Dr. Murad’s top beauty tip: Eat your water

When I hit 40, I couldn’t pretend anymore that my body was the same as it had been in my 20s, or even my early 30s.  Back then, I could bounce back from whatever excess I subjected myself to, whether it was too much rich food or too many late nights.

Not anymore. I look in the mirror and the physical landscape has changed. Contours are getting slacker, my once combination skin is getting drier. Heck, even my hair is dry. It’s like watching a verdant oasis gradually get taken over by a parched desert. Does that fountain of youth really exist, or is it just a mirage?

As it happens, dermatologist Dr. Howard Murad has found the fountain of youth, and he says the way to get there is not through anti-aging, but through youth building. That’s a pretty radical paradigm shift, if you ask me. How do you build youth?

“Chances are your skin was healthier as a baby than now,” says the American doctor, who was in Bangkok recently to launch a new book and talk about his groundbreaking theories. “Dealing with stress was probably easier for you when you were younger. Anti-aging is preventing the aging. Youth building is going back in time. Anti-aging is limiting. Youth building is going back to how you were when you were younger.”

The fountain of youth

Unlike the rest of the skincare industry, Dr. Murad believes in a proactive — rather than preventive — approach to looking young and staying healthy. As the author of the bestselling The Water Secret: The Cellular Breakthrough to Look and Feel 10 Years Younger, he proposed that it is our cells’ ability to remain hydrated and retain water that determines the state of our health and looks. Considering what I just told you about deserts and dryness, I am hearing him loud and clear.

“The fountain of youth was water,” he states. “When you were born, you were between 75 and 80 percent water. Ultimately as we get older we have less and less water in our cells. Your skin is drier today than it was 10 years ago. But every cell in your body is drier, and we go from a state of full hydration ultimately to dehydration. So how we can encourage more water into your cells? That is, in essence, youth building.”

Inclusive health

Based in Los Angeles, Dr. Murad has worked with over 50,000 patients. From his decades of practice, he came to realize that traditional methods of medicine — spot treating the disease or condition — weren’t working anymore. He thus formulated his theory of Inclusive Health: treating the patient as a whole and addressing all three aspects of an individual — external, internal and emotional. He also started jotting down some realizations that came to him as he listened to his patients talk about their problems. As a doctor in Hollywood, a fair number of them are celebrities, and he’s seen some of the most beautiful people who — surprise, surprise — have less-than-flattering views of themselves. Over time he began to write down these inspirational sayings on cards and send his patients home with a few of them. “I listen and think about them after they leave — that person, look at how beautiful she is and she thinks she’s ugly. I’m helping the average person to be healthier and happier.”

Dr. Murad has collated hundreds of these bits of wisdom in his fifth book, Creating a Healthy Life: The Art and Wisdom of Howard Murad, MD, and I’ve included some of them here as subheads, but more on that later. First, the Iraq-born pharmacist/physician explains the three key aspects of Inclusive Health:

‘Healthy, hydrated cells are the key to ageless skin and a healthy body’

“What you put on your skin is important. Use products that prevent damage from the environment, that hydrate the surface of the skin, and peptides to help with wrinkles and pigmentation,” Murad says. “When you don’t put good products on your skin and you go out in the sun, it dries you out and damages you. Putting on a sunscreen and moisturizer minimizes that.”

Also a pharmacist by training, Dr. Murad decided to formulate his own product line when he realized that science, health and beauty were synonymous. “In the early ’80s I had a medi-spa in my own medical office,” he says. “There was no laser then, so I had an electrologist and a facialist. Then, because I was always writing prescriptions for compounding for patients, I decided to have products. They’d come back and ask for more. Then I started working with alpha hydroxy acids, realized how great they were and came out with them early on. Then one thing led to another.”

Today he has dozens of products that address every possible skincare concern, from acne to redness to cellulite to wrinkles. (See sidebar for some current standouts.)

‘Before there was medicine, there was food’

Second, eat better. Most people think that staying hydrated equals drinking six to eight glasses of water a day, but Dr. Murad says that water “will go right through you.” Cellular water is absorbed slowly, so for lasting hydration, you should “eat your water” in the form of fresh fruits and vegetables. He also recommends whole grains for building collagen, and foods rich in antioxidants, amino acids, good lipids, anti-inflammatories, phyto nutrients, and probiotics for a better immune system.

“Because your cells are made of nutrients and cell membranes are made out of amino acids and lipids, eating good fats, which includes the omegas, and good amino acids, is crucial. Eating better makes your cells resistant to environmental damage, and if your body is alkaline it will also be more resistant to cancer and bone loss. Take supplements once a day with amino acids and lipids.”

His youth-building diet entails eating 80 percent of such healthy foods and 20 percent comfort food, purely for the happiness it gives you. “Enjoy it, because the stress caused by not eating the chocolate is worse than the few calories you get from it.”

‘Be imperfect, live longer’

The last frontier of getting back to your youth is emotion, according to Dr. Murad. We have to reduce stress, because one of the ways we lose water is through sweat: sweaty palms and underarms. Thanks to our fast-paced modern lifestyles and the Internet, we are constantly subjected to what he calls “cultural stress” and our lives have become increasingly isolated.

“Our culture is causing you to have a lot of problems. As society grows you think we’re getting good things, but now you have hundreds of emails that you didn’t have five years ago. You have to answer them all — you try to but you can’t — so you end up having what I call attention deficit disorder. You just answer the headline, the lead, then feel you couldn’t answer them all, so you feel bad about yourself, feel like a failure. So we see more and more patients in my office who are on antidepressants, who are on drugs for ADD.

“There’s always more traffic, more pollution, and the news is always bad. There’s a lot of stress that’s there every day. It’s constant and pervasive. I call it ‘cultural stress.’ Of course there’s the other kind of stress — a flat tire, a death in the family — they happen and they’re over. But this is all the time, which is harder on your ultimately.”

‘Magic only happens when you create your own’

The most difficult aspect for him to address is the emotional — how we can get back to our two-year-old happy, creative, expressive, unselfconscious selves. “As we get older, we become more afraid. We limit our life. We’re not willing to create new adventures like younger children did.”

Dr. Murad himself experienced a major stress in his life when he took a trip to Hong Kong and his vision started getting blurry. Diagnosed with a detached retina, he had to undergo surgery and rest his chin on his chest for weeks, during which he didn’t know what to do with himself. His wife Loralee suggested he create art.

A couple of years earlier he’d taken an art class with Loralee while on vacation, creating 11 paintings within an hour. His art teacher, noting his natural talent, told him that further art classes would spoil it, but Dr. Murad didn’t pick up his art materials again until the enforced medical rest.

‘Give yourself an opportunity to have a transformation’

Now he’s been painting steadily for five years, and has amassed quite a collection of colorful, abstract paintings that could earn him the title of the Jackson Pollock of the dermatology world. In his studio he usually puts on some Vivaldi or other high-energy music, throws acrylic, oil and watercolor paint on a canvas and invites people to come over and hang out. “When I do the art, I do my best when people are watching,” he admits. “I don’t do as well on my own. One of the things I say is you become most creative when you expose yourself to others without fear of rejection.”

The University of Southern California has asked him to exhibit 40 of his pieces in their museum for four months, and Dr. Murad has compiled his best artworks with his sayings in Creating a Healthy Life.

It’s an inspired and inspiring combination. I keep the book on my bedside table and first thing in the morning after waking up I look at one of his paintings and read the accompanying quotes (they fit five on a page, with one prominently highlighted).  It improves my mood and starts my day off right.

‘Why have a bad day when you can have a good day?’

Some of my favorite quotes are “Turn the rest of your life into the best of your life,” “Give yourself permission to be happy,” “Ignore the naysayers from without, but more importantly the naysayers from within,” “Stay in touch with your passion,” “Learn by watching, not judging,” “Make your journey without a destination,” “Success comes when you accept the possibility of failure,” and “Aging is a fact of life. Looking your age is not.”

Dr. Murad is his own best advertisement for the soundness of his theories. At 74 he travels the world giving talks on Inclusive Health, exudes the energy of a 20-year-old and radiates positivity and youth, despite a full head of white hair.

“Your life’s story, in the end, is how you have lived it,” he says. “Make it sweet, happy, and healthy.”

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The Murad Medi-Spa is located on the fifth level of Rustan’s Makati. Call 813-3739 for more information.