Skin Sobering

Erin Yuet Tjam and Ryuichi Utsugi

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You’re not taking care of your skin. Maybe you think you are, with a counter full of lotions, serums, creams, and cleansers. But what we call “skincare” products aren’t caring for your skin so much as masking it. Worse yet, modern skincare disturbs your skin’s natural metabolism and impairs your beauty.

In Skin Sobering, “Beauty-Obsessed Scientist” Erin Yuet Tjam, Ph.D. and renowned anti-aging physician and skin specialist Ryuichi Utsugi, MD., deconstruct the myth of reliance on skincare products peddled by the beauty industry. Through evidence collected by treating thousands of patients, and reviewing hundreds of scientific studies, Utsugi and Tjam empower you to understand what will help your skin look and feel its best. By exploring your body’s biological processes, the chemical effects of all products, brilliant industry marketing, regulatory neglect, and people’s stories, you’ll see past the touched-up veil the beauty industry has cast over our understanding of our skin.

Beauty and health are not at odds. What’s healthy for your skin is also what makes you beautiful. Once you help your skin “sober up,” you’ll escape a health epidemic to which you didn’t realize you were contributing. You’ll also find a lifestyle and a financial freedom you didn’t realize you were missing.

Erin Yuet Tjam, Ph.D. is a health scientist, entrepreneur, author, mother of six, and a beauty-obsessed ex-product junkie. After her PhD in Health Studies, Dr. Tjam joined a pharmaceutical research firm in Toronto. Her busy family brought her work back to Waterloo where she was the Director of Research at St. Mary’s General Hospital, and Senior Research Associate at St. Joseph’s Healthcare for near 12 years. Concurrently, Dr. Tjam held adjunct professor and health researcher positions with UW, as well as honorary professorships with several universities in China. She and her husband Bruce also enjoy raising chickens, ducks, fishing in their pond, gardening, cooking, and hosting parties at their country home.

Dr. Ryuichi Utsugi, MD, is a specialist in anti-aging and skin health, and a board-certified plastic surgeon for over forty years. He founded the Aesthetic Medicine Center of the Research Institute of Kitasato University Hospital and is the Director of Clinic UTSUGIryu in Tokyo, Japan. He was an expert advisor to skincare companies and had his own line of skincare products before he discovered what they do to the skin. He presented and published this research in conferences, scientific papers, medical textbooks, and skin health books. One of his books, translated in Chinese as Skin Fasting, remains popular across Asia a decade after publication in Japan.

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