085: [FEMALE STORIES] From ER to Skincare: Hormonal Health, Natural Beauty, & Embracing Aging with Dr. Sarah Villafranco

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Sarah Villafranco, a former ER physician turned founder of Osmia, a non-toxic skincare brand. Sarah opens up about her incredible journey from the intense world of emergency medicine to creating products that promote natural beauty and health. She shares what it was like to shift her identity and purpose, offering a truly inspiring perspective for anyone considering a big career change.

We dive into the harmful chemicals hiding in everyday skincare products—think parabens, phthalates, and synthetic fragrances—and the impact they can have on hormonal health and fertility. Sarah breaks it all down and gives us practical tips on how to detoxify your routine without the overwhelm.

We also touch on some of the larger issues, like the risks these chemicals pose to pregnant women and cancer patients. It’s all about empowering you to make safer, healthier choices without feeling alarmed. Towards the end, Sarah and I get real about aging. We push back against the anti-aging narrative, exploring how Osmia takes a refreshing stance by not promoting anti-aging products. Instead, we celebrate natural beauty, embracing imperfections, and encourage a more positive outlook on aging. This conversation is a must-listen for anyone who wants to nourish their skin and soul, while living in harmony with their body at every stage of life.

About Sarah:

Dr. Sarah Villafranco attended Georgetown University Medical School, and went on to complete a four-year residency in emergency medicine at George Washington University. She moved to Colorado, where practiced as a board-certified emergency medicine physician at Aspen Valley Hospital, Snowmass Clinic, and Valley View Hospital in Glenwood Springs, CO. She stepped away from the emergency room to launch Osmia Skincare in April of 2012. She remains a licensed physician in Colorado, and helps people find skin health as CEO of her brand.

Connect with Sarah:

 IG: osmiaskincare 

Chapters

• 0:02 Embracing the Other Way
• 14:23 Uncovering Hidden Dangers in Skincare
• 26:11 Navigating Toxins in Skincare and Pregnancy
• 38:14 Reframing Skincare and Aging Beliefs
• 44:18 Celebrating Aging and Natural Beauty

Transcript

Kasia: 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Other Way, a lifestyle podcast exploring uncommon, unconventional or otherwise alternative approaches to life, business and health. I'm your host, kasia. I'm the founder of InFlow, a women's wellness brand that designs intentional products to help women reconnect to their unique cyclical rhythm and find a balance between being and doing. This podcast is an extension of my mission within Flow. Here we provide intentional interviews with inspiring humans trailblazers, researchers, spiritual teachers and more on the journey of doing things the other way. On the journey of doing things the other way. Hi everyone, I'm your host, kasia. Welcome back to the podcast. I have a very special guest for you all. Today I am speaking with Dr Sarah Villafranco. Sarah is a board-certified physician. She is also the founder of Osmia, which is a non-toxic, all-natural beauty brand, and Sarah's story is so interesting. She went from a full-time ER physician role to transitioning out of that and founding her non-toxic beauty brand, osmia, and today's conversation really dives into that about shifts in identity and how to navigate those, about Sarah's own unique journey. But we also talk about taking the path less traveled and a really educated, informed path when it comes to skincare and the products that we put on our bodies, the products that we use in our homes, and Sarah really dives into a the impact that skincare can have on our health. We talk about how chemicals found in most major skincare brands affect our hormonal health and fertility and, of course, we are going to share some tips with you, tips that Dr Villafranco has for reducing our toxic load. Now, in addition to this, sarah and I had a really powerful discussion towards the end of the episode where we talk about why osmia doesn't market any anti-aging products and I wish you all could see and if you go onto Instagram, I'm sure you're going to see just how radiant and glowing Sarah is. And this conversation meant so much to me because it's very rare to meet women, especially on Instagram, who are just so real and honest about how they feel about the anti-aging narrative and why they are, in fact, pro-aging. There aren't, you know, too many really prominent examples out there, especially those who are also founders of skincare brands. So we dive into in the conversation some powerful reframes that Sarah has on aging and some real juicy advice around how to cultivate self-acceptance in our bodies and why that is so important. Without further ado, let's dive into this conversation. It is so good. I feel so open-hearted, just finished recording it and I absolutely loved it and I cannot wait to get it out and share it with you all. So, without further ado, let's jump on into it.

Kasia: 3:28

Dr Villafranco, sarah, welcome to the Other Way. Thank you, I'm so excited to have you here. We have so much to cover. I absolutely love your background. As we literally just talked about, in the wellness space, there are a lot of, I guess I would say, influential people out there of very different backgrounds, and so when I read about your unique background kind of working as an ER doctor to now founding your own company in the wellness space and like your unique perspective, I found it so interesting. So we're definitely going to get into all of that, but before we do, I would love to give the audience a taste for really who you are as a person. So what are three words that you would use to describe yourself?

Sarah Villafranco: 4:14

I had to think about this for a minute, so I'm glad you sent me notes before. So I think, for better or for worse. One of the words I would use is unfiltered. Joyful is another one, and persistent. I don't tend to give up too easily.

Kasia: 4:33

I love that. Well, I mean your entire career trajectory just says like one indicator that persistence definitely comes through. I mean to go through medical school and residency and then to start a company and bootstrap it I mean that's just absolutely wild. So maybe we can actually start there. So you call yourself on your Instagram bio a reformed ER doctor. Can you talk a bit about your story?

Sarah Villafranco: 4:59

Yeah, so I sort of went into emergency medicine because I didn't love any one specialty enough to feel like this is all I want to do, but I liked all of them enough to think, yeah, I'd love to do a little of everything. I also liked the fact that it was shift work. So, you know, I thought there could be something nice, especially if you sort of have ideas about having a family, could be something nice about kind of wanting to like turn off your doctor brain when you leave the ER. So you know, it was a great choice for me. In a lot of ways I'm one of those people that gets like weirdly calm under pressure and that's a really good skill to have in the emergency room. Pressure, and that's a really good skill to have in the emergency room.

Sarah Villafranco: 5:49

But after a decade of it, you know, I noticed a few things that were frustrating to me, and so I noticed one that I felt more often than I wanted to, that I was working against patients on their own health, right, and I was like this feels weird to me that I'm fighting you, like I'm in this with you but it has to be with you. I don't really want to be working against you on your health. So an example would be you know, somebody comes in with bronchitis three times a year and they're still smoking, right, and I understand there's an addiction issue there, but it I started to feel a little frustrated sometimes that people felt like entitled to their health, like I was supposed to give them health without them contributing to it, and that was like yucky to me. And then, you know, maybe the flip side of that is that I noticed a pattern of like, I guess what I would call power stripping by physicians, and so I felt like doctors were constantly stripping people of their power to be well and I didn't feel good about that. I didn't feel like I wanted to tell someone like you need me to be well. I wanted to say no, no, you actually have almost everything you need to be well and I'm here to help provide some guardrails or some expertise, but it should come from you, because it's your body that you're living in.

Sarah Villafranco: 7:16

So I think those are the things that started the internal percolation about whether I wanted to stay in the ER. I was afraid that I would stay there for a career and end up like really jaded and really tired, and around that time I had my second daughter and then my mom died of pancreatic cancer, and that was enough to make me do the whole like I don't know, flip my life upside down and see what it looks like from a different angle. So it was during that period of time that I like accident not accidentally, but I sort of randomly signed up for a course in soap making which I had never tried, and I fell insanely in love with that process and then I was like, oh God, now I love this. What am I going to do?

Kasia: 8:07

Wow, so much there. I mean I just really want to start by I'm sure you probably, maybe you reflect, we reflect on this already today but just commend you on the courage that it takes to like redefine your life in that way, because so many of us can feel and I deeply relate to this as well like we've invested so much time and energy, like that sunk cost fallacy into whatever it is that we're doing, like a whole career, all that schooling, the cost of that, that it can be really hard to make that change, and so I think it's such a bold thing to do and I think it's so important to share the stories of women who do that. I mean men and women, everyone really. But especially for other women listening to this podcast, I'm curious what was that period of time?

Kasia: 8:58

Like I mean having that catalyst of your mother's death? I can imagine it was probably like almost like a deep shock that maybe like made the transition easier. But were there some like growing pains not even we can dig into, you know, building the business and the growing pains of that but like of the decision to be like, wow, okay, I'm shifting a huge part of my identity working as this ER doctor to now doing something completely different, like what was that process like emotionally for you, what did that feel like and how did you go through that identity shift?

Sarah Villafranco: 9:33

It was messy, like really messy. You know, I grew up as the daughter of a Georgetown law professor. My dad is the most professorial man you can even imagine, like tweed elbow, patchy glasses on the tip of his nose, that whole thing. Like he was super proud of me as a doctor when I moved out to the mountains and was practicing out here. I was really the only female ER doc in the Valley out here but I lived near Aspen Colorado and I was. You know I think there might've been one other, but I lived near Aspen Colorado and I was. You know I think there might have been one other, but but basically it wasn't really a thing and so there was like a little bit of like pride or I don't know. You know that it tapped into something that fueled my ego in a in a good way and I actually really liked a lot of the work and it was terrifying to think about leaving it. I mean especially, you know you work so hard.

Sarah Villafranco: 10:28

I had my first child during my residency and becoming a mom and balancing that with, you know, training in emergency medicine and taking boards and becoming board certified. I mean all that. It was such a grind and the idea of like letting that go was very, very scary. And I had to, you know, definitely had to. I always say I put my ego in a padded room and let it like bash around for a few months. It was, it was really scary. I mean, I came home to my husband, you know, I took that soap making class and then I started playing with all that stuff. And for months I was playing with it and then I thought like, okay, well, I don't want to leave medicine just to do like a hobby. I have a purpose and my purpose was to help people live healthier lives. That was why I was drawn to medicine and I have to figure out a way to link this new passion to my purpose, or it's not going to make sense for me to do it. And when I started researching the ingredients that people are using on their skin every day in their daily routines, the purpose was really easy for me to find because there was so much room for improvement and there are so many health consequences that people aren't aware of.

Sarah Villafranco: 11:48

And I thought, gosh, if I could create a line of products that really didn't come with those health consequences and then also was able to weave in the you know, one of my three words about me was joyful, and if I can weave joy into using these products so that it's not like you know, okay, it's not bad for you, but it doesn't feel that good, I wanted it to be not bad for you and feel amazing.

Sarah Villafranco: 12:11

And so once I figured out that that was possible, I kind of went home to my husband and was like I like I think I might want to do this, I think I might want to try, and he said you're serious. And I said I'm serious and you know, I want to be careful about, you know, the whole you have to follow your dream thing. Because, like, if I were responsible for supporting my family financially, I don't think I could have done it. And so or listen, I won't say that because I am persistent so I would have had to find alternate ways to do it. But my husband was able to carry our family financially while I went into the beginnings of launching a new business, and so because he was so supportive of the idea, you know, sort of gave me the courage to say like, okay, let's give it a go.

Kasia: 13:02

No, I think that's so powerful. And actually earlier today I was interviewing Susan Griffith Black, so she's the founder of EO products and you know I was. We had a similar conversation about, you know, just navigating the difficulty of building a business while also just trying to survive, right, like passion is not enough, and I'm so glad that you named this because this is just like a very real reality, like our society conflates following your dream with like, of course, ultimate happiness is to follow your purpose, but it's so hard when your purpose is also tied to your means of survival, and so I think, just understanding that you know that is there are trade-offs there that need to be made, and naming that, I think, is just so, so, so important. Yeah, I want to go back to something you mentioned. So you talked about kind of the, the shock that that you witnessed in kind of investigating some of the ingredients that are present in a lot of the skincare products that we use day to day, and I would love to talk a bit about that.

Kasia: 14:14

And also, before we do, do you follow Peter Attia, by any chance? Have you heard of him? Sure, yeah, yeah, okay, so he had this. He has this amazing podcast episode out that I'm like almost done with it, but it talks about, you know, essentially, to distill it down, it's really about the aspects of medicine that are broken and how that critical thinking, like first principles point of view, can sometimes get lost in the scientific method, like when we evaluate if something is healthy or not. And so I just feel like it is just so powerful that you had the ability to look at the ingredients and like actually critique them and like evaluate that from like also with your science background, but also with you know, from like a first principles point of view, that hey, like something might be wrong here. So let's talk about ingredients Like what are some of the things that might shock the average consumer as they're listening to this episode, about you know kind of what can be found in some of their skincare products.

Sarah Villafranco: 15:15

You know, I don't know if it's shocking. I think what's? The ingredients themselves aren't terribly shocking. I mean, there are a few, and most of those have been banned. I think that the thing that gets tricky, and so this may be what Peter is talking about a little bit. But a lot of people want a randomized, controlled trial right To prove that substance X causes condition Y, and it's hard to find those.

Kasia: 15:41

And pay for them, right Like get them funded too.

Sarah Villafranco: 15:44

Yeah, well, people, yeah, and then and then the. You know, the trouble is that little brands like mine can't afford to sponsor studies like that. So it's it's the big companies that are using Substance X that are funding the studies that say oh, there's no proof that it causes condition Y, okay. That say, oh, there's no proof that it causes condition Y, okay. And what I did and this is in 2010, 11, 12, I just pulled up all the studies I could find on the ingredients that I had questions about, and my standard wasn't I need you to prove to be that this substance causes this condition. My standard was is there enough concern that we should just skip it? You know, because people think that the absence of proof is proof of absence, right, and that's not true. Like, there may not be a randomized controlled trial, but there's, like at that time, I don't know, 15 trials that made me go. I don't like that, I don't like seeing that at all. And you know, when I had enough of those question marks surrounding an ingredient, it went in my reject list. So I would say some of the top ingredients were parabens, which are used to preserve products, and I want to be clear here that some products need preservation. So I don't really feel good when I see preservative-free on a product because I'm like, okay, well, if this formula needs preservation meaning, does it contain water or water-soluble ingredients, in which case it needs preservation then I don't want it to be preservative-free, I just want you to use safe preservatives, right?

Sarah Villafranco: 17:30

Phthalates are a huge one for me, and one of the biggest hiding places for phthalates is in synthetic fragrance, and a ton of people use products with synthetic fragrance in every corner of their home, and that's another point to make about a lot of these ingredients that we'll talk about is there's a cumulative effect here. So it's not that big a deal if your mascara has some ingredient in it, but if your laundry detergent has it and your dish soap has it and your shampoo has it and your toothpaste has it. But once it starts to accumulate in a lot of these, a lot of these substances are essentially it's like a dose dependent response, right? So the higher the levels are in your bloodstream or your tissues, the more the chance of a side effect that's undesirable, right? So parabens and phthalates are probably right up there in terms of health concerns for me. And then synthetic fragrance I'm going to lump in with that.

Sarah Villafranco: 18:32

I think ethoxylates is like a huge category that people don't really know about and it's super hard to train people how to look for them on a label. There are ways to do it, but most people just don't have the time or interest to like really dig into every label and to know oh, is this an ethoxylated ingredient? So ethoxylation is a process by which something is treated with ethylene oxide, which is a known carcinogen, and create. That process creates a byproduct called 1,4-dioxane, which is also a carcinogen and also it's a groundwater contaminant. So like levels in our drinking water and our streams and rivers and stuff of 1,4-dioxane are elevated and it's dangerous. It's dangerous not just for us but for the little creatures swimming around in those bodies of water. So Thoxylate is another one, and then sulfates, especially something called sodium lauryl or sodium lauryl sulfate. I have a specialty in difficult skin. Basically because I own it.

Sarah Villafranco: 19:34

My skin has been really difficult and so I've had to do a lot of research about it and have become a resource both for myself, and it's led a lot of my product formulation.

Sarah Villafranco: 19:45

But also now I've helped many thousands of people who have difficult skin, and so one of the conditions that I have is called perioral dermatitis, which just means dermatitis around. Dermatitis means like inflamed skin, so it can look like acne, it can look like eczema, but it happens in this distribution, and one of the leading causes of that is SLS, or sodium lauryl sulfate, and SLS is a foaming agent that is in things like shampoo, it's in toothpaste, it's in hand wash, it's in your laundry detergent, it's in your dish soap, it's in basically everything, and it's in a lot of brands that you would think maybe it wouldn't be in. You know and I'm not I don't love naming other brands in a way that is negative, but just a lot of brands will present themselves as as possibly being more natural than they actually are. But but SLS can actually be made naturally, but if you're sensitive to it, which so many of us are, then it doesn't matter if it's naturally derived. It still needs to go.

Kasia: 20:48

No, I think that's that's such a valid point that you know it's so easy to market something as healthier. You know, like calling it natural or preservative free, even right, like these terms get thrown around and it's just. You know it is unfortunate because the weight gets put on the consumer to be making a lot of these decisions. And you know, on one hand, one can make the argument that well, yeah, we're empowering consumers to make the right decision, but it also is so difficult to do so because what information is true? What do I actually take as real versus not? And you know, there's just so much, so much information out there that I think it can be really overwhelming for people to recognize. Like, should I be concerned about this or not? Right?

Sarah Villafranco: 21:37

Totally and it's really hard to know who to trust and why, right. So, like, one of my greatest like trickles is the TikToks, where it's like board certified dermatologist here telling you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right. And I'm like, okay, look, you're a board certified dermatologist. That's great. And if I have a skin cancer I'm coming to you and, frankly, if I ever decide I want to get Botox unlikely, but if I did, I'd come to you for that too. But as far as product recommendations, your board certification in dermatology does nothing for me because you have been handed free samples by huge personal care companies for your entire career and you have been spoon fed by those companies to believe that their products are safer, more effective, whatever. I don't actually think dermatologists have very good training at all in product ingredients and the fact is most of them are kind of like plugging their ears and going la, la, la, la, la la. When it comes to the data on things like parabens and salads, they're going to catch up eventually, but they are way behind.

Kasia: 22:48

Yeah, and honestly, I think that there is an aspect of, well you know, a certain level of group think happening, and I understand why it's out there, because it's extremely inconvenient and scary to have to, like now start to think critically and really question some of these things. When you know the powers that be deem it safe and say that this is okay and you know when there might not be as clear causal relationships between, like, certain ingredients and sides effects. But you know, as you mentioned, some of these effects are cumulative and if we know that something is unhealthy, it's kind of like okay, maybe smoking one cigarette isn't going to give you lung cancer or like lead to kind of effects like that. But is it one a day, is it multiple a day? Like at what point is that tipping point? And that could be really individual for every person. And I think the same thing comes to chemicals that our bodies have like not evolved to break down and we know that some of them, right, like don't fully break down, depending on the chemical that we're talking about. So I just think that's, that's just such a good point.

Kasia: 23:57

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Kasia: 25:10

All right, now back to the episode. Okay, so question for you. We have a lot of women here who you know are in the stages in various stages of their fertility journey, and I feel like a lot kind of comes up during that time, because when women become more aware of the things that they're putting on their bodies and how that might affect the fetus or, you know, if they're trying to conceive a baby to be. This is actually how I found you. I was reading the book Awakening Fertility, where you talked about the fact that a lot of women are consuming what you called hormone scrambling chemicals. Can you talk a bit like at a high level, give women an idea of you? Know, what is it about these, some of these chemicals and we don't even have to be specific about which ones but like, what is it that they're doing to our hormones? Because I think that might be like feel like a leap for some people who are not familiar with hormones scrambling chemicals, so to speak.

Sarah Villafranco: 26:08

And it's again, that's a pretty, it's a big umbrella term. I want to back up and just say your point about people finding. So people find our brand a lot because of pregnancy and because of cancer, and those are two very different circumstances, but both populations really care about what's going on their skin, right. One, because and because they want to take care of either their own body or the body that's about to grow inside them, right, and so I love that we're talking about this and I hope we can get more people to care about this stuff before they're pregnant and before they get cancer. Right as far, I think actually giving a specific example might help elucidate the question you asked.

Sarah Villafranco: 26:52

So I think about one study and I don't have it in front of me so I can't quote the exact numbers. It's a small study, I think in Japanese college students, I think in Japanese college students, and the study looked at the level of detectable parabens in their urine and found this is like a loose translation, but found that women who had higher levels of detectable parabens in their urine had a shorter menstrual cycle, okay, and by about I don't know by like two or three days, and it doesn't seem like that big a deal, but if you're taking a 72 hour fertility window and clopping a couple of hours off of it like it matters, it matters over time, and you know when you think about things like fertility rates starting to drop I don't want to get all handmaid's tale or anything but like I mean it's happening and I think this is part of it. And so an endocrine disrupting chemical is one that gets absorbed into your body and either disrupts a natural hormone cycle within your body or behaves like a hormone which ends up more like amping it up. And so ingredients like parabens. I think there's enough data now to say that it definitely can affect our periods. It can affect things like birth weight and age at birth, like at gestational age. At birth, people with higher levels of detectable parabens in their cord blood and in their urine gave birth to smaller, younger babies.

Sarah Villafranco: 28:35

Also not good. You want to cook them as long as you can. Things like phthalates are being increasingly linked to thyroid disorders and thyroid. Your thyroid system is also a hormone based system, so I think a lot of people sometimes think hormones are just testosterone and estrogen, but that's that's not true. I mean, there's a, there's so many hormones and the whole system in our bodies, all the stress hormones and the yeah, it's it's and they're connected right, like they're so connected and it's such a complex system and I think it's it's already complex within with no interference.

Sarah Villafranco: 29:12

And so if you can just not confuse the system, it's like it's like taking a couple of cooks out of the kitchen. If you can, if you can pull some of these ingredients from your life, it's going to be a clearer landscape in there.

Kasia: 29:25

No, I think that's so important. I'm curious for women who are pregnant or are trying to get pregnant, like how about transferring some of these chemicals to the fetus, like is that also a concern or is it kind of more about, like, the health of the mother? I'm curious if there's any research out there that you've found about that.

Sarah Villafranco: 29:45

It's definitely a concern. There are no. Like I said, the studies just aren't really funded. No one's gonna go and like pump a bunch of phthalates into a pregnant mom and then measure the levels in the babies, like it's just, those studies aren't gonna get done. But there's like a an intuitive piece there. I mean, first of all, you know, some of the studies do look at cord blood and they're looking at levels of parabens and phthalates in cord blood and if it's in the cord blood, guess what it's in the baby.

Kasia: 30:14

It's getting to the baby yeah.

Sarah Villafranco: 30:16

Yeah, so um, I I think the studies are going to be hard to track, but there's enough evidence there for me to say let's just avoid them, and I think this is a good point. Just to mention, there's a syndrome that I've named called toxophobia. The fear of exposing yourself to toxins can be toxic in itself. So I'm all for educating yourself, I'm all for doing the best you can, but I'm also all for as long as you're doing those things, trust your body. Like your body is equipped with multiple detoxification systems, from your lungs to your colon, to your liver. Like it's a system set up to remove harmful substances. It's just a question of whether you can kind of reduce the load and make those systems have to work a little less. And same with our diet, same with stress management, all of that stuff. But I think it's worth just calling out that if you walk around terrified all day, every day, that you might be coming in contact with a paraben, that's not really healthy either. So if you can change the bulk of your daily habits, you're doing great.

Kasia: 31:30

I think that's so important to call out because it's so easy to feel a bit dogmatic about it, especially when you start to go down the rabbit hole and you're like, oh my gosh, like these are some of the things that certain chemicals are linked to or the effects that it can have on our lives and on the environment.

Kasia: 31:47

But I think that you know it is the reality of the world that we live in. Like you know, some of the technical innovations that have happened in this world have helped us save so many lives and also, with that, have come also downsides, right With the invention of new chemicals and new products, and so you know, this is just kind of the environment that we live in. So I guess kind of in that vein, practically speaking, for someone out there who's listening who is like, okay, like I have definitely heard a bit about the impact that you know these chemicals can have on our toxic load and whatnot, like if you could just name three practical action items that someone could start to make in their lives, or decisions like, what would that look like? Like the most lightweight ones, that would be like the best bang for their buck, impact speaking.

Sarah Villafranco: 32:36

Yeah. So I'll have two suggestions in the skincare department and then one in, like the home department. So when you talk about skincare, when you talk about skin, you're talking about this stuff that covers your body, and your face is 4.5% of that. So if you're just thinking in pure math terms, I always have people start with switching to a natural body soap, right. So from your neck down, that's 91% of the surface area of your skin. And if you're using a lot of the body washes and stuff out there not only come in, you know big plastic containers but also contain a lot of preservatives and synthetic fragrance.

Sarah Villafranco: 33:20

So if you switch to and of course, yes, I sell soap so am I trying to get you to buy my soap? Sure, I think my soap's awesome, but you can also find other brands of natural bar soap that come in environmentally conscious packaging and they last forever and they're, you know, their soap got a bad rap for a hot minute when, like again, I'm not going to name names but, like the drugstore brands or the grocery store brands, those are kind of more detergents than soap. But if you're buying a handcrafted soap, you're buying a product that is very moisturizing, because glycerin is a natural byproduct of saponification, which is the process of turning something into soap, and there's tons of glycerin in a handcrafted bar soap and that's a very skin softening ingredient. So if you're worried that soap's going to make you dry, just don't buy it at the grocery store.

Sarah Villafranco: 34:10

So a body wash for a body soap is switch number one and switch number two. I would swap your body lotion for a body oil. The body lotion contains water-soluble ingredients and therefore has to be preserved, and a lot of times there is a synthetic fragrance also involved in that. The body oil is a bit of a habit shift in that it works well if you apply it to wet skin. If you apply body oil to dry skin or towel-dried skin, you'll feel greasy. If you apply it to sopping wet skin, you'll just feel beautiful, velvety, softness.

Kasia: 34:46

Wait, I want to pause on that actually for a minute. So you're suggesting, when we're actually getting out of, let's say, the shower, before we've dried off, to apply the oil and it will soak in and it won't be greasy.

Sarah Villafranco: 34:57

Correct.

Kasia: 34:58

Okay.

Sarah Villafranco: 34:58

So what I do? Because I and you have long hair too, so I get my hair up and out of the way and I stay wet, and then I usually do my face products first, just because I don't want my body products on my face, cause they are. Face skin is different in that it's thinner, and so the richness of a body oil might be enough to make somebody break out if it gets on your face. So I put my hair up and then I do my face routine and I haven't dried off at all and then I slather body oil on while there's visible droplets of water on my skin and basically a lotion is water and oil that have been emulsified right, and then they need to. It needs to be preserved because there's water in it. This way, you're providing the water that's already on your skin and you're taking the oil and you're emulsifying it with your hand on your skin.

Kasia: 35:47

So it's just such a great life hack that is chemistry yeah. Oh my God, yeah, nobody's actually ever explained that, it's so obvious when you just said it. But, okay, great, all right. So we got two.

Sarah Villafranco: 35:58

Two out of three, what would you say would be two and then the third one is I would get people to switch their laundry detergent so people just forget about their laundry detergent. But you're sleeping on the sheets you've washed in your laundry detergent. You're wearing the clothes you've washed in your laundry detergent. It's a big point of exposure throughout your day, and most laundry detergents contain sodium lauryl and sodium lauryl sulfate. Most laundry detergents contain sodium lauryl and sodium lauryl sulfate. Most laundry detergents contain synthetic fragrance.

Sarah Villafranco: 36:25

Once you get away from using a synthetically fragranced laundry detergent and then somebody walks into your space with their clothes that have been washed in that, it will blow you away how big and loud that scent is. So, and then if you have any kind of sensitive skin stuff going on, the sodium lauryl sodium lauryl sulfate piece is really is really important too. So a lot of people come to me and they're like, oh, I use Tide Free and Clear, and I'm like, okay, well, the Free and Clear is good, there's no fragrance in it, but you're still have the SLS factor, which is keeping your skin in a state of irritation and frustration, and so I always recommend for people to switch to something like Branch Basics or Molly's Suds. Both of those are my two favorite brands for laundry detergent.

Kasia: 37:13

Oh, I'm a fan of both. Okay, those are really tangible tips that I think are really really accessible for people. I kind of want to switch gears for a minute and actually go back to something you mentioned very briefly a little bit earlier in this conversation. So you know we were talking about skincare and you know how facial care and body care is different. I'm curious what your view is on products for more mature skin, and you kind of called out that you don't use Botox. You look fabulous, by the way. I want, like, all of your skincare tips. I mean, I guess we're getting them right now, so that's great. But yeah, what are your thoughts about skincare that is, let's say, aging mature, like you know? Aging mature, like you know? Does the regimen change in those cases and what is your take as a skincare brand founder on like aging and anti aging kind of products and things like that?

Sarah Villafranco: 38:14

So, you know, I think like I want to like back out of that conversation and just ask the bigger question, which is you know, what is all that rooted in all the anti-aging talk? It's rooted in fear, you know, it's rooted in fear, and it's rooted in patriarchy and like there's.

Sarah Villafranco: 38:37

Snap, snap, I mean you can't deny it, right? I mean, men just get a pass when it comes to getting older and they look sexy or they look silver foxy or whatever it is, and women just get criticized by both men and women and it's a mess. And I I kind of want to just like put a pin in that and say can you for yourself, can you back out and ask yourself what you're afraid of? You know, and I do this exercise every time I give a talk somewhere and I have people close their eyes and have them picture somebody who's been really important to them in their lives in a, in a way that feels like it's in their heart, in a in their lives, in a way that feels like it's in their heart in a special way. And I want them to picture like an exact moment with that person and really like think of the details of that moment. And then I let people marinate in that for a second and then I have them open their eyes and I say, okay, I want you to raise your hand. If you thought about that person's cellulite no hands go up. Did you think about their gray hairs? No hands go up. How about their crow's feet? No, okay, how about, like the neck skin that gets a little crepey. No, no, hands go up Like, and so we spend so much time and energy thinking about all of these things that no one's going to remember about us, and it's really a shame.

Sarah Villafranco: 39:58

So I think I like to start from that point and then encourage people to participate in the beauty and skincare rituals that feel nourishing and to leave behind the ones that feel punishing. Yeah, well, I mean I'll push back on your pushback. Right, there's a lot of comparison, and and comparison is the thief of joy, you know, and so I didn't say it would be easy for you to redefine this stuff for yourself. It's hard, it's really hard, and you have to commit if it's important to you, and so the thing that I guess what I say to people is ask yourself why you're doing something. If you're like I'm getting Botox because it really makes me feel like the most true, most beautiful version of myself, or I'm coloring my hair for that reason, okay, but if there's any like, if there's a moment of pause in there where you struggle to answer the question, or you feel like you might be full of shit, sorry. I encourage you to pay attention to those moments and give yourself permission to kick out against it.

Sarah Villafranco: 41:08

Because what happens is women complain all the time about the double standard for men and women and why did women not? But they're the ones calling and making the appointment at the dermatologist or the salon and continuing to feed the beast. So if there's a part of you that wants to change this and I'm the mother of two daughters I don't want them to feel like they have to modify themselves as they get older. I want them to feel like they can live in truth and joy in this world, whatever that looks like for them, and if that is Botox and hair dye, great. That is your truth and your joy and you're doing it for your good reasons.

Sarah Villafranco: 41:52

But if you're doing it to conform to something else that doesn't come from inside you, I encourage you to take up the habit and this is the practical piece of catching yourself in the act. You look in the mirror and you start to say something super mean to yourself and you go okay, I hear you. I hear you critical version of myself, I hear what you're saying and, yes, my skin is changing as I get older. Now what else can we notice about?

Sarah Villafranco: 42:23

About me in the mirror today and look, it's an, it's a total work in progress. It's never, it's just like anything worth doing. It's never done. You know, you're constantly trying to get better at it and I have days where I'll like catch myself in the mirror and I'll think like you look beautiful today. And I have other days where I'm like, oh my God, your neck, what is happening, you know, and like those are both real and they're both okay, and I just encourage people to kind of de-escalate the importance of your own appearance and, look, this is a really like. This is why it's hard to be the owner of a skincare brand when I actually have this opinion about all this. I want to sell product. Of course I do, because it means I can continue to grow the business and I love our products and I love what we do. And do they have anti-aging benefits? Of course they do, but I just try to frame it through skin health at any age and if your skin looks and feels healthy, then I think that's winning.

Kasia: 43:26

I think it's so important to share not just this perspective on really making a choice to not, as you kind of called it, feeding the.

Kasia: 43:38

You can choose to feed the beast or not, and that's both with your dollars, if you feel called to do that, may it be authentically or not, but also with your thoughts and the beliefs that you have about your skin and also, I guess, the brands and the ones you choose to purchase from, and do they align with those values or not?

Kasia: 43:59

Like those are all examples of feeding the beast, and I think you make such a good point that, although, yes, you know, men get a pass and there's like that patriarchal unfairness in this whole picture, we as women also do it to ourselves and like there's a level of accountability there. Not every culture per se looks at aging this way. I think social media has maybe changed that now for most of the world, but you know like in other parts of the world, women of all ages were celebrated for different things, and so I just I I really appreciate that mentality and also, more than anything, I really appreciate kind of meeting someone who is maybe a couple of years older than me who emulates and really feels that way and is trying to model that for her daughters. Because we need more of that if we're going to change the narrative right, like there isn't just one way of being, yeah.

Sarah Villafranco: 44:57

That's right and I think that for me it's not. I'm not out to prove that my way is the right way. I'm just here to provide it as an acceptable, equal alternative to what is becoming the norm, which is people starting Botox in their twenties. And you know, you see the people who have a lot of work done on themselves as they age, and I think the one thing that makes me sad about it is a lot of their faces really start to look the same don't even get me started about that.

Kasia: 45:30

Yes, right.

Sarah Villafranco: 45:32

I mean it looks like they all have the same surgeon or or person who's injecting and they're all doing the same stuff and so you lose this. I mean, when I think of it as a mom, I think about when our babies are tiny. My daughter turned 21 yesterday, so she's no longer tiny, but she was this big in my hands and the weird like facial asymmetries and the way our faces move is what allows them to recognize their mothers and like that you want to talk about evolution. That's like beautiful, right, and we start to take that stuff away from ourselves as we modify our faces and worry about facial asymmetry.

Sarah Villafranco: 46:12

I understand if something is like really dramatically different about your face and you feel like you know it's hard for you to be in the world, but I think we're so like lasered in on our imperfections that we just like forget to appreciate that it is the fact that one of my eyes doesn't open as far as the other one that makes my face unique and makes people recognize me in the world and makes me me, makes my face unique and makes people recognize me in the world and makes me me, and so you know again like I I honestly think, maybe my position on this stuff like shoots me in the foot a little bit as a brand founder, but I'm just like I'm a truth teller and the fact is that most of the products on the market that promise they're going to do something don't.

Sarah Villafranco: 46:55

And so like with our products, what I want them to do is help your skin do its job, which is a barrier that keeps bad stuff out and good stuff in Right, and I want the products to bring some moment of joy into your life and into your days, and that's the promise we make and you know they. We get tons of emails from people saying my skin is glowing because of the nectar drops, or you know, I had dermatitis and finally I'm leaving my apartment after two months because my skin is healed from dermatitis. Like that stuff is, like that fuels me and my heart and the reason that I do this, but like I just feel sad sometimes that so many people get sucked in by all of the promises that are getting made when there are so few products that really live up to their promises.

Kasia: 47:47

Yeah, and honestly I don't think you're kicking yourself in your I don't even know what the.

Kasia: 47:50

I think that you know at the end of the day if you know, we're trying to, we're fighting this up, this uphill battle of like never aging. It's resisting what's like real and true for us in our lives, and I think that every woman, regardless of the choices that she makes, resonates with the part of that. Because who doesn't want to like, feel truly, just like fully accepted, you know, accepting of their skin, accepting of their wrinkles in some capacity, accepting of I don't know morning breath and all that other stuff, like just to not constantly have this feeling of anti, anything like to truly feel like, wow, I'm nourishing myself, I'm taking care of myself, like.

Sarah Villafranco: 48:38

I think that narrative is truly, truly appealing, so, for what it's worth, there's also like it's harder to stay in touch with gratitude if you're constantly criticizing your body. I mean, like this my body's been carrying me around this planet for 51 years and, okay, so I've got like wrinkly skin above my elbows or above my knees, but like my body's still doing everything I ask it to do every day. That's amazing, and so I think that it gets you a little bit away from a gratitude mindset which we know is a life prolonging mindset and a life enhancing mindset If you're constantly in this self-criticism and self-modification mode.

Kasia: 49:25

So powerful? All right, I could chat with you forever, but, sarah, we're coming up on time, so where can people find you? Any fun announcements? And I will hyperlink everything below so you don't have to worry about spelling it out.

Sarah Villafranco: 49:38

We are Osmia Skincare on all social platforms and let's see, as far as fun things, one of my favorite things that we do is something called the Craft Series, and so the Craft Series are seasonal body products. They're soaps, body oils and body mousses, which is like a body butter, but ours has like a really unique texture and they come out throughout the year, but they're very connected to the season, and so we have I actually don't know when this podcast is going to air, but there's a link on our homepage that takes you to the craft series and it's just. It's just such a fun way to explore Like scent is one of the things I love the most in the world and playing with essential oils. So we have some really beautiful seasonal craft series products that'll be coming up from now through the end of the year.

Kasia: 50:29

I love that. That's a nice way to celebrate the seasons without necessarily just buying a pumpkin spice latte. So which?

Sarah Villafranco: 50:38

is $4 a day or $6 a day, so that's an expensive. That's right With a lot of sugar.

Kasia: 50:43

Okay, anyway, we won't go there. But, sarah, it was so nice speaking with you. Thank you so much for jumping on.

Sarah Villafranco: 50:49

Yeah, same to you. Yeah, Thanks for having me.

Kasia: 50:52

Thanks everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into the Other Way. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a five-star review. It really helps the podcast grow and I'm ever so grateful. If you want to stay connected, you can find information on how in our show notes. And finally, if you're curious about inflow and want free resources around cyclical living or moon cycles, check out inflowplannercom. And, of course, for all my listeners, you can use the code podcast10, and that's all lowercase podcast10 for 10% off any purchase. All right, that's all for today. See you next time.