Stay Off My Operating Table

The Ancient Skincare Secret You Need to Know - Charles Mayfield 159

• Charles Mayfield • Episode 159

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Ever wondered how a severe sunburn could ignite a passion for natural skincare? Join us on a fascinating journey with Charles Mayfield, aka the Lard Father, as he shares his incredible transformation from a CrossFit enthusiast and paleo cookbook author to the founder of Mayfield Pastures and Farrow, a groundbreaking skincare company.

TImestamps:
00:00:00 - Introduction and background on Charles Mayfield
00:05:30 - Biological similarities between pigs and humans
00:08:45 - Problems with modern skincare products
00:12:30 - Benefits of natural ingredients in skincare
00:16:00 - Overview of Farrow Life skincare products
00:20:15 - Tips for healthier skin and natural sun protection

Guest Bio:
Charles Mayfield is the founder of Farrow Life, a natural skincare company specializing in lard-based products. With a background in CrossFit, paleo nutrition, and ethical pig farming, Charles brings a unique perspective to the skincare industry. His passion for natural ingredients and sustainable practices led him to create a line of products that harness the power of traditional animal fats for skin health.

Resources & Links:

  • FarrowLife skincare products: https://farrow.life/https://farow.life (use code "stayoff" for 15% off)
  • Twitter/X : @FarrowLife
  • Intagram: @FarrowSkin

Connect with the Hosts & Guest:
• Dr. Philip Ovadia: https://ovadiahearthealth.com/home/
• Jack Heald: https://wizardofads.org/partner/jack-heald/

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Speaker 1:

Welcome back folks. It's the Stay Off my Operating Table podcast. We are joined today by the only man who's ever been on the show, who has a voice even better than mine.

Speaker 2:

No, Jack, I've met you in person, man, and the mic doesn't do you justice, my friend.

Speaker 1:

He's sucking up to us folks. Phil, introduce this loony bird to us all yeah, this is a reintroduction.

Speaker 3:

Uh, very, uh happy to have a good friend, a good friend of the pod, charles mayfield, back. Uh, the lord father as we know him, and uh, for those of you that want to go back into the archives, we had Charles on quite a while ago and a lot of amazing things that he's done, that he's continuing to do, and we had the good fortune actually the three of us of being together in person just recently at Hack your Health conference and at that conference, charles delivered what I thought was a killer talk and I basically said we got to get this out to the audience, we got to get you back on to talk about it. So we'll certainly get to that, but maybe for those of you that didn't listen to the first episode, uh, charles, why don't you give a little bit of your background and, uh, how you got to be known as the lord father?

Speaker 2:

uh, yeah sure, thanks, bill. It's uh great to be here, am I? Am I the first uh repeat guest on the uh?

Speaker 1:

no, no, no, no no we've had so so many, at least two.

Speaker 2:

Just trying to build my resume a little bit, you know. No, it's a pleasure to be here. My background is a sordid history of a number of different curiosities and adventures, but I would say, all very centric to health and wellness. And yeah, I would say, the person you see before you today got into CrossFit in the early 2000s. Mid 2000s. Crossfit led me to paleo. I've co-authored a number of cookbooks in the paleo space and once I got really interested in food, the next step on the ladder was really where does my food come from? I had the fortunate opportunity to be asked to cook and raise money for the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund at Polyface Farms in Virginia. This is back probably 2014. Fund at Polyface Farms in Virginia. This is back probably 2014.

Speaker 2:

I grew up in an agriculturally adjacent family. My family was in the dairy business, although in my formidable years the family business had grown to really be a milk bottler. We weren't milking cows anymore, we were pasteurizing milk and sticking it in a bottle. So my farming I would say my farming curiosity really, really peaked on that trip to Polyface and so just read a bunch and got super curious and you know, at some point there's no more books to read. It's time to do that. And so, 2016,. I launched Mayfield Pastures, which was a very small, hyper-niche regenerative farm, leased some land on a family farm and was raising pork, beef chicken, doing some eggs batch of turkeys every year. I had a small clientele, probably 50 to 60 customers, spread out locally and all the way down to Atlanta where I'd spent many years. I had been in the gym space, crossfit again, health, wellness. The cookbooks I've been coaching people for many years on how to eat right. I called it at some point my paleo lens If you can't pronounce it, you shouldn't eat it. Read the ingredients. Fast forward, it was 2019.

Speaker 2:

I had a fairly epic sunburn. Most listeners can relate to one of those highly memorable barbecuings and, you know, out of a half desperation, half curiosity, I came home. I had a jar of lard from the pigs we were raising in my refrigerator and decided to we call it lathering up. I just, you know, coated my skin with this stuff and, you know, in a matter of minutes I had, you know, almost immediate relief, put a little bit more on the next morning. So two applications and, wouldn't you know it, my sunburn was more or less resolved in about two days, which was great.

Speaker 2:

Phil, you know this, when you tinker in the health nutrition space, when you change something or notice something, your senses are heightened. And after it went away, I really watched my skin like a hawk for about two or three weeks and I never peeled like not one stitch of skin peeled. And that was really the watershed moment for me. That got me. It just blew my mind Because you know, and everybody that's ever had a bad sunburn at some point you peel, it doesn't matter how much aloe vera you put on or any of that stuff, at some point it's coming off. And so that really started piquing my curiosity. I took that paleo lens and shined it on skincare and wouldn't you know it? There's just as much toxicity in skincare as as maybe maybe even more so than there is in in the food industry.

Speaker 2:

I don't know, today the ultra processed foods are pretty, pretty gnarly but uh. But yeah, that was that was it. And so I started tinkering around the kitchen, making making batches of of uh, samples, and I'd take them to, uh, my farming customers and you know, lo and behold, they really liked it. I loved it and so, yeah, we launched Pharaoh in January of 2022. And so we're coming into our third year of business now and you know, the thing that's been the most surprising to me over those two or three years, being a guy trying to convince folks to smear lard on their skin, is how many people just had no idea what lard was. Tallow is the animal. Skincare industry, albeit small, is dominated by tallow, and we love tallow, we use it in our products. But there was this real disconnect and it sort of shocked me.

Speaker 2:

You know, I grew up in the South. I remember Crisco and I remember Lard, for sure, but you know this was part of the talk in Austin, phil. You know, if you rewind the clock, certainly 100 years ago, but if you go back to 1910 and you walked in the general store, there were no grocery stores in 1910. You walk in the general store to buy your nails and your shoe polish and your flour and your sugar. There is a 100% chance that you walked out of that store with a can of lard. And this is pre-refrigeration, this is pre-air conditioning. I don't want to go back to those times. I'm really happy with the AC. But fast forward. A hundred and some odd two retirees later, and no one knows about lard. And so that's really. The mission of Pharaoh is to bring the power of the lard to the masses and to educate people about just how miraculous the pig is. And so, yeah, that's a little bit of my background, maybe a little long-winded, but here we are.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, no, I think that's a great leads us naturally into some of the things you discussed in your talk and, I think, some of the things that I want our audience to hear. So maybe let's just start with the basics, because you've mentioned it. You asked today and most people can't even tell you what LARD is. So what is LARD?

Speaker 2:

So great question. So LARD is the rendered subcutaneous fat from a pig. It's not directly adjacent to tallow and we'll talk about three fats. So lard is the rendered subcutaneous fat from a pig, the subcutaneous fat from beef, because it's usually used in the grind of ground beef and of course cows are a ruminant animal. It's a little harder for them to pack on subcutaneous fat. But tallow has a pig equivalent as well. That's called leaf lard. So that's the rendered visceral fat from a pig. If you hear the term lard, it is specific to a pig. If you hear the term tallow, that is a sort of a placeholder term for any visceral fat rendered from a ruminant herbivore. So cow most commonly the cow, but elk, bee, bison, deer, the list goes on and on deer.

Speaker 3:

The list goes on and on. Now we know, certainly in humans, some of the difference between the visceral and subcutaneous fat. Talk about that, maybe from a pig perspective, what some of those differences are. And just to kind of reiterate what you said, there's actually kind of two types of lard. There's what's commonly called lard, the subcutaneous fat, and there's the leaf lard, which is specific to the visceral fat.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I can talk about that. So, uh, both fats, uh, perform a different duty. Okay, so the visceral fat, um, the kidney fat that's probably a better placeholder term for it Kidney fat, biologically by design is a padding or a protector. It's like the seat belt for the organs. And so, you know, with humans it's the same thing. You know, we bump into things and every now and then have to get into a tussle, and so when the body is jarred, if you will, it acts as a padding. But, more importantly, there's no biological function to store. So the visceral fat, it's there. Now it can grow. It can get bigger or smaller.

Speaker 2:

If you've ever had a DEXA scan, you certainly know that visceral fat can build. However, it's a continuous organ. So if you pull out the leaf lard from a pig, it is encased in a skin, so it's literally like one big organ. That's not the case with the subcutaneous fat. It grows and builds on a cellular level, and so pigs, just like humans, are incredibly efficient at converting excess calories. Certainly, once they've framed out and matured, just like a human, they're very, very good at converting excess calories into subcutaneous fat. And so if you put a pig next to a cow I know they're the different sizes, but as a ratio of meat to fat you're going to see a much higher amount of fat on a pig than you will a cow.

Speaker 2:

And so the subcutaneous fat, the source of lard, that is a biological storage mechanism. So pigs are going to metabolize vitamin D from the sun the same way we do. They're going to store any excess vitamin D in their fat stores. Minerals, various things. Those all get packed into the subcutaneous fat and also environmentally cutaneous fat and also environmentally. So if you've heard the term like acorn finished the Spanish are infamous for this, these acorn finished, spanish serranos and cured hams. A pig will take its environment. If you feed a pig peaches for two months before it has its one bad day, it goes off to the butcher. There will be a sweetness. If you feed them acorns, there will be a nuttiness to the subcutaneous fat because they're taking that environmental exposure, both dietarily and environmentally, and they're storing it. And so I say the swine is divine, but the lard is hard. For that lard to be of quality, that pig really needs to have lived a very good, healthy, vibrant, well-fed life outdoors.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and what are some of the maybe unique properties of lard? Comparing it to tallow, you know we don't even need to talk about all the artificial kind of fats, all the non-mammalian fats that you know typically are in skin care products. We're just looking at the animal fats. Maybe talk about some of the differences in lard versus tallow that may have advantages when it comes to using it on our skin.

Speaker 2:

Sure, Well, I mean tactilely, tallow at room temperature is very solid. I'm sure if your listeners have had a tallow balm or even a whipped tallow. It's hard at room temperature and so you got to really dig in there. Lard is a little bit more liquid. I think that has to do primarily with the variation in saturated fats, unsaturated fats, monounsaturated fats, lard. If you look at the lipid balance, if you look at the pH, if you look at the various naturally occurring vitamins and minerals that are stored in fat, lard is a spot on match to human biology. We love tallow and I agree we don't need to talk about all the other garbage that's out there. We put tallow in our products, but we share more biology with a pig than we do a cow on many fronts. And so you know I get asked this all the time.

Speaker 2:

Well, why do you put tallow in your products? Tallow doesn't absorb as well. It's less recognizable by your skin than lard. It's way more recognizable than, say, you know, cottonseed oil or you know any of these petroleum derivatives for sure. But it will sit on the skin surface a little bit more. And so we use it for two reasons. One, it allows me to create the viscosity, if you will, of a more traditional traditional is not the right word industrial cream. So you go to the CVS or your pharmacy and you buy a cream off the shelf. It's creamy Tallow's, not creamy Lard's a little bit liquidy at room temperature and so I use it almost as an emulsifying agent to make the cream a little smoother. And then, secondarily, once you've applied our product, the lard is going to preferentially be consumed by your skin and the tallow really acts. It's going to stay on the surface a little bit and it really acts as a barrier. So you moisturize the skin and you sort of seal it in, and the results have been absolutely amazing.

Speaker 3:

And you know just kind of, I think, finishing off the sort of composition of these products. Another question that always comes to people's minds is you know all the other stuff that's put into typical skincare products? Um, and you know, maybe we specifically look at things like fragrances and people might be thinking well, you know, I don't want to walk around smelling like bacon all day, uh, so talk talk about that and uh why you know your products are really don't have much else in them.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so so there's, there's two. There's two rendering, so you take fat and you render the fat, and there are two predominant, uh, rendering methods. There's a renderings, so you take fat and you render the fat, and there are two predominant rendering methods. There's a dry rendering and a wet rendering, and all consumers are familiar with the dry rendering method. It's heat only. If you've ever cooked bacon, then you are rendering fat. You're also cooking meat simultaneously, and so most consumers associate, when they hear the term lard cause they don't, they don't really know what they, what they, what it is they associate with with bacon grease and, and bacon grease is rendered pig fat, but it's also you've cooked some things, and so we we utilize a wet rendering method. There's a little water and it's really mostly fat when render, again, cooking bacon, you look at the strip of bacon. It's half meat, half fat. And so I mean leaf lard.

Speaker 2:

Leaf lard was prized as a baking fat, for still is to this day, but not many people know about it. It was prized as a baking fat forever because, again, subcutaneous fat is storage, visceral fat is not. It didn't matter what the pig ate. The visceral fat was odorless and colorless. When you're baking your pie crust or your biscuits or your cake, it wouldn't impart a flavor or smell. Does lard have a flavor or smell? Yes, it's ever so slight. Our unscented products, you know, people are actually kind of shocked when they smell them because there's not really much there. And I said before we use tallow in our products.

Speaker 1:

I would argue that tallow as a general uh, in a, as a, in a, a general sense, it has more odor to it again, albeit slight, has more odor to it than than lard does all right, um, a number of things, but I guess the big thing for me is you gave a speech at Hack your Health that I managed to miss, and it was so good that Phil said we need to have Charles back on the show. And I argued with him. I said no, god, no, we don't need to hear that man talk anymore. But Phil insisted and it's his show that hurts a little Jack insisted and it's his show, so, um, that hurts a little jack.

Speaker 1:

But also, as we were talking there, uh, the, uh, the uh. The feral life booth was right across from phil's booth. Uh, you've got some products I hadn't seen before, so I'd just like to throw it to you. Pick one. You'll tell us about these new products, what they're doing, what, why you developed them, or I'd kind of be interested to hear what impressed phil so much about your speech well, uh, if I could pick one product to highlight, I would say it would be our unscented skin food.

Speaker 2:

I think our unscented face food is our, is our seller. It's a little slightly lower price point, so that may be just economics talking, but our unscented skin food, so it's the product I use most. I tell people I travel with our face food and when I'm home it's the skin food, because it's a smaller package. But the unscented product's got four ingredients lard, leaf, lard tallow and honey. We use a little bit of honey. It's very good for the skin, yep, and I like it too because it's a. It's a, it's a raw honey, so it's got a little bit of wax feel to it. So when I'm done lathering up it leaves a little bit of attack on my hands. So you know it's. It's four ingredients. You know, I challenge you to walk into any, any pharmacy in the country and find a skincare product that's got four ingredients. Uh, uh, certainly any that have animal fat in them, cause that. That does not exist and we're we're an animal folks. Just just to remind you, we're not a coconut, we're not a petroleum derivative, and so, yeah, yeah, uh, so, so that would be the product I would, I would most showcase in terms of it. You can use it anywhere. I mean I again I use it on on my face Um, it's, it's a bigger product. So your, your, your price per ounce of of lard is is a substantially better. If you're looking for a deal and deal, and it's the cleanest thing we got, we offer it in a scented version as well, and we scent our products with all natural organic essential oils. But I have found I never would have thought this, but I have found over time that most of our consumers and customers tend to gravitate towards the unscented products. They're just cleaner, they're very grounding in terms of once you apply them, but I like our scented stuff too.

Speaker 2:

Jack, in terms of the talk, I can hit some highlight points. Evidence shows that we domesticated pigs and what is now the middle East? Uh, that it was called the far East back then, as as far ago as about 13,500 years ago. Uh, so arguably they're the first animal we domesticated for meat. And we have a much longer uh track record with dogs. Uh, but, uh. But. That wasn't to eat, that was to to co hunt with, and so our arguably to eat that was to to co hunt with. And so our arguably the first animal we domesticated, for me, um, the. You know history, history is just rot and I didn't, I didn't even, I didn't even dig into the, the Asian history with pigs. They were there's a record of them, uh, domesticating pigs there in about 8,500 years ago, but, um, but yeah.

Speaker 2:

So we, we have a long history with pigs and if you go back through the literature, you know, uh, I'll give one example Golan, who was, uh, marcus Aurelius, is concierge doctor, if you will, in the in the um, early, early hundreds, um, he's the founding father of anatomy physiology. I want to say two other. I can't remember, I don't have my notes in front of me, but this guy, this guy was a major player and arguably the most important doctor to Marcus Aurelius and credits most of his knowledge to his ability to understand the anatomy of pigs through dissection and raising them and just just understanding how that, how they functioned, and so that's just a, that's just a snippet. And then, you know, got into more modern history and how the pig is built. You know, pill pigs are built to dig and root. Uh, they're also built with they. They have, uh, they have very small lungs for their size, so they're especially prone to respiratory illnesses, given their size. And if you look at how we raise pigs today, 98 plus percent of the pigs in this country are raised indoors. They never see the sun, tight quarters, poor air quality, and so it's really an environment for just candidly suffering.

Speaker 2:

And so why don't people know about lard? I talked about this a little bit. So Crisco comes along in 1911. Crisco, for your listeners that don't know, is a cottonseed derivative product that they have to bleach white to look like lard, by the way. They have to bleach white to look like lard, by the way. They bleach white and there's the chemical process to hydrogenate and create that stuff. It's pretty gnarly as well, but it hits the market in 1911. The nail that really finished off the coffin of lard came in World War II, and this is fascinating. But we rationed lard in World War II. Did you know that, jack? We rationed lard. Uh-huh, a couple things happened. Why? Well, because you can't make nitroglycerin out of cottonseed oil.

Speaker 1:

I'm sorry but I'm not seeing the connection. But go ahead the war effort.

Speaker 2:

In order to make explosives, you need nitroglycerin. You can't make nitroglycerin. They had to have lard to make nitroglycerin. Lard is the ideal. You remember Fight Club? Oh yeah, here you go. Oh boy, so they're raiding the dumpsters outside the liposuction clinics because the next best thing to pig. I joke about this. I'm like Brad Pitt and Ed Norton just knew a pig farmer, they wouldn't have to go raiding those dumpsters. But the reality is you can't make. It's the most efficacious fat to make nitroglycerin, which is explosives. Now, fast forward to today. All of our explosives are synthetic. But that was the nail that really drove home, put LARD off the shelf because you couldn't get it. Well, here's this Crisco stuff and there's the lipid hypothesis and Ancel Keys and there's all these other contributing factors. But lard was the first animal fat to be targeted and picked on, if you will, by the industrial seed oil business. Um, tallow, you know. Interestingly enough, you know so tallow. Well, mcdonald's used to cook with tallow.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, right yeah, back when their French fries tasted good. You want to know why. I assumed it was because they were fried in tallow. Because, right yeah, when their French fries tasted good. You want to know why.

Speaker 2:

I assumed it was because they were fried and tallow Cause it was cheap. So the beef industry could not grow until we mastered and uh, mastered refrigeration. Right, you did not kill a cow in July 85, a500 years ago. Because what are you going to do with this 1,500-pound carcass? First of all, you've got to move it around, you've got to skin it and eviscerate it and all those fun things. But then what are you going to do with it? You've got to keep it cold so that it doesn't spoil. And so once we, especially post-World War II, once we mastered refrigeration and mechanization and all of these things, it opened up the market for a broader expansion of the beef industry.

Speaker 2:

Well, we kill a lot of beef in this country. We have for a long time, and by now we didn't cook with tallow. 100 years ago it was lard, tallow was reserved for soap and candle making. And so now, all of a sudden, you got all this tallow laying around. It was cheap. And so McDonald's is looking around. What am I going to fry my fries in? Well, here's this waste product from the beef industry. I'll bet I can get it pretty cheap. How about that from the beef industry? I'll bet I can get it pretty cheap.

Speaker 3:

How about that this?

Speaker 1:

is why we invite this guy on here. He's got this stuff that nobody else knows about. This is fantastic.

Speaker 3:

Oh yeah, and the talk was certainly chock full of that, but it really made me.

Speaker 3:

You know, it kind of starts to bring a lot of these pieces of the story together as to, you know, you can see the whole narrative uh building, you know, the whole narrative building to villainize these, uh, natural products, uh in, you know, so that the synthetic products, the industrial products, can take hold and be promoted.

Speaker 3:

So, you know, I guess we'll shift a little bit just to kind of broaden this out to the skincare industry and some of the things that you know are going on in there, some of the shenanigans I would point to that may be harming our health, in the same way that you know we've talked a lot about what has gone on in the food industry and how that has harmed our health. But I think people may not recognize the impact of what you're putting on your skin on your health. I think many people have this concept that you know you put something on your skin, it kind of stays on your skin, you shower it off or whatever, and you know it's not going to impact your health. So talk about why that might not be true and why people should be concerned and should start paying attention to what's in what they're putting on their skin.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, sure. So the primary consumer protection legal structure for skincare and cosmetics was established in 1938. It's called the Food and Cosmetics Act. It's called the Food and Cosmetics Act At the time. Again, you got to think 1938. At the time, the ingredients in skincare that required pre-market safety testing were color additives. That was it. And, of course, again 1938, we haven't perfected all of and and and synthesizing. Uh, that that act has been updated twice since then. As it relates to cosmetic, as it relates to the act I know of two, it might be three, I can't keep up with the politics but cosmetics has been excluded from every single update, right? So the consumer protection laws in place around skincare, um, place around skincare, are coming up on a hundred years old.

Speaker 2:

And what's more concerning again is our, what we've been able to generate in terms of chemicals. You know parabens, phthalates, oxybenzones and all these various components, and so you know, just to brush over it real quick, your skin is your largest organ. It does eat things. If you've ever brushed up against a poison, ivy bush, you know perfectly well that it likes to eat oils. And it's also developed some really, really smart mechanisms Think through, like the evolutionary lens lens. It's developed some pretty good mechanisms for protecting itself.

Speaker 2:

The problem is most of the chemicals. So skincare if you go into the pharmacy and you buy a product, it's an emulsified product. So you take fat, you take water, you get an emulsifier and you mix them together. When you do that, you're creating an environment that is highly conducive for bacterial growth. The water acts as a fuel source, as food for bacteria. So in doing that, you have to inject quite a number of various preservatives and chemicals. And then you got a monkey with the pH, because skincare it's a fat-based game, but it's also a pH-based game. You don't want it to be too acidic or too basic. You end up with this chemical soup, if you will. We know very clearly today that a lot of these compounds are endocrine disrupting. That's not good. A lot of them are estrogen signaling. It's not that estrogen is not important, but we don't want to monkey with it with our skin care. And so the real message.

Speaker 2:

I'm trying to talk about a couple different things Obviously, the power of the pig and lard, not only from a culinary standpoint, but also through the lens of skin care, but also the current state of affairs in skincare. I think we're slowly turning the corner, just like with your practice, phil, and I have to say this this is completely sideways. But your carnivore panel on Friday, not one question about cholesterol, right, and so you know I'm just we were talking about that. After you're talking, I'm like man, we're turning a corner, right we're.

Speaker 2:

You know the tide is shifting and so you know I think it's going to ultimately be the nutrition side of the house that drags people into seeing that same thing through the lens of skincare, which is great, and there's some great products out there. Again, I'll be at mostly tallow-based. We're the large game in town, but, yeah, the consumer protections that are in place are not helping anyone. If you go to the American Academy of Dermatology are not helping anyone. If you, if you go to the American uh, american Academy of Dermatology, go to their website, they have 27 corporate sponsors. They're all pharmaceutical companies.

Speaker 1:

Just say that again, say just say that again.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so to get, yeah, to get your accreditation as a dermatologist, you join the American Academy of Dermatologists, uh, which ironically started in 1938, the same year that the Food and Cosmetics Act was passed, right, and it's right there on their website. You know, here are our gold-level, silver-level, platinum-level sponsors 27 of them. All of them, Actually, all but one, are big pharma. One of them is a lab testing type company, so skin testing, and this, that and the other, but all pharma adjacent, and so you know it's, it's the same situation in in in the dermatology, esthetician world, phil, that you see in the medical world. You know, all the major medical schools are funded by big pharma, and, and so we have a real problem that the fox is guarding the hen house, if you will. And so you know, my job is to talk about it, but also provide a product that's clean, uh, highly efficacious and um, and also talk about, and and help people understand that, that these animals pick, um. I talked about this a little bit in the talk.

Speaker 2:

Pigs are actually modern day medical heroes, right? I talked about you in my talk, phil. You know we use their heart valves to repair pigs. We harvest over 20 different hormones from pigs and use them in humans. I mean, it's just the biology is so tight, and so to treat this modern-day medical hero so poorly, to raise them in such an awful environment, it's beyond reprehensible and crazy enough. If you raise them in the right way, their meat is better, their fat is better, I'm going to imagine, their hormones and everything else are probably healthier as well. So there you go.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you know, uh, and just to really hammer that point home about how, you know, most people would think that the closest animal to us is going to be, you know, in the in the monkey ape family, uh, but it really is the pig. And, and you know, when we look at the potential of transplanting organs from other animals to humans, pig organs are the focus. Pig organs are the only ones, to my knowledge, that have actually made it to human clinical use and are currently being trialed to transplant parts from pigs and kidneys and other organs from pigs. So it really does hammer home that point.

Speaker 3:

And just to kind of circle back again and crystallize, there's really only three ways that the outside environment gets into our body, and that's either through our intestines, when we eat it, through our lungs, when we breathe it in, and through our skin, when we absorb things through the skin and apply things to the skin. So we have to really start thinking about what we're putting on our skin and how that's going to impact our health, because it's not a barrier, it's a, it's a uh, uh, an exchange membrane, as we call it. Really, uh, so uh, cause we can put things out too, we can sweat things out and things like that Um, what, uh. So you know you, you've been now kind of in this for a number of years.

Speaker 2:

What has most surprised you about the skincare industry. The industry, well, I don't know if it's a surprise, so much as just an observation. It's a lot like the bottled water industry. It's all marketing. Whether you pay, you know, three dollars for the bottle of water in glass or you pay 99 cents, it's, at the end of the day, it's the same product inside and you know if you go to it again. You go to the pharmacy, you go to your Sephora. It doesn't matter the product or the packaging. There's 90% correlation in terms of the ingredients underneath the lid and my product is the same. I use the same three or four or five ingredients in all my products too. But the point is, you know those products well. Here's a good point. Those products I did find this out they're not safety tested, they're don't harm tested, right. So again, it's just like when a pharmaceutical company wants to bring a new drug to trial, right, they do all their own testing and then they submit the data that they want to the FDA for approval. Well, a skincare product works the same way. They will develop the product, they will test it, but they're not testing it for efficacy, they're testing it to make sure it doesn't harm you, and those are two different modus operandi, if you will right. Yeah, let's see how well this works is different than let's make sure this doesn't hurt the consumer, and so that's probably been. Again. I've started looking around and I read labels now and it's just, it's the same light bulb moment I had when I started reading food labels. It's like, oh my gosh, look what they put in here, why is this even here? And so you look, start looking at skincare labels, and it is, it is exactly the same thing. I I'll. I'll add one surprise this. This may freak your listener out a little bit, but, um, I have to give credit to um, oh gosh, what's his name? Oh gosh, what's his name? It'll come to me.

Speaker 2:

We hypersanitize, yeah, now you know, in an environment, in a clinical or surgical environment like you get into from time to time, phil, that is immeasurably important. However and this got exacerbated, obviously, in the last three or four years with the over-sanitization of our environment but your skin, I mean, we used to take a bath once a week. I mean, this is recent history. We would bathe very infrequently. But the soaps, skincare covers, soaps, cosmetics, shampoos, conditioners, and the toxicity there is just as harsh, and I would say that the consumer over-sanitizes.

Speaker 2:

I take a shower every day. I will soap I'll actually, I mean, I wash and wash and wash cloth. But this is a surprise to me. My skin has never felt or performed as well, uh, as it does now, and I probably only wash with soap three times, four times a month. Tops um, shower every time, wash off every time. I never stink, you know, never stink. I can tell you. This is the kind of thing you tell somebody at the end of the night, not the beginning. But that was a real shocker for me, right, because I had grown up.

Speaker 2:

You take a shower every day, you cover up and, just like any change, it took about a week or two of reacclimating. Right, because your body loves homeostasis. And so your glands, these glands in your skin that produce sebum, you know our natural oil well. They're sort of programmed to keep you balanced and level. Well, if every day, or twice a day, or in some cases, crazy enough three times a day, if you're stripping those natural oils off your skin, you're sending signals to your body produce more oil, produce more oil. And so you get into these, you know, oily skin or acne type situations because you're just, you're manufacturing more of this stuff than than you need to be.

Speaker 1:

So more of this stuff than you need to be? So that begs the question, at least in my mind. Are we I got to set it up to try to make sure I'm asking it right so by using these soaps that are made out of God knows what, with all kinds of chemicals and stuff in them on our skin, stripping away the natural oils in our skin and then coming back and trying to do something to replace the natural oils, it sounds to me like if you're doing that, the best bet is to use a natural oil, a natural fat, like your skin food and this is where I'm sorry, but this is what it sounds like or maybe just don't strip off your natural oils.

Speaker 2:

Well, soap's a good thing. You know we do get stinky from time to time and every now and then, you know, you run across, you get some motor oil on your or there comes time. I will say for your listener if it doesn't say soap, definitely don't use it. You know you've got beauty bars and, uh, cleansing bars. So. So, um, post-world War II again, uh, we developed an absolutely toxic but highly effective disinfectant powder for wound care during World War II. It did the trick, buddy. I mean you know you got shot or stabbed, you know powder this stuff on there. Well, after the war, it's like what are we going to do with all this stuff? And so you know, call this a reasonably good thing the FDA did is they said, okay, you can use this stuff in bars, but you can't call it soap. So soap is short for the saponification process, that's taking lye and fat and saponify. You mix them at a certain temperature and then they solidify and turn into soap. And so it's just a low-hanging fruit for your listener. If it doesn't say soap on the package, do not use that. Okay, then beyond that, again, it's the same issues.

Speaker 2:

If it's fragrant, those are definitely synthetic chemicals. I would definitely. You know your soap shouldn't smell like anything. Now, we have soap we're launching and we have an unscented and a scented version, but we're using essential oils. This is store-bought stuff. We have soap we're launching and we have an unscented and a scented version, but we're using essential oils. This is store-bought stuff, and so, yeah, I would definitely preferentially tell you you want to use a soap that's made with, at the very least, plant-based fats. You know coconut oil, shea butter, avocado oil. You know soap is a fat game as well, um, but but beyond that, you know fragrances, uh, all the other preservatives that there's just garbage. I do think having soap around is a good thing, um, you know, you cut your hand or you cut your leg. It's good to be able to to sanitize that area, um, and then rub a little lard on it. Everything.

Speaker 1:

It's all better what happens to our skin when we I I should reframe that. What can we to happen? I ran a little experiment at the beginning of the year using your face food and another natural I think natural product.

Speaker 2:

That was a good product. I remember you did that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, from Noble Body, yep, and I couldn't tell any difference in my skin. I did it for 30 days. Right side of my face got feral life, left side of my face got noble body. Um, there was. However, the two products felt really, really different to me. I didn't know if I'm just too damn old to for there to be a for me to see any particular benefit, um, or if I wasn't using one right or using the other right, um, but I was fascinated personally by the difference in just in the feel.

Speaker 1:

Johnny at Noble Body who's actually he's a friend now. I interviewed him several years ago for another podcast suggests using a very small number of drops of his liquid stuff. So I did that and it seemed like with the, the feral life stuff, I couldn't use too little. It just seemed to have an almost infinite ability to keep spreading on my skin, whereas the noble body stuff, after not very long it felt like it absorbed into my skin and I don't understand what's happening there. Does that make sense? Does the question make sense? I couldn't tell from a result standpoint that my skin reacted better to one or the other but the Pharaoh Life stuff.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to reveal some inside information here. When Charles was on the show for the first time two years ago, he sent me a a a small jar of the the face skin, face food, face food, face food. And I still have it. It's still I, I, I use so little of it. And I don't mean that I don't use it, I mean it takes so little. It's mean it takes so little. It just keeps on going. What's?

Speaker 2:

happening. Well, a couple things. I want to make sure I heard you correctly. You could put more of my product on and it would soak in versus a little bit.

Speaker 1:

No. I could put very, very put, very, very, very, very, very little of yours on, and it would seem to just take care of my whole face. Oh sure, yeah, like I could do a fingernails, the fingernail clippings worth, of face food, and it would just it just kept honest to god, it kind of felt magic. It was just weird. I couldn't understand what was going on, whereas with Johnny's stuff it behaved more like what I'd anticipated.

Speaker 1:

You know, use a little bit, put it on, spread it around, and then you got to use a little bit more. And I'm not complaining, it was just, it was the behavior of them on my skin was so strange, so I mean so different with yours. Never had anything like it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Well, I mean, we, we say a little goes a long way. I would, I would say also to speak to just like you didn't see a difference, but the high, the further you get in the skincare game, the further you get from buying your stuff at the store, and and and and utilizing more natural ingredients. I think the the tighter the margin to get in terms of performance. Right now, I will tell you, I think our stuff is way up toward the top of that list in terms of uh efficacy and and and uh, feeding, fueling the skin. Um know, not knowing the ingredients that are in his product Again, let's assume they're all natural and this, that and the other. It was an oil, though. Right, it was an oil, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so.

Speaker 2:

A little dropper, yep, and so that's.

Speaker 2:

I don't know what the oil is, but just by design it's going to go on a little bit differently and conceptually you're going to be a little bit different, um, in terms of texture and and and spreadability, but, um, but I mean that's the best answer I can give you in terms of, like, the performance. Again, the more you know us versus tallow you know we use a little tallow in our products they're both going to perform better, especially when you stack them up against aloe vera or clonique or any of these other industrial oils. Everybody's skin is a little bit different and so you know there is variance there. Your climate is a little bit different, so you know a liquid oil might perform better in your level of humidity than, say, something more along the lines of a ferro product, and so there is sort of baked-in-the-cake variance with every individual and every climate and I certainly don't expect our product to be the top dog everywhere, but we certainly want to be in the top quartile, uh, in any environment, on any, any strip of skin.

Speaker 1:

I could say without, without hesitance, that, um, it's the most. I'm hardly a skincare product expert, but I've tried a little here and there over the years and it is. It is by far. Um, there's nothing like it. There's just absolutely nothing like it.

Speaker 2:

It's your right side, your best side, Jack, I can see, I can you know you're on camera a lot, man, I know you sort of favor that right side.

Speaker 1:

So there is nothing like it.

Speaker 2:

And you knew that going into the contest, which is why you, you wanted to protect that right side as as much as possible.

Speaker 3:

I mean, and I think again the message here are similar to the message we've been trying to get out about your food is, you know, less processed, closer to the source.

Speaker 3:

Um, you know clean and, uh, you know clean and you know nature did a good job in providing what we need and the whole concept that we needed to industrialize this and improve upon it, when the answer was right in front of us all along. And you know, like you said, you know similar to the way we talk about. You know, eat the foods that your grandparents and your great grandparents eat. You know, put the things on your skin that your grandparents and your great grandparents were, and that was the jar of lard, like you said, that they assuredly bought every week when, you know, whenever they were going to the general store. So, um, I think that's kind of the message that we can give people. Um, one, one other fun uh thing that I think came out during the talk we should let people know uh, about, you know, the name Pharaoh, uh, how that came about for your uh company and your company and kind of. You know, I know there's a couple of meanings to that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, sure, so well, pharaoh as a noun, and this is F-A-R-R-O-W, not the P-H. And then I think there's another F, pharaoh, it's a grain, maybe a r? O, so, um, no, this pharaoh as a noun refers to a, a newly born? Uh, batch of pigs, piglets. Uh, pharaoh, as a verb, if you're pharaohing, you are helping facilitate mama pig and daddy pig getting together and and creating those babies.

Speaker 2:

And, uh, you know, funny enough, uh, we went through a branding exercise, you know, to, I mean, mudlark was a potential name, farmer's daughter was a potential, I remember these cause, we went to the brand and she, if Pharaoh was the last, the last, slide in the here are these brands and I really liked farmer's daughter, uh, candidly, but I have a farmer's daughter and I have a farmer's son and I was like I can't, I can't do that to Scott, he's my, he's my head farmer. And so, yeah, we, we went with Pharaoh. You know, we're, we're a large based company and it, you know, part of, again, part of my, uh, of the foundation of our company, is, is really holding up this miraculous animal that again, has fed us for years. You know, we, we, we, god, we used to eat so much more pork. Um, again, due to you know, you can harvest a pig, a couple hundred pounds and feed the feed the village for a day or two, or feed the family for a week or two. Uh, you, what are you going to do with a 2,000 pound, 1,500 pound steer? You know, when you don't have, don't have tractors and elevators and all these, or refrigeration, and so, um, yeah, fair, that's the. That's the origin story of our, of our, and we've got you know.

Speaker 2:

Jack, you were asking about new products. It's not as new anymore. We launched our Epic Dermis product.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I didn't get to talk to you about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that was. We launched it at this event last year and it's, you know, it's done fairly well. It's a unique product. It comes in a tube. Our products are very heat, uh, sensitive, and so you take this tube and hold it in your hand for about 10 seconds and you go open it up and it's, it's liquid. So we've got some. We've got some things we got to figure out. I put a warning label on there, but Epic, epic Dermis has done very well. Uh, we've got a soap line that we are launching, hopefully in the next two or three weeks.

Speaker 2:

Um, you know just just three, three different soaps and, uh, I'm, I'm exploring a number of different products.

Speaker 1:

Now it's just I'm glad you brought up the soap Cause. I wanted to ask you about it. It was unique in the soap industry as far as I could tell. Do you mind? A little bit about it.

Speaker 2:

Well, so it's a goat's milk, we so we took our smart lard and we mix it. It's a cold, cold, um soap making process. We took our smart lard and mixed it with goat's milk and it's called the goat soap uh, goat, as an greatest of all time. And we've got an unscented. We have a eucalyptus spearmint scent, which is probably my favorite, and then we have a cedarwood and wild orange scent, and so Is there a particular reason to use the goat's milk with it instead of I don't know whatever else is normally?

Speaker 2:

used. Milk has been used as a, as a skin healing agent for ever. When you, when you make soap, you need a liquid, you need lye and you need a fat, and so, again, I'm not as I've got someone that makes that soap for me, we just provide the smart lard, um, but I have made tons of soap I have not used. I use use a distilled water when I tinkered with soaps in the past. But yeah, so the goat's milk uh replaces, uh by and large replaces the water in a traditional saponification formula and it's just very smooth. Uh know, milk is again milk and honey and olive oil have been tried and true skin uh treatments for for millennia, and so, yeah, and we get to call it the goat soap, yeah, well, yeah, I mean obviously there's.

Speaker 1:

That's the main reason to do it, it. You know. The thought strikes me that that here we are, phil and I, for for the last three years, have been talking mostly about what you put on your, put in your body, and the message that we're hearing from one health care practitioner after another, one nutrition specialist after another, one researcher after another, is return to the old ways. Return to the old ways. If your great grandparents didn't put it in their body, don't put it in yours. And I'm hearing essentially the same thing from you. If they didn't put it on, if your great grandparents didn't put it on their body, don't put it on yours. It's just, you don't have to comment. It strikes me as kind of ironic that here we are, what, almost 200 years into the Industrial Revolution, and we're finding out that, man, it was not an unmitigated advancement.

Speaker 1:

There were a lot of things folks were doing that we probably ought to go back to doing.

Speaker 2:

Well, just a couple things. It's actually worse than that, unfortunately. Because your great-grandparents ate bread. Right, I mean, I'm pretty carnivorous, I know, phil is, our great-grand grandparents ate bread. That was bread that they harvested the wheat themselves and cooked it themselves and used butter and, you know, animal fats. That wheat doesn't exist anymore. I mean, you can go find some specialty wheats and you know, you see some of these sourdoughs, but regrettably, we've really ruined a lot of traditional foods in the modern era and we've lost a respect for the sun, skincare.

Speaker 2:

People are scared of the sun these days and they shouldn't. They should be embracing the sun. But you know, a hundred years ago, again a hundred years ago, if it was noon, there were ten people maybe outside without any clothes on, and where were they, I don't know. People had more respect for the sun. We got early sunshine because we were up early, farming or whatever the case may be. So we were in constant contact with the sun, had copious levels of vitamin D, but when it got intense we were either inside or fully covered.

Speaker 2:

And one thing, two things sunscreen have done for us. They have convinced everyone that they were safe, and so you just put all this stuff on and go out at noon and spend all day in the sun, and then it's one of the most toxic skincare products we put on our skin. There's cleaner versions now, but there's still chemical-laden goop. And so I tell people when I take my kids on the beach vacation we get up early, we get all that early sunshine and then 11, 11.30 hits. If they want to stay out there, we put a hat on. We've got all this technical gear now, really light water wicking gear, so we cover up and of course I lather them up in a little lard too, but otherwise we go inside, we eat lunch, we play a board game, we just we have a little bit more respect for the sun and I think that's another big issue today.

Speaker 1:

This, this feels deep, this feels like philosophy. You know, we've been.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think there's, there's a little bit of all of it in it and, um, you know, I think, uh, it's just amazing, uh, what, what Charles is doing and uh, really, you know, encourage people to go check it out, uh, and we'll we'll give the information in a minute how to do that and it will certainly be in the show notes, but, ultimately, you know what Charles is doing.

Speaker 3:

I really respect it. It is truly a family business. You get on his social media, you're going to see the kids participating and he's doing things the way that I think they should be done, and we've, we talk about it with our food, and I think now we also need to talk about it with our skin care and you know it really, just, we should all be examining all of the areas of our life and thinking about how we, how it's been hijacked from us, and how we need to be more intentional about really a lot of these decisions that we're making in life, and I think, ultimately, that's what that's what our health message comes down to, and I think, I think what Charles is doing can be a big part of that. So, with that being said, uh, let the people know how they can get the good stuff from you, charles.

Speaker 2:

Uh, you're too kind. Well, there's a couple of ways I'm going to brag Cause I'm. This is this is one of my little merit badges If you, if you join Dr Ovadia's private practice, you get a free total skincare bundle with me, cause we're the preferred skin care provider for uh ovadia heart health. Um, our website's the easiest way to find us. Farrowlife again, that's f-a-r-r-o-w dot life. Uh coupon code is stay off. Uh, just like, stay off my operating table will save you 15. And and uh, you can find us on instagram at Pharaoh skin. That's, those are probably the two best spots to find us. But, um, yeah, send me a note If you, if you contact us through the website, you're looking at the guy that reads them and responds to them. We're still small but growing and uh, just, it's just a real honor.

Speaker 2:

Uh, phil and Jack, I appreciate everything Certainly you've done to promote our brand and help me spread the lard, and I try to return the favor. I think it's incredible what you're doing, phil, and you know it's the average consumer and the average doctor look a lot alike. As the average consumer and your average dermatologist, you know we're really trying to unscrew a lot of people's brains, whether it be food or skincare, and so I, I, I certainly, I'm certainly grateful to sort of join, join arms with you guys and continue to give people options to stay Well. I'd like to point out.

Speaker 1:

We're Charles is not a sponsor for this show. We don't take any sponsorship money on this show. No, I just like the product. I really I get I it's. I love to tell people about it. So, um, yeah, it's fun. Y'all, y'all check it out, it's, it's, it is, it's fun and it's cool and it's very consistent with this whole philosophy of if your great grandparents didn't use it, you shouldn't use it either. Looks like Phil might have. Oh, no Good, he's still with us. I was called away to do emergency surgery there. It's a great cold away to do emergency surgery there.

Speaker 2:

And, phil, we can tell that your lists are now to book a ticket to Tampa Florida for next November. I think fall Hack, your Health is coming to your backyard. I'm very excited about that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, be on the lookout for Hack your Health 2025. Certainly, Charles and I will both be there so you can get the early calendar set.

Speaker 1:

All right, that's it for the day. I think Charles will definitely be back. I can't, I really truly can't. I think by the time this one drops, hopefully the goat soap will be out. I'm going to get some for myself, just because I don't know. I just like the idea, all right. Some for myself, just because I don't know. I just like the idea, all right for, uh, charles mayfield of pharaoh life the lard works in mysterious ways. Dr philip ovadia, this has been the stay on my operating table podcast. Thanks for joining us. We'll talk to you all next time.

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Dr. Philip Ovadia

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Jack Heald

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