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Guest: Eric Brotman

Release Date: 8/7/2023

Welcome to Trulyfit the online fitness marketplace connecting pros and clients through unique fitness business software.

Steve Washuta  

What is the skin microbiome? And why is it important? is controlling acne simply a matter of balancing proper skin bacteria? How do prescription acne medications like Accutane work and what are the side effects? What is the advantage to bring a product to market as a supplement rather than in the medical category? We talk about all this and more in the upcoming episode.

Steve Washuta: Welcome to Trulyfit. Welcome to the Trulyfit podcast where we interview experts in fitness and health to expand our wisdom and wealth. I’m your host, Steve Washuta, co-founder of Trulyfit and author of the book Fitness Business 101.

Steve Washuta  

On today’s episode I speak with Dr. Hugh Varma. He is the CEO the co founder of phyla, pH yLa biotics, you can find everything about them at Fila biotics.com. And he has his PhD from Johns Hopkins University as well as studied at university Cal.

Steve Washuta  

And today we’re gonna be talking about everything from how acne is currently treated, what is in the over the counter products, where his and dermatologists viewpoints might diverge? Or maybe they don’t at all. We’re going to talk about the science behind the microbiome on our skin.

Steve Washuta  

And we’re going to talk about the differences between his product and all the other products on the market. I thought it was a fascinating conversation, the science that has been done here, I knew nothing about anything concerning the microbiome on the skin, we always learned about the microbiome of the gut. We also do talk a little bit about that.

Steve Washuta  

With no further ado, here is Dr. Hugh Varma and myself. Dr. Varma, thank you so much for joining the truly fun podcast when you give my listeners and audience a little background on who you are, and what it is that you do day to day in the health world.

Dr. Yug Varma  

Hey, Steve, thanks for having me real pleasure to talk to you today. So I’m a scientist. My background is I’ve got my PhD at Johns Hopkins doing bio organic chemistry. And then I started doing microbiome research as a postdoc at UCSF, and then I started this company. And very briefly, you know, I’ve been studying the microbiome for about 13 years now.

Dr. Yug Varma  

It’s a super interesting field around, you know, less than 20 years old. So it’s really young. But I feel like, not only is it an incredibly interesting field to be in, but it’s had the fortune of really capturing the attention of like the public, right?

Dr. Yug Varma  

A lot of people are now aware what the microbiome is are curious about it and want to know how they can take care of their own microbiome. And really, you know, that is what our company has done is develop tools to perturb the microbiome in beneficial ways so that it can lead you to better health.

Steve Washuta  

Yeah, it really is all the rage. It’s been everywhere it’s talked about on all the podcasts, it doesn’t matter if you’re a nutrition expert, or if you’re someone who’s an expert in a completely different area. Now, it seems to be that, you know, the biome, the gut biome is interconnected with so many things in the body that we’re now discovering.

Steve Washuta  

And I think maybe that’s why it’s intriguing, because it went from nobody ever hearing about it, too. Now, it being considered one of the more integral parts of our overall health and wellness, I want to take just one quick step backwards, doing what you researched, excuse me, what you studied, do most people go off and start their own companies like you did? Or do they just sort of like fall into day to day, scientists kind of activities.

Dr. Yug Varma  

Most people don’t most people do kind of the science thing, either in academia or in industry. But, you know, one of the prime motivations for me was, you know, early on, when I was studying the microbiome, it was really amazing to see almost on a monthly basis, some new discoveries and new insight coming out, that was amazing.

Dr. Yug Varma  

And then, you know, I, I’d be very excited when I read that. And then I’d wait, you know, for six months, a year or more, for follow up, right? Of like, okay, so this is a cool insight, how are they going on and making this technology. And what I realized is not very many people are doing that. And you know, that’s not the function of academia, that’s fair.

Dr. Yug Varma  

The function of academia is to discover things and to do basic science. But, you know, I was kind of frustrated that I felt like we were leaving a lot on the table, not that it wouldn’t eventually be picked up. But I just wanted to accelerate the rate of innovation and in particular, accelerate kind of my, my idea of it, my conception of it.

Steve Washuta  

Most of the information or the products or the discoveries that I read about again, I could be targeted to me because the community I’m in has to do with like digestion and and food right and how the gut microbiome works in that way. You kind of went a different route, right? You you want the the skin care route, can you discuss the initial discoveries behind how it affects our skin and how it affects acne and things of that nature?

Dr. Yug Varma  

Yeah, so you know, It’s like you have a gut microbiome, which I’m sure most most of your listeners are aware of. We have a microbiome on our skin, right. And it’s pretty normal when you think about it, that we have a skin microbiome, we have a mouth microbiome, we have a gut microbiome and so on. And, you know, just like there are different kinds of forests, right, there’s rain forest, there’s plants that grow in the desert.

Dr. Yug Varma  

The skin microbiome is different from the gut microbiome, different organisms live there, the nutrients are different, the environment is different. But the microbiome of the skin actually occupies a similar role to the gut microbiome, which is to say that it is intimately tied to our health. It is, you know, chiefly responsible for keeping our skin healthy and preventing our skin from getting sick, such as by the growth of unwanted organisms.

Dr. Yug Varma  

But more importantly, it talks to the immune system, right. And so just like, although in our gut, right digestion takes place, what happens in the gut has far more to do with, you know, our health than just digestion, which is to say that, because so but let me back up. So there are two places in our body where the immune system is built up the most. One is in our gut, and one is under our skin, right.

Dr. Yug Varma  

So the immune systems are just on the other side of the what we call the gut lumen, where all the bacteria are where all the food passes through. And then on the other side, kind of with an ear to the wall listening in, right, and they’re taking the temperature constantly, they’re sensing constantly. And one of the reasons is that obviously, there’s a huge bacterial load in our gut.

Dr. Yug Varma  

And you can imagine if that ever infiltrated into our body, that would be a huge problem, you would die very quickly. And so immune systems kind of buttressing against that. But the other thing is also that our gut microbiome talks to our immune system, and kind of sets the thermostat that influences a number of immune processes in our body. And that’s really what the immune system is primed to pick up on.

Dr. Yug Varma  

And so when you’re young, you know, if you don’t get exposure to the right consortium of bacteria, you can develop asthma or allergies, or sensitivities later in life. And it’s the same same in with the skin, right, like a lot of people develop sensitive skin, rashes, eczema, etc, it all has to do with a microbiome imbalance that your immune system is picking up and responding to. It’s the same with acne. You know, when our microbiome is in balance, our immune system senses that and is okay with it.

Dr. Yug Varma  

When our microbiome goes out of balance, it is something that the immune system doesn’t like, and it sends out inflammation to deal with it. And that inflammation is just acne, it’s just eczema, you know, it’s a number of other things. And so understanding the microbiome is role in disease and health. But more importantly, understanding how balance plays into it is really important, because, I don’t know 30 years ago, right? You would have said, most people’s attitude will be bacteria are bad, right?

Dr. Yug Varma  

Clean every surface, you know, bleach everything, sanitize, you know, all things. Now, we know that that’s not true that there are good bacteria and bad bacteria, and that there needs to be a certain balance, which is why we eat probiotics and fermented foods and so on. And so my research really has been in terms of uncovering this balance, figuring out, you know, what, is driving disease, and then developing tools to kind of address that.

Steve Washuta  

Let me give you a little hypothetical here. If and I don’t know what the testing is, let’s say you swab somebody’s skin, and you’re able to put it under a microscope, or whatever it is. But if you take 100 people, and you don’t actually get to see the people, so you have no idea if they have acne, if they have skin issues, but you’re taking each individual’s skin microbiome, and you’re looking at the individual bacteria, do you have a good sense of who potentially has skin issues just by looking at those, let’s say bacteria and numbers.

Dr. Yug Varma  

Not for all skin issues, but I’ll focus on acne, which is you know, the biggest is the number one dermatological condition nearly all of us get is a nearly universal experience. For acne, there was a study done in 2016 that looked at people with healthy skin and people with acne, right. And they tried to figure out, are there organisms? Are there certain genetic elements that are associated with acne versus health?

Dr. Yug Varma  

And they built this algorithm from the sequencing data because, you know, looking at the bacteria and the genes that are on our skin, and that she builds a predictive engine, where they then took, you know, blinded microbiome samples All right. So basically, they got samples from people, they weren’t told whether this is from a healthy person or an acne person.

Dr. Yug Varma  

And I think it was over 80% accuracy that over 80% of the time, they could correctly predict, oh, this is a healthy person, this an acne person, just based on data of what microbes are on your skin, right? So this gives us a very, very strong sense that, just like were able to do this with sequencing, a very expensive technique, our immune system is sensing this all the time, right?

Dr. Yug Varma  

They’re pulling in data from our skin, and they’re like, are you imbalanced? Are you inflamed? Okay? If you are balanced, no problem. If you’re not, then I’ll send out inflammation. Now, another very interesting part of this study was that they looked at, you know, healthy skin and acne skin microbiomes. And the biggest difference they found was that there is a particular organism called the phage, that kills and the phage that kills see acnes, the big, sort of 600 pound gorilla in our skin microbiome, the one that causes acne.

Dr. Yug Varma  

If those features are present, they’re present far more on healthy skin, then on acne skin. Now phages love to kill and eat bacteria, right? So this particular phage was killing see acne is the acne bacteria. And it’s only found on healthy skin. So this gives rise to this important really interesting hypothesis that, you know, we all have annoying friends who have amazing skin look great, never washed their face, never get acne, chances are, they have these phages on their skin that are, you know, balancing their microbiome preventing the overgrowth of acne bacteria.

Dr. Yug Varma  

And the rest of us who are wondering what we did wrong and on the straight and narrow, can never seem to get ahead of our acne, we don’t have the benefit of this organism naturally occurring on our skin. And so a large part of our research has been devoted to this organism to developing it to be able to put it in a bottle so that everyone can sort of in a bio technological way, repair their microbiome, bring it back to balance.

Steve Washuta  

And you know, forgive my naivety here concerning this, but do the the drugs that are currently used prescription drugs to treat acne? Are they working on any of this? Are they typically dealing just with hormones and kind of the internal stuff?

Dr. Yug Varma  

Right, so see, acne is this one bacteria has been known to be heavily involved in acne for like eight years, right? And for reflecting that, all antibac all anti acne products are antibacterial, right? So you think of antibiotics, you think of benzoyl peroxide, you think of retinoids, they all have an antibacterial effect. The difference is that antibiotics, benzo products are all of these, they kill indiscriminately, they land on your skin, and they can look good bacteria and the acne bacteria.

Dr. Yug Varma  

And the result is that they’re depleting your skin microbiome. So after you know, regular use months and months of use, yes, you’re killing the bad bacteria. But you’re also killing the good garden of good bacteria that keep the balance. So what happens when you go off of it, because you know, benzoyl peroxide is really harsh antibiotics, you can go out in the sun, you know, there’s all these side effects.

Dr. Yug Varma  

So you stop using them, because they’re really harsh, and you’re seeing an effect. And the next thing that happens is that acne comes back for overwhelming majority of people. And that is because you’ve depleted your microbiome, the moment you remove this antibacterial, the bad bacteria grows back even faster than the good bacteria, because now you’ve kind of thinned out your bad microbiome later.

Dr. Yug Varma  

So that’s emerging is something that’s really important. And fundamentally, all of these, you know, pharmaceutical products that are used for acne, although they tried to kill the bacteria, they’re not able to do this in a specific and targeted way like phages can do.

Steve Washuta  

That’s very interesting. Yeah. And that kind of goes along with my own thesis here of something you just talked about earlier is that there are these there’s people who don’t use anything, but there’s the other end of the spectrum, there’s people who use nothing but products, right, they have 1000s of dollars of skincare regimens.

Steve Washuta  

And all day, every day, all they’re doing is worrying about their skin, but eventually I would assume by putting that much stuff on your skin, you’re also doing damage right because you’re never giving your your your natural bacteria a chance to build back up you’re never giving your you’re never getting a balance because there’s always there’s always a taking away and a giving there’s never just a relaxation period and the whole point is to like any other drug prescription or otherwise is eventually you’d like to get off of this right there’s no there there are no free lunches so to speak.

Steve Washuta  

There’s always going to be secondary effects. So you don’t want to be using unnecessarily for the rest of your life. And I think that’s what you’re talking about your your product does does differently, but okay, this is another really naive question. Why is it that most people have acne on their face? face, as opposed to elsewhere on their body. Does that also lead to the specifics of the phages? And the other skin biome?

Dr. Yug Varma  

Yeah, so it has to do with what bacteria causes acne, right? It’s C acnes. This bacteria that loves so the main food for C acnes is Sema, which is an oil that our body produces. Right? Now, we have three kinds of skin microbiome. And they’re basically different kinds of, you know, forests you can think of, they’re different ecologies. So you have the oily microbiome, which is called the sebaceous microbiome.

Dr. Yug Varma  

And it’s only prisoners on our face, our upper chest and upper back. Incidentally, that’s exactly where acne hits, right. And this area of our skin is really the only place where C acnes is highly dominant. Again, that is because our sebaceous glands, these oil glands really occur in our face on our upper chest and our upper back. Then there’s the dry microbiome, which is most of our body, your arms, your legs, your torso, it’s all the dry microbiome. It’s much more staphylococcus and craning bacteria.

Dr. Yug Varma  

And then there’s the wet microbiome, which is our armpits, or groin region, you know, any place where it’s kind of closed and moist. And so, you know, you’ll notice that no one ever gets acne on their knee. But that’s because the C acnes doesn’t occur there in large enough quantities to cause a problem. And because, you know, a lot of our customers actually have back acne and chest acne, and they say, Hey, can you use this product on on chest acne?

Dr. Yug Varma  

And we say, yeah, you can, because the, the organism, the cost driving the disease is exactly the same. And we actually have seen some great results from our customer base for that. So it’s really about understanding the ecology, and, you know, figuring out what, how are you actually solving the problem, right? Because a lot of people think, Oh, you don’t have oily skin, the oils feeding the bacteria. You know what, I’ll just dry out my skin? Well, that’s a huge problem.

Dr. Yug Varma  

Because your body produces oil on the skin for a reason, right? It has a very important function, it acts as a moisture barrier. It keeps your skin layer smooth and supple.

It prevents, you know, early aging, fine lines and wrinkles. And so what a lot of people do, you know, especially with retinol is and Accutane and stuff, it will permanently dry out your skin because it kills and reduces the size of sebaceous glands permanently.

Dr. Yug Varma  

Your acne free, but you have to deal with chronically dry skin for the rest of your life. And that’s irreversible. And so, yes, you’re right, the oily skin is feeding the bacteria. But if you can just kill the bacteria, right and control it, you don’t have to worry about oily skin as much because you’re using phages, for example, to control the bacteria. And so it’s a much more elegant solution, one that does far less damage, and one that gives excellent results. Irrespective of what kind of acne you have.

Steve Washuta  

It seems like the research has come pretty far in a short amount of time, at least from the general public perspective, all we’ve learned, I imagine there still research going on, right? People are still doing their due diligence to find the next step. What is your forecasting of the next five to 10 years? In this particular department of skin? microbiome? What what are we expected to find out? What would you be surprised about?

Dr. Yug Varma  

So I think that we’re gonna continue to chip away and probably make huge strides. As you know, the tools that we use to examine the microbiome, the skin microbiome, especially are getting better and better, right. So there are some technical challenges with studying the skin microbiome. Unlike the gut microbiome, where there’s plenty of bacteria, that you know, you there’s plenty of sample, let’s say to choose from, the skin has a very thin layer of bacteria.

Dr. Yug Varma  

And when you try to scrape the bacteria off of your skin, a lot of human cells come out to so your your sample as such is contaminated with a lot of human cells, so you don’t care about you’re trying to get to the bacteria, and there’s relatively few bacteria. Well, our our ways of kind of sequencing and detecting these bacteria have become more and more sensitive and require less and less material.

Dr. Yug Varma  

And so we’re getting richer and richer data. And further, you know, just as science progresses with one person making our observation and you know, revealing it, someone else picks up on that and takes that forward. We’re continuing to see that and whether it’s acne or eczema or psoriasis rosacea you know there are so many skin conditions that are a bit pretty sure are driven by bacteria.

Dr. Yug Varma  

We don’t exactly know how for acne and eczema. You know, it’s pretty clear it’s pretty straightforward. It’s been studied for long time, but I’m actually really excited for more skin microbiome insights to come our way. Because, you know, we have a platform technology and features which can kill and target very specifically any bacteria.

Dr. Yug Varma  

So we’re actually waiting for people to discover, make new discoveries and say, Oh, this vector is responsible for this phenomenon or this effect, right? And if it’s undesirable, we can actually sort of cut that off and make that into a product, right? Make turn that insight into something that reaches people’s hands, that gets in people’s hands reaches their lives and makes a difference.

Steve Washuta  

Are any of your current discoveries or insights considered controversial? And let me let me break it down for you. If you were to sit down with a dermatologist, let’s say, and you were to explain all this, as you’re explaining it, to me, would at some point, your ideas and your ideologies diverge? Or do you just have the same, let’s call it you’re diagnosing the same thing, but you just have different prescriptions for how to fix it? Um,

Dr. Yug Varma  

it’s not controversial. It is a newer technology, right? And so when we talk to dermatologists about this, they fall roughly into two camps. One camp says, oh, you know, I know that the problem, the pharmaceuticals, that I’m prescribing my patients are problematic, because a lot of side effects. I know patients struggle with them.

Dr. Yug Varma  

And they cause a lot of misery, right? I mean, the side effects are not just redness, dryness, irritation, inflammation. For Accutane, it is birth defects, it is liver damage, you know, it is joint pain, and it is incredibly painfully dry skin.

Dr. Yug Varma  

And so, you know, the first camp of dermatologists say, Hey, if you have anything, and if you have data to support it, that and we do we have, you know, clinical data to really support how our phages make a change in the microbiome. They say, hey, I’ll take this with both hands. Then there are others who say, hey, you know, Accutane was approved over 40 years ago. Yeah, it’s rough. It’s harsh. And people have harsh side effects. But they’ll deal with it.

Dr. Yug Varma  

And it does work. I mean, that’s, you know, it does work. There’s no question about it. But they’re not willing to try anything new, right. And so it really is a difference between germs who, under who kind of toed the line of the status quo, or who are interested really in new technologies, new innovations, new insights, especially not just because it’s a new for the sake of being new. But because it really alleviates a huge pain point for consumers and patients, which is that acne, all acne products have huge side effects, and that cannot be ignored.

Steve Washuta  

What is the problem? Or maybe it’s not a problem that companies like yours have where it it borders on a supplement and medication, right? And from a I guess you would say, like a marketing standpoint. And from a legal standpoint, you get into this weird gray area? It’s like, do you ever want it to become a medical thing? Do you want to keep it as a supplement? Is this somebody come above you like the FDA and go, Oh, actually, this does work? We’re gonna grab this from you. How do you deal with all of that?

Dr. Yug Varma  

So I mean, we we kind of faced this decision point pretty early on and what we decided, and what we learned was that the vast majority of people with acne, seek relief on my over the counter, right? A lot of them don’t have access to germs. And even if they do, insurance is covering acne medication less and less, because they think it’s a cosmetic problem. It’s not it’s a, it, among other things. It’s a mental health problem.

Dr. Yug Varma  

Because, for example, there was a study done in the UK, which found that people with acne are 63%, higher, prone to mental health issues than people without acne. That’s nearly two thirds more. And I don’t think it comes as a surprise to anyone, especially people that have acne, but even people who don’t, because acne first hits us when we’re teenagers, right? We’re insecure, we’re trying to figure out our place in the world.

Dr. Yug Varma  

We’re trying to find who our friends are to be liked by them. And then there’s this thing that erupts on your face that you can’t hide, because you have to show your face to everyone. And you’re trying to deal with that at a particularly vulnerable time in your life. So I think it’s really important. You know, to your point.

Dr. Yug Varma  

There’s a huge number of people seeking a remedy for acne that can’t or won’t, or won’t be able to go to a doctor and we wanted to make this product available to as many people as possible. And for that reason, the you know, strongly sort of followed this Over the counter path. And it’s really been a huge success. You know, a lot of our customers are people who’ve actually tried everything, they’ve tried brand, ABC, all the ones you’ve heard of, they’ve gone to the dermatologist, and you know, some of them suffering for from acne for seven years, 10 years or more.

Dr. Yug Varma  

And then they find us and they’d say, Oh, my gosh, finally, the first thing that’s worked. And, you know, we have we run clinical trials, we’re going to be releasing the data, it’s under embargo, because of some patent issues. But, you know, we, our aim is really to freely distribute and shared data and to educate people.

Dr. Yug Varma  

So we are going to be in the over the counter space, we want this product to be available easily to as many people as possible. And yeah, we love to educate people, you know, one of our biggest challenges right now is we’re a small company, we just started out, and it’s a very crowded market. And just like any company at the beginning, in a crowded market finds itself, especially when they’re, you know, not selling the same stuff in a different bottle, right?

Dr. Yug Varma  

We’re not like the 99% of other brands that are just putting benzoyl peroxide or whatever, in the same bottle, and, you know, different fragrance different label. We’re inventing a new tag, we invented a new technology, and we’re trying to educate people about the latest science, and that takes time. But we’re willing to be patient and I just happen to really enjoy the education part of it.

Steve Washuta  

How does the patent process work for something like this is do you currently have no competitors? Is it? Can somebody still do the research you’re doing but just not put it into a product? Or is it just is it really complicated?

Dr. Yug Varma  

Um, it’s a bit complicated, because it has to do with the regulatory side of things. But yeah, I mean, this is naturally occurring organism, as I discussed, it’s actually found on healthy skin, and not really on acne skin. So that’s a very interesting insight. And I think that, you know, obviously, there are a few companies that we know of, that are using features in skincare, and some are planning to kind of address it more towards acne.

Dr. Yug Varma  

But we do have a very strong pattern to that, once granted, would basically give us exclusive use of this technology in acne. And really, for us, our aim is to kind of make things like benzoyl peroxide obsolete, not because they work or don’t work, but because of the huge side effects that they have.

Dr. Yug Varma  

Right? The fact that they damage your skin, they damage your skin microbiome, and that’s not okay. It used to be okay, because you didn’t have any choice because you your choices were one harsh ingredient versus another. But now we’ve invented something that’s not harsh at all. And for the first time it gives people this amazing new option that they never had

Steve Washuta  

before. Yeah, I think it’s important to give the consumers more options. Like you said, everyone’s body reacts differently to medications. So you have people I know people who were on accutane and were fine. They were on accutane for a long, long period of time never had any issues. I know people who are on Accutane, who were a disaster, they had every single possible issue that you could possibly have coming from it and side effects.

Steve Washuta  

So to give people more options, especially options that potentially have less side effects, and are a little bit more natural seem seems to be the way and I’m glad that you said it’s staying most likely as a supplement and not moving up the ladder as a as a medication where it’s gonna be harder for people to get. This has been fantastic information.

Steve Washuta  

Let’s give my audience and listeners some more information about how they can get your product where they can maybe reach out to you directly and any other specific website or social media where they can do their research and their due diligence on your product.

Dr. Yug Varma  

Yeah, absolutely. So we are online at Fila biotics.com We’re Fila pH y la and so we’re Philo biotics calm there, you can learn more about our science, our clinicals and, you know, make the choice for yourself. And of course, if you want to buy our product you can buy at Philo biotics.com as well. We’re on socials at Fila biotics on Twitter X, I guess it’s called Now Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok.

Dr. Yug Varma  

And, yeah, we’re trying to spread the word about this amazing new technology for people who have acne for parents whose kids have acne and who are disappointed that nothing’s really changed since they were kids. You know, people are still using the same stuff that you know you hated as a teenager. So yeah, check us out and hopefully we can educate you and help you make the best decision for yourself.

Steve Washuta  

I’ll have all the links in the description below the podcast. My guest today has been Dr. Hugh farmer with Fila biotics, thank you for joining the tulipwood podcast

Dr. Yug Varma  

Thanks Steve appreciate it

Steven Washuta  

thanks for joining us on The truly fit podcast please subscribe rate and review on your listening platform and feel free to email us we’d love to hear from social a truly fit dot app thanks again

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