I'm A PhD & RD — This Is How I Care For Skin From The Inside Out

If you've spent some time in my section, you likely know that we take beauty advice from a wide variety of experts. Sure, dermatologists, aestheticians, makeup artists, and hairstylists make up the core of experts—but we also talk to individuals like joy strategists, psychologists, chemists, sleep experts, eco-justice advocates, and spiritual leaders. Why? Beauty can take many forms—and all are valid. 

And one way we are particularly interested in beauty is how you can optimize your skin health through what you consume, like your diet and supplements. And to get to the bottom of this, who better to talk to than a registered dietitian and nutrition scientist with a doctorate in foods and nutrition, like our very own director of scientific affairs Ashley Jordan Ferira, PhD, RDN. This week she joins my podcast Clean Beauty School to chat about the vast world of beauty supplements, dietary choices for your skin, and her own skin care journey. (Check it out—we cover a lot of ground.) 

And while we get quite technical and into the science weeds, the crux of the episode is about how skin care is never just about vanity: "Just because your skin is literally placed superficially doesn't mean you can treat it superficially," she tells us. 

Ferira works in-house on our supplement range—and thus knows the ins, outs, and everything else about supplement formulation. And for her skin care and beauty needs specifically, she utilizes mbg's beauty & gut collagen+ and cellular beauty+.*

She goes on to explain that you can think of the ingredients in beauty & gut collagen+ as your skin's baseline: "This is the daily foundational base of skin essentials. It has 17.7 grams of collagen peptides—type I and type III—so we're not messing around here with the dose,"* she says. "Then it has seven other ingredients. We have hyaluronic acid, L-glutamine, biotin, vitamins C and E, turmeric root extract, and broccoli seed extract, delivering this powerhouse phytochemical known as sulforaphane glucosinolate."

Some people like to view supplements as a Band-Aid over less-than-ideal eating habits.

Just because Ferira's work is dedicated to internal approaches to health and well-being, that doesn't mean it's the only option. 

"The benefit of taking oral nutrients is you are not limited by time and space: Beauty routines take time, and we may not be paying attention to our whole bodies. But oral nutrients help the entire body and do so rather quickly, meaning taking them is not time-consuming [like a skin care routine might be]," she says. 

But when people ask her what's better: Using oral or using topical? Well, her answer is quite simple: "Well, both sound good to me!"