Season 6, Episode 7: The Intersection of Aesthetic Medicine and Wellness with Dr. Anthony Youn

Evelyne: Absolutely. Today we’ll be talking about the intersection of aesthetic medicine and wellness, nutrition for beauty and business and social media. So, before we dive in, what is leading you up this week, Tony?

Dr. Anthony Youn: Oh, this week. So, one of the things that I have started doing the last few months is, so we, my wife and I, adopt senior rescue dogs, and I started volunteering at an animal shelter in our area. And, just a few days ago, I was volunteering up there, and I took this little dog.

He’s a little black dachshund mix, and it’s cold right now. I brought him outside, and he was so afraid of me that he curled up in a little ball in a corner of the building, on the pavement, and just, like, curled up in a ball and, kind of was acting afraid of me. It was so fascinating because he started off being afraid of me and not knowing what to expect.

And by the end, he was, like, all curled up in my lap, his mouth wide open, trying to play with me. And it just showed me why I do that type of thing. Well, I’ve been doing that, and it was just so, so, rewarding. And I’m so excited to hopefully see him get a home, hopefully in the next few weeks.

Evelyne: Oh, that’s so sweet. Thank you so much for sharing. At our Designs for Health sales and marketing meeting, which we just had, we actually had dogs there from an organization called Courtroom Critters. And so, during our breaks, we got to hang out with these dogs. And one of them was named Hufflepuff. So, it was really sweet, like made it so special. So, thank you for sharing.

Dr. Anthony Youn: Yeah, that’s kind of our thing. My wife and I, you try to find, like, a little corner of the world that you can try to make better with your life. And that’s kind of our thing now. And so, my daughter and my wife, actually, they just signed up to or to do orientation to volunteer there. And so, it will hopefully end up being a bit of a family thing.

Evelyne: I love that. Well, I think that you make an impact in many corners of the world, not just that.

Dr. Anthony Youn: Thank you.

Evelyne: Yeah. Let me share a little bit more about you. For those who may not be familiar. Known as America’s Holistic plastic surgeon, Anthony Youn is a nationally recognized board-certified plastic surgeon. He’s recognized as a leader in his field. He’s the author of the bestselling books The Age Fix, In Stitches and Playing God. His public television special, The Age Fix with Doctor Anthony Youn, has been viewed by millions. He hosts the popular podcast The Doctor Youn Show. He is the most followed plastic surgeon on social media, with over 5 million subscribers on his YouTube channel and 8 million followers on TikTok.

His new book, Younger for Life, is a national bestseller and a complete, holistic guide to turning back the clock using the process of autojuvenation. He’s also the founder of The Youn Beauty product line.

So, Tony, I’m very curious about your journey. Did you always want to be a doctor when you were little?

Dr. Anthony Youn: In a way, I did. I mean, the day I was born, my parents decided that I was going to be a doctor. And being the middle child of first-generation Korean immigrants, I was kind of like, okay, whatever you say, you know? And so, I kind of I went through, you know, undergrad, I got into medical school, I went through medical school, and I really hit this point where I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do at that point. I was always told by my father that I was going to be this high-powered surgeon, neurosurgeon, transplant surgeon, cardiac surgeon, and I realized after doing medical school for a couple of years that that just wasn’t my personality. Like, I don’t love life and death situations. It stresses me out, you know?

And I’m proud that I went through my entire residency of general surgery and plastic surgery, and I never had anybody die on me that shouldn’t have. I mean, that type of stuff happens when you’re in training. People die. But I was always so honestly afraid that that would happen, that I would make a mistake, and somebody would lose their life because of it. There are some doctors who thrive in those types of situations. For me, they horrify me because of the fear of the guilt that I may feel if I make that wrong decision.

And so, after being told by my father all my life that this is what I was going to do, I realized that I don’t want to do that. Like I’m not made for that. I thought about doing family practice for a while. Because I love working with patients and stuff. And I have a lot of interest in so many areas. And then I discovered the field of plastic surgery. I’ve been an artist kind of all my life. And so, it really ended up kind of creating that intersection of art and medicine that I found fascinating. And I ended up going into that field.

And, since then, the interesting thing about it is it has allowed me to do a lot of other things other than just being a doctor, that maybe if I was like a gastroenterologist, that I wouldn’t be able to do so much of. And so, it’s the books and the media and the social media, all that stuff that, for me has just been energizing to my career and to my life overall.

Evelyne: That’s amazing. And let’s talk about that side a little bit more. So, the business and marketing and social media. So, you have eight and a half million followers on TikTok, over 5 million on YouTube, one and a half million followers on Instagram. And what really comes across when you look at your videos is like your personality and your presence, and you mix humor at times, like maybe a little unhinged with, with education and also with empowerment. And I think people just are really drawn to that.

So, I’m curious, how did you grow this persona? It seems like you’ve really figured out the recipe to viral videos, so talk a little more about that.

Dr. Anthony Youn: I did a lot of TV early in my career. One season and this is, gosh, maybe twelve or thirteen years ago, I think I did six or seven episodes of Rachael Ray’s talk show. I was on Doctor Oz’s show a bunch, and I was doing all this TV, and it was fun. I was flying all around the country. And then I met JJ Virgin, and I realized how much I didn’t know about being an influencer and stuff, and I realized, too, I got to a point where I was doing all this national TV and I was getting into my 40s, and I started realizing that the producers were picking doctors who are younger and better looking than me.

And I started realizing after doing a lot of national TV for probably about 6 or 7 years or more, that I was starting to age out like an aging actor. And it was very concerning because the TV that I was doing was helping power my practice. For me, it was an outlet for my creativity. I spent so much time creating pitches and stuff. I was my own publicist, really, and getting all on all these shows and stuff. And as I started seeing the writing on the wall, I started realizing that, that they’re picking me less and that I’m on a downhill slope.

And so I met JJ Virgin as I was looking at writing a book and stuff, and, a common friend introduced us, and I attended one of her Mindshare supplements many years ago, and it really opened the door for me of how you can be a physician and you can actually think outside the box of how to impact people’s lives in many more ways than what I was doing. And from there, I started shifting my focus to social media, realizing that my platform for all those years was basically up to producers. It was their platform, and they allowed me to go on it. And so that platform I didn’t own, I didn’t have any control of. And this was something that I started realizing that for me to truly take the next steps, I need to get ownership of my platform. And so, I shifted towards social media.

But at the time, I was still under the impression that I needed to act like the doctor, that I was always told, you have to act a certain way. You go to the conferences, you act a certain way, you dress a certain way. And for a couple of years, that’s what I did, and I did okay. Things went fine. And I had a discussion with JJ. I was in her mastermind group, and we were doing these kinds of fun games after the whole group sessions and stuff. And she said, Tony, you’re actually really funny. Like, why aren’t you showing your humor online and being yourself? And I said, I’m not funny. What are you talking about? And she said you are. You should really just like, be yourself on social media and, and when you’re doing this, and I thought really?

So, the pandemic hits in 2020 and my office closes down for two and a half months. But at the time, I had no idea how long that was going to last, and I promised my employers I would pay them. And when I actually looked at my bank account, the most money I had coming in was from Google, from my YouTube channel. And so, I thought, okay, why not? I mean, I’ve got a bunch of time. I can’t treat patients right now. Why not just create more content? And it was twofold. Part of it was that I knew I could potentially generate income from it being, you know, from the social media companies. But the bigger thing was, is I could, you know, really touch people and help people during a very scary, crazy time.

I had nothing to sell. And it was just, hey, if I could take people out 15 seconds, 30 seconds, a minute, two minutes out of their scary, crazy time that that was back during the whole quarantine time, then that was really a gift. And so, I stopped worrying about being a doctor, and I just started creating stuff that I thought was entertaining and funny. And that’s when everything really blew up.

I think because people are used to doctors either being overly serious, or promoting themselves and my field, it’s all about self-promotion and look at my before and after. I’m the best surgeon. Or it’s people hiring companies to do their social media for them and people knowing within a few seconds that this is not the actual person, this is some company doing it for them.

And so here I was with my own phone on a tripod, nobody else making videos for YouTube and TikTok and Instagram. And people, I think, realize that this is actually the doctor with his own phone and making this stuff up, acting like himself. And then, that’s when everything exploded.

Evelyne: So do you think for some people, because obviously that was 2020, do you think maybe if somebody’s listening they’re like, oh my gosh, well, I missed the boat. You know, we’re in 2025 now.

Dr. Anthony Youn: No, I mean I think at this point there are so many opportunities and new opportunities that will come up. You know, I was one of the OG doctors on TikTok. And I do think that did help me with getting my start there because I was there. But, you know, right now with these social media companies, and especially when you’re looking at video and short form video, they can blow up. If it’s a good video and interesting video, that something different, you don’t have to have followers, and it can blow up pretty quickly. And that’s, I think, the benefit one of the benefits of short for short form video, that’s so different than, let’s say, legacy media. You know, I came from a TV background and in order for me to do like a national TV show like Live with Kelly and Mark, you know, you don’t go from being a nobody to go out a go on a show like that.

You go from creating your content on social media to being invited to local TV and then from local TV, maybe you do some spots on national news and then you work your way up to these talk shows. They don’t just take anybody. The interesting thing about social media now, though, is that anybody, especially when you’re on TikTok and Instagram Reels and YouTube shorts, anybody can go viral if you’ve got the right content.

Now going viral for me, when I look at viral for my posts, that may be 5 million views or 10 million views, but if you don’t have many followers, going viral for you could be 20,000. Well, you know, a local television show may have 5,000 people watching it. And if you’ve got 20,000 on your TikTok video, you’ve already eclipsed that by four times. And so you do want to look at that from a proportional view of kind of where you’re at.

Evelyne: Yeah, definitely. And I think the message that I’m taking away is just be yourself.

Dr. Anthony Youn: Yeah. Because people can see authenticity, and authenticity is something that you can’t fake, obviously. And people will see. The internet and especially people on TikTok are very, very keen. They know if you’re faking something, they know if you’re acting. And whenever I have made videos where maybe I wasn’t being authentic, you know, maybe I was following a script that I wrote for me, and trying to read every single word, like with brand deals and stuff, they say, you need to say this and it’s like, yeah, but that’s not how I talk. No, no, you have to say this. People see right through it. They know, like, hey, you’re reading a script, dude.

And no matter how good an actor you are, they see right through it. But, you know, I think it’s important for people to, when you look at social media, it’s such a huge thing because I think a lot of people don’t realize just how much impact you can have.

So, for example, you know, you can go to a sporting event with 20,000 people. And when you think about going in front of those 20,000 people, having a microphone and saying something for a minute, that’s a lot of people to listen to you. You can easily do that on social media. 20,000 views is very doable for somebody, even if you don’t have a lot of followers.

And when you think like that’s that whole basketball stadium listening to what you have to say for that short period of time. It puts a lot of power and control and opportunity at your fingertips.

Evelyne: Yeah. Two thoughts. One is going back to JJ Virgin. We’ve interviewed her on the show, big fan. And she’s the one who brought me into this industry.

Dr. Anthony Youn: She’s great.

Evelyne: And we were just chatting before we started about how she has helped us and so many other people just to soar to new heights, in our field. So, shout out to her. And then I’m also thinking, you produce content constantly, right? But you’re also a busy plastic surgeon. You’re actually operating on people, and then you have your family, and I’m curious, and you run like an online store. How do you do all of it? Do you not sleep? Do you feel like you have work-life balance?

Dr. Anthony Youn: So, I’ll tell you what my schedule basically is. Every Monday and Wednesday I’m in the office seeing patients from about 9 to 5 p.m., pre-op patients, post-op patients, consultations, all that type of stuff. Every Tuesday and Thursday I’m operating. Typically, I start at 7:30 and I usually operate until mid-afternoon. I come back to the office in the mid-afternoon. And then at that point I’ll either do paperwork, I may see a patient or two, but usually not that much. And then I may record some short form type videos, maybe producing some stuff. And then every Friday I take time to do my podcast, The Doctor Youn Show. So, I record 1 or 2 podcasts on a Friday, as well as, short form videos and things like that. I have a weekly e-newsletter that I write myself, and I usually write those on Sunday mornings when my kids are asleep. So, through the weekend, I’ll take an hour or two to put something like that together. We send that out. And then over the weekend, I come up with, like, ideas and things here and there. I’ll take time to go over ideas to script out, let’s say, a long form YouTube video, reach out to people for the podcast and that type of stuff.

It does take a lot of time. What I have cut out is I used to see patients every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, for injections like Botox and stuff like that, and I no longer do that anymore. And on Friday mornings, I used to operate. And I made the decision probably 6 to 9 months ago to stop operating on Friday mornings as I relaunched my podcast and said, look, I really want to take my time to do my podcast.

And yeah, I think you make decisions like that as a physician, and yeah, I’m not operating. And so, there’s lost revenue there. But the hope is that by investing time in the podcast that I can make that up. And, and still do something that that’s really enjoyable and hopefully reach more people and help a lot more people in the podcast than I would doing enough operating for a couple hours on a Friday morning.

Evelyne: Yeah, very incredible. And do you feel like with your social media you have brought people into your practice, because you’re in Indiana, right? Or no, you’re in Michigan.

Dr. Anthony Youn: Yeah. I’m outside Detroit. Yeah, I used to keep track of where patients come from, and I stopped long ago because my waitlist now I think is two and a half years.

Evelyne: Oh, wow.

Dr. Anthony Youn: Yeah. And so at this point, it’s just part of it I may take for granted. Now, I don’t have to advertise myself for anything. And I think that’s part of also why my social media does well is because I’m not promoting myself all the time. Yeah, I do promote my products. You know, I’ve got a full skincare line and supplements. And I promote my podcast because I want to help grow that. But other than that, you know, you don’t see me posting a lot of before and after photos. You don’t see me trying to sell, surgery and all that type of stuff. And I think people like that. They don’t want to be sold all the time.

And I have a separate channel for my plastic surgery channel on Instagram and I have one on YouTube as well, where we do put before and afters and stuff. But that’s a separate, completely separate channel that if people want to follow that and they want to see the before and afters and, and the patient transformations and stuff, they can. But my main channels, I really, really limit that.

Evelyne: Yeah, it’s really interesting. Thank you for sharing. And do you feel like you do have work-life balance, the way that you’ve set your schedule up?

Dr. Anthony Youn: I’ve been thinking about this a lot because I’ve been in practice now for 20 years. For 19 of them I took ER calls at my local hospital, and I finally dropped off of that about a year ago because that’s where you get called in the middle of the night. You go see people who get bit by dogs and stuff. And for many years I thought, you know, I really should do this. This is what I should do. I feel an obligation. And then I realized after 19 years of doing it that the hospital did not appreciate me doing this, even though it was all for free. They didn’t appreciate it one bit. My patients appreciated it, and I am happy to help them. But I also feel like at this point, I’ve kind of put my time in, I’m getting older and, I don’t know that I wanted to keep getting woken up in the middle of the night and, and driving in, especially in a Michigan winter where it’s like, oh, that was so painful.

But I have realized that spending as much time as I have, I’ve written the four books that you mentioned. That’s what really, when I look back, that is what took up so much time was researching and writing these books. And that time I could have spent I spent a lot of time with my family, and I don’t think my kids would ever tell you my dad didn’t spend enough time with me. I made it to all their games and all that type of stuff, but where I didn’t, what I didn’t do necessarily is foster is create friendships during that time. I have a lot of good friends from high school. I have friends from college and from medical school and stuff. But living 20 years in the community I’m at, I have some decent friends, but I don’t have, like, really close friends.

And part of it, I think, is because instead of me going out to the bar with them or going to watch a game with them, I would be at home writing my books or editing my books or creating scripts, pitches for TV and stuff. I feel like now, actually, I have a bit more work-life balance now that I think I’m done writing books. I think this is my last one. I feel like it covered everything I needed to do and say, and so I have no plans right now, and it has really opened up a lot of time for me. I’m still doing my social media and my video creation, but that I can do in the time is still feel like I have a lot of time on the weekends to actually do my own thing and not feel like I have to keep writing and editing.

At one point my wife joked, it was like we watched Hamilton, and she’s like, you’re Alexander Hamilton. You can’t stop writing; you can’t stop writing. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but my wife is like, you’re just like Alexander Hamilton. You will not stop writing. And I’m like, I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I look at it now and I think, hey, yeah, I mean, maybe I spent too much time doing that. I don’t know, I think it is hard.

Evelyne: Right. And thank you for sharing all that because it is hard. When is enough enough? And I think that’s the question that comes up a lot, right? Especially when you’re talking about business growth and social media growth and books. And all of the things that you want to do in work and in life.

Dr. Anthony Youn: I think that that it’s hard. Hindsight is always 20/20. And you know what? If I could do it over again, would I do anything differently? I’m really proud of the four books I’ve written, but I don’t know that I need to keep doing it. I feel like I’ve done it. I was in a band when I was in, residency and we toured locally a little bit and stuff like that. We were never all that good, but once we finished, I was like, okay, I think I’m done. I don’t need to do this again. I’m not that good at it. And so, but I kind of got out of my system and I think with the books like this last one, Younger for Life, I’m so proud of, it’s done so well. It’s exactly what I wanted to get out there, which is a true integrative approach to turning back the clock that I don’t know how to follow that up. And I feel like this moment, I don’t feel that need to because I feel like it was so complete. So, we’ll see.

Evelyne: Yeah, I love that. So, let’s transition to talking about that more. You are a trendsetter in the plastic surgery space. When it comes to combining nutrition with procedures. And I’m curious what led you to that years ago before, you know now that it’s a little more popular?

Dr. Anthony Youn: Yeah. So, I started off, being a traditional plastic surgeon, and I did, traditional medical school. I did three years of general surgery and residency. I did a couple of years of plastic surgery residency. I trained, actually, with a top name plastic surgeon out in Beverly Hills. And for the first many years of my practice, I basically practiced like I was taught. And it was a bit of a cut first mentality. So, in surgery, there’s a term “to cut is to cure”, or “the only way to heal is with cold steel.”

And you always as a surgeon take pride in the operations that you can do or that patients choose you to do. So, for example, if you’re in residency and you’re a general surgeon, you really want to scrub in on the big operations like the Whipple. You know, the Whipple is like a ten-hour pancreatic cancer operation. And if you are so lucky, and at the top, you’re chief resident, that you can scrub into one of those. You’re so fortunate to do that. And in a similar fashion as a plastic surgeon, a cosmetic plastic surgeon, I always looked at my career for many, many years of how successful I was in my practice was, was how many people were coming in to see me for facelift surgeries. You may choose a variety of plastic surgeons to do your liposuction, but if you’re going to have a facelift, you’re going to be very, very choosy about who’s going to cut open your face, because you only have one face and you can’t hide it. And this is a very difficult operation. It’s a long surgery. It’s very meticulous, and it’s filled with potential complications. And so, for many years, I base the success or measured the success to my practice based off how many of these faces I had on my schedule.

And I had a patient who had a facelift, who had a horrible complication one year from it, and it really sent me into a bit of a tailspin, because I thought that I was in the pinnacle of success in my practice. I was doing great. I had, at that time, I think over a year waiting list, and I had this patient who just did terribly from invasive surgery.

Not her fault, not my fault. And it got me really into thinking, am I doing the right thing for my patients? And this corresponded to me meeting JJ, reading books from alternative medicine practitioners and starting to really open my eyes to the fact that there is an entire way to practice medicine and to be healthy that I was never taught in medical school.

I had zero nutrition training in medical school. I knew how to write orders for a patient who was in the ICU and needed to get a feeding tube down their throat or need to get nutrition through an IV and stuff. But I would write those orders, and then we would all go to the cafeteria afterwards. It’d be 2 in the morning, and it would be Fry Bar, and I would eat the deep-fried apple slices and the French fries at night, along with all the other residents, throwing it down with a Coke and stuff. And this is what you see in medical training. Like, we don’t know this stuff. And at the time, I didn’t even think how bad this was.

So once again, this event corresponded to really me opening up my eyes to alternative medicine, functional medicine and all of that. And I started really then studying what I didn’t know about nutrition and even about skincare and all these ways to help make yourself healthier. And that’s what got me going on the path that I did, and with this eventual book, Younger for Life.

Evelyne: Yeah. I thought it was interesting in your book that you wrote that you were researching trauma surgery and wound healing and things like that, right? Because there was research on it, but I’m guessing it just wasn’t applied in the plastic surgery industry. And you were an early adopter of that, right?

Dr. Anthony Youn: Yeah. So early in my practice when patients would tell me, hey, I’m on these supplements, what should I do? I would just blanket tell them, go off of them. And you don’t need anything. And when you talk about preventative therapy and how to heal best from surgery, what we were taught in residency was, tell your patient not to smoke and then go off of medications that can potentially cause them to bleed. And then go off supplements. And that was pretty much all we were taught, you know? And so, I started thinking and started to realize that I don’t know anything about supplements. You know, I tell my patients, go off it, but what do I really know about these things? And, and is there a way that there are certain supplements that may actually help a person heal better?

And I looked at the research and the studies that were performed in surgery, and I compared that and combined that with what I was learning, reading books from people like doctor Mark Hyman and Doctor Joel Kahn and all these other docs who are in more of the functional alternative medicine realm. And I started realizing that there were certain things that were in common. And so that’s what started me into thinking about supplementation, getting my patients on supplements. I created a pre- and post-surgical supplement protocol that I gave to my patients for many, many years. But honestly, I never actually published any of that. And I didn’t do it on purpose because I knew that if other patients would do it, let’s say would take my the supplement that I would recommend and, prior to surgery, then they would have an operation. And we know that at least 1% of patients get a hematoma, get a bleeding complication after surgery. I didn’t want to be the scapegoat. I didn’t want their surgeon to say, hey, I performed a tummy tuck on you. You bled afterward. It’s because of Doctor Youn’s supplements. That’s why it happened. You should go sue him. I want to make sure that didn’t happen to me.

So, I gave to my patients, and they did great. And I do feel that it lowered their complication rate. They seemed to heal faster. I had a lot of patients come to see me, you know, after surgery to say, oh, my gosh, what supplement was I taking? Because I’ve never, you know, my bowel function is so much better. Or I have so much energy than I used to have, or all these things they would tell me. But I never went public with it because of the fear that some other doctor who had the knowledge that I had of supplements before, which was zero, would actually try to use that to have me be their scapegoat.

Evelyne: Interesting. I do have a few follow-up questions regarding the specific supplements and what you saw in people. But also, you mentioned before you used to recommend that people go off supplements completely before. Do you still recommend that people stop supplements like 3 to 7 days before, or is it only certain ones?

Dr. Anthony Youn: So, it’s only certain ones. And so, what I’ve done now is I have created actually a supplement protocol that we put patients on before and after. And since then, I’ve altered it a bit. And so, what I tell patients is I have them go off of their supplements about two weeks prior to an operation, and then they start on our supplements at that time and then continue those supplements for a good two weeks after surgery.

At that point, some of the supplements, like we start Omega-3 fatty acids two weeks after surgery because you don’t want to increase the risk of bleeding. They can stay on that, usually we have them stay on that for at least a month afterward, but they can restart on their supplements, usually after about two weeks.

Evelyne: Okay. And then you said that they had lower complications and just saw overall improvements in other health. Are there any really cool success stories that really surprised you?

Dr. Anthony Youn: I had so many patients that would tell me, we give all of our patients probiotics. And I had so many people tell me, oh my gosh, my bowel function is so much better. Like, I used to have bowel movements like once every four days. And it was I had so much bad constipation or the opposite, I had irritable bowel syndrome, and I don’t know what you’re doing with these probiotics. And that was all it was. It was basic probiotic and my bowels are so much better. I had so many people that would tell me after surgery that their hair was thicker afterward, that their nails felt stronger, that their skin was glowing. And a lot of people said really that their energy level was so much better. Which is weird because you have surgery, your body undergoes a trauma you shouldn’t feel necessarily more energy afterward. You’re usually it’s the opposite. But a number of people say, after taking this for a while, like, I don’t know what’s in it. It’s always, I don’t know what’s in it, but I feel so much better. And so, patients would say, hey, what can I take of these chronically that I can take now, and keep feeling this way or keep seeing these changes in my skin or my hair, or, like I said, my bowels and that type of thing.

Evelyne: And did you find that between people who were on the protocol versus patients who were operating on before that, their rate of recovery was faster?

Dr. Anthony Youn: So, we didn’t we never did a true study on it. I could just tell you anecdotally, just from what I appear to be seeing in my practice, that, yes, in the last since I started my patients on these very specific supplements, I had seen my complication rate, I feel, go down. Whether it’s bleeding complication, whether it’s them needing more pain medications, it does appear that overall, the whole experience is much better for them, but we haven’t necessarily tested it against people who aren’t taking the supplements. It’s just my impression.

Now, I’m also in a maturing practice. Is it possible that the techniques are improving, too? I don’t know, I mean, I feel like I’m doing things not that that differently. And there’s always, whenever you operate on people, there’s always a risk of certain complications happening that no matter how good a surgeon you are, they can happen. Bleeding is a big one of those, infection is another one of those. No matter how good you are, some people get infections. And I feel like I’ve seen all of those numbers in general on, much less of those types of issues over the last several years that I have been helping my supplement my patients than I did prior to that.

Evelyne: Yeah, that’s great. And I’ve only been to one aesthetics conference. But I do know that at some of the major aesthetics as well as plastic surgery conferences, that there’s typically some element of nutrition, right?

Dr. Anthony Youn: A little.

Evelyne: A little, okay. Not that much more, okay.

Dr. Anthony Youn: Yeah. I think that we are, and I take a little bit of credit for it, but I think there is becoming a realization of how much we have been ignoring, and, and this type of people as part of this because patients are asking for it. They’re reading the books. They’re seeing this stuff on social media, and they’re saying, hey, why aren’t we talking about regenerative medicine? They’re asking for this stuff. And so, surgeons are responding by saying, oh, okay, there’s people interested in this. Maybe I need to look into that.

Evelyne: So how do you recommend that other practitioners start integrating this approach with their patients if they’re not?

Dr. Anthony Youn: There’s a company and I don’t have any ownership in it. But there’s a company called HealFast. They have some pre- and post-op supplements. That’s a very simple place to start. There are a lot of great products for Designs for Health. And I know that they have people at the company that can talk with practitioners about, hey, I’m a surgeon. What are some supplements that you can recommend? Once again, I have my own protocol. I don’t release it. I’m sure I could make money by releasing it, but really, part of it is that I’m committed to my patients. I do put this type of information in my books and stuff like that, but the specific protocol, I’m hesitant because I haven’t had an attorney go through that. And what happens if somebody takes and says, hey, this is Doctor Youn’s protocol and then a patient has a complication. I know what doctors are like. Doctors never admit that they did something wrong. Surgeons are even worse. And if anything happens, they’re not going to say, you know what? Maybe I should have spent more time cauterizing your bleeding, and that may have prevented your hematoma. Instead, they’re like, oh, what are you taking from this doctor I don’t know. Oh, maybe it’s that guy’s fault. And so, in general, if you’re going to start, I think there are certain very simple places to start. And once again, it would be contacting a company like Designs for Health, HealFast, I think is a good company as well.

And they’re very straightforward types of supplements. The stuff that I recommend, none of it’s out there. It’s all pretty easily obtainable.

Evelyne: And I just want to mention that through Designs for Beauty, we also have a training course for practitioners on beauty from within that goes through all the supplements and explains it. So that’s a great resource as well.

So, let’s talk a little bit more about aging of the skin and nutrients because this is what you know everybody’s interested in. So, when it comes to accelerated aging of the skin, what are the top lifestyle factors that contribute to it?

Dr. Anthony Youn: So, first thing is going to be stress. And you only need to see when the US presidents go into office. And then 4 or 8 years later when they come out, how much stress does to your skin. I’m a big believer in certain lifestyle activities like meditation. I’m a huge believer in meditation. I’m a big believer in yoga. But there are other things you can do to reduce your stress. You know, we started this talk about shelter animals, and I think part of a great way to reduce stress is giving your time to a cause bigger than yourself. In general, looking at ways to give back, reduce stress and to make your life more meaningful, all of that is really healthy and helpful for reducing the aging process.

As far as something more direct, okay. I’ve got a lot of friends in the alternative medicine space. I do believe in sunblock. Now, I’m not a dermatologist who applies sunblock every morning, and then even if I’m going to sit in the basement, I’m still applying sunblock. But I do believe, and I’ve seen so many cases of sun damage, of skin cancers. God forbid; you don’t want to get a skin cancer on your face. And I’m a believer in sunblock. So, my recommendation is if you’re going to have a certain amount of exposure to the sun, there are some people who will talk about just how powerful the sun is. You can look at different settings and stuff for that. But in general, if you’re going to have a lot of sun exposure, then I strongly recommend at least SPF 30, a sunblock.

I am a believer in trying to avoid certain ingredients in sunblock, sunscreen, specifically oxybenzone and octinoxate. They are ever present and in so many sunscreens. But there’s a concern about potential hormone disruption with them. And so ideally, stick with the physical blockers or ones that are not as controversial, such as avobenzone or mexoryl-XL.

If you go to Korea and get some sunscreens there, they’ve got great ones in Korea. You used to be able to get them on TikTok shop actually, but recently there was a law that that was passed in the government that has really shut a lot of that down. Because unfortunately, here in the US, our sun protection is not so good compared to what you see in other countries.

So that would be the thing is, protect your skin from the sun. And then ideally, you want to use some type of antiaging cream. Retinol is a great one to start with. That’s derivative Vitamin A, if you’ve got sensitive skin, you could use one that contains bakuchiol instead. Or peptides. Peptides are also great for the skin too.

Evelyne: Great. And let’s talk a little bit more about supplementation for skin health, for beauty from within, but also nails and hair. So, collagen is recommended a lot across the board for beauty from within. Can you explain what makes it so effective? Because I think one thing that causes some confusion is that we know that collagen is the structural building block, but how does it work when I ingest it? And we know that peptides are signaling molecules, so can you talk more about that?

Dr. Anthony Youn: Yeah. So, I think, just to go for the basics, 70 to 80% of our skin is collagen. And starting about in mid 20s we start to lose about 1% of collagen every year. And collagen is a part of our skin that provides the turgor, the strength, the firmness of our skin. And the way collagen is, is that there these protein fibers, there are kind of like the logs of a log cabin. And as you get older, those logs start to fray, and they start to fall apart. Women, in the first five years after menopause, studies show they lose 30% of the content of their skin in those first five years after menopause, and then about 2% every year after that.

And so one thing we really want to focus on as we’re getting older, if we’re looking at beauty and health of our skin is to help promote that collagen or prevent it from degrading. So, collagen is a large protein. And so, one thing you can definitely do is you can increase the amount of protein in your diet because you need to get those precursors, for collagen so that you can create that collagen and so those precursor proteins. So, some people will talk about, you know, 30 grams of protein each meal or maybe 100 grams of protein a day. But suffice to say, increasing the amount of protein as you get older can help to support the collagen.

When you’re looking at supplementation. Collagen supplements are a huge, huge deal. I’m a big fan of collagen supplements. That’s why I’ve got my own supplemental collagen. But when you look at the studies, it’s interesting. There are traditional physicians who will say that collagen still is not proven. But there are a lot of studies out there. And the studies some of them are meta analyzes of multiple studies. The question is, is if you ingest collagen as a supplement, how do you know it gets to your skin?

And some people say, well, it gets broken down in your stomach. How you know, your body even absorbs it. And that’s why you want to look for a collagen supplement that is made of hydrolyzed collagen peptides. And so, what does that mean? Well, they hydrolyzed collagen, takes out large collagen protein and breaks it down into smaller amino acids and peptides.

Peptides are small, small groups of amino acids, and it makes it so that your body can actually absorb it. Verisol is a great version of a type 1 collagen that your body can absorb. And then when you actually look at the studies of it, studies are performed on people who are taking hydrolyzed collagen supplements. And you look at after they take it, let’s say, every day you look at two, three, four months later and they’re studies that show an increasing in the high increase in the hydration of the skin, increasing the thickness of the skin.

There are studies where they actually drop the blood of patients, of people who are participants, who are taking a college or supplement, and they find collagen precursors in their blood. And there have even been actual biopsies taken of the skin, showing an increase in collagen of the skin after taking collagen supplements. So how is it that it goes from your stomach, and it makes its way to your skin?

It’s not just your skin that’s going to benefit from a college and supplement. If it’s, let’s say, a type one collagen, that’s hair, skin, nails and bone, you know, so you may find improvements. And we see this with my college or something all the time where people say my joints feel better or my hair feels thicker or my skin, my nails feel better.

There are so many benefits from it. So it’s not just that you take a collagen supplement and it goes directly to your skin. Yes, as a plastic surgeon that’s what I look at. But we know it’s going to all different parts of your body now that’s different than if you apply collagen cream to the surface of your skin. That doesn’t work because collagen is a large protein. It’s not going to get through the actual epidermis, that upper layer of skin, that’s a barrier to it. So big believer in collagen supplements. I feel that there are certain supplements that everybody should consider taking that I feel is definitely one of them. Unless you are vegan. Because there is no true vegan collagen. So, if you don’t want anything animal based, then definitely don’t take it. That’s not going to work for you. There are vegan quote unquote collagen supplements out there. I think those are great, but they’re not the same, you know? So being in collagen supplements, typically they’ve got vitamin C, which is a precursor to collagen, they’ve got protein in them, which is great, but it’s not exactly the same.

Evelyne: Yeah. What are some of the other key nutrients that you recommend to patients for healthy aging?

Dr. Anthony Youn: So, I just mentioned vitamin C. I think that’s a really obvious one. Vitamin C is a big one because not only is it a precursor to collagen, you know, we remember way back from high school biology, the whole idea of scurvy, where you have these, people who are pirates and people who are sailors, where they fill their boat with fresh fruits and vegetables, and then they go across the Atlantic or they cross the Pacific, and several weeks later, they run out of fresh fruits and vegetables, and eventually they start having skin breakdown inside their mouth and all that type of stuff because they’re not getting any actual vitamin C. Vitamin C is present in fruits and vegetables, and it breaks down very quickly and it’s water-soluble. So, you literally have to get it every day. Well, in addition to it being absolutely essential in the production of collagen, but it’s also a powerful antioxidant. And that’s why we use it in serums on the skin. That’s why it’s in so many of the multivitamins. I think it’s great. You can almost not get too much vitamin C, because it does so much great for you. The big thing with taking it as a supplement, I think is important is oxidation is its antioxidant behavior. Because one of the main ages of a body is oxidation or free radicals. And vitamin C basically fights or neutralizes those.

Evelyne: Aside from vitamin C, what else do you recommend?

Dr. Anthony Youn: I think there’s a number of other great ones. Vitamin E is important. Zinc is important. That is also super important for the health of your skin. And then vitamin D is super important as well. That’s also just to help with immune, for your skin to fight off pathogens and to continue to be healthy. So, I’m also a big fan of that. There’s a lot of other things you can consider. There’s so many different, antioxidants out there, from resveratrol to green tea. Really the goal is to try to get a variety of antioxidants. And so, if you can take a supplement that contains numerous different antioxidants in it, that’s all going to be good versus let’s say, just focusing on one.

Evelyne: I’m curious with your own patients, how do you incorporate the nutrition supplementation part? Is it like just part of the deal or is it a separate add-on? Is it required for everyone? Tell me more about that.

Dr. Anthony Youn: So, all of my patients who are having major surgery, and I still operate two full days a week, will get our entire supplement protocol. So they are pre- and post-op supplements. And that also will include a medical grade scar cream. So a silicone based scar cream, because whenever you operate, you will create some type of a scar. I also have a pain cream from a friend of mine from Mind Body Matrix. So it’s active ingredient is menthol, and it’s just a topical cream that patients can put on their skin. That can act as a non-narcotic pain reliever. So just something to help with that. We also do prescribe narcotics. If you’re going to have surgery, you want to make sure you’re comfortable. And then the supplement protocol, the pre- and post-op that we have them specifically take.

Evelyne: So, it’s basically required.

Dr. Anthony Youn: And they all get it for free. Occasionally get patients will say look I don’t like taking pills. Do I have to take it? The answer is no. You know, you don’t want to. You don’t have to. Sometimes, too, they’ll say, well, if I’m only going to take one pill a day, what do you recommend I take? That’s when it gets more difficult. If you’re going to be on antibiotics and if I pick one, I would probably pick a probiotic because we want to support the microbiome. That’s a huge one. And so sometimes people say, yeah, I just want to do one thing. We’ll say, okay, well take this. You know, I would rather have them take a probiotic than let’s say, bromelain. You know, that’s a derivative of a pineapple extract that can help the anti-inflammatory. You know, I would pick the probiotic over the bromelain. So, then it just kind of depends on what the situation is. But yeah, if I had to pick one then probably the probiotic maybe the most point if you’re going to have surgery.

Evelyne: Gotcha. And I’m curious, what do you consider some of the hottest trends right now in both like the aesthetics world and in the plastic surgery world?

Dr. Anthony Youn: In the aesthetics world, a huge thing, and I think we’re just touching the surface right now, is exosomes. So, exosomes, basically they are made from stem cells. You know, we talked about peptides a little bit ago. And peptides essentially are small chains of proteins, of amino acids. And in skincare and antiaging, peptides actually with skincare are meant to essentially signal our skin cells to create collagen. And the way I describe exosomes to my patients and followers is that they’re basically packets of information. That information can tell your skin to create more collagen, or it can tell your skin to reduce inflammation. There’s a lot of different things, reduce redness. There’s a lot of different potential applications of exosomes.

Currently, they’re only FDA approved and allowed to be used topically. So, what we’re using them for now is we’re, starting to use them for patients who are having treatments, like, let’s say, laser treatments or, radiofrequency microneedling like Morpheus8 treatments where you are going to get redness afterward. And studies find that if you apply exosomes on the surface of the skin, it helps reduce that redness much more quickly than if you were just used to use, let’s say, Aquaphor or something like that.

But the hope is that if the FDA at some point lifts the ban on injecting exosomes, that that could open up a whole multitude of opportunities for injecting, let’s say, in the scalp to help grow hair, to possibly, injecting it, into the skin as a bio modulatory type of substance. I think that there’s just so much that it can potentially do, especially as the science gets better and better and they take these packets of information and are able to put whatever we kind of want in them.

Evelyne: What about polynucleotides? That’s another term I’m hearing lately.

Dr. Anthony Youn: So, this is interesting too. This also is only FDA approved for the US in a topical form. Where this got a lot of news is Kim Kardashian had something called the salmon sperm DNA facial. What does that mean? Do they take salmon and, like, extract their sperm somehow? Kind of. So, for some reason, salmon DNA is similar to human DNA, and the belief is that it helps to reduce inflammation and create a regenerative effect. And so, if you go to South Korea, you can get this. This is called Regeron. But these are poly ribodeoxynucleotides, or polynucleotides essentially, where you can inject it under the surface of the skin. And the belief is that it increases hydration, reduces inflammation and increases collagen production. Right now, it’s not FDA approved, so you can’t do it in the US. My hope is that maybe over this next year that it might be.

I actually just did a podcast on my podcast The Doctor Youn show, where I covered five things that I’m hoping come around in 2025, exciting cosmetic treatments. And that was my number one was Regeron, was the polynucleotides. No, that was my number two. Number one was exosomes. And number two was the polynucleotides. So, you we covered both of them.

Evelyne: Very cool. What are some trends you wish would go away?

Dr. Anthony Youn: I think the big thing that is starting to go away is the big fish lips. There’s so much filler being injected. Back in 2004, I wrote one of the seminal papers in our scientific literature is called The Volumetric Facelift. And it was one of the first papers that described how our face ages in three dimensions. And we described at that time, this is before we’re using many fillers and stuff. It described how the ideal antiaging surgery is not only just a lifting procedure because things drop, but also a filling out using a patient’s own fat. And like I said, this is before we had fillers and stuff. And so, people took this and they go, oh, wow, that’s a great idea. And like so many things in plastic surgery, you think, oh, a little of something is good. So, a lot of something must be even better. So all these fillers get approved and now people are injecting insane amounts of filler into cheeks and people and really making people look unfortunately distorted.

Interestingly, there have been a few celebrities recently who people are just going gaga over because they look so amazing. Demi Moore, Lindsay Lohan, Christina Aguilera, and they’re, I don’t know, I feel, and I talked about this in my podcast as well. I think it’s possible that one or more of them may have had some of their filler melted away, and now we’re looking at them saying, wow, they look great in part because they don’t look like they’ve had work done, even though they have probably. But so that’s the thing I wish would go away. And I think hopefully we’re on our way there.

Evelyne: One more topic I want to cover with you, which probably could be a separate hour-long conversation, but I noticed that in your book, you kind of almost like you want people to stay away from plastic surgery. And I noticed even in your videos online, you really talk about self-acceptance. And something else you talked about is how much we live in a youth-centric culture. And I’m just curious, as you’ve gotten older, how have your thoughts on aging shifted?

Dr. Anthony Youn: It’s just by experience of seeing my patients. Number one is I think that I have enough experience to know. I’m not like this hotshot surgeon that comes out and thinks, look at all the different things that I can do. I think I have a very deep understanding of a lot of the bad things that can happen from plastic surgery.

That being said, I’ve had some bad things happen to some of my patients, not necessarily from anything I did. But just when you operate on, and I’ve probably in the last 20 years operated on 20,000 people, somebody is going to have a complication. I’ve seen enough situations that could have been really bad that I’ve saved patients from. Thank God that they had close calls, essentially, that I have a healthy respect for bringing people to the O.R. that unfortunately, I think maybe some doctors don’t. I make the most money if I operate on somebody, period. But that being said, my goal is not to bring people to the operating room. My goal is to hopefully have you be as happy as you can and only use the O.R. if absolutely necessary. Because I would not be able to forgive myself if I operate on somebody unnecessarily in an operation that maybe I felt shouldn’t necessarily be done. And then they had a horrible complication from it. I just wouldn’t be able to forgive myself.

So, for me, I think part of it is that there are doctors out there who, their consultation for plastic surgery is trying to convince you to get work done. And so, for me, I feel like that’s wrong. And if I can help influence people to take it as seriously as possible and only have surgery if they absolutely feel the need for it, and if it comes from themselves, at the same time, I see people unfortunately, more often than I’d like to, where they are kind of getting pushed into getting work done by their spouse or their boyfriend. And it really, really bothers me. And, and instead of me coming down on this person in front of me doing that, I would rather put a blanket statement out there because they know I’m talking to them. But I don’t have to necessarily confront them in my office and get into a very ugly situation.

So, I’ll put that on social media and I have had a lot of pushback. I’ve had people go online; I’ve had people bash me online. I’ve had people leave bad reviews of me who aren’t even my patients because they don’t like some of the messages I’m sending, but they will actually put reviews as if they’re my patient. That’s a crazy thing, because they want to get at me because they’re upset, because maybe their spouse decided not to get breast implants after listening to my podcast, they decide maybe I can be happy without them. And their husband doesn’t like that because they want those implants. They want her to have big boobs. And you know what? If they’re upset with me, then that’s fine. I’m okay with it. It’s been an evolution, I think, of somebody who has been happily married to my wife now for 25 years. We’ve been together 30. I’ve got a teenage daughter and a realization as a male, just kind of how hard it is to be a woman in today’s society. And a woman who’s getting older and trying to be an advocate for them and my patients and for just women overall.

Evelyne: Thank you for sharing. And congratulations. So, we’re going to wrap up with some rapid fire questions that we ask every guest. So just whatever comes to you, what are your top three favorite supplements for yourself?

Dr. Anthony Youn: Okay, so number one is I take a collagen supplement almost every day. Number two, I’m on a hair replacement supplement or, not replacement, but a thinning hair supplement. And number three, I would say it would be an Omega-3 fatty acid supplement.

Evelyne: Great. And what are your favorite health practices that keep you healthy and balanced?

Dr. Anthony Youn: Number one, I do intermittent fasting. And I do that several times a week just depending on what I’m doing. I cannot intermittent fast and then operate. So those days I usually have a protein filled breakfast if I’m going to operate. So number one would be intermittent fasting. I think that’s really good. Meditation. I don’t meditate as much as I should, but I have been actively trying to do that more and more. And then number three would be doing a variety of different exercises. So I run, I play tennis, I do yoga, I do weights resistance training. And I think that really the key as you get older is to not do the same thing over and over again, but to really mix it up because all your different muscles need to be used as you get older, not just the ones that propel you forward if you’re just walking right, or, you know, that type of thing.

Evelyne: Great. And final question, what is something that you’ve changed your mind about through all of your years in this field?

Dr. Anthony Youn: Okay, this is interesting. Chiropractors. You know, I went through traditional medical training. And if you were to go to my hospital or any of the hospitals I worked at and go to the physicians lunch room and say, hey, I’ve got a friend of mine who’s a chiropractor, I love the information he’s giving out or she’s giving out. You would be met with snickers, and I would have been the same, because that’s what we are trained to not respect chiropractors. I have some friends of mine now who are chiropractors, and they are, some of them are just absolutely so intelligent and they know so much more about nutrition and preventative treatments that I could ever hope to know.

I think degrees are really, really important. But as an MD, unfortunately, too many MDs believe that they know more than they do. And they discount what other people know just because they don’t have an MD. I’m sure there are chiropractors out there doing, and I see it on TikTok all the time, manipulations and I would not recommend. And that I think may be dangerous, but I have so many chiropractor friends who are just brilliant, and they know so much about nutrition and I think we need to open up the tent a bit more as physicians, and bring more people in because there’s so much knowledge that we can learn from each other.

Evelyne: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. We do have a lot of chiropractors who listen because we do work with a lot of chiropractors, and they do get much more nutrition training in school. And a lot of them, you know, beyond that too. So, thank you.

Well, this was awesome, Tony. I learned so much from you. And I just appreciate everything that you do in your practice and in the world. It’s amazing.

Dr. Anthony Youn: Well, I appreciate you having me on your podcast. Thank you so much for taking the time and for the invite.

Evelyne: Thank you. And thank you for tuning in to Conversations for Health. Check out the show notes for resources from today’s conversation. Please share this podcast with your colleagues. Follow, rate or leave a review wherever you listen or watch. And thank you for designing a well world with us.

Voiceover: This is Conversations for Health with Evelyne Lambrecht, dedicated to engaging discussions with industry experts, exploring evidence based, cutting edge research and practical tips.