Episode 11 - Skin Toxicity: The Untold Story of Daily Poisoning
Victor Dwyer: Sylvie, thank you so much for joining us today for another episode. Before we dive into skincare and skin toxicity, please tell the audience a quick intro of who you are and why you're here for the people that haven't heard from you yet.
Sylvie Beljanski: Sure. So, my name is Sylvie Beljanski. I am the president of the Beljanski Foundation, which is a not for profit based in New York City, which was created in 1999 and is funding research on cancer with natural compounds. And I am also the president and owner of a company called Maison Beljanski, and, which is providing dietary supplements. and skincare. So that's why I chose to speak to you today about skincare.
Victor Dwyer: Cool! So why should we be concerned with skin poisoning? What is it and what does that mean?
Sylvie Beljanski: Well, it means, technically, being poisoned through the skin by things that chemicals that you are absorbing through the skin. When we think of poisoning, we do not tend to think about the skin. We first, we think, you know, things we are eating eventually inhaling, drinking, but not the skin.
And there are four good reasons to actually think of skin poisoning. One is because our skin is our largest organ of absorption. Men, women, approximately two square meters and 6.5 pounds of flesh for everybody, more or less. Second good reason skin is our fastest organ of absorption. You know, it takes about 26 seconds to go from skin to bloodstream.
And cosmetic chemicals are designed to penetrate the skin. So, the skin literally eats everything we are putting on it. Third good reason, because there is no filter. When you, when you eat something which is not good for you, your liver is going to eventually process everything and your digestive system is going to help eliminate what is not good for you.
But once it is directly into your bloodstream, well, it's going to take much more time, be much more difficult to eliminate. So, there is no filter. It goes directly to the bloodstream. And then what you are putting on your skin on a daily basis is often very bad because there are a lot of chemicals in every product, and we are using a lot of products.
There was a survey done a few years ago from the environmental worker working group. And the average woman use 13 products every day containing 114 unique ingredients. And for men, it's the average is 11 products daily with 105 unique ingredients. So, you can be sure that a lot of those are not good for you.
Your skin absorbs about 60 to 70 percent of anything you put on it. And it turns out that, and most people do not know that, but cosmetic and personal, personal care products are really, notoriously underregulated. And beauty companies, they do regulate themselves. There is there is no long term safety study required, only short term issues, of course.
I mean, if you have skin irritation appearing right away, it's not good business, so people, I mean, manufacturer avoids this kind of things, but for long-term safety, there is absolutely nothing. Nothing. Especially in the US. In Europe, there were over 1,300 chemicals which were banned or restricted.
In the same time, the US has just banned. Do you know how many? 30.
Victor Dwyer: Really?
Sylvie Beljanski: 30 against 1,300 in Europe. And even in Europe, there are still some problematic products that remained in the market and in very popular brands. So, generally we don't hear about those issues unless there is some big, you know, settlement from a big, big company so that it's, you know, the press and media start to speak about it.
In 2014, for example, we had the Johnson and Johnson who removed the baby shampoo that contains some formaldehyde, for, for babies. And, you know, we can say that was pretty old, but 2023 we have Procter & Gamble who agreed to pay 8 million dollars as part of a settlement to resolve a claim that it aerolyzed products contain benzene, which is a known carcinogen. So, that's, you know, that's kind of some extremes, but a lot, a lot of products and popular brands which are available on the market, contain mostly endocrine disruptors, meaning products that are disrupting the hormones. And you see them on the labels, they are not listed as, you know, disrupting your hormones, but they are listed as, as phthalates, parabens and phenols, mostly.
So, phthalates they are, they are called plastic plasticizers. They you find them in nail polish, hairspray, aftershave lotions, cleanser, shampoo, and they are linked to problem with reproductive, create reproductive issues, create infertility, and they have been also associated with an increase of risk of breast cancer.
Parabens they are antimicrobials. They are preservatives. They appear on the label under different names, you find them under the name of methylparaben, ethylparaben, propylparaben, isobutylparaben, butylparaben, benzylparaben, all that, you know, it's a different families of parabens, but they, they are available also in a lot of cosmetic products, makeup, lip balm, perfume, shampoo, conditioner, lotion, shaving cream, facial shower, cleanser, scrubs.
They are everywhere, especially in the cheap products because it's a very cheap chemical to use and very effective as a preservative. The problem is that they can bind to the estrogen receptors, meaning really our hormonal system and the they create havoc. In 2004, there was a study done in the UK for, with breast cancer tissues from 20 women who had breast cancer. And out of the 20 tumors that were examined, they found parabens in 19 of them. Where do you think they came from?
Victor Dwyer: Yeah.
Sylvie Beljanski: They are coming from the fact that we are putting them on our face on a daily basis.
Victor Dwyer: Yeah.
Sylvie Beljanski: Something that shows that. Yes.
Victor Dwyer: Yeah, that's, that's crazy. That's crazy. Really?
Sylvie Beljanski: Yeah. And I could on, and go on and on and on. There is also a product called triclosan which creates antibiotic resistance. It is so bad that it was removed, banned actually. One of the few things that was banned. It was banned from the soaps, but it's available in plenty of other products, including toothpaste, hand sanitizer.
A lot, we used a lot of hand sanitizer, sanitizers during CoViD. Actually, it is known for hormone-disrupting properties and increased antibiotic resistance.
Victor Dwyer: That’s so crazy that those are like normal products that we put on like every day and we have no idea that it's like, like we're putting on like, like whatever ant poison, poison on our bodies. It's kind of crazy. Never really thought about that.
Sylvie Beljanski: Your, your Walgreen cosmetic else is, is really terrible, I mean, it's putting your your health at risk on a daily basis. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Victor Dwyer: Yeah. And what significant changes does the new legislation say about cosmetics recently passed by Congress bring to our attention? Really curious about that.
Sylvie Beljanski: I wanted to speak to that about this time because indeed there is a new legislation. So, people may have heard that there were some changes and say, “Oh, we are going to be safe and we can rely on the FDA to protect us.” Actually, when you look at the law, at this new law called Modernization of Cosmetic Regulation Act, MoCRA, which was passed by Congress end of 2022 and is coming now into effect.
It's, unfortunately, it requires mostly a lot of paperwork. Companies will have to declare where they are manufacturing. They will have to declare their, their, their ingredients, but there is nothing is banned, nothing at this point, nothing is, is forbidden. There is no, no safety study which is required.
So, I don't think that, at least in the short term, it's going to make any difference. And the situation is so bad, actually, that a number of states have taken the lead to, to ban a number of products, ingredients in their cosmetics. Well, of course, California leads the way as they are the most probably the most health conscious state in the country.
But here in New York, where we are, in 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul signed a bill to ban, to ban mercury in personal care and cosmetics. Mercury! You thought, you know, why people are adding mercury in their cosmetics?
Victor Dwyer: I didn't even know people use mercury anymore.
Sylvie Beljanski: Exactly. Exactly. Well, it took, you know an act from from the governor of New York to ban it in New York, but you can go in New Jersey and you will still have, have cosmetics with, with mercury or buy something online, on Amazon and it may have mercury and I am not speaking of aluminum, which is, you know, you know, almost all, all the cosmetics that, that we are using
Victor Dwyer: I'm just curious. My deodorant has aluminum in it ‘cause it's a like antiperspirant.
Sylvie Beljanski: Is bad. It is, it, it is bad. You want to go to to, to get something that has no aluminum, no phthalate, no, no fragrance and no, no paraben.
Victor Dwyer: Really, no fragrance?
Sylvie Beljanski: No fragrance. Under the name of fragrance, actually, it's an umbrella name, and it's hiding a lot of bad, bad stuff, generally. Not always. Not always. But generally, that's an umbrella word to cover bad stuff.
Victor Dwyer: So in your opinion, how can we, smell? Okay. I'm a guy. So I naturally, obviously I smell bad naturally, like, like without doing anything, I will smell bad. I just, how guys are unfortunately. So what, what can, what can we do as guys to smell better and not have the risk of skin poisoning from cancer at the same time.
Sylvie Beljanski: Read, read the labels, read the labels, and avoid all those stuff that I am speaking about.
Victor Dwyer: So, it sounds like no aluminum, no, no fragrance, no fragrances, just reading that certain labels for the certain ingredients that may cause cancer in there.
Sylvie Beljanski: Yeah, yeah.
Victor Dwyer: That’s what it sounds like.
Sylvie Beljanski: I mean, I would say be aware of the green washing and really learn to, to choose organic products and, and in the, within the organic products, also learn how to make the difference between greenwashing, and really quality products.
Victor Dwyer: And how can I detect greenwashing marketing techniques and stay away from the lies that are there? Like, can you go into what greenwashing is one more time as well? Okay.
Sylvie Beljanski: Well, there are indeed a lot of of greenwashing because paraben, some phthalates have got, you know, very bad rap for a few years. And so a lot of companies are, I mean, trying to remove some, the most problematic ingredients, like phthalates or bisphenol, but they are replacing them with other products which are not any better, or they just switch from a hormone disruptor product that has, you know, well documented to another one which is not as documented.
So, people are not going to notice, and sometimes it's even worse. A lot of companies have replaced parabens by other cheap preservatives, which are even worse than the paraben. And all that comes with, you know, with, with words like naturally derived, non-toxic, clean, pure, natural, hypoallergenic, green formula, safety tested, and there is absolutely no, no defined meaning behind any of those words.
It just, it's just hype and, and marketing. So, so people can say whatever they want actually. And you put some attractive packaging with some green leaves and whatever, and the idea is to trick you into thinking that it's natural and good for you. But, unless, unfortunately, unless you learn how to resolve those levels, you are going to be prey to a lot of companies selling you a lot of bad chemicals.
There are some companies, because I'm in the field, you know, of helping people with cancer issue and trying to provide them some support with natural, natural approach, natural solutions. And I've seen some companies in, in specifically, in the field of advertising to people with cancer because people with cancer and treated for cancer with conventional treatment and say, the, the skin can be very, very damaged by, by chemotherapy itself, in addition to the, to the cancer.
And I, I'm not going to give the name of that company, except I will say it's a French company, and but it's also largely available here in the States. And, and when I looked at the label, I was, I was in shock because all the worst offenders were, were listed and it was advertised for people with cancer.
So, that's why I was, I was shocked and that's where I decided to look more carefully into, into this issue.
Victor Dwyer: Wow. And what should we be looking for in skincare ingredient wise that reduce the causes of potentially cancer?
Sylvie Beljanski: Well, you know, it's, I know it's often a little bit more expensive, but it is definitely worth looking for certified organic, certified organic product. It's an indication that the, the, the company, you know, has had, had to have some tests done on the, it's on the purity of the products. It means it contains at least 95 percent of ingredients are truly clean and not, do not have contamination.
Even the 5 percent of the products have to come from an approved safe list. It is potentially, I mean, supposed to be free of toxic ingredients, should not have any ingredient which is carcinogen, do not, should not contain any hormone disruptor. And when it is, say, it is farmed, it should, doesn't, natural products, certified organic.
Are supposed to be free of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, petrochemicals and dyes. Dyes is also an important, an important issue. No solvents, no irradiation to clean the product after, afterwards are entitled to, to enter into organic products. Whether you go with USDA-certified organic, or the European equivalent, which is EcoCert is even more stringent, it's, you are sure. to avoid many many of the bad, much of the bad stuff.
It is, you are sure also to avoid genetically modified organisms which is which is also can be an, an important issue. But that's not enough. I'm shocked sometimes to see some products which are marked USDA organic and they come into plastic bottles.
Victor Dwyer: Yeah.
Sylvie Beljanski: Well, you know, especially, plastic is going to leach some compounds, some phthalates especially when containing some fatty compound. And the cream is always water in oil or oil in water, but there is always an oily comp component in when you make a cream.
So, I would say absolutely avoid plastic bottles, plastic containers, plastic tubes when you are using skincare products and choose instead glass. It may be heavier, it may be more, less, you know, less convenient, but it's, it's really worth it.
Victor Dwyer: Yeah. That's super amazing. And going to the good side of this, are there any ingredients that are actually have a beneficial effect when they penetrate into your bloodstream through your skin?
Sylvie Beljanski: Yes, absolutely. And that's exactly what's the research of the Beljanski Foundation. We, we have been doing research on cancer with natural ingredients now for, for years, and it turns out that two of the ingredients we have been researching for cancer, we were looking mostly at different kind of cancer.
And one of the, I mean, two of the products we were looking into, we tested them for melanoma. One of them is a golden Ginkgo leaf, leaf of golden Ginkgo and that line of research stems from my father's work. He was a PhD in Molecular Biology at the Pasteur Institute. And he, one of the papers he left was research on this Ginkgo leaf extract on skin fibrosis.
My father was obsessed at, with helping people with cancer, and it turns out that when people have radiation their, their skin might be burned, and then this burn turn into fibrosis where the tissue lose their elasticity. They become very, very hard because the thin layer of fat under the epidermis, between the epidermis and the dermis, has, has vanished, has melt with the radiation.
And he found that this Ginkgo extract is able to prevent and in to some extent repair the, the fibrosis damaged induced by radiation. And it is doing so by regulating some specific enzymes at the level of the liver.
So what, what we did with our, the PhD who is in charge of research at, at here at the Beljanski Foundation was to start a new line of research that was conducted at the Kansas University Medical Center where we looked at the ability of this Ginkgo extract to regulate the enzymes that are developed by melanoma cells.
And one of those enzyme is called angiogenin and help cancerous cells to create new blood vessels and those blood vessels help the cancer cells to feed themselves and need a lot of energy, cancer cells in order to replicate faster and faster. And they also need those blood, new blood vessels to spread to other organs.
And by, with this Ginkgo extract, we are able to regulate the, the development of this enzyme. And that was done with a melanoma, melanoma cells, this research. And there was also another, another study we did with some mix of green teas, also at Kansas University Medical Center, where we tested this green tea on different kinds of cancer cell lines.
We started with breast, had a very good results on breast even metastatic breast cancer cells. So, we decided to look into other cancer cell lines and we, we show, we're able to see a very nice inhibition on colon, liver, bladder cancer cells. And we went into melanoma and tested on four different kind of melanoma cells.
And every time this tea was inducing a very nice inhibition of those cancerous cells. So that shows, you know, it is possible to include natural compounds which have, are going to bring good things to your skin when your skin is going to absorb that in 26 seconds and, and brings that directly to your blood stream.
You want to bring good things. So, you want to choose a skincare with good ingredients. Why not take in, you know, anti cancer compounds on a, on a daily basis, just by putting that on your face. And, and that's the idea of, of the skincare.
Victor Dwyer: Yeah. And can you guide someone through the process of, let's say they're going through chemotherapy. Well, like what, what type of actual advice would you give someone to not like to a) put that, that lotion you retire, whatever that cream on, on your skin and like the green teas, can you go through that, like process, if someone was going through chemotherapy and going through this anti-cancer cancer or those potential ways to reduce that cancer there. Can you guide someone, like, an actionable way of what they should do if they're on chemotherapy?
Sylvie Beljanski: So, when you're on the chemotherapy very often your, your skin gets, gets damaged. People report to have especially their hands, their feet gets very, very dry, bristled. If you have radiotherapy on a specific place on your body, it can get burned and there are, the last thing you want is to add more, be more aggressive with your skin.
You want to nurture your skin. You want to be, to be good and kind and gentle to yourself. So, avoid anything harsh, avoid any, any compounds that will remove chemicals that will remove another layer of the skin. What you want to do is to cocoon your, your skin and bring it as many good things as possible you want from the inside and from the outside.
The, the Ginkgo biloba, the tea can be taken, you know, as dietary supplement. You can, if you drink tea choose the tea that is going to bring you more than just antioxidant. You want to, skin, you want to drink a tea, which has, you know, good research behind, behind it. Not all green teas are, are, are equal.
And for the skincare, it's the same. I mean, you want to absolutely use glass, organic certified products in glass containers. Avoid phthalates, avoid parabens, and you want product which is going to be kind to to your skin and be filled with good ingredients.
Victor Dwyer: Yeah, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. And is there anything else, on a previous conversation that we talked about, anything related on skid toxicity or any of the ingredients or anything else or any benefits or even the Beljanski research, any other conversation that we talked about that you want to add on to what we talked about.
Sylvie Beljanski: Well, what I want to, to, to say is that, of course when you have cancer, you, you have to be extremely cautious about what you are doing and the toxicity that you are bringing to your, to your body and for, for many, cancer is actually kind of wake up call where they understand that just cannot continue to poison themselves and to start to educate themselves and to start to clean up their, everything in their lives.
But, you don't have to sacrifice. You don't have to make hard choice for when it comes to skincare. You just, you know, have to make the right choice. Learn a little bit about the labels. Avoid the bad stuff, and if possible use something that is going to bring you good ingredients with anti cancer properties.
Don't, everybody should, should use that on a daily basis. You don't, we don't want to wait until cancer happens and being diagnosed with cancer. There is more and more cancer around us. That's for a reason. If it's not a genetic disease, if it was, there would be a stable number of cancers. There is more and more of them and people are getting diagnosed more, younger and younger because of the environmental toxicity.
So, skincare is one big way to get poisoned and we, we, we need to, all of us to, to use clean products and reduce to the very minimum this, this environmental toxicity.
Victor Dwyer: Yeah, totally agree. And is there any other books events or any other materials you want to promote while we're talking about skincare?
Sylvie Beljanski: Well, you know, I have my, my own, I mean, skincare line, which is Beljanskin named always after my father which, and of course, I, I practice what I say, but it's more about, you know, education and understanding how we are making ourselves sick on a daily basis. It's about learning about the choices that we, we can make on a daily basis.
Victor Dwyer: Yeah. Especially with all the, the variety of products that we have available right now. And you're a hundred percent right. It definitely is less, like, convenient to get like products that don't have aluminum and then also products that are in glass, jars and things like that, but you have to think about like the additional costs and the additional time taken away if you do get cancer, cause like, it's definitely a huge expense if you're worried about the money or time or whatever it is like that, your health, basically, dramatically declines if you do get it.
Sylvie Beljanski: So, that's just for, you know, this typical American thing. So you are, they're trying to sell you “value” and “value,” what is called “value” is actually a huge bottle of crap.
Victor Dwyer: Yeah, yeah.
Sylvie Beljanski: Yeah. And I mean, that's not really value. Come on! Be honest. It's not value. It's, it's pushing, it's pushing crap.
Victor Dwyer: Yeah, I totally agree.
Sylvie Beljanski: And they can sell at a, you know, minimum price because the cost is always ingredients are so cheap and so bad that, that they can reduce the price on on a big plastic bottle. But I mean, you have one life, one body. Is that the way you want to go?
Victor Dwyer: That's super valuable. That's super valuable. Well, Sylvie, thank you so much for coming on today. Please tell the audience how to find you, how to find more about the skincare line, how to find more about the research. Please tell the audience where to find all that information.
Sylvie Beljanski: So I'm Sylvie Beljanski. The Beljanki Foundation can be found on the website, beljanski.org. You will find all the research that started with my father, all the publications, including those I mentioned today about the tea and the Ginkgo. You will find that on the, on the website of beljanski.org.
And if you want to look up my, my skincare Beljanskin, it's on the website of Maison Beljanski, which is one word, M A I S O N and then my last name, B E L J A N S K I dot com. And we are in New York. So if you come to New York, just stop by. We have a nice little store.
Victor Dwyer: They can hook you up with all the research and they can hook you up with all the products as well, I bet. That's awesome. Well, Sylvie, thank you so much for joining. Thank you audience, if you, if you did watch this far, thank you so much. We appreciate it. This is The Beljanski Cancer Talk Show, and we'll catch you next time.
Thank you.
Sylvie Beljanski: Thank you.
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