Beauty Focus Collagen+ training with Dr Joe Chang

Hi everybody, it's great to meet all of you today. As Justin has given you a teaser on this new product that we have developed over the last few months (in fact, it took more than six years for us to get to this point), it's pretty exciting. I thought I would share some of the new information that we have on this Beauty Focus product. The most important thing to remember with this particular collagen-based product is that our scientists have come through, and it is not your mother's collagen product. Fundamentally, it is the most complete Beauty supplement that has been clinically proven to deliver benefits to your skin. For example, we have one of the major ingredients in it, which is collagen, but it's not just any collagen—it's a particular and specific collagen peptide that can actually stimulate your skin cells to produce collagen and also act as a building block to build more collagen in the skin tissue. The second major ingredient in this particular Beauty Focus product is an antioxidant that is called lutein. Again, as many of you who have been with Nu Skin for many years can imagine, we know a lot about antioxidants, and we did not want to choose an antioxidant that doesn't selectively get into the skin tissue because it's not going to do any good. We evaluated and screened hundreds of different types of antioxidants, and we landed on and identified this particular antioxidant called lutein. It is important, and in a few minutes I'll let you in on a secret why we chose lutein, because I think you'll agree with me that based on the scientific evidence we have obtained with this particular antioxidant, it delivers really important benefits to the skin—in fact, just as much as the collagen ingredient does. The third ingredient that we have blended into Beauty Focus is a particular class of molecules or substances that we call phytoceramides. We all recognize that in order for the skin to stay healthy-looking, radiant, and so on, it needs a lot of moisturization occurring in the skin tissue. This is what we call hydration, and the key property with this particular phytoceramide class of molecules is that it can retain—it can actually literally hang on to the water in the skin so that it doesn't get dehydrated and make your skin look dry. These are the three major ingredients, and that is why we really believe at Nu Skin that this is the first time we have developed a product that is the most complete, clinically proven Beauty supplement—in other words, it delivers beauty from the inside out. When we talk about collagen, we notice that many of the competitive products we have evaluated and analyzed use the parent collagen molecule blended into the final product. We did not think that is really the most optimal way of delivering collagen to the skin. Our Nu Skin scientists went to work and identified and evaluated a whole series of different types of collagen. We looked at the parent molecule; through a patented process, we actually cut up and sliced the collagen molecule into little bits and pieces or fragments of them—some big, some small—and we evaluated all of them and successfully managed to identify the most potent collagen fragment, what we call the collagen peptide. It is a very small molecule, and our studies show it actually enters the blood very quickly and, importantly, it accumulates in high, much higher levels than the parent molecule. Finally, it gets delivered to the skin tissue. I've already alluded to the fact that it acts as a building block to make more collagen and also can stimulate the skin cells to produce more collagen. But that's not all. During that particular stimulatory phase, it can also make another skin protein that is as important as collagen, and that is elastin, which keeps your skin able to bounce back—in other words, it increases or improves skin elasticity. Collagen and elastin together—to us, this is one of the most exciting findings with this particular collagen peptide, unlike the parent collagen protein. This one has dual action on the skin, which translates to incredible benefits. When you look at this particular peptide, as I've mentioned, it stimulates collagen synthesis. The next question we wanted to know is: does it really mean anything? Can you actually visually see the outcome of these molecular or scientific mechanisms happening inside the skin tissue? So as usual at Nu Skin, we conduct clinical studies—it's a very unusual practice in our industry to conduct clinical studies with the final product—and what our clinical studies show, in summary, is that indeed the skin becomes more elastic, and because of that, it can also reduce wrinkles. These are very important benefits from the Beauty Focus product. As a scientist, I'd like to show you the data—this is going to bore you a little bit, but I think it's important. When you look at this kind of data, it's really not about me telling you that this product is great; it's the data that shows you that it is really something that can actually happen on your skin. Briefly to summarize all these extensive scientific studies we have conducted with Beauty Focus: fundamentally, it can produce a 15% increase in skin elasticity, it can decrease wrinkle formation by 20%, and importantly, we can also see at the tissue level there is more procollagen being produced—as much as a 65% increase. All these properties and findings that we have observed in the studies do translate to a visual improvement of your skin when you use this product over a period of about four to four months. Now, let's talk a little bit about a second important ingredient in Beauty Focus. When you think about making collagen, it's great you can increase the production of collagen and elastin. The second thing our scientists wanted to do is: if you produce more collagen, why don't we also put in an ingredient that can literally preserve this collagen? Because what's the point of making more collagen if you cannot keep it intact in the skin? That is one of the major reasons why we added the antioxidant. We know the skin tissue is exposed persistently and consistently to environmental stress factors—like blue light, for example. These are damaging factors. When the skin is continuously exposed to such environmental stress factors, invariably the collagen will break down over time, and similarly with elastin. With the addition of lutein into the Beauty Focus product, we can literally provide a chemical shield, if you will, on the skin so that there is less damage to the collagen that is already being produced. Don't take my word for it—it actually is in the skin because at Nu Skin we can use a particular technology we have called a biophotonic scanner. When you place that scanner and scan your skin in as little as a minute, you can see an improvement in oxidative protection in the skin, showing that indeed this particular lutein ingredient actually gets delivered to the skin to protect it very well. In fact, some of our studies show that by being there and being present in the skin, you also have hyaluronic acid being produced all the time, which again is a very important ingredient in maintaining hydration of the skin. Finally, the third ingredient—this is a huge word: phytoceramides. When you first look at it, frankly, I would say 'what on Earth is a phytoceramide?' It almost sounds like the name of a monster, but it is an important one in chemistry. Because of its chemical nature, it has the ability to hold on to water for much longer than not having phytoceramides present in your skin. As we all know, if you hydrate your skin, you're going to keep your skin healthy. Moisturization has always been the mantra in skin health, and we are able to deliver that particular benefit in the presence of the phytoceramide—a very important third ingredient we have blended into this product that we call Beauty Focus. We've done all the scientific studies. Now let's see whether we can translate this into what actually happens on human skin. We do a lot of these types of studies at Nu Skin—in fact, it's probably a unique differentiating feature of our company in that we do clinical studies on the final product and not just on the ingredients themselves. We do double-blind studies using subjects over a range of ages, from young people less than 30 all the way up to middle age 60 and so on, and we do it over a period of four months in this particular instance. Let me show you some of the data. When you look at the skin after 4 months of taking Beauty Focus, you can see a dramatic increase in texture and radiance, and if you look at the overall appearance—these are all expert gradings of the skin. The principal investigator of this particular study is a professor of dermatology at Duke University, so she and her team look at skin every day and know what they're looking for. From the columns, there is a huge and significant improvement in all three metrics after taking the product for four months. Just stand-alone, it works—we know it works, the data tell us it works. As Justin mentioned to you, we also have established ourselves as the number one Beauty Device System in the industry with the LumiSpa. So we did a combination study, asking subjects to take Beauty Focus for four months while using the LumiSpa. What we saw is really interesting: the combination of a consumable (a beauty supplement taken by ingestion) and an external device produces even more dramatic effects on radiance, texture, firmness, and overall appearance. This has never been seen before, and this combination can only happen at Nu Skin because nobody else has LumiSpa. This combined use of a device with a consumable is a combination you won't find anywhere else. To bring it all together, this is not your mother's collagen product. From our data and conclusions, this is the most complete Beauty supplement that has been clinically proven. Very few companies can actually say they have conducted clinical studies on the final product. It is clinically proven—it's not just my word that this product works; it is the result of the scientific studies. Let me introduce one of the original scientists who worked on this product: Dr. Shelly Hester.

Yes, and I think frankly, as a scientist, it's unfortunate that we call this a Collagen Plus product because it really isn't a collagen product per se. When we first started on this project, we looked at a variety of competitive products out there, and invariably what we find is that they just drop in the parent molecule—the whole collagen product—without much experimentation to find out whether it actually is the best version to use. Our scientists, using a patented process, chopped up this collagen molecule into various bits and pieces to see which one was the best to blend into the product. The operative word here is not just collagen; it's really the collagen peptide that we selected—the one with the highest potency and the ability to deliver itself into the skin tissue.

Yes. We obviously selected the right collagen to put into the final product, but we said that's not enough because there are other things needed in a beauty supplement. As I mentioned earlier, one of the most important things is: once you make collagen, you need to protect it. That stimulated the scientists to say, 'Aha, we need to put an antioxidant in it because the skin is constantly exposed to the environment, and a lot of oxidative damage happens on the skin—and one of the causes is that the collagen is being chopped up.' So we set out to find an antioxidant, but not just any antioxidant. We needed one that can get onto the skin. After many trials and errors, we selected lutein, which, once consumed, gets to the skin and stays there to create this oxidative shield to protect the skin.

Absolutely. And it's a great idea, but we took it one more step: we went and did the study to prove that idea is correct. That's why we do the scientific studies here at Nu Skin.

Yes. The scanner is interesting. We developed it many years ago. Now, by putting lutein in, can we actually test whether the antioxidant gets to the skin? With the biophotonic scanner, within a minute you can literally tell whether your oxidative protection has gone up. It's been proven and validated, so it's not hokey.

Absolutely, especially when you ingest it. How do you know? You have to take it on faith? No, you can measure it yourself. That's the key.

Big word, right? Just call it ceramides. In skin health, there's a mantra: moisturize, moisturize, moisturize. That is the fundamental tenet. So we asked, 'Is there a way of doing that through this Beauty Focus product?' We looked for an ingredient that can help preserve hydration of the skin. We found this wheat lipid extract. Chemically, when we looked at it under an electron microscope, the chemical structure of the ceramides is very waxy, very fatty, and it has hooks that can grab onto water molecules. We included it and saw that the hydration index of the skin goes up when you take this product consistently. So you moisturize from the inside out.

Definitely.

Absolutely. Think about it: consuming an ingestible product and using an external device can enhance not only the consumable but also the benefits delivered by the device. This is what we call synergism in science: putting two together, one plus one is not just two—one plus one equals three or more.

And think about it: there are other devices we have too. For example, what happens when we start looking at Boost as another device?

Yes. Our clinical studies, although we fund them, it's important to acknowledge that these are studies done at universities. For example, I already alluded to the fact that the principal investigator of these clinical studies with Beauty Focus was a professor of dermatology at Duke University. That's the third-party validation we seek. When we do our clinical studies, we don't manipulate the results. If they show negative results, we don't launch the product.