Speaker 1: Beyond the Beauty is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Bobby Brown. I'm really excited to talk
Speaker 1: to my next guest, Dr Howard mira Ad, a name
Speaker 1: that most of us have known forever as these amazing
Speaker 1: dermatological skincare products that are in all the department stores.
Speaker 1: You've seen him forever. I don't really know that much
Speaker 1: about him, and when doing my research reading about him,
Speaker 1: he has such an interesting story. How he was born
Speaker 1: in Baghdad, you know, put himself through medical school, had
Speaker 1: so many jobs in between, and honestly, he was the
Speaker 1: first person that figured out the correlation between beauty and wellness,
Speaker 1: and his skincare approach always depended on that. He is
Speaker 1: quite something and I'm looking forward to understand why he
Speaker 1: looks so good at eighty one years old and what
Speaker 1: he does and here about his company. So here's my
Speaker 1: conversation with Dr Howard Murad. So, Dr Murad, I have
Speaker 1: to tell you, reading your biography, reading everything that you know,
Speaker 1: my amazing producer gave me, I wish there was a book.
Speaker 1: Is there a book of your life story? No, that
Speaker 1: really isn't. Maybe that should be, but yeah, you know
Speaker 1: that's written several books, um, but not specifically about my
Speaker 1: life story, a lot of it on my personal website
Speaker 1: D R. Howard your ad dot com. But we'll we'll
Speaker 1: start at the beginning, because your name has been in
Speaker 1: my radar on my radar for decades, and I don't
Speaker 1: really know that much about you and reading about you.
Speaker 1: You've had some fascinating life so a lot of the
Speaker 1: listeners you know, are new to to who you are.
Speaker 1: So could you start at the beginning? Where were you?
Speaker 1: I was born in Baghdad. That that was a country
Speaker 1: that never nobody ever heard of until about twenty years ago. Um.
Speaker 1: And as a child, we were fortunate to be able
Speaker 1: to migrate out of the country, um and come to
Speaker 1: the United States. I came here when I was seven
Speaker 1: years old. Yeah. You were New Yorker correct, Yeah. I
Speaker 1: grew up in New York. I went to college in
Speaker 1: New York and then I went to medical school in
Speaker 1: California and sort of I never impact Uh, And you
Speaker 1: went to medical school, but you also went to pharmaceutical school.
Speaker 1: Well it's a story, you know. I tell people make
Speaker 1: your mark on the campus of life and letter direct you. Um.
Speaker 1: I always kind of was interested in science as a younger,
Speaker 1: younger person, I wanted to be an engineer. But then
Speaker 1: somehow or other I didn't get calculus very well. And
Speaker 1: my older brother was a pharmacistant, said you like science,
Speaker 1: why don't you go into pharmacy school, And so I did.
Speaker 1: While I was in my farmacy school, I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I'd like to go to medical school. Probably won't get in,
Speaker 1: but I'll apply anyway. And I tell people, might make
Speaker 1: your mark on the cabinets of life and light to
Speaker 1: direct you, because a lot of times you don't know
Speaker 1: where you're gonna go. You let it, you let it
Speaker 1: take you. So it took me to go to medical school,
Speaker 1: and even there I always wanted to be on the surgeon.
Speaker 1: Uncle Sam had different plans for me. Sent me to
Speaker 1: Vietnam to the Italian surgeon and I got a lot
Speaker 1: of care of surgery. And when I came back for
Speaker 1: my second year of duty, I was attached to the
Speaker 1: a dermatology clinic. And in medical school that was the
Speaker 1: most boring class ever. I mean I fell asleep most
Speaker 1: of the time, but now in a different light, it
Speaker 1: was very interesting to me. And when I finished my
Speaker 1: military I got into in residency and you see l
Speaker 1: A and to be a hospital. So that changed my
Speaker 1: life entirely. And then your first practice was in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: It wasn't Los Angeles. It's a little community by the
Speaker 1: airport called Westchester. This was a very Chinese office. It
Speaker 1: used to be a psychiatrist office. When I started, there
Speaker 1: was no sign on the door. There was a tiny
Speaker 1: waiting room, a reception area, and an office. And so
Speaker 1: I started my first week in practice, I had one
Speaker 1: patients who just happened to walk by. It was a lunchtime.
Speaker 1: I happened to be there. I was going around trying
Speaker 1: to meet people, and it turned out it was the
Speaker 1: germantological problem. So I got my first patient without a
Speaker 1: sign on the door, without without office, but and that
Speaker 1: is and it grew from there, and that was Yes.
Speaker 1: I finished my weaponity in training and started my practice
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two. But you were one of the
Speaker 1: early doctors that realized that it's lifestyle and food and
Speaker 1: what you put in your mouth is an effective of
Speaker 1: the skin. And that's that was like in the eighties.
Speaker 1: Could you talk about that well, I under concept called
Speaker 1: inclusive health. Inclusive means everything is connected, so over time
Speaker 1: it was trying to understand, um that skincare, which now
Speaker 1: I call it. I always say skincare is health care.
Speaker 1: If you really understood it, that you if you're really
Speaker 1: taking care of your skin, it means that you're taking
Speaker 1: care of the rest of your body. Everything is connected.
Speaker 1: And as a dermatologist, I was recognizing the patients that
Speaker 1: I was seeing or coming in and the ones who
Speaker 1: did have a better lifestyle. We rate well, exercise and
Speaker 1: so on, seems to have better skin. Um. So it
Speaker 1: was a con sept of looking at that, but that
Speaker 1: led me into trying to understand what was going on
Speaker 1: and um. The other thing that really changed my life
Speaker 1: is understanding hydration. Now people think of hydration and drinking
Speaker 1: a glasses of water again. But if I were to
Speaker 1: have anybody come, I use is your skin dryer today
Speaker 1: than it was ten years ago? I think they would
Speaker 1: all say absolutely, and is dryer? So it's a fact
Speaker 1: of life that we go through stages of life going
Speaker 1: in full hydration to less and less hydration. And how
Speaker 1: do we get better hydrated? Well, maintaining the barrier function
Speaker 1: of your skin in the first line of defense, So
Speaker 1: making sure you're using sunscreens with antioxidants and inflammatories. And
Speaker 1: by the way, way back in two I started putting
Speaker 1: antioxidants in my products regardless of what they were treated,
Speaker 1: treating for um and so the idea of that barrier function.
Speaker 1: Think about it, when you get a sunburned skin gets red,
Speaker 1: but you also feel tired of arctic so you you
Speaker 1: begin to feel that what happened is damage penetrated through
Speaker 1: your skin into the blood stream and affected your brain
Speaker 1: and liver and every organ in your body. Also, the
Speaker 1: reverses food because when your heart's not healthy, your skin
Speaker 1: doesn't look so good, so you're less you're more pallid.
Speaker 1: So that connection was very important. So the other problem
Speaker 1: was and this was the drinking a glasses of water
Speaker 1: a day and maybe that's how much we need, but unfortunately,
Speaker 1: when you drink that much water, it just goes right
Speaker 1: through you. So I had the concept of eating your water,
Speaker 1: eating water rich foods. It's very important if you look
Speaker 1: at diet, basically, water rich foods are healthy for you.
Speaker 1: Basically fruits and vegetables that even means are you know
Speaker 1: you can absorb up to sight and water. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: fish and chicken without the skin uh is predominantly water
Speaker 1: maybe anyway, so generally help the foods are rich in water. Um.
Speaker 1: The other is the exercise. And people used to say,
Speaker 1: well I exercise, what I'm sweating, I'm drying. Yeah, you're sweating,
Speaker 1: but you're building muscle, and muscle is seven percent water.
Speaker 1: And finally, stress reducing stress is going to make a
Speaker 1: big difference in your life because when you do stress,
Speaker 1: and and and how do we do that? Dr murre at,
Speaker 1: how do we do that? My answer to that is
Speaker 1: magic only happens when you create your own um and
Speaker 1: go back a little bit. But that way back in
Speaker 1: two pounds and three accord the term cultural stress to
Speaker 1: stress the modern living. You know, if you think about it,
Speaker 1: we tend to have a very sedentary lifestyle, especially now
Speaker 1: with COVID nineteen. But it was happening, you know gradually
Speaker 1: anyway things get delivered to us. You can get food
Speaker 1: delivered faster than if you went to the grocery store.
Speaker 1: Your entertainment gets delivered to you, and you did to
Speaker 1: watch you just sitting. That leads to a sedentary lifestyle, Isolation, loneliness,
Speaker 1: all kinds of bad things, and it's constantly pervasive. So
Speaker 1: I have to understand you have that that damaging you.
Speaker 1: And once you understand that, you develop ways to think
Speaker 1: how I can get improvement with that. And then why
Speaker 1: did you want to start your own skincare brand? Well,
Speaker 1: it was a journey. I was a pharmacist, as you
Speaker 1: know before, and a lot of times I would recommend
Speaker 1: compounded prescriptions. I write the compound prescriptions and getting filled
Speaker 1: and people you know, like my compounding and they were
Speaker 1: coming and they would so I just wanted the compound
Speaker 1: of prescription. They didn't necessarily want to see me. And
Speaker 1: then I got involved in the Alphahi droxy acids way
Speaker 1: back in mid eighties. I would say I started cheating
Speaker 1: patients with the Alphi droxy passings and rammatically sults actually
Speaker 1: always sent thousand different patients with different levels of alfhi
Speaker 1: drops the answers mostly like colic, and I saw the
Speaker 1: results and I said, at the same time, in my
Speaker 1: own practice, I had a inesteficition and in electrologies, so
Speaker 1: it's kind of a pre you know many spats. Before
Speaker 1: there wasn't any spat. I said, what the heck, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe we should make it available. I opened up my
Speaker 1: own SPAT, which is twenty miles away from my practice.
Speaker 1: But people came to that, and so I started giving
Speaker 1: them the ALPHI drox, the acids and decided, well, let
Speaker 1: me see what I could sell it to other salons
Speaker 1: in other places. And so I started my bus knowing
Speaker 1: nothing about business. So did you started by yourself? Did
Speaker 1: you find a lab, a partner? I mean, how do you?
Speaker 1: How did you do that? I wish I could give
Speaker 1: you the you know, a roadmap, because I didn't have one.
Speaker 1: I basically I met a person who said, why don't
Speaker 1: you started off a spot of your own? And so
Speaker 1: that's a good idea, and I said, okay, I'll open one.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to do it, so I asked
Speaker 1: him to help me. And you helped me with, you know,
Speaker 1: finding somebody in a space to rent and things like that.
Speaker 1: And then I decided why should I only have it
Speaker 1: in my spot? Could sell it all over. I really
Speaker 1: dedicated myself. Basically spent virtually maybe a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: two hundred and seventy five days a year away from
Speaker 1: my home going to trade shows and things like that
Speaker 1: to trying to do open a business. I have a saying,
Speaker 1: don't let failures spoil your success because there were failures.
Speaker 1: As you know, if you have their failures, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people stopped, they say, I can't do it anymore.
Speaker 1: My best way to describe that is I decided, well,
Speaker 1: besides just selling it to Cilantro, I don't and I
Speaker 1: sell it know an informercial conformercials were a big deal
Speaker 1: at the time, but there were you know, there were
Speaker 1: only certain channels. So again I found somebody who suggested
Speaker 1: that they could do a good job. And I wanted
Speaker 1: to break the mold because at that time it was
Speaker 1: just people sitting in a chair and talking to each other.
Speaker 1: I wanted a story. There were two sisters wanted to
Speaker 1: care of herself be other. We didn't. I created some products,
Speaker 1: did in commercials and I sold zero. I had borrowed
Speaker 1: money to do that, and it just didn't more um,
Speaker 1: But then I still like the idea. So at a
Speaker 1: couple of years later, what I did is like again
Speaker 1: I borrowed some more money. I had to repay my money,
Speaker 1: but I've invested my whole again in this one, and
Speaker 1: this one's huge and brought your ad. I think the
Speaker 1: reason people know you're at is more from the infomercials
Speaker 1: than actually you know, some of the retail and other
Speaker 1: places because it was a real success. Now you have
Speaker 1: how many products you have over skin care products? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's basically there are a lot of
Speaker 1: numbers and sometimes too much is too much? Probably better
Speaker 1: to have fewer, excuse and many students. But you know,
Speaker 1: every time you come up with an idea, so this
Speaker 1: is great, but the other one is also great. By
Speaker 1: trying to limit it is a good idea, I think,
Speaker 1: otherwise becomes a little bit confusing. Basically, the general concept
Speaker 1: behind it I called the hydrade shouldn't products. These are
Speaker 1: people products for everybody, whether your young holds or in between,
Speaker 1: and they're encouraging better hydration again, which is the foundation
Speaker 1: of use than I was telling you before how important
Speaker 1: hydration is um. And then there's the product that contained
Speaker 1: retinal and then there are products that contain the alpha
Speaker 1: hydroxy acids. Invited the what do each of those things do?
Speaker 1: Could you tell everyone what vitamin C does? What alpha hydroxy? Okay,
Speaker 1: so the first one is for everybody, the hydration one,
Speaker 1: because they have antioxygens and inflammatories and encourages the better
Speaker 1: hydration of your skin again, the ones that you can
Speaker 1: do to really back the lines the appearance of your
Speaker 1: skin is hydrated. When it's fully hydrated, lines and wrinkles
Speaker 1: and things begin to disappear. Um. Then the second stage
Speaker 1: is maybe somebody in there, say, twenties to the forties,
Speaker 1: out of the sun too much, getting recles, diptation find
Speaker 1: and that's why idmen ce alphydroxy acids. And then beyond
Speaker 1: that is people who want something more dramatic. And I
Speaker 1: believe retinal at this point is being ingredient. There are
Speaker 1: many other ingredient to many other things that go beyond it,
Speaker 1: but the basic important nvenient to that, although again you
Speaker 1: could use any of those at any as because retinal
Speaker 1: is a it's used for acne, it can be used
Speaker 1: for wrinkles, it can be used for a firming, and
Speaker 1: could be used for you know, at any age, and
Speaker 1: so can be alphydroxy acid. But generally that's what the
Speaker 1: categories are. And your business is so huge right now,
Speaker 1: are you do still own it or no? I told
Speaker 1: I told the whole brand to Unilever in two pound
Speaker 1: and are you still involved. I'm involved in the sense
Speaker 1: that you know, it's my legacy I'm involved in my
Speaker 1: pe'll see my face and my things and things like that,
Speaker 1: because that's what lives on. I'm there to support the
Speaker 1: team and do the best that they can and and
Speaker 1: help them in any way I can um. My journey
Speaker 1: so far now had been to make it lightly different
Speaker 1: life for myself but still be involved in the brand.
Speaker 1: I hope i'd be in different involves soill I die
Speaker 1: because it is what people know before and it is
Speaker 1: important to me that it is successful. I have no
Speaker 1: financial interest, and you know, I don't get a percentagement.
Speaker 1: Was it emotionally hard for you to to let go?
Speaker 1: It was very difficult because it was a family unit.
Speaker 1: One of my daughters, my nephew, a lot of family
Speaker 1: members were involved. But I could see the writing on
Speaker 1: the walls. I could see that there was a point
Speaker 1: where we were getting to that we there was so
Speaker 1: much competition from all over and the ability to really
Speaker 1: maintaining and grow was going to be more and more challenging.
Speaker 1: And I didn't feel that I could bring that forward.
Speaker 1: I didn't believe that I could make that maybe happen.
Speaker 1: More so, what's spring enjoy these days? What are you
Speaker 1: doing for fun? Over the years I started painting, so
Speaker 1: I still paint. You know, I'm not sure exactly what
Speaker 1: I do, but the days go by. Know, I I live,
Speaker 1: I I spend a little more time with my family
Speaker 1: and you know, things like that that I do and
Speaker 1: I and again, I'm still involved a little bit with
Speaker 1: the company because you know, I helped them with their
Speaker 1: promotions available. They asked me any questions about what what's
Speaker 1: my opinion on x Y and z UM. I don't
Speaker 1: tell them what to do. I give them my opinion
Speaker 1: and sub to them to take it or not. And
Speaker 1: sometimes they take it, sometimes they don't. Since this podcast
Speaker 1: is called Beyond the Beauty, if you could just answer
Speaker 1: what beauty means to you, Like, what's your definition of beauty?
Speaker 1: Beauty it's health and wellness. Very hard to be beautiful
Speaker 1: if you don't have wellness and health in your life.
Speaker 1: You know, people ask me what's the one thing I
Speaker 1: could do for my skin that would that would really
Speaker 1: make a difference, And my answer is always smile, because
Speaker 1: when you smile, the skins lifted up and you look
Speaker 1: more attractive, more becoming when you smiled. Then when you're angry,
Speaker 1: you know, there's so many other ways that I can
Speaker 1: look at you and because everybody is unique in their
Speaker 1: own way. One thing I tell my patients to do,
Speaker 1: and I know it's a podcast, but everybody has paper
Speaker 1: and pencil, paper in and I asked them to, without
Speaker 1: thinking and only ten seconds, do a scribbled step. You
Speaker 1: know how you just sometimes you will write on the paper,
Speaker 1: you kind of screw around ten seconds, don't think about
Speaker 1: what you're doing. And if you give it to a
Speaker 1: hundred people, everyone's going to have a different scribble scrapp
Speaker 1: because everybody, you know, they're not going to do the same,
Speaker 1: And that to me proves everybody is a unique individual.
Speaker 1: Allow the unique you to blossom because there's nobody else
Speaker 1: exactly like you, nobody else who has exactly your talents,
Speaker 1: and nobody else who can do what you do. So
Speaker 1: allow the unique you to blossom. And where you put
Speaker 1: the scribble scrabble in the space that you spent it,
Speaker 1: to me is where you think your potential is. But
Speaker 1: the white space is your true potential. So the idea
Speaker 1: is all of us. I think we're so good, we
Speaker 1: can do X, Y and B. It was kind of limited,
Speaker 1: but if you look at my journey, I never knew
Speaker 1: where it was going to end up, and every step
Speaker 1: of the way it was a little bit different, but
Speaker 1: I allowed just to happen. And don't let failure spoil
Speaker 1: your sticks us and expose your accomplishments to your harshest
Speaker 1: critic without fear of rejection. And who is your harshest
Speaker 1: critic to you? So those kinds of things. That's kind
Speaker 1: of all kinds of philosophy ideas that I like to
Speaker 1: share with people. That's wonderful. Well, now I have a
Speaker 1: speed round, so I've got five or six questions, and
Speaker 1: let's see how we do. What's your daily skincare routine. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know it's different every day, but it's always a
Speaker 1: treatment and sunscreen of moisturizers at night. What's your supplement
Speaker 1: health routine like these days because you have very beautiful skin. Well,
Speaker 1: I do take a lot of supplements, the basic ingredients
Speaker 1: and let mean I take the basic one a day
Speaker 1: vitamin with vitamin B and things like that in it.
Speaker 1: I do believe in glucosamine. You know, one of the
Speaker 1: things that happens to us is over time our collagen
Speaker 1: bundles begins to decrease. We see that unless more wrinkled
Speaker 1: and joint pains and things like that. And colleges is
Speaker 1: built by h through cosmine amano act if I evence
Speaker 1: trades minerals, so I take it through cosmine supplement that
Speaker 1: has that combination and basic one a day. And how
Speaker 1: about your exercise do you have an exercise routine? I
Speaker 1: have a trainer four days a week, and when he's
Speaker 1: with me, I wish to do well. When I'm alone,
Speaker 1: I don't do so well. You know, I do the
Speaker 1: same thing with him. I could do it myself because
Speaker 1: the same thing, but when he's got there, I don't
Speaker 1: do it. I hate to say that and admit it,
Speaker 1: but that's a truth. Truth is good. What about a
Speaker 1: favorite cocktail? Do you have one? It's not that I
Speaker 1: don't drink. I've never had a problem with alcohol at all.
Speaker 1: There were times when I would drink of you know,
Speaker 1: to his three sconsins in the evening, but right now,
Speaker 1: im you know, I might have a glass of champagne
Speaker 1: or something to celebrate. My favorite drink is a green
Speaker 1: drink that my wife makes that is a lot of
Speaker 1: vegetables and mostly greens, and that's a mix them all
Speaker 1: up and question them up and we drink them every day,
Speaker 1: so I get my vegetables and salad and whatever all
Speaker 1: at one time as a drink, so make sure I
Speaker 1: get that. And how about for the final question, what
Speaker 1: is the one thing you can't live without? My wife?
Speaker 1: Best answer? How many years you married? Dr Murad? Well
Speaker 1: we've been together twenty years and been married. Ah, that's
Speaker 1: so nice. Well, I have thoroughly enjoyed talking to you
Speaker 1: and just really like absorbing your wisdom. You are a
Speaker 1: very special man, and I hope more people of the
Speaker 1: different generations learn about not just your products, but you.
Speaker 1: And I want that book, your life story, your advice.
Speaker 1: All right, I'll have to do that. Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. From this has been a real
Speaker 1: pleasure to meet you and to talk to you. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.