Skin Benefits of Lard and Tallow, Treating Sunburn & Anti Aging | Charles Mayfield DSH #381

Seriously what we ingest through our mouths, but we don't understand that our skin eats things.

And so if you look at the regulations and everything around skincare, it dates back to 1938.

And the only ingredients, here you go, the only ingredients in skincare that require pre-market safety testing are color additives.

That's it?

That's it.

Wow.

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And here's the episode.

Ladies and gentlemen, today we are going to learn about a lot of fun health topics, including the skin and how important it is to take care of your skin.

We got Charles Mayfield here today.

How's it going, man?

Going great, Sean.

How are you?

I'm good, man.

I got to hear how you got into this whole journey around the skin.

Oh, goodness.

It's a couple of different journeys that came together, but sort of a healthy lifestyle, eating, cooking background, got into the fitness scene pretty well.

And those two coalesced into getting into farming.

And farming put me in a situation where I got a really nasty sunburn.

And lo and behold,

used animal fat post-sunburn.

And it worked.

Wow.

So, yeah.

So we,

that was, gosh, that was three and a half years ago and

launched the company about a year and a half ago.

But yeah,

we've seen tremendous results

with

just using real ingredients and no junk.

So you said animal fat.

What does that look like?

So

we use three different animal fats from two different animals.

We use lard from pigs, a leaf lard, which is also from pigs, and then tallow.

The animal fat-based skincare market is minuscule compared to

what I would call the industrial skincare market.

But most of them are using tallow predominantly.

We're the first to use lard, which is fat from pigs.

Got it.

And how toxic are these lotions and these sunscreens that everyone uses on a daily basis?

They can be quite toxic.

There's a lot of data.

There's a similar

adverse event reporting system for skincare as there is for

vaccines and other

different medical situations.

But yeah, we've seen there's a lot of data now about various cancers.

A lot of the

preservatives in skincare, phthalates, parabens, these are known endocrine disruptors.

So think like our hormone system.

A lot of them are endocrine disrupting compounds.

And then, you know, before we hit record, we were talking about the microbiome.

So the human body is inhabited by a lot of different bugs

that are called our microbiome that happens in our gut and also externally on our skin.

And a lot of these compounds in water-based creams

disrupt that and kill our natural microbiome as well.

Right.

So there's bugs on our skin that are actually good for us, and these lotions and sunscreens are killing them?

Yes.

So interestingly enough, I think this is sort of one of the next frontiers.

We've had a human microbiome project going on now for a couple years,

but we know less about the relationship between our microbiome and human health than we know about space.

There's a lot to be discovered there.

I like to take a little bit more of an intuitive approach to it.

You know,

we coexist with these creatures

and have for hundreds of thousands of years.

Best we not just go blanketly napalming them with toxic preservatives and skincare.

So do they help us?

We are,

yes, they do help in that they coexist with us.

I've been trying to get on Brett Weinstein's podcast, The Dark Horse.

He's an evolutionary biologist.

I've been, Brett, if you're listening.

But, you know, to talk about skincare through the lens of evolution.

And just, again, we've coexisted and co-evolved with these bugs for many, many years.

And

whether it's hormone signaling,

we know that bugs, the microbiome of the gut

helps with the signaling of

satiety hormones.

You're full, you're hungry, all sorts of stuff.

So, yes, I'm going to intuitively say that they're very important to our health.

and so we need to be a little bit more respectful for them.

When did these mass market lotions and skincare products hit the market?

Was it recently?

Early 1900s.

So skincare as an industry

was really reserved for,

I would call it the elite of the elite of the elite,

all the way back.

I mean, we've been fascinated with skincare.

all of human history.

You can look into the Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts.

I mean, the vibrant, glowing skin.

I've used those Egyptian Aztec clays.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so

our infatuation with skin health has always been here.

But

until the turn of the century,

the ingredients predominantly used in skincare were hard to find and expensive.

And so with

the advent of,

I would say, petroleum derivatives and also seed oils.

So we see at the turn of the century, you see Crisco.

So Crisco is a hydrogenated,

well, it depends.

Sometimes it's canola oil, sometimes it's rapeseed oil.

It's a seed oil.

It's not a very, very healthy product.

And it was originally used to make candles.

This is proctoring.

This is the origin story of Crisco.

It was really an injuring lubricant, and then it was to make candles.

And at the turn of the century, you get the light bulb, electricity.

What are we going to do with all this cottonseed oil?

And so

they hydrogenated it, turned it into Crisco, bleached it white, ironically, to compete with lard, which was the preeminent cooking fat at the turn of the century.

And so

as we've been able to, from an industrial standpoint, harness more petroleum derivatives and make cheap

seed oil derivatives out of industrial agriculture, then it's skincare is fat-based.

We talked about water, but it's really an emulsification of fat and water.

That's the chemistry of industrial skincare and so that the cheaper and more available the fat side of the equation the more you can manufacture and right put put put products on the shelf that you know have a two three four five year shelf life because again all of this toxic goop that that keeps them from going bad.

And so we're able to make them very cheap.

They're able to sit on a warehouse shelf for years

before ultimately getting in the consumer's hand.

And so that, I think, is what truly led.

We've always been fascinated with skin health.

But in terms of, you know, look at all the other marketing things we've learned in the last hundred years.

And we're seeing that, you know, manifest now digitally, you know, what happened with marketing, the turn of the century and understanding human psychology and all of these various things have

all come together.

Oh, yeah.

They're good with that marketing, man.

They got me on sunscreen for a while.

They got us all.

They got us all.

Man, I I used to think using not was a good thing.

Well, it's, you know,

for your listeners out there,

if you're a skin health expert, whether that's an esthetician or a dermatologist, if they're not talking to you about sleep and what you eat and hydration and all of these lifestyle things that either promote or demote skin health,

then I would argue they're not doing you a very good job.

For sure.

And, you know,

the sunscreen thing, I'm a little older than you, Sean.

I can close my eyes and remember, I can smell it.

The Panama Jack tanning oil.

Tanning oil.

We didn't have sunscreens.

It was tanning oil.

So it was like this, you know, squeeze it out oil that my dad, you know, we'd go fishing when we were kids.

And there was number six, number eight, number 10, and number 12.

That was the SPF of these.

Oh, that's it?

Yeah, that was it.

And you could probably,

you were hard-pressed to find an SPF value on a suntan lotion 30 years ago

that was higher than 15.

Now they're like 100.

Oh, yeah.

And so if you look, I mean,

truth be told, look at the data.

Incidence of skin cancer have gone up precipitously.

Use of sunscreen has gone up precipitously.

And the SPF value have gone up precipitously.

So all, you know, if something was working, then we would see those incidents of skin cancer go down.

So it's correlated.

I think there's a correlation and there's a whole new mindset around looking at seed oils and the impact they have on us.

Yeah.

And of course, a lot of these sunscreens and industrial skincare products are seed oil based.

Wow.

I didn't know that.

I thought just on the diet side to cut out seed oils.

I didn't know they were in motions, too.

It's in everything.

Wow.

That's scary.

And with skincare, you know, here you go.

So I can find, if I'm a skincare company, I can find the most obscure, hard to reach,

tropical seed, right?

And I can do a couple of marketing studies on it and I can extract the oil from that seed and I can put it in my product.

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And I can talk about the benefits of this new wage, you know, can't find it anywhere else ingredient.

I mean, look at the ingredients in a water-based skincare.

Can't even read them.

You can't read them.

If you're lucky in skincare, you've got, I would call it plant-based fats, olive oil, shea butter, coconut oil.

If you're lucky,

seed oils are different than plant oils.

Right?

Olive oil comes from the fruit.

Avocado oil comes from the fruit of the avocado, not the seed.

Not the seed, right?

Right, right.

And so, yeah, it's dominated by seed oils.

And so we, you know,

I take the stance of, listen, shea butter, coconut oil, all of that's great.

You're not a shea, you're not a coconut,

you're a mammal.

And so we should consider using animal fat as the predominant food for your skin.

Nice.

A lot of people want to get tan, but is that actually damaging their skin when they're exposing their skin to that much sunlight?

Well, you don't need a lot of sunlight to get tan.

We have an infatuation with being tan, despite, you know,

you know, it boils back to your genetics.

Like if you're low or high melanin content in your skin, you know, then you need to take a little more or less care in how much sun exposure you get.

But more importantly,

we've lost a lot of respect for the sun.

I think

because we've been encouraged to just cover ourselves in this

sunscreen.

But if you rewind the clock a hundred years, if it was noon, there were no swimming pools, you know, we weren't most people weren't hanging out by the pool at noon.

And if you were outdoors back then, you were fully covered.

Big hats, you know, working outside.

Now, we got plenty of sun exposure.

To answer your question, I don't think it's unhealthy to want

darker or

more sun-exposed skin.

I think more of the problem is created when we spend too much time in the sun, direct sun, during the hottest times of the day.

We could get a lot more accomplished if we limited our direct sun exposure,

ate a healthy diet, got plenty of sleep.

You'll have that golden brown you're after.

Yeah, I agree.

What's the science behind tallow and lard being good on the skin compared compared to other skincare products?

Again, I go back to intuition.

We're an animal.

So the science is, so people, this is one of the problems with the skincare industry is we,

if you compare it to the food industry, okay, we take very seriously what we ingest through our mouth, but we don't understand that our skin eats things.

And so if you look at the regulations and everything around skincare, it dates back to 1938.

And the only ingredients, here you go, the only ingredients in skincare that require pre-market safety testing are color additives.

That's it?

That's it.

Wow.

That's scary.

It's quite scary, especially when you consider that in 1938, which is when this Food and Cosmetics Act was originally written, think about how many chemicals we'd figured out how to, you know, harness.

Probably none by

the industrial age is just getting kicked off.

So fast forward now, you know, almost 100 years later, it's the same regulations.

Why haven't they updated it?

Well, they've updated the act a number of times.

They've excluded cosmetics every single time.

So the food aspect of the FDA and the food and cost has been updated over time.

Most of the regulation in skincare now today is really more about labeling.

Yeah.

not about consumer safety.

Sounds like someone's getting paid off.

It's a lot of money in skincare.

So why tallow and animal fat?

Just to start there.

We're an animal, okay, and our skin eats things.

So you start getting into what does your skin want?

Well, it wants naturally occurring vitamins.

It wants naturally occurring lipids and fats.

And if you look at how animal fat is put together, especially when that animal is sourced from a regenerative, holistic land management, you know, high animal welfare environment, then their fat and candidly, human fat look a lot alike, right, in terms of the vitamin A's, E's, D's, and all that.

And so

if our skin walked up to a buffet line of fats, it would preferentially choose pig fat, beef fat, lamb,

mammalian fat, I would say animal-based fat.

It would preferentially choose those things.

Yeah.

So knowing that your skin eats everything that you put on it, what are you using in the shower?

Are you using body wash, shampoo, and conditioner?

God, that's a great question.

No.

Wow.

No.

This is the thing you always tell people at the end of the night.

But I use, I make my own soaps.

We're going to probably have a soap line in the coming year, but I make our own soaps out of very, very basic soap ingredients, you know, some lard, some water, and some lye.

Okay.

But I only soap

two or three times a month.

What?

Now, I shower every day.

Took a shower this morning.

I wash cloth.

I emulsify.

I don't soap off too much.

It's probably one of the things that sparked the launch of this company was

the over sanitation that really stemmed from the pandemic.

You know, it was like hand sanitizing everything.

And I noticed my skin was getting really wonky.

Right.

And so

I think we over sanitized.

I think we did.

There's no question about it.

And so, and then you throw on top of that, there's a lot of junk in soaps, whether it's the perfumes or the various fragrances they use.

And so

our skin produces oil naturally.

And our microbiome exists naturally.

And so I think the fewer times we can disrupt that with these.

you know, harsh

cleansers, I think the better.

Yeah, some people shower every day.

Some people shower twice a day.

Do you think that is too often?

Well, defined shower.

Again, if you're rinsing off with water,

go for it, man.

Well, people use shampoo and conditioner every day.

I think that's too much.

And body wash.

I think that's too much.

I personally, now, you know, again, everybody's got to get to their own level of comfort here, but

Sean, people will ask, well, do you stink?

Well, no, you don't.

Now, if you go work out or go run a marathon or, you know, go get sweaty, you might, you might smell.

Right.

But

again, that's why you tell them at the end of the night, not at the beginning of the night, because

in social settings, I don't say a thing.

No, I'm glad you have this take because I get a lot of heat for this, but I only shower twice a week, three times a week.

And I mean, my girl kind of hates it.

But other than that, I don't feel like you need to do it daily.

It seems like a chore at that point.

It's relaxing.

Now, most of my showers are cold.

Yeah, I do both.

Yeah,

I like that aspect of it.

I do like the cleansing

idea of a shower, you know, washing off the day.

I just don't use soap.

Just use some water.

I think we're

over sanitized for sure.

I think so, too.

Let's talk about...

Have you looked into urology at all?

A little.

What are your thoughts on like applying urine to the skin?

You know, I love, I've listened to that episode with uh, so I was a little worried.

You know, I'm the lard guy, and I'm like, I'm going on Sean's show, I'm gonna talk about lard.

Well, hell, he's had a guy on there that talked about urine.

That's

that's a little out there for me, okay.

Uh, but I'm not saying I wouldn't try it.

Um,

I

there's

there's there's so many things that

one can try.

And I'm also a big believer in sort of the placebo effect.

So if you think it's working,

and you know, nothing's more natural than urine.

I mean, you know.

You could be doing worse things.

It's making me think of the kingpin movie.

There's a scene in there.

But I mean, nothing's more sterile than urine.

And it's your own body.

You know,

my contention with that particular topic, sean is my body didn't want it the first time why should i give it back yeah that's that's my own contention now if we're talking about it from the angle of it's a cleanser or a nourisher for externally on the skin

okay you know we're not drinking it or

some people drink it too it's i i understand i'm definitely not doing that but um

no i mean it's a fascinating topic um

it's it's

It's a little out there for me.

I feel that respect.

Yeah, I draw a line somewhere around there, too.

So we're on the same page.

I want to take it back to your farming days.

Is it true there is a soil problem right now in the country?

Tremendous soil problem, yes.

And this is documented.

I forget if it was the World Health Organization.

We're going to run out of topsoil in about, I think we've got 30 to 50 years left.

Wow.

And we're done.

So we can't farm anymore?

We run out of topsoil, we're done.

Wow.

Okay.

You know,

you get this climate change stuff that's going on.

Regenerative farming is a way to build soil.

Our animal fats come from

farms that grow healthy, happy animals and build soil.

There's great examples of this with white oak pastures down in Georgia.

You got your polyface farms in Virginia, primal pastures out on the west coast.

There's examples of this everywhere.

You can farm in a way that builds soil,

is not reliant on chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

That's another big problem.

And it reduces all the different tillages.

You know, when we till up the earth,

it's a dust bowl all over again.

We've already had a dust bowl.

When was that?

1930s?

Oh, wow.

Was the big dust bowl?

Pretty recent.

Oh, yeah.

No,

we've got shining example historically after shining example of our inability to manage soil.

And yes, there are examples of this being turning the corner.

I think we can feed the world this way, even though I don't like saying that because it's not our responsibility to feed the world.

It's our responsibility to feed our nation or our community.

But yes, it is a huge problem, Sean.

The good news is there are lots of really awesome solutions and they involve animal agriculture.

So we'll have to start now.

We're already starting now.

I mean, if your listeners want to look into, like the Savory Institute is a great resource in terms of showing documented improvements.

White Oak Pastures down in Bluffton, Georgia is another great example.

They've got some studies done by

the same third-party study group that did Beyond Meats.

carbon sequestration study.

Came down to White Oak, spent, I think, a year down there.

And to turn this, this will blow your mind.

Like every pound of ground beef that that farm produced was a net carbon sink.

Wow.

That's impressive.

It's 180 degrees opposite what they tell you is possible with animal agriculture.

You know, it's like

it's polluting, you know, the cow farts are

ruining the planet.

Cow burps, cow farts are ruining the planet.

And that's wrong.

It's flippantly wrong.

And they've now proven it.

So yes, we need to be building more soil.

We grow a lot of grain in this country.

Most of it is for ethanol

and to feed animals.

It's not actually what we're eating.

And then what we do eat is in highly processed foods now, too.

So you've got a whole bunch of people vested in the current model.

Consumers are going to be the ones that lead us to the next spot, whether that be through the lens of skincare or through the lens of, you know, what we eat

daily.

Seems like glyphosate is another issue these farmers are facing right now.

On one hand, they need to grow these crops and they have to use something like that to keep them healthy, right?

But on the other hand, it's causing a lot of health concerns.

So what do you think the fix is there?

Well, the fix for starters is stop using glyphosate as a desiccant.

So I'll give you a little history on glyphosate.

Two things.

One is all the studies, all the safety tests were performed on glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in Roundup, but it's only 51% of the recipe, right?

So all the safety testing was done on one ingredient, not the finished product.

That's not good.

Secondarily, it's not human-safe for the same reason that these skincare products aren't necessarily human-safe.

Glyphosate does not disrupt any of the metabolic pathways that humans use to generate energy.

It does disrupt the photosynthetic system and processes of plants, which is why it's a great herbicide.

Problem is, we're covered

with all these bugs.

So all this microbiotic,

our microbiome is impacted.

by this chemical.

Throw on top of that, starting about 15, 20 years ago, they started using so when you got wheat in the field or soybeans or you know, whatever crop, it's time to harvest.

Well,

you can't harvest until it's reached senescence or died, okay, and then it dries out and you bring the harvesters through and you harvest it.

Well,

if you're waiting for that to happen and it rains, now all of a sudden I'm delayed and I can't harvest anymore and I ruin crops.

So about 15, 20 years ago, they figured out that they could start using Roundup as a desiccant.

So, when it was time to harvest, they just go through the fields and kill everything with Roundup.

Well,

that's different than spraying it on everything when you put the plant in the ground.

Right.

See, it was originally all these genetically modified crops, you plant them, you spray the field, it kills everything else but the crop, and then the crop grows.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, you've got a whole growing season for that glyphosate to dissipate.

Now, we're spraying it directly on our food.

So you spray it, kill it, and two, three, four days later, you harvest it.

Right.

So glyphosate is a real problem.

I don't think we need it.

The environment certainly doesn't need it.

I mean, we've got

a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico the size of, I think, Rhode Island.

What caused that dead zone?

All of the runoff of chemicals.

You think about all the rivers.

Yeah.

The mighty Mississippi spills spills out of the Gulf of Mexico.

That's crazy.

Oh, yeah.

There's a dead zone the size of Rhode Island in the Gulf of Mexico.

Holy crap, that's huge.

And they'll never be able to grow again.

I never say never, but

it's not going to grow until we stop

overusing.

And synthetic fertilizers are just as bad.

Synthetic fertilizers will oxidize the ground, which is why you got to keep using them every single year.

I mean, if they really worked, it's like our skincare products.

You need less of our stuff over time because it's really good at what it does.

Well,

you would think that would be the case with artificial fertilizers, but it's not.

And so they

all of this chemical soup gets in the water.

It's not great for the obviously the sea life, but it's created a dead zone.

Yeah.

Did you see the new thing Bill Gates started with the vegetables?

Is this the peel?

Yeah, the peel.

I've seen it.

Not real excited about it.

I'm at Costco like looking for it.

No, it's got me paranoid.

Have you seen it yet?

No, but they're at Costco apparently.

A lot of vegetables at Costco have it.

Have it now.

Yeah.

See, I'm worried.

I'm actually really worried that they're going to reach a point where they don't have to put it on the label.

They probably will.

They don't even tell you what's in it.

I've been a

pragmatic carnivore now for about 11, 12 months.

Okay.

Absolutely.

I mean, I still eat an apple, you know, occasionally.

But yeah, mostly meat, eggs, dairy, and salt.

Yeah, these days with all the weird stuff they're putting in fruits and vegetables, I don't blame you.

You're constantly dodging landmines at the grocery store.

It's tough.

I mean, you know, I always say, you know, buy local if you can.

You know, it's kind of hard to do in Las Vegas.

But

there are options.

You know, there's still...

And even mail order options, there's some options there.

But yeah, right now I'm sort of sticking to meat and dairy.

And you feel a lot better?

I feel great.

Wow.

Everyone I talk to, that's a carnivore, says that.

I feel, yeah.

Well, I think that's how we got introduced.

Yeah.

Dr.

Ovedia, shout out, Phil.

And he's seen a lot of stuff, so he's very educated about

diets.

Quite.

And, you know, and Phil's another great one of just, I think I like his approach with health.

I mean, he sort of talks about it through the lens of if you want to eat this way, this way, or this way, just focus on real, you know, whole foods.

Yeah.

And I'm the same way with skincare.

Like, let's get some of the preservatives and toxicity out.

I mean, if you want to go tallow-based, great.

If you want to play around over here in our lard camp, that's awesome too.

Yeah.

So talk to me about the future of the company, any products coming out, where you see it going.

Yeah, so we're still very young.

And right now we're looking at soap, I mentioned.

I'm looking at deodorant.

I need that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've tried so many natural deodorants, and I don't know.

All right.

I got to ship you one of those.

I've got some I'm playing around with.

Okay.

Yeah.

I've tried like seven different brands.

Really?

Yeah.

I want to get into, you know, the funny thing, Sean, is our product, skincare wants you to have an individual product for an individual need.

Yeah.

You know, AM cream, PM cream, face cream, skin cream.

There's eye creams.

Oh, yeah.

The list goes on and on.

I can understand

treating this differently than this.

But

I think we should have a soap.

I know we should have a soap.

I know we should have a deodorant.

I'd like to have a shave,

shave product, like a pre-shave.

I hate how artificial those shaving creams are.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I hate using shaving.

And shaving cream.

So with shaving, no men think they have a skincare routine, but every man I know has a skincare.

They just don't know it.

So you got the cream on the front end, and then you got the aftershave on the back end.

And so typically those are two different, you know, alcohol-based, chemical-based compounds.

You're putting it all over your face.

It's getting in your body.

Yep.

And so,

yeah, so that's the plan right now is to continue with our sort of stable of products.

We just launched the Epidermis this year, which is our portable packable.

I think I sent you some of that.

And yeah, we're just going to keep, right now we're just trying to build brand awareness.

We're sort of the new kid on the block and and

again, grateful for being able to come on a show like this.

Yeah, we'll put a link in the in the video, man.

But I've been using it and I was surprised it didn't have a smell.

People think lard smells like bacon grease.

It does not.

I think actually we use tallow as well.

I think tallow is a more odorous.

animal fat.

Yeah.

But for your listeners out there, it's not.

I sent you the unscented too.

Yeah, no, it feels great, man.

I like it.

That's the funniest joke for me is early on when we launched the company.

So I, you know, you can imagine I ordered labels, right, for our jars, and I ordered like 10x

the scented labels versus the unsented, because I'm sitting here in myself, I'm going, no one's going to want to smell lard and tallow.

It could not be more opposite.

Like people are like just running towards the unscented.

And I actually enjoy our unscented more.

Yeah.

It's more grounding to me.

Yeah.

It's just nothing there.

It's just.

Yeah.

That's funny, man.

But where can people find you and find the company, man?

Sure.

Pharaoh.life.

That's a F-A-R-R-O-W.

Life is our website.

And that's it.

We're direct to consumer out of East Tennessee and hoping to continue to grow.

And just grateful.

Yeah.

Thanks so much for coming on, Charles.

Absolutely, bro.

Yeah.

Thanks for watching, guys, as always, and I'll see you tomorrow.