Shrankhla Holecek 00:03
Hello, I’m Shrankhla Holecek, the founder and CEO of UMA, an ayurvedic beauty and wellness collection. This is the Uma Elements podcast. Each week, I’ll be having a conversation with someone I greatly admire on the topics of ayurveda, holistic healing, spiritual well being, and alternative health. By sharing wisdom together, we will unlock a secret that, as ancient as they are, Ayurveda and other ancient modalities are as modern and relevant today as ever.
Shrankhla Holecek 00:41
Today we’re chatting with Jessica Defino on the Uma Ayurveda podcast. Jessica is a beauty culture critic writing for multiple outlets like the New York Times, Vice, and Vanity Fair. Referred to by the Sunday Herald as the woman the beauty industry fears the most, Jessica fearlessly offers unfiltered insight into the world of beauty products. Her expertise encompasses natural, holistic, and sustainable skincare as she delves into the profound impact of beauty culture on individuals physically, psychologically, and spiritually. In this captivating episode of the Uma Ayurveda podcast, we engage in a thought provoking conversation with Jessica, exploring her unique perspectives on beauty and its products in the modern world.
Shrankhla Holecek 01:33
So, Jessica, welcome to the Uma Ayurveda podcast. You know, and as I was just saying, I absolutely adore your work, and I’m so excited to talk through this undoubtedly scintillating ideology experience body of work that you’ve accumulated over such an incredible period of time. But we must start with the two gripping lines in the opening paragraph of your introduction, which is ghost writing for Kourtney Kardashian and going head to head with dermatologists. Tell us a little bit more about that.
Jessica Defino 02:11
Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to chat with you. And yeah, it’s funny, I always get questions about this ghostwriting for the Kardashian business, and it does kind of relate to my skincare journey and going head to head with dermatologists. So before I started writing in the beauty industry, specifically, one of my last positions was working as an assistant editor on the Kardashian Jenner official apps. So I was part of the five person launch team that launched all five of those apps in 2015, I think it was. And part of what my job entailed was creating content for the Kardashians and the Jenners. So I primarily worked on Khloe Kardashian and Kendall Jenner’s apps.
Jessica Defino 02:57
But I wrote a little bit for all of the sisters. So it was content, everything from outfits to beauty, know, Kourtney’s healthy recipes and things like that. And it’s interesting because I think it did inspire a lot of my skincare journey because it was a super high stress environment. There was a lot of pressure. I was on call twenty four seven, and you’re creating content that’s going to be read by millions and millions of people. So it was super stressful. And a lot of skin conditions are triggered by chronic stress, as we all know. So towards the tail end of my time working on these apps, I developed something called dermatitis, which is like a chronic skin condition. That dermatitis is kind of a catch all phrase that means, like, something’s going on with your skin, but we don’t really know what. And so I was going to dermatologist all the time, just, like, praying for an answer, and nothing seemed to work.
Jessica Defino 03:57
And I’d kind of always had, quote unquote, problem skin. I don’t like saying the words problem skin because, as I found out over the years, any skin issue or skin problem is really just your body trying to communicate with you. But over the years, I dealt with acne.
Jessica Defino 04:12
I had been on accutane, I’d been on antibiotics, I’d had medicated treatments, I’d had retinoids, all of it. And what dermatologists prescribed for my stress induced dermatitis was topical steroids. I ended up being on topical steroids for two years, and they really got rid of the dermatitis at first, which was wonderful, but eventually they triggered this steroid resistant case of dermatitis that took over my whole face and thinned my skin barrier and caused something called skin atrophy, which is basically like the permanent thinning of your skin, to the point where my skin was too sensitive to handle anything. I couldn’t use the steroids anymore because it was too dangerous.
Jessica Defino 04:56
I couldn’t use really anything topical, even, like washing my face with water hurt, because that’s how compromised my skin was. And so I didn’t really have anywhere to turn except trying to heal my skin from within, through diet, through lifestyle changes, through mindfulness practices, and through really soothing, gentle, natural ingredients, and through healing my own skin that way, without any help from dermatologists, I learned so much about how the skin actually functions. And I started to ask, like, wait, why isn’t anybody talking about this? How come all the women’s magazines I’ve read over the years haven’t mentioned any of this? How come a dermatologist never told me how my skin really works? And how this medication is really going to affect it. And it kind of kick started this passion I have for really getting the truth out there about skincare.
Shrankhla Holecek 05:55
Thank you for sharing that. There is so much in there, starting with the fact that a not surprised at all that the Kardashians have to thank you for, for their success over the years. I appreciate the candor about that journey because one of the things about Ayurveda that I find more and more gratifying every day is how empowering the idea of your wellness and your beauty and the most profound ways to help that is within you. Most of the angles in us, and it’s nice to have one other very important data point in you that resonates with that conclusion. So thank you for sharing that with us and thank you for all the work that you continue to do in this space. And speaking of that work, and I think you started to go in this, in this world, or at least until very recently.
Shrankhla Holecek 07:08
And predominantly, beauty writing has traditionally been very product driven, mostly sort of product reviews. And you see that it’s an ecosystem where a lot of the revenues are driven by magazine revenues, are driven by ads, and that’s just how things work. How have you found the courage and now the audience to pursue writings about minimalism, personal experience with healing yourself, which is not really driving dollars, but is at the truth, what our skincare and wellness approaches should at least start from going all natural and listening to your intuition. How have you gone so successfully against the tide?
Jessica Defino 07:57
Right? I think you mentioned the word courage, and I don’t think it was courage at first. I think it was just being really naive about the beauty industry. Like I said, I wasn’t super involved in the beauty industry at all, or beauty writing or beauty media before I had healed my own skin post steroids. So to me it was a genuine question, like, wait, why isn’t this stuff being talked about? Does nobody know? I’m going to get out there and I’m going to tell the truth.
Jessica Defino 08:25
So my first push to really start writing about this less product heavy approach to skincare and approach to beauty, I think I was just very naive. And the more that I worked in the beauty industry, the more I realized, oh, this is why nobody’s been talking about it. Because finding the answers within yourself and through natural ingredients that you can’t put a patent on doesn’t make anybody any money.
Jessica Defino 08:53
It doesn’t make the platforms and the publications that are publishing these articles money. It doesn’t make beauty brands money. It doesn’t make dermatologists money. So eventually I started to realize, okay, this is why it hasn’t been talked about. But by that point, I was so driven in my mission that there was no choice for me. I’m not going to write about products. I’m not going to push more products on consumers, because I always say, if products were the answer, we would all have perfect skin. There are millions of products out there. None of them work. None of them work. Otherwise, we would have no skin issues left to solve. And I think it’s resonating with a lot of people.
Jessica Defino 09:36
I think that we have reached this peak of consumption, especially with the skincare boom of the past couple of years, two to three years at least, with the ten step skincare routines and the overflowing shelfies. And I think it’s finally starting to hit the general consumer that, wait, I have all these products, and I still have all of these skin issues, and I’m still trying to solve them with more products. And something doesn’t add up.
Jessica Defino 10:05
So I’ve been so pleasantly surprised that this message is really resonating with people. And I think collectively as a whole, we’re kind of fed up with having to buy into these solutions that don’t actually work. And yeah, I think people are ready for this message. And because they are ready for this message, it’s in turn helping push this kind of content on major publications. Some of the stories that I’ve had published, I’ve kind of been in disbelief, like that Vogue would publish something on a super minimalist skincare routine. Know, I wrote a piece for Vogue about sheet masks and how we shouldn’t be using sheet masks anymore.
Jessica Defino 10:48
And it’s like, very exciting to see some of these publications which have previously pushed very consumerist messages catching on to kind of this less is more ideology.
Shrankhla Holecek 11:00
And in what you were saying, I think those are sort of the valuable cues that we must all seek and respond to, even if our personal journeys don’t take us on the path of minimalism, realize that, look, there is something to be said because a lot of these magazines and publications do eventually respond to where the populist belief system is going. They’re not going to publish something, in my humble opinion, that people are going to be like, what? I’ve never heard of this phenomenon.
Shrankhla Holecek 11:36
So, like you said, touches upon a tide of curiosity and changing mindsets about this very vital piece of knowledge. Evolution in our skincare journeys, if you will. One final question on your relentless pursuit of sort of true north. And we’re starting to talk about sort of some of this budding enthusiasm and awareness in people. However, I think still we’re maybe a few steps away from sort of this mass adoption of feeling like we’re empowered to jump on our own journey of exploration and understanding what’s right for us until, let’s say, we have 100 of you talking very plainly and openly about these topics.
Shrankhla Holecek 12:34
Sometimes claims do feel meaningless, and we are in positions to get influenced by greenwashing, for lack of a better word, or other claims that really are meaningless. And you do such an excellent job of just sort of quite provocatively taking them head on. How do you recommend people find authenticity in everything, sort of their personal selection of minimalist products or what to use? What are some of the things that you found helpful?
Jessica Defino 13:07
I think the best answer to this is also very simple. And it’s just like, be curious and ask questions, and that will lead you to the brands and the products and the practices that are right for you. For example, if a brand launches a new product and it says this moisturizer reduces wrinkles, ask how. Look for that information. How does it do that? What ingredients is it using to do that? How do those ingredients interact with my skin? What are the studies on that? Don’t take anything that a brand tells you at face value. Really be curious about it.
Jessica Defino 13:48
And I think the more curious you are and the more digging you do, the more you can kind of see where the cracks are in some of the marketing language and some of the logic and where it aligns with facts and truth and where it aligns with just pushing a product and making money. I think another thing that’s really not talked about enough is listen to your intuition. I think in modern society, we don’t really trust ourselves anymore.
Jessica Defino 14:18
We’ve gotten so used to companies and corporations telling us what we need and what’s right and what will help that we kind of ignore our own instincts. And some of the most profound healing that’s happened to my own skin has been because I followed my gut about what to leave behind, what natural ingredients to try, what practices to incorporate. Even with ayurveda, there are so many healing systems that I could have chosen when I was looking for something. But something about learning about Ayurveda just felt right in my gut. And that led to profound healing, not only in my skin, but in my gut, in my digestive system. And I think it’s really undervalued. Just listen to your instincts. Ask questions.
Jessica Defino 15:12
I think something that’s also been helpful for me in terms of what brands and what products to trust is. There’s this great quote, and it says, who profits from your insecurity? Who profits when you have this feeling? And if you’re feeling insecure about something, about something, about your skin or the way that you look, or aging, just ask yourself, who profits when I feel this way? Is it good for me or is it good for a brand and their bottom line? And just asking myself that simple question has helped me realize, like, okay, I don’t actually need this certain product.
Jessica Defino 15:52
I don’t actually need like a retinoid or botox or lip filler, because it’s not benefiting me, it’s benefiting somebody else. And I know inherently that that’s not the right choice for me. It’s not something that’s going to serve my highest self or my highest good, because it’s not for me. It’s for a corporation to make money off of me.
Shrankhla Holecek 16:14
I love that. And a lot of that resonates with me personally on account of sort of some of the healing philosophies of ayurveda, which in my mind, sort of live alongside traditional western treatments that you might need to go to an emergency room for. But one of the first things when someone is exploring ayurveda, and they come from a very traditional western medicine mindset, is the subjectivity of ayurveda versus the objectivity of western medicine.
Shrankhla Holecek 16:47
And those two often clash. Often in the west, what works for 70% is often chosen as the thing that must work for everyone. Whereas in ayurveda, healing is very personalized and individual. Sort of how a vaccine receives approval versus how an ayurvedic physician will take you through your life. And again, this is not a comment on what we should do when it comes to medication. It’s just about opening our mind up to taking that leap of faith in going back to trusting our intuition and what might be right for me.
Shrankhla Holecek 17:28
Because you might be the 30% when it comes to retinol or a steroid not being right for you. And if it’s not feeling right on your skin, persevering in using that, just because it’s worked for 60 70% of the people can sometimes be ignoring that intuition that’s keeping you alive, that’s there to protect you and nurture you. I sort of try to think about that balance a lot in life, and I’m glad you touched on that. Before we move on, I realize that everything that you are sharing and saying has come from such an incredible body of research. You’re talking to so many experts. As I can see in all your work, is there any resource in terms of a book or, I don’t know, a website that you have found very valuable as a resource in your journey?
Jessica Defino 18:35
Oh, there are so many. I love going on submed submed.com to research the skin and the skin’s inherent functions. Obviously, like scientific data for a lot of natural ingredients, natural healing practices is sorely lacking, and that’s because you can’t really make money off of it. And studies cost a lot of money.
Jessica Defino 19:01
So if there’s not money making potential for something, it often doesn’t get studied. That being said, there are some really fascinating studies out there about how the skin inherently functions, what it’s designed to do, how it works, all of these intricate moving parts. And that has been an amazing learning resource for me. The book Skin Cleanse by Adina Grigore was my first introduction to this kind of more minimal take on skincare, and I find myself constantly referring back to that book. I also found the book the beauty of Dirty Skin by Dr. Whitney Bow really helpful.
Jessica Defino 19:40
It’s all about the microbiome and the skin barrier and how that’s basically like the skin’s built in protective system. And when your barrier is intact and your microbiome is healthy and thriving, the skin really does take care of a lot of the hard work itself. We don’t need to rely on products as much.
Jessica Defino 19:59
And there’s a book that just came out that I am fascinated by. It’s called Clean the New Science of Skin by James Hamlin. And it’s kind of about the rise of soap and how soap and all of the kind of cleansers that we use today are really marketing inventions and not necessarily the best things for our skin. So it’s all about how to be hygienic and clean without relying on these traditional, very stripping cleansers and soaps and shampoos. It’s a fascinating read.
Shrankhla Holecek 20:33
Thank you. People are undoubtedly going to love those, and we’re going to put them at the bottom of the podcast just for easy sharing. Moving on from that and sort of honing into some of the things that you have come to see as myths, and you just talked about one great one around the use of soap and marketing. Tell us a little bit about the favorite myths you’ve debunked over the years.
Jessica Defino 21:02
Sure. I think my favorite is the idea that dead skin cells are bad and must be exfoliated away every day. I think this is a really common myth that we kind of all grow up with, like, even the name dead skin cells. Sounds like, oh, that’s bad. You don’t want something dead on your face. It makes your skin dull. It makes your skin dry and flaky. In reality, that’s not the case at all. Dead skin cells, scientifically, they’re known as corneocytes.
Jessica Defino 21:32
They actually are part of the body’s built in defense system, moisturization system. They hold moisture. They actually shape shift. Like, once your skin cells reach the corneocyte stage, they become wider and flatter so that they can hold on to more moisture. There’s so much built into dead skin cells that our skin actually needs. They serve a purpose, and our skin actually self exfoliates when they are ready to be shed. So we don’t really need to go in with an exfoliator every day or even at all. Most people, once or twice a week is fine, or you don’t have to exfoliate. But learning the actual function and biological purpose of dead skin cells was such a game changer for me.
Jessica Defino 22:21
And I’m constantly telling people, like, no, you really want your dead skin cells. They’re helping you so much.
Shrankhla Holecek 22:29
And indeed, it is a very fitting revelation in a time that a lot over exfoliation is happening in all sorts of ways. At home in dermatologists office, it again keeps going back to sort of thinning skin barriers and sort of forgetting how our skin and our body is our best defense against everything.
Shrankhla Holecek 22:54
We’re talking about tens of thousands, millennia of evolution versus something that may have just been discovered. And I think sometimes we forget to respect our bodies for what they’re able to do and how they’ve come up with mechanisms to thrive, such as dead cells that sort of evolve to protect you. I’ll encourage everyone to check that article out and do some of their own research on this. And speaking of your stories, I also found the story on seed cycling fascinating and magically informative. A lot of us struggle with acne in big and small ways.
Shrankhla Holecek 23:37
It’s not something that leaves us in adolescence. And, of course, while inviting everyone to go check out that story on Cosmo, could you share some high level takeaways for our listeners from that story?
Jessica Defino 23:52
Sure. So seed cycling was something I discovered maybe two years ago when I was dealing with a lot of hormonal acne, and nothing that I was trying was working. And the biggest realization that I had about hormonal acne eventually was like, it’s happening because of my hormones, which is an internal issue, and no amount of external skincare is really going to change that. So I started looking into ways to balance my hormones from within with food, and I discovered seed cycling.
Jessica Defino 24:22
So, basically, the premise of seed cycling sounds a little wacky, a little out there, but it’s eating different seeds every day in accordance with the phases of your menstrual cycle. So on day one of your cycle, to day 14, you eat a tablespoon each of pumpkin seeds and flax seeds. And then on day 14, to the end of your cycle, to the next time your period starts, you eat a tablespoon each of sesame seeds and sunflower seeds. And each of these seeds has nutrients in it that help naturally balance your body’s natural hormone fluctuations throughout your cycle.
Jessica Defino 25:02
So some of the seeds are really good at binding estrogen when there’s excess estrogen in your system, and they help the body kind of eliminate that excess estrogen more easily. Other properties are antiandrogen. So when your progesterone and the different androgens in your body are surging around the time when you would normally PMS, these seeds help kind of mitigate that surge so that your hormones stay kind of on an even keel throughout your whole cycle.
Jessica Defino 25:32
And this normally isn’t used as a way to treat hormonal acne. Seed cycling has been known as a natural remedy for PMS, for PCos. It really helps with mood regulation, with bloating, with cramping. But when I read all that, I was like, wait. Hormonal acne really is just another side effect of PMS, of imbalanced hormones. I bet this would help my skin. So I tried it, and within a month, my skin had transformed. So it’s something that I still practice to this day.
Shrankhla Holecek 26:07
How encouraging. Thank you for sharing that. So, knowing all that, you know, what are the two or three practices that you recommend someone first turn to in making the leap to this whole intuitive, sort of raw and native pursuit of beauty?
Jessica Defino 26:29
I think the first thing is to really learn about how your skin inherently functions. The skin is built to self cleanse, to self moisturize, to self exfoliate, to self heal. And I think for me, it was very transformative to kind of learn about how my body already knows what to do.
Jessica Defino 26:54
And it really helped me trust my body and trust my skin and kind of thank it and acknowledge it and have gratitude for all that it’s trying to do for me. And part of understanding how the skin and the body inherently function is understanding how everything is so interconnected, and that anything that pops up on my face, whether it’s like a blemish or a dry patch of skin or a dermatitis outbreak, these are all communications from within. And that communication could be, hey, your hormones are out of balance.
Jessica Defino 27:28
Or it could be, hey, you’re under a lot of stress right now, and you need to kind of slow down and reevaluate what you’re doing day to day. Or it could be, hey, you’re using way too much skincare, and your barrier is compromised. But kind of understanding how it all fits together really helped me find some sort of appreciation and love for my skin, even when it was not, quote unquote, cooperating with me. And then I think it’s also really important to reevaluate your relationship to beauty and how it impacts your life. For me, when I first started to dive into this more intuitive, mindful take on skincare and beauty, it was because dermatitis had taken over my whole face, and I was red, scaling, flaky, oozing. It was bad. I couldn’t wear makeup. And I realized that I had been basing all of my self worth on how I looked.
Jessica Defino 28:33
And when I couldn’t look what I considered to be pretty or beautiful, and I couldn’t wear makeup, my sense of self worth was completely shot. And it made me really think about the ways I had related to beauty and the beauty industry and beauty marketing my whole life. And really kind of based a lot of my identity on what I looked like. And I think just understanding that and thinking about it and maybe trying to detach a little bit from this value we place on external appearances has been invaluable. One in my skin healing journey, but also in my emotional and mental health. And to do that, some of the tools that I used were daily meditation, breath work, a gratitude practice. And it sounds funny, because none of them are products and none of them really have to do with your skin. But I credit those things with healing my skin more than anything.
Shrankhla Holecek 29:38
That makes a tremendous amount of sense to me. Jessica, when you talk about, especially coming from my personal experience on this, even though I grew up with ayurvedic principles and within nature, I think that when I moved here, I was so fascinated and enthralled by a different lifestyle, I went headlong into trying different things and products. And I think somewhere along the line, my personal intuition did get weakened.
Shrankhla Holecek 30:10
I would throw coffee and alcohol at problems and sheet masks at things. So sometimes going back to listening to that intuition and just embracing all of you does require practices that don’t seem like traditional skincare practices, but instead journeys of just knowing yourself emotionally, metaphysically and so on. So that totally makes sense to me. And some of those were also tools I relied on and still rely on when I feel a little bit off kilter or off balance and different strokes for different folks, as it were. Traditional meditation doesn’t really work for me.
Shrankhla Holecek 30:57
So I practice a form called transcendental meditation, which I find is I should be doing more of. But that’s the one practice that I found I was drawn to when I first learned it and that I was able to practice. So even within those pieces of advice, I think there’s a lot of personal exploration. But I love those and can definitely endorse that they worked for me. I know those are practices and I know your work in ingredients and what to avoid has been profound. What are two or three ingredients that you actually love for your skin?
Jessica Defino 31:42
I love this question. So the first is manuka honey. Manuka was kind of the first natural ingredient that I used and saw such a huge improvement in my skin and my dermatitis and my acne. And it kind of turned me on to this whole concept that, wow, natural ingredients actually can be very powerful. There’s always this misconception that if it’s from nature, it’s weak or it’s not going to have the same effect as like a prescription or a pill, but they can be so powerful. But manuka honey, I love. I use it as my cleanser every morning.
Jessica Defino 32:15
So I just put raw honey on damp skin and massage it in and then rinse it off. I’ll use it as a face mask. So just slather it on for like 20 minutes and rinse. It’s a really great spot treatment too. So if I have any pimples, I just dab a little bit of manuka on it. I’ll leave it there all day if I’m just working from home. And it’s so healing. Manuka specifically has very high antimicrobial properties, higher than any kind of honey. It’s also full of DHA, which is really great for your skin barrier. It’s a humectant, so it draws moisture into your skin. I mean, there’s really nothing that manuka can’t do. It’s my favorite. I’m also a huge fan of jojoba oil. That’s what I use kind of as my daily moisturizer.
Jessica Defino 33:02
I love jojoba because it’s a very close match chemically to human sebum. So sebum is kind of your skin’s built in moisturizer. As we all know. My skin particularly doesn’t produce enough sebum. I was on accutane for a long time, which kind of attacks your sebaceous glands. So my skin is kind of chronically dry now. And so I love jojoba to give me the kind of moisturization that my skin is naturally inclined to want. And that means it’s also pretty universally compatible. Like anybody with any skin type, whether you’re dry or oily or sensitive, will do well with Jehovah for the most part. So, yeah, I would say those are my two heroes.
Shrankhla Holecek 33:46
That is tremendous, along with just everything that you’ve shared with us over the last 30 minutes. Jessica, in parting, is there anything else that we didn’t touch on that you’d like to share with our listeners today?
Jessica Defino 34:03
I don’t know. I feel like we covered so much. The one thing that I was going to add in somewhere that I forgot to mention was, I know a lot of the times, the things that I write about, especially the more mindful aspects of beauty, the inner work of skincare can come off as a little out there. And a lot of people are like, nah, I’m not into meditation for my skin. Just, like, give me the active ingredients.
Jessica Defino 34:28
Give me something to put on. So, one thing that I have found super helpful for anybody who’s kind of skeptical about the idea that what you do on the inside will reflect on the outside, is there is an entire branch of dermatology that is dedicated to this mind skin connection, and it’s called psychodermatology, and it’s the merging of psychiatry and dermatology. And realizing that there was, like, a scientific link between the two really helped me trust what I was experiencing from this more mindful approach to beauty.
Jessica Defino 35:03
So I’ll just go through the basics of psychodermatology to give a brief explainer. But in utero, your skin, your brain, and your gut start off as the same bit of tissue, and there they form a link that lasts forever for your entire life. So the brain, the skin, and the gut are just inherently interconnected in ways that science can’t even fully explain. But that’s why if you have digestive issues, you’ll often see that show up on your skin.
Jessica Defino 35:34
If you’re super stressed out, you’ll see that show up on your skin. Even things like goosebumps. When you’re afraid and you get goosebumps, that shows the Mind skin connection. Or if you’re embarrassed and you blush, that shows the Mind skin connection. So psychodermatology really explores all of this connectivity in scientific terms. And what they found is that things like stress, if you’re stressed out from anything that’s happening in your life, it actually compromises your skin barrier.
Jessica Defino 36:07
So your skin barrier doesn’t work as well. Your skin starts to leak moisture, it becomes dry, it becomes more susceptible to bacteria and sunlight and pollution. So there really is that clear link between stress and how it’s affecting your skin negatively. What I find really fascinating is the research into how your mind can control your skin to heal.
Speaker 4 36:35
So there’s some really fascinating research on how meditation actually strengthens the skin barrier, how gratitude actually does the same thing. And so for anyone who’s kind of skeptical about some of these more woo woo, for lack of a better word, concepts, I always love to point them in the direction of psychodermatology and the studies that are there, because I just think it’s so fascinating to see western medicine and scientists acknowledge this connection in a way that people can say, okay, maybe this works. Maybe I’ll try it.
Shrankhla Holecek 37:09
I love that. Jessica, is there one or two places, or should we just google that? Because even as someone who sort of buys into that philosophy hook, line and sinker, I am so excited to learn about sort of like a scientific basis behind this. Where do you recommend we might look for an early peak?
Jessica Defino 37:29
So I’ve written a few articles on it. So there’s an article on fashionista.com just about psychodermatology in general that I wrote. I’ve written about breath work and how it affects that kind of mind skin connection for the cut. I’ve also written about gratitude and the mind skin connection for the cut. And the book that I mentioned earlier, the beauty of Dirty Skin by Dr. Whitney Bow. She has a whole chapter on how meditation affects the skin barrier, as I would, I would recommend those. And then from there, from those articles, there are individual experts in each one that you can kind of research and look into because there is so much to share there.
Shrankhla Holecek 38:11
Amazing. Love that. Jessica, thank you so much for taking the time and sharing this wealth of information with us as well know sort of leaning into your personal experience, because I think that makes it resonate so much more with every human being in that you’re sort of exploring beauty and wellness and everything in between in such a personal, wholesome, education led way. It’s been lovely chatting with you. It’s always lovely reading all of your work, and I look forward to bringing more of you to our audiences over the next few months and years.
Jessica Defino 38:55
Thank you so much. It was so great to talk to you.
Shrankhla Holecek 38:58
And likewise, thank you.
Shrankhla Holecek 39:01
You can learn more about Jessica’s work through Jessicadefino.substack.com. That is Jessicadefino.substack.com, as well as her newsletter, the Unpublishable. As we conclude this episode, we invite you to delve deeper into the world of Ayurveda with Uma. Please subscribe to the UMA Ayurveda podcast. To continue this transformative journey with our series of conversations that we hope you’ll find enlightening, visit umaoils.com, that is umaoils.com. For an even more immersive experience exploring not only our luxury ayurveda products, but also an array of inspired wellness, insight, and lifestyle tips.
