A Dermatologist’s Guide to What Actually Works in Skincare

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Transcript: A Dermatologist’s Guide to What Actually Works in Skincare

Season 12, Episode 33  | May 26, 2026

David Freeman

Welcome back to another episode of Life Time Talks. I’m David Freeman.

 

Jamie Martin

And I’m Jamie Martin.

 

David Freeman

And today’s topic is all things around skin health. So granted, our largest organ is our skin, it’s also the one thing we most often take for granted. So until we start having issues with it, that’s when we start to address a little bit of the issues within the skin. And today we’re going to have a special guest who breaks it down and help us support the space of how skin can get better within health. Who do we have?

 

Jamie Martin

Yeah, absolutely. I’m really excited. We have Dr. Mohiba Tareen here with us. She is a board certified dermatologist and Mohs skin cancer surgeon and the owner of Tareen Dermatology, the largest independent dermatology group in Minnesota. Named a top doctor for 13 consecutive years, she completed her dermatology residency at Columbia University, and advanced surgical and cosmetic fellowship training in New York City. As founder and medical director of Tareen Dermatology, Dr. Tareen is recognized for excellence in medical, surgical, and cosmetic dermatology.

 

And in just full disclosure, I am a patient at Tareen Dermatology and you have helped me navigate a few complicated situations with my health. So welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here.

 

Mohiba Tareen

Thank you so much for having me, Jamie, and thank you so much for trusting me personally with your skin. With all the choices that you have, I am honored that I could be your doctor.

 

Jamie Martin

Well you helped me navigate, you know, I will just be like, I had a little skin issue, skin cancer issue, and you helped me work through that. And it was really, it’s been challenging, but it’s also been really empowering what I’ve learned from you. So thank you. And we’re gonna dive into it. We know that our skin matters to our health and we gotta take care of it.

 

David Freeman

Well, I mean, I did some high knees right before we got into this episode to drive up the energy. And then you kind of whispered it to me. So like, that’s actually good for your skin. Break that down, please, so people can hear it.

 

Mohiba Tareen

I mean look, he’s glowing, isn’t he, everyone? So the skin, as you said, it’s our largest body organ. Anything that you do, exercise, not sleeping, et cetera, that all has ramifications for your skin. So when you’re doing your high knees, it’s increasing your circulation, it’s increasing your blood flow to your skin, particularly from sitting all day. Many of us are in offices, many of us are in computers. It’s really nice to take those interval breaks and really get that blood flowing.

 

Jamie Martin

Right, well, okay, so let’s start because when we think of skin, we think it’s outside of our bodies, right? It’s our covering, it’s keeping us, you know, keeping out germs and bacteria and all these things. But really, when we talk about healthy skin, you have often said like healthy skin starts from within. It’s a phrase we hear when it comes to our health. So what does that actually mean? Because I mean, we know that it’s not just surface level here.

 

Mohiba Tareen

Absolutely, it’s your largest body organ. is everything. It’s protecting you from the environment. It’s regulating your temperature. It’s keeping you beautiful. It’s keeping you warm. Everything you’re doing, as we talked about, exercise, sleep, something that’s really important for women, RA, Jamie, hormones, nutrition, stress, all of those can factor upon your skin and not only make you not look your best, it can make you not feel your best. You can get skin cancer. You can get eczema. You can get psoriasis.

 

Everything, almost every disease, manifests in your skin. That’s one of the reasons I was attracted to dermatology. When I was a medical school student, I walked into a room and one of my attendings saw a patient who had yellow skin and was able to diagnose his pancreatic cancer early. And that individual was able to live from having a terrible disease that was diagnosed early.

 

Jamie Martin

So there’s signs potentially coming through our skin that something deeper could be going on as well. It’s all interconnected.

 

Mohiba Tareen

They always say the eyes are the window to the soul. I think the skin is the window to the soul.

 

David Freeman

So with social media, because everybody’s on it, everybody’s taking and consuming all this information, I personally, even within whatever I might be scrolling, I see skincare routines. And I want to ask you as far as, hey, err on the side of caution, obviously ask questions, but before you start to dive in and start putting these products on your skin, how would you speak to all the listeners out there on that?

 

Mohiba Tareen

Well, just like everything in life, skin is just not one thing. Everybody’s skin is different. What is great for your skin, Jamie, may not be great for your skin. And social media is, in a lot of ways, all about shock value. What is the newest? What’s the most crazy thing that you can do? And that’s not what’s good for skin. As dermatologists, we know simple is better. You don’t need a 12-step routine. It’s better to do two or three things, cleanse your moisturizer, sunscreen, and do that consistently rather than all the crazy, know, salmon sperm, all these things. Although I do love that, we can get to that later. But there are a few new things, but they should be tested and you should do them in moderation.

 

Jamie Martin

Well, and there’s also the the real value of working with a professional to do this versus taking some of the information that we’re seeing on there You know, there’s all sorts of skin trends out there, you know, I was using this example yesterday I’ve been using like a lymph brush which seems pretty like that’s probably pretty low-stake stuff, right? But there are other things that may be a little higher-stake and when I think about like my daughters, I have tween and teen daughters, what they’re seeing and what they’re wanting to do and how they want to take care of their skin. There’s also some things they probably shouldn’t be doing, but they’re being exposed to earlier because of whatever’s online or on social media.

 

Mohiba Tareen

You hit the nail on the head. So we’re actually seeing a lot of detrimental effects for social media on young women. There are kids who are six, seven, eight years old who are doing multi-step regimens that are actually harming their skin. They’re harming their skin barrier. When you’re young, you have really great skin cell turnover. You know, you get a little cut in a kid. It heals in a couple hours. You get a cut in a 90-year-old. They can get an ulcer and they can die from it. So using an exfoliative thing in a young child is actually harming his or her skin barrier.

 

Jamie Martin

So we don’t need to go there quite yet. And that’s what I keep telling my daughters. I’m like, look at your beautiful skin. You can do those things later. You’ll have your whole life to do those steps.

 

Mohiba Tareen

Youth is the time to start, know, consistency, easy things. Again, sunscreen, cleanser, moisturizer, and really get in the habit of that versus like all these crazy things that they’re advertising on social for nine-year-olds. I mean, people are going to Sephora with their nine-year-olds and spending hundreds of dollars. Come on, put that in their college fund instead.

 

David Freeman

I agree, agree. Harley, do you hear that? That’s my daughter. With that, with that, I got to ask the question. You kind of alluded to it earlier as far as we have different pigments, right? So Jamie, whatever it might be working for her skin complexion might be different from mine. So can you kind of break that down a little bit?

 

Mohiba Tareen

Yes, absolutely. And it’s not just skin pigment. It’s your oiliness. It’s your dryness. It’s your age. It’s your hormone status. It’s your nutrition level. Many people are in GLPs right now, and their skin responds differently if they’re on a GLP. So there are so many things. We have to really make that individual to the patient. That’s why you see a professional, again, what is good for your brown skin may not be good for your brother’s brown skin.

 

Jamie Martin

So let’s talk, I when you meet with patients and you’re kind of looking at them for the first time, like what can it tell you about their health or overall lifestyle and what are you looking for to kind of begin to start to build out a plan for them if they need a plan?

 

Mohiba Tareen

So first of all, we just want to start with basics. We look at skincare as kind of a pyramid. What are non-negotiables? A great cleanser that meets what you need. For example, if David was oily, we’d use something, maybe some type of, you know, foaming type of mechanism. Me being perimenopausal, older, I’d want a creamy cleanser. So that’s kind of a non-negotiable. You want a great cleanser because we know all those heavy metals and toxins that we’re exposed to every day. We want to get those off of our skin.

 

Number two. We want a great sunscreen. And many dermatologists will come on your program and say, you need sunscreen all the time, every single ounce of your body. I am not militant like that. I feel like everything is moderation. Use your sunscreen on your sun-exposed areas. But if you’re wearing a long-sleeved shirt, do you need sunscreen on your arms? No. Right. So a little sunscreen, sun-exposed areas, because we do get chronic UV radiation even from windows. If we’re not outside, people say that all the time. I’m not outside. I’m like, well, still wear your sunscreen on your face because that’s the most common spot for skin cancer. So that’s kind of a non-negotiable.

 

And then moisturizer. Some people are maybe oily and they’re like, Dr. Rene, why are you recommending a moisturizer for me? But actually the moisturizer will regulate your oil glands and make it not overproduce. Isn’t that interesting? So if you can find the right moisturizer for you, it’ll actually regulate that.

 

And then we come to the next step of the pyramid. Do you want to do some medical grade skincare? Many of you have heard retinoids, retinol. Retinoids are topical vitamin A’s. They’ve been around for 40, 50 years, so we know the science behind them. They go into the nucleus, the central part of the cell, and they increase skin cell turnover. They make your skin thicker and better. And they also reduce DNA damage, so it helps with skin cancer. So there’s a double-edged sword right there. Right.

 

And then antioxidants. And then we think of things like kind of at the top of the pyramid. Do you want to do a little neuromodulator? Do you want to do a little bit of filler? Do you want to do some laser to tighten the skin? But if you’re, you never start at the top of the pyramid. You don’t do a $2,000 laser if you’re not using a great cleanser and a great moisturizer.

 

Jamie Martin

Yeah, start with the daily habits, like all things, right? We talk about health and wellness all the time. It’s like you have to have the foundational habits in place, our pillars that we’re always talking about. Plus be addressing, you know, I think lifestyle habits. So what role do lifestyle habits, let’s talk about nutrition in a little bit, because I think, you know, I have one of my daughters is, has some skin issues. She’s dealing with acne and we talk a lot about how are you nourishing your body too? Cause that comes through your skin, but then there’s more that she can do too. So what, talk about some of those other lifestyle habits.

 

Mohiba Tareen

Diet is huge, sleep is huge, hormonal regulation are huge, stress is huge. So let’s come back to your daughter first in terms of acne. As dermatologists, we were taught that food really doesn’t have an input into acne. That was the adage about 20 years ago. We now know that food is the driver of many people’s acne. So dairy can be a huge driver of acne in young women.

 

And interestingly, many of your listeners may not know this, it’s the skim dairy, skim milk has a lot more hormones than full fat milk. Many people cannot tolerate skim milk, but then they drink full fat milk or almond milk or something and they’re good. Yogurt doesn’t tend to turn on acne, so that’s where you can get a lot of your dairy there. So hormones in meat and milk can really be a driver.

 

We know high glycemic foods, I know you guys talk about high glycemic foods all the time. They just produce that insulin resistance, so all those hormones and oil, can’t go back into the skin, they sit on top of the skin.

 

So the main drivers that we see are dairy and high glycemic foods. again, just like your skin is individual, if red dye and Kool-Aid, who’s still drinking Kool-Aid, but you know what mean, if red dye is your driver of acne, then that is something that you can help your dermatologist pin down.

 

Jamie Martin

Narrow that down and I think that’s a really important thing to be able to talk about some of those habits that you have and what you’re doing right like that might be affecting the quality or the health of your skin not quality necessarily but that goes back to really also gut health which we I mean that you know that we just had it we talked about that yesterday like what the quality of what’s happening there the permeability and what happens inflammation all those pieces

 

Mohiba Tareen

And you probably talked about this, but the skin and the gut are both derived from the ectoderm. So embryonically when we’re forming, the skin and the gut are actually seen from the same embryonic membrane. So if your gut is sensitive to something, your skin is most likely going to be sensitive to it as well. So we know that.

 

Jamie Martin

Yep, that’s a really interesting thing to know. how do you ever have people test for food sensitivities? that do you recommend that or work with other health care providers to recommend that for patients?

 

Mohiba Tareen

100%. So as a dermatologist, board-certified dermatologist, I take care of lot of eczema and psoriasis as well. And those are kind two different ends of the immunological spectrum. Psoriasis can be kind of scalp, and eczema can be more kind of itchy and all over. But yes, sometimes foods and different medications, different systemic things can trigger that. And as dermatologists, we’ll get you set up with an allergist for that. Because as dermatologists, we do external testing called patch testing to see if there’s something that you’re coming in contact with, but it’s allergist tests from the inside. it’s all, it’s like we all, medicine should be a collaborative endeavor. It’s not its own individual silo.

 

David Freeman

Yep, so you touched on the nutrition, we talked about gut health as well. Stress was another piece that you mentioned. So can you unpack stress a little bit as far as how that can create breakouts and stuff?

 

Mohiba Tareen

Absolutely. So I mean, as a physician, I’m a doctor first before I’m a dermatologist. Every disease, every disease that we all deal with is genetics plus environment. And what is that most important environmental driver? It’s stress, right? So if you are undergoing stress, it turns on your cortisol access from your brain, right? And the cortisol access plugs directly into your oil glands. And it turns those oil glands on and it makes them produce an irregular type of oil. Like we like a little bit of oil, you know, especially at my age, as a woman, need a little bit of oil to keep our skin hydrated. But if the oil gland is overproducing, like a toxic type of oil, it leads to breakouts and congestion. So that’s how stress is turning that on, David.

 

Jamie Martin

Yeah, it’s like the stress-related breakouts that you hear about people or eczema or itchy skin patches or whatever that looks like that many people like it feels like some people are more prone to that than others to that you hear about it with.

 

Mohiba Tareen

And maybe those people, those other people who they’re getting rashes on their hands and things like that, maybe their sister instead is getting gut permeability and maybe their brother is getting some type of like other, you know, vascular type of issue. But everybody manifests their stress in different ways, but a lot of people manifest it in their skin.

 

Jamie Martin

Any other lifestyle habits you’ve mentioned movement we talked nutrition sleep stress. Is there anything we’re missing? I mean environmental exposures

 

Mohiba Tareen

My god, so much toxins in the atmosphere. The lack of the ozone layer has increased the risk of skin cancer. Again, we’re in Minnesota, one of the top three states for melanoma in the country. So we know when we are losing that UV protection, we get skin cancer. So that unfortunately is something that we have to think about.

 

David Freeman

So just for our listeners, if Minnesota is one of the three, do you know the other two?

 

Mohiba Tareen

I think it’s North Dakota, and I’m forgetting the other two. It’s states where there’s a lot of Caucasian individuals and not a lot of recognition of UV protection. So right in these northern states, we get such short periods of sun that people go outside right away. They get their burns. And we know sunburn is really what turns on skin cancer. Chronic low level exposure, fine. But it’s those big bouts that lead to a blistering sunburn that increase your risk of skin cancer substantially.

 

Jamie Martin

Well, and I just want to talk for a minute because I’m a woman in my early 40s and it was, 25 years ago in high school tanning beds were a huge thing for a lot of people in my age range. And it was something like that. It also increases the risk and chances of skin cancer, right? Like potentially?

 

Mohiba Tareen

Substantially. I mean, tanning beds are now considered the same carcinogen level as cigarettes, guys. I mean, we know. All of us went to tanning booths before proms and things like that. I’m brown skinned. My mom would be like, what are you doing? You’re already brown. But everybody is doing it. And that’s what peer pressure is, right? And so they’ve done studies. One, tanning bed exposure can increase your risk for skin cancer by anywhere between 30 to 70%. Isn’t that crazy? And when I’m doing full body skin exams, we will see people who have terrible moles kind of right where the tanning bed gave them sun here and here.

 

Jamie Martin

That they might not otherwise have been exposed to.

 

Mohiba Tareen

Precisely. Right. Precisely. So we can see that direct correlation between a mole getting irregular and melanoma changes and that tanning that exposure.

 

Jamie Martin

I want to stick on this topic for just a second because one thing I’ve noticed with my daughters, I said, mentioned tween and teen, I’ve noticed this trend over the last two summers that they have been monitoring the UV index for going outside. Like, is that about? I’m sure you’re hearing about this, but they’re keeping an eye on this. Like, I’ll go outside, the UV is this. I can go outside right now.

 

Mohiba Tareen

I’m really happy that this UV index is becoming more well known, especially amongst young people, because we know when the UV index is high, we’re going to get more of those harmful sun rays. But it’s not like that’s also low level sun rays, as we talked about through windows and things like that. That can age you. It can contribute to skin cancer. So people have the fallacy, like I’ll just wear my sunscreen when I go out in the high UV time. But you should be wearing your sunscreen, your sun protection, your sun protective clothing at most times.

 

Jamie Martin

Right, so it’s not just then, right.

 

Mohiba Tareen

But we’re happy though about the girls.

 

Jamie Martin

Absolutely, I’d rather have them be aware and understand. But it is funny, like even just thinking, my girl’s like, why would you have ever laid in a tanning bed? And I’m like, great question. Really great question.

 

Mohiba Tareen

They’ll be talking about their 12 step TikTok trends. There’s always something.

 

Jamie Martin

Yeah, give them 20 years down the road.

 

David Freeman

Duration in the sun, okay, obviously saying put on sunscreen Is there any recommended time to be in sun without protection to get benefits of the sun?

 

Mohiba Tareen

So controversial. Did we have to go there, David? No, I’m kidding. There are so many schools of thought. So some people think that under 15 minutes, fine, no sunscreen. You need that for vitamin D exposure and vitamin D production, because we know the sun helps us manufacture vitamin D from our skin.

 

Then there are schools of thought, scientists who have shown that in our northern latitude where we are right now, there’s so little UV penetration through the sun in winter that you could be outside for five hours and you couldn’t make enough vitamin D.

 

So I typically say less than 15 minutes, fine. You don’t have to wear your sunscreen. But if high UV index day, as we were talking about before, you may get a little burn with less than 15 minutes. So kind of play it by ear. really does also depend on your skin tone. For people like you and I, we really can’t manufacture vitamin D in our skin if we live in Minnesota in the winter. So why are you even getting the sun damage at that point?

 

Jamie Martin

Is vitamin D a part, do you recommend vitamin D for all of your patients as well?

 

Mohiba Tareen

Excellent. So maybe not everybody because there is hypervitaminosis D where you get too much vitamin D and then you can have some toxicity. But it’s quite rare in these northern climates. So vitamin D is not just a vitamin. I’m sure you guys have touched on this. It’s also a hormone. It helps our skin and our gut and our immune system function at a more optimal level. So almost everybody in northern climate is vitamin D deficient. So I do recommend it. It helps with acne. It definitely helps with eczema and psoriasis. Sometimes it can help with hair loss. So it’s a really great vitamin to incorporate into your regimen. you probably have touched on vitamin D3 is what we recommend. take a little vitamin K with it to help it get into your skin cells.

 

David Freeman

Okay, so we said put on sunscreen, but we want to make sure that we’re putting on, since it’s our biggest organ, the correct type of sunscreen. So I know there’s a lot of sunscreens out there. What do you recommend people using for sunscreen?

 

Mohiba Tareen

So whenever my patients ask me this, I always say, the sunscreen that you will wear is the sunscreen that I recommend. Some people like sprays. And sprays notoriously get a bad rap. If you put enough spray on and you rub it on and you use it every day, great. If you like a cream, if you like a lotion. But in general, as dermatologists, on these kind of areas where you’re using sunscreen more, like your face and your hands, we like organic sunscreens. We like mineral sunscreens, things with titanium and zinc, because those things sit on top of the skin.

 

Chemical sunscreens, things like octocrylene, avobenzone, longer names in general, those get into the skin cell itself and that’s how they protect versus those other ones like titanium and zinc that actually just sit on top of the skin. So do you want something to get into your kids’ skin cells? No, I want something that sits on top of my kids’ skin cells.

 

Jamie Martin

Yep, and that’s often the, I mean, you might see it, they look more white. I was in Costa Rica this past year and we were doing surfing lessons and there were so many people who just had it all over, and it was not rubbed in at all, but it was definitely that titanium version. You could tell the skin protection, the sun is so strong there, you’re so much closer to the equator, but that was what everybody was wearing.

 

Mohiba Tareen

Equatorial sun is a different thing. The white is actually also reflecting the skin too. So you can also get those like titanium and zinc is what’s called micronized where it’s really broken down and so you don’t get as much white. you don’t get as much protection.

 

David Freeman

And then the recommended SPF, I know usually you’re saying, well, the amount of time that you’re probably out in the sun, but what’s usually the rule of thumb?

 

Mohiba Tareen

So the American Academy of Dermatology, which is a governing organization of all dermatologists, recommends SPF 30 and above for daily use. And then if you’re going to be really out, like, at the equator for a long time, you can use an SPF that’s higher. But SPF 30 really protects you against about 96 % of all the sun’s rays. So you’re really only incrementally getting more. And what we see is somebody will say, oh, I use SPF 30 regularly. Now I’m using SPF 50, so I’m not going to reapply. And then they get burned, because it’s a fallacy that they’re so much more, that they’re almost double protected. They’re not.

 

Jamie Martin

Right, you still need to be applying, you know, every, what is it, is it every 80?

 

Mohiba Tareen

Yes, every 80 to 90 minutes, a shot glass worth. But coming back to that, I’m really about moderation, guys. I think that SPF clothing does not get enough air time. I mean, on my own, I have five kids, and if I was reapplying sunscreen, I would just not do anything else.

 

Jamie Martin

You would be doing that for one all the time? You need more arms.

 

Mohiba Tareen

Yes. That would be great.

 

David Freeman

I want to on the opposite end of sunscreen you have sun tanning lotion too. So what exactly is happening with that process with the sun now hitting in the skin to create you know obviously a darker pigment what’s happening there?

 

Mohiba Tareen

So the oils are just really reflect, know, they’re catching the sun rather than reflecting it away. And it’s concentrating it into our epidermis. In our epidermis, we have cells called melanocytes that turn on pigment. So it’s concentrating everything into those melanocytes and turning them on in a way that looks good initially, but then over time is really is DNA damage. And even in brown skin people, we can get skin cancer. So it’s a fallacy like, we’ve got this beautiful glow. We’re never going to get skin cancer. I see plenty of skin cancers in brown skin.

 

Jamie Martin

Okay, okay, so we’ve I feel like we’ve covered a lot already But I want to get into that how you’re doing the personalized skincare for people because you have a lot of people all ages Coming into your office. I know as I’ve sat there and looked around like there’s people who are very young and very old and they’re for very different reasons, but you know thinking about Each individual like how do you address them and make sure like they’re coming in, they’re getting the kind of thing that they need for skin, whether it’s a concern that they’re having or like, hey, I’m just trying to get ahead of any issues that might be there. I just want to skin check to be sure I’m on the right path.

 

Mohiba Tareen

Absolutely. So there’s medical, there’s cosmetic, but I just want my patients to know that they can be healthy and beautiful at any age. And I think that is the essence of this podcast is you can live your best at any generation, any time. And it really is a discourse between you and your dermatologist, you and your esthetician. So if you’re dry skin, you probably need some more hydrating things. If you’re oily skin, you know. So we sit down, we could great.

 

We can do some really good skin analyses these days. Now sometimes we even use AI cameras. Yeah, AI is great because it can really get a sense of pore size, texture, sebaceous gland, hormonal activity. So all of those things, we can get really good photos. can help us analyze. And we can really bring things to the patient that they may not know that they needed. Like some people might need a little skin booster to plump their skin. Some people might do better with a laser resurfacing.

 

Again, we have to analyze, we have to see what’s right for that person, what is best for their budget as well. And I think it’s a fallacy that people need to spend a lot of money on skincare. There’s plenty of things that you can buy at Target or at the drugstore that work really well.

 

David Freeman

You know you have your flow and your cadence like when you get your teeth cleaning just once a year, right? Is there a certain cadence as far as how people should be going to a dermatologist?

 

Mohiba Tareen

Excellent question. So most individuals after the age of 18 to 30, it kind of depends on your risk factors, should be coming in once a year for a full body skin exam. Even dark skinned people like us can get skin cancer. And our skin cancers, ironically, can come on our hands, feet, and sometimes on our genital area where it’s not well known. Caucasian individuals, we see more skin cancers on their nose, their lips, their ears, their hands.

 

So people should be coming in once a year for their full body skin exam. And at that time, towards the end, you can sit with your dermatologist and say, you’ve taken a great look at my skin to make sure that there’s no skin cancer. What else are you seeing? Can you help me address my brown spots? Can you help me address so many people have redness, rosacea, broken blood vessels, and they’re really self-conscious about it. So that can be a great medical and kind of cosmetic endeavor with your dermatologist.

 

Jamie Martin

Well, and that kind of brings us to, think, you we talk about wanting to have your longer as a health span within your lifespan and also wanting to have really healthy skin. One thing we’re hearing a lot about now are peptides. Peptides have been part of skincare regimens for a really long time already. We’re hearing about more of them because of GLP-1s and that type of thing. But, you know, how can peptides and maybe other, I mean, we’ve talked a little bit about like platelets and exosomes and all those things. Like those are some newer innovations in this space. How are those coming into play and what should people know about them?

 

Mohiba Tareen

Excellent. So peptides topically have been around for almost two decades. We’ve used them in sunscreens to help them feel better and make our skin look better. We use them in night creams to make our skin more hydrid. So I love that we are finally getting some information about peptides, which are just really different types of proteins. Exosomes, as you know, which are signaling molecules, those are new to skincare. And there’s just a few of them that are really validated. A lot of them don’t do anything.

 

Some of the platelet-derived ones, some of the ones made at our wonderful Mayo Clinic, turn on your cellular repair mechanisms. So you don’t have to just inject peptides. You can use them on your skin. You don’t have to inject exosomes. You can just use them on your skin, and you can get really good results. So before, what was validated was just sunscreen, retinoids, and antioxidants. Now as a dermatologist, can confidently say peptides can increase your hydration. They can make you look better. Exosomes can fix things and sun damage and things like that. There’s a lot of really great science out there.

 

Jamie Martin

That’s really exciting because I think that’s one of the things I’ve heard and we’ve been reading more about is sometimes people are asking for exosomes or some of those other things in place of the neuromodulators and things like that. So if you’re not comfortable with the idea of Botox or that kind of thing, this might be something to ask about or at least get curious around.

 

Mohiba Tareen

100%. And so many of these things are natural. Like you have naturally occurring peptides. You have exosomes that give messages within your cells. So people are really feeling really much more natural and wholesome when they use it and they can make their skin look their best. So we were talking about salmon sperm before, which was like a really big TikTok trend. And it was originally approved in Korea and a lot of people were using it in Korea, which is kind of like the bastion of all skincare.

 

At Tareen Dermatology, we were the first clinic in all of Minnesota to introduce salmon sperm facials. And it has been a game changer. It’s been one of my favorite treatments of 2025 because it uses peptide and DNA signaling to turn on the skin cells to make more hydration. So as we age, we lose that collagen and elastin. I always say that bounciness. You look at your kids and they’ve got that beautiful bouncy skin. That salmon sperm, the PDG and RNA DNA that it turns on is really beneficial to bringing back that elastin.

 

Jamie Martin

It’s so interesting. it actually, I’m just gonna ask this, it actually salmon sperm? Like what is it? Because I’m like how would somebody even think to try that?

 

Mohiba Tareen

So what they saw with the fish farmers, the hand that they were harvesting the fish with looked significantly younger than the hand that was not harvesting the fish. Isn’t that so cool? I mean, all medicines come from nature, right? All medicines come from some type of natural source. It’s now made in the laboratory, so yes.

 

Jamie Martin

That’s funny. Well, that actually brings me to going back to nature. There’s a lot of stuff happening around like botanicals and those kinds of things. like, what are your thoughts on those?

 

Mohiba Tareen

I mean, botanicals are great, but also sometimes they can’t be great, right? Poison ivy is a botanical. Is that great for your skin? It’s, again, I feel like we go to such extremes with health, and we just need to take the middle path. You know, if a light botanical is in your rosacea thing, like niacinamide or something like that, great. But do you want all your skincare to be botanicals? No. Yeah.

 

Jamie Martin

Exactly.

 

David Freeman

And then going back to the reality check, I keep coming back to cadence, because I think just for our listeners to be able to have something to take home and actually start to apply when it comes to detoxification, probably not putting on makeup. Is there a cadence within that? If you’re usually wearing makeup five days or seven days, whatever it is, of the week, is it like, all right, give your face a little bit of a rest? Or is it a detoxification process that one should go through when it comes to their skin?

 

Mohiba Tareen

So the skin is an amazing organ. It will detoxify itself if you let it. Again, that’s why think cleansing is really important. Get off all those heavy metals and all those toxins from your skin. hopefully, I mean, coming back to sleep, sleep is paramount for the skin. So hopefully you do have your makeup off for eight hours a night and all those types of things. And hopefully you are sleeping so that your skin cells can repair themselves. Because we know during that deep sleep, during that REM sleep, everything is repairing itself. All the garbage of the cells is getting pushed out to the cadence every night for sure. It’s really popular on YouTube and things to have that slept on eye makeup look. Don’t do that. It’s just making your eyes and your skin worse.

 

Jamie Martin

Okay, I have to ask about one more thing because we’ve talked a lot even in just the last two days as we’ve been recording episodes about red light therapy and that’s again another skin health trend maybe it started as but it’s actually been proven to be pretty helpful with skin.

 

Mohiba Tareen

It’s not just helpful with skin, it’s helpful with joints, it’s helpful with inflammation. We love red light after laser treatments. It helps the skin repair itself. I personally use a red light cap every single day on my hair, because I’m prone to female pattern hair loss. We know certain wavelengths of red light turn down inflammation, they help the skin repair itself. Too much red light conversely can be toxic. Too much red light can cause hair loss. Too much red light can cause damage too. So again if there’s one thing your listeners take away, everything in moderation.

 

David Freeman

I’m gonna go to another question. I think this is another good one too, as far as is there a limit as far as how long you should be in a shower? I think sometimes we take these long showers, right? And you’re washing and scrubbing and then at some point you’re just allowing the water just to your body. Should it be like, all right, you need to cut it off after 10 minutes or what do you recommend?

 

Mohiba Tareen

Like at 10 minutes, god, everyone would be a prune. Although it is so nice. mean, for a lot of us, the shower is the only relaxation time that we get. So again, we try to do less than five to seven minutes. But more importantly than that, lukewarm water, not the hottest water ever. So hate to break it to you. Lukewarm water. And as soon as one gets out of the shower, pat your skin dry with a nice terry cloth, nice high quality cotton.

 

Then while the beads of water are still upon your skin, that’s when you apply your moisturizer. Because it helps pull the water, helps pull the moisture into the skin. And we know those skin cells are more open, they’re more permeable right after the shower.

 

David Freeman

Never knew that. Did you know that?

 

Jamie Martin

I think I did know that, because it’s kind like you want that dewy feel.

 

David Freeman

I mean I’m going super dry I’m trying to like . . .

 

Jamie Martin

Nope, not anymore.

 

Mohiba Tareen

Yes, right, like, dry, let a little bit of that water help be the carrier for the lipid of the moisturizer.

 

David Freeman

And I’m just thinking of the towel that I just wiped myself off with. How often should you probably be changing that towel out?

 

Mohiba Tareen

Well, you should be using a different towel for your nether regions and other places, your armpits versus your face, things like that. So I definitely recommend, I always just try to do it at least every day or every other day when I, yeah.

 

David Freeman

Did you know that? You just keep the secrets over here.

 

Jamie Martin

I did know that. I’ve just been holding it back.

 

Mohiba Tareen

My husband and my boys might use the same towel, you know.

 

Jamie Martin

It’s okay. It’s okay. There’s some things that happen. We’ve talked a lot about tips, but I also want to talk a little bit about the emotional side of skincare because we know that that can have an effect on confidence and how somebody kind of presents themselves in the world. let’s talk about that because I think why is that, why do you think skin is that for people? mean, it’s obviously aesthetic.

 

Mohiba Tareen

Absolutely. I mean, it’s the first thing that people see of you when you walk in. People make so many assumptions about you from your skin. So it really is emotional. I mean, I’ve been a board certified dermatologist for almost 20 years. My most thankful patients are my patients who I’ve fixed their acne. They walk in, they cannot even look an individual in the eye. After a few months of treatment, they have so… They can look at you. They can make decisions. They can live their lives. I mean, I’ve saved many a life from melanoma. Those patients don’t thank me as much as my acne patients who have gotten their confidence back. So it’s really awesome.

 

Jamie Martin

And I’m assuming you see that with a lot of teens. I mean, they’re going through hormonal changes, both boys and girls. Like, that is something. Like, you gotta get through that period of life, but there are ways to support them through it and help with their confidence level in that area.

 

Mohiba Tareen

I always recommend if your child is suffering from acne, this is not, we used to think in my generation that let them have their acne, it’ll fix itself. That is not the case. We see such terrible scarring and it costs so much more money and it leads to so much more emotional distress if you don’t treat it. So it’s better to treat acne earlier and younger. And particularly for brown skinned people, we scar so poorly. So it’s really great with brown skin to prevent acne.

 

David Freeman

Okay, all right. Well, we hit on a good amount of things. So is there anything else that you want to leave our listeners with before we get into our special mic drop moment?

 

Mohiba Tareen

Cool, I’m excited. One thing we didn’t touch too much upon are hormones in the skin. And coming back to like when you’re a teenager, your hormones are turning on and they’re connecting to your skin in a whole different way. men might get really kind of diffuse deep acne. Girls can start getting some of that jawline hormonal acne. That can be really deep and really painful for some young ladies and they don’t understand how it plays in with their cycles and things.

 

But then we come to this other part, like when our hormones start to drop. And it happens not just in women, it happens in men too. There’s like an epidemic of low testosterone, right? So there are so many ways that hormones play into the skin and lead to deeper cystic acne, lead to dehydration, lead to all these problems, pigmentation. If your estrogen’s too high, you can get melasma, all these types of things.

 

It’s all great and fine to use your estrogen cream for your vagina on your face until you start getting brown spots. Yeah. Right. it’s really important that your dermatologist understands your hormone level through your life.

 

Jamie Martin

Yeah, and probably understands what you’re doing and doing in collaboration with other health care providers as well to know how that might be impacting that.

 

David Freeman

Are you ready for it? Good one. This is a good one. All right. So taking us out with this mic drop moment, can you share a testimony that just stands out to you to this very day of all the years of practice within this space that just it changed this individual’s life? You don’t got to mention their name, but more of their story.

 

Mohiba Tareen

Absolutely. I mean, coming back to acne, let’s talk about a young man with cystic draining acne. Literally pizza face, nodules, pus draining out of his face, pus in the armpits.

 

Jamie Martin

Painful too, I’m sure.

 

Mohiba Tareen

Exactly. Cannot sit. You can’t sit because there’s draining nodules there.

 

We put this individual on a medication called Accutane, which has been around a long time. It’s essentially a high dose of vitamin A. So it’s a natural medication. It’s got some side effects. But that vitamin A can get deeper into the skin cells that are overproducing oil. And it fixes everything. Within eight months, this individual is totally clean, clear, can look me in the eye. Got a 4.0. was valedictorian of his class. He was really smart, but he just couldn’t show it because he was so not confident.

 

David Freeman

Wow.

 

Jamie Martin

That’s pretty cool. He was struggling with that piece of it. I think what you just said is I’m gonna just want to know here before we jump off because you said it was eight months. So again, like with all things, these are not quick fixes necessarily. There is patience. You may have a little trial and error, but these are like with all things, we have to figure out what works for us individually. And I think it takes time. There’s really no such thing as quick fixes or things that are gonna solve this in the next week.

 

David Freeman

Right, right.

 

Jamie Martin

Anyway, all right. Well, Dr. Tareen, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on. We want to make sure that our listeners and viewers can find you. Your website is Tareendermatology.com. You’re on Facebook and Instagram at Tareendermatology, TikTok at Tareenderm, and same on YouTube as well at Tareendermatology. Anywhere else we should point people?

 

Mohiba Tareen

Just our offices throughout the state of Minnesota and Wisconsin.

 

David Freeman

Nice, that you got your state in there now.

 

Jamie Martin

I’m a Wisconsin native. I love it. All right. Thank you. Dr Tareen.

 

David Freeman

Appreciate you.