIKE MORENO: You know, you’re like, okay, now I’m on the board.

CELESTE HILLING: Now I’m on the board now doing those things. More importantly, what happened is it’s as you know, the research community is fairly tightly knit. So, a lot of other people started coming and saying, wow, you know, here’s things we’re working on and what can you do? So, we sort of created almost a co-op of a lot of the great biotech companies. You know, San Diego is one of the largest biotech markets. We have over fifteen hundred Life Science companies. So, you know, it is an amazing place because once that started happening, we started working with UC Irvine, Rejuvenate Labs, which is where the growth factors are harvested and then the vitamin D lab.

So, it just started just kind of moving towards our vitamin D technology SGF4 which is human growth factor technology, all about immune system and the body sort of seeing itself and feeling and getting its function back to the technology I’m the most excited about, think about it like a topical space suit for the skin, because just like a space suit protects astronauts from radiation, but also gives them life support inside. Right now, over fifty one percent of our environment is light coming from our devices and infrared coming from our wireless technology. So, we’re bathing in the equivalent, this is not a science term, it’s a “Celeste-ism”, but we’re bathing in the equivalent of sort of six suns. So instead of just worrying about the sun we get when we go outdoors or that’s coming through this light in this hotel room, it’s also about, you know, how do we deal with the light that’s coming from our devices? And we’re finding that our children, because they’re being educated virtually, as well as gaming and connecting socially, are spending over 20 hours a day bathed in that light. Oh, so you would never send your child onto the beach for twenty hours unprotected, but we’re unprotected in this streaming light all day long.

DR. MIKE MORENO: But you’re right, we don’t think of it. We don’t look at it like that. You mentioned something about growth factors. Can you just talk a little bit, spend a minute or two talking about what our growth factors? Because I don’t think a lot of people know.

CELESTE HILLING: I think also because we talk so much about stem cells and so everyone sort of thinks stem cells are the magic potion for everything. The reason I say that is what makes stem cells so amazing is they can become whatever they’re programed to be. Right. I always use the analogy. I tell people, hey, you go, and you get your phone, you buy it and when you take it right out of the case, does it work right? No. Right. You have to program it. So, they activate it with software that tells it it’s an iPhone versus a Samsung, then it also tells it here’s all my applications. So, I always tell people growth factors to take on that role, similar to what you see with applications and it’s and the reason I like to use that analogy is because not only just like you have your phone that has Bluetooth and games like Angry Birds and YouTube and all these things are different, but also at the end of the day, you have to every now and then do a software update. Right. Because as things change and your body gets exposed to the elements and age and whatever drugs, whatever else we put, I don’t mean drugs, drugs, the prescription things that we take or whatever we may do with our bodies, you every now and then. That’s why your cells start to mutate, and they don’t communicate at that same level or function at the same level.

So, what’s beautiful about growth factor technology is if we can sort of re-infuse that programing, sort of encourage those cells to think like they did and behave like they did when they were younger, then it’s sort of like giving a software update to your phone. Everything works better, faster, and we see that with skin cells. So, our SGF4 isn’t every growth factor family in the world because we were only able to find for families of growth factors that truly impact skin and how skin works. So, we basically isolated those and we’re able to put those into topical applications, and it is amazing. The change, the cosmetic change that you see in the skin, but the good news is for people who have chronic conditions like things like rosacea that are chronic or hyper pigmentation where they have it, and they just struggle to fix it over time. If we can get to give you that cosmetic pop in your line to fill in your wrinkles, go away. You use that every day over 72 days, 90 days, you start to see a reduction in these chronic conditions as well and over a year you look dramatically different.

DR. MIKE MORENO: So, what about psoriasis? Psoriasis? Is that something that you deal with much?

CELESTE HILLING: Yes, psoriasis. We do a lot. Our vitamin D technology with psoriasis, because psoriasis, alopecia, and vitiligo are all vitamin D deficient conditions. Eczema. So, what we see is vitamin D deficiency doesn’t cause it, but when you’re vitamin D deficient, it exacerbates it. Right. So, what we find is that if we can help it…so how does topical play into vitamin D? Well, the way topical plays is that we referred earlier, vitamin D acts like a hormone. Right? Your skin needs D to make D. So, when you’re exposed to UVB, which are the shorter rays that burn you, they interact with this [UNINTELLIGIBLE] that lives in your skin and it chemically creates more D.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Convert’s it right?

CELESTE HILLING: Correct. So, if you look at it, if your skin needs D to make D, but it is a hormone, what happens to our hormones as we age. We find that the levels in the skin are decreasing just the way our hormones decrease all over our body. At the end of the day, I could run around naked. I hate those commercials that say go in the sun for 10 minutes and you’re going to make your daily dose of D. Well, that’s true if you’re 10 or 15. But if you’re thirty-five, forty, forty-five sixties and south, I could run around naked all day without sunscreen and I’m not going to make as much. And if my skin’s darker, which acts like a pigment to block those UVB rays, it’s going to take me longer and especially if I’m aging and darker. So that’s why we see people with type three, type four, type five, darker skin types tend to be by 90 percent vitamin D deficient. So, what we find is if we can topically apply D, we don’t ever apply it and say, oh, it’s a supplement or you’re taking this to improve your levels, that’s not the claim, but what we are saying, it’s like anything else. If we can just trick the skin by having these on the surface of the skin and accessible to light, it doesn’t act like a supplement. It helps the body trigger that behavior that causes. Just like it does when you put sunless tanner on, it makes you darker in the sun. So, we have had such great results with that.

It begins to address a lot of those chronic skin conditions like eczema, psoriasis, where they’ve been using prescription drugs for a long time, but yet they still have these high reoccurrences. So, if we can combine a very, very safe topical therapy that helps boost that. We see tremendous movement in a lot of chronic conditions that really are egregious to people. That’s I’m a huge fan of vitamin D. I’m a huge fan because I know everyone I know who said cancer is like super aware of the importance. It’s another thing like our skin suit which protects you from blue light. I feel like we can boost your immune function with vitamin D topically and we can protect you from environments with things like skin suit. Then reprogram yourselves to sort of behave younger. You sort of have that triple threat.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Yeah, well, vitamin D, I love that you’re a big fan of it because that’s a huge one. You know, as a primary care guy, when we do our panels, our blood panels annually or whatever it may be, and you check for blood sugar, cholesterol, thyroid, this and that, vitamin D is one of the tops on my list, because I’ll tell you and it’s kind of interesting because I would say, I’ve been practicing twenty-three, twenty-four years when I first came into this vitamin D wasn’t a big thing that we checked. But in the last ten years, ten-ish, maybe a little more, it’s become a big thing. I will tell you, when I started checking vitamin D levels, I would say 80 percent of people, maybe more were vitamin D deficient.

The question is, why is it diet? Is it nutrition? Is it avoidance of foods? We don’t know, but the bottom line is replenishing that. What we typically do is we give people a weekly high dose to fill the tank. Then I tell them this is something like a multivitamin. You’re going to take two thousand international units or three thousand, whatever it may be, daily, forever, because we fill those stores and then we deplete them rather quickly. So, I love that you’re a fan of vitamin D because I am, too, in the wellness spectrum, in weight loss and nutrition, absorption of minerals. It’s so critical. I love that you’re passionate about this in skin care. I think a lot of people missed the boat on that.

CELESTE HILLING: Well, and I want to support one other thing. The beautiful thing for me and the reason I am so passionate, as you know, the one way you test your D is through a blood test. So, at the end of the day, when you’re doing things topically, you really don’t have many people take you seriously because they always say, oh, you know, it’s anecdotal, like what can we really prove about what happens topically unless it’s through a dermal patch or something like that? Well, what’s beautiful is we were the study did not occur here in the US, but we were able to be part of a study in Dubai where they actually use strictly a topical application and drew blood and of course, like you’re saying, because there they wear garments that cover them from head to toe. They have dark skin and they’re in a desert. To your point, 79% percent of the participants were vitamin D deficient.

DR. MIKE MORENO: I believe it.

CELESTE HILLING: They drew their blood in the beginning and they underwent six weeks of a topical application. This was because these women were infertile. It was really about fertility and vitamin D deficiency that they were researching, but they wanted to try and elevate the levels of D. So, the only thing they did was a topical application. The D had about five thousand IU kind of application in the surface of the skin and it was applied daily to hands and face. So basically, at the end they waited another four weeks to draw blood because what they wanted to see was if they were producing more, would it still be doing something after the topical application? So, the study group went from about a 13, some of them were12 to 13 to a 37.6.

DR. MIKE MORENO: And 30 is normal for those of you out there who wonder what a normal level is, it’s typically 30 or more. So, it went to a normal level.

CELESTE HILLING: Yeah, went to a normal level and we were able to do stuff [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. So that’s now initiated about, to my knowledge, 45 different studies going on now in this area to really see can we help that? Because one cool thing about it is it’s cheap. You don’t need high levels of prescriptions and things that people might not be able to afford. We’re not there at all and this is not in any way FDA approved or whatever, but I’m just saying this is the future I think we’re going to see, because the beauty of Vitamin D when you can draw blood is you can really be able to show that you’re making a difference.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Exactly. Well, that’s what I was going to ask you. What is the future? You’re fascinating. You’re so in line with it’s not just cosmetic. Like, look at me how pretty I look. It’s much deeper than that. It’s the psychological element. It’s the physiological. There’s so many things. So, what is your big prediction for skin care in the future?

CELESTE HILLING: So, let me add one thing that’s cool to your point. When you are vitamin D sufficient 72.5 percent of your dermis is collagen. Do you know how firm that is? It goes back to when you’re healthy, your skin is cosmetically beautiful. Right? That’s more than all the Kardashian’s and Jenner’s together. So, you can look amazingly beautiful when you follow these things. Environmental protection to me is and I think it’s growing when you look at the American Heart Association, when you look at the Diabetes Association, they’re all looking at how your environment, because everybody says you should have a genetic profile and you should have an environmental profile that sort of shows what do you live in every day. Those two things together, help to determine what your health markers can look like and where you can go. Think about how are things in your environment, how do they come through to you? How does pollution get into your body other than just breathing it or coming through? It comes through the skin, right. How does sunlight, blue light, infrared radiation, how does asbestos particles in the air, all of these things come through the skin.

DR. MIKE MORENO: It’s not just what you eat. Like you said there are. It’s like we inhale, we are exposed environmentally. We eat. I know another big thing. Vitamin D is important absorption. There’s so many elements. Calcium, osteoporosis. You were speaking about that. It’s a big thing for all of us, more so for women, but vitamin D and calcium is something that most women menopausal should be on for life. Think of all the things that happen with low vitamin D and osteoporosis and hip fractures. You know, the cost. I mean, there are so many things. It’s so refreshing to hear that that you have this this passion about this, because it gives me hope, I have to say.

CELESTE HILLING: Well, and I also think we have a great tool. We have the medium you and I are on today. We have a way of making sure that this doesn’t stay in the labs. I mean, the whole reason skin authority started in the whole reason it came to be was that I thought, oh, my gosh, how can all of this exist, and no one know about it. Because we don’t have to wait. I mean, the beauty of topical is that we’re not making claims that we’re curing cancer, we’re coming in and saying, hey, you’re going to be cosmetically beautiful. You know, by the way if anything, we do move your health north. Good. We’ll take the credit. Yeah, no, we’ll take the credit. I think the reason I say that is you don’t need 50 or empirical studies to move that stuff forward. I think at the end of the day, I’m excited that we can if I can just make somebody, one person, not be in a place, you know, take something as simple as skin cancer. We have twenty-one million new cases of skin cancer in 2019 in addition to the five million that exist. So, when you look at it, it’s crazy, a cancer that you can see. That’s a cancer that you can see. We have not been able to do it.

DR. MIKE MORENO: Yeah, you know what Celeste. Thank you. Celeste Hilling. I mean we could go on for hours and hours. I love the passion. I love the fact that this is much more than just a pretty face. This is really diving into the deep. So where do we find you and where do we find skin authority on social media? Let us know.

CELESTE HILLING: Yeah, well, thank you for that. Yes. www.skinauthority.com, easy. And we’re @skinauthority on Instagram and Facebook and definitely we’d love to hear from you, but more importantly, we would love to help. We don’t charge for it. If you have a question, call, and ask if we can help you stay healthy and well. More importantly, I’d love to do more things with you because as we look at the whole body, the whole person, it’s so important. I feel so honored to have an opportunity to share and to be part of your journey too.

DR. MIKE MORENO: I can’t thank you enough and thank you so much for saying that. This has been so much fun. I appreciate everything. Hopefully we’ll see you again. We’ll talk to you again.

CELESTE HILLING: Yeah, well, we’re San Diegans. We got to get together.

DR. MIKE MORENO: That’s right. Yeah. Okay, well, thank you, Celeste, and everybody, don’t forget, subscribe, download, and listen to Wellness, Inc. with me, Dr. Mike Moreno. I always have guests that will intrigue and challenge the listener to learn about the growing influence of wellness in our lives. Stay in the know everybody. Don’t miss Wellness, Inc. Take care.

The Wellness, Inc. with Dr. Mike Moreno podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not intended as a replacement or substitution for any professional, medical, financial, legal, or other advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This podcast does not constitute the practice of medicine or any other professional service. The use of any information provided during this podcast is at the listeners own risk for medical or other advice appropriate to your specific situation, please consult a physician or other trained professional. Thank you.

About This Episode:

In this episode, Doctor Mike talks to Celeste Hilling about her incredible skin care company Skin Authority, which she co-founded and built from scratch into one of the fastest growing skin care companies in the world.

She used a successful career in technology to launch unparalleled customer service and the best products possible.

They dive into personalized techniques, lifestyle changes to help your skin, Vitamin D benefits and human growth technology.

You’ll find out about her visionary way of turning technology and science into health, wellness, and beauty.

Connect with Celeste Hilling:

https://www.facebook.com/skinauthority
https://www.instagram.com/celestehilling/
https://www.instagram.com/skinauthority/
https://www.youtube.com/user/skinhealthtoday