Life Extension Science and Botox [Interview][Transcript]
Guest: Dr. Josie Tenore, MD
Presenter: Neal Howard
Guest Bio: Dr Josie Tenore graduated from the University of Toronto’s School of Medicine and received her Master’s of Science degree from Harvard University’s School of Public Health. She practiced full service academic family medicine and noticed that her patient population was becoming more interested in healthy aging and wanted solutions for their concerns that were outside of the scope of traditional medicine. She founded “FreshSkin”, an aesthetic medicine practice and is focused on helping her patients feel as good as they look and look as good as they feel. She is also board certified in Integrative Medicine.
Segment overview: Dr. Josie Tenore, MD, talks about Botox, and some studies that show that Botox treatments help those who suffer from depression; and also the welllness and weight loss programs.
Transcription
Health Professional Radio – Botox
Neal Howard: Hello and welcome to Health Professional Radio. I’m your host Neal Howard, thank you so much for joining us today. Our guest in studio today is Dr. Josie Tenore. She is the owner of Fresh Skin whose mission is to provide patients with exceptional aesthetic and wellness services, delivered with honesty, integrity and respect. How are you doing today Dr. Tenore?
Dr. Josie Tenore: I’m doing fantastic, how about yourself?
N: I’m doing well. When we’re talking about longevity and quality of life, a lot of that has to do with how we look, not only how we feel and our state of health both physical and mental. But how we look, how we perceive ourselves when we look in the mirror and how we hope that others perceive us. You’re in the business of providing well quality of life aesthetics at Fresh Skin am I correct in that?
T: You are, absolutely.
N: When you were here before in another segment, we were talking about Botox being by far the most popular treatment when it comes to quality of life medicine. Talk about some of the other aspects of your practice, you are a medical doctor you became interested in aesthetics during medical school. You’re still a medical doctor, but you focus on aesthetics more so now.
T: That’s correct. Let me step back, I always had an interest in aesthetics. When I was trained to do varicose vein treatments in 1986, I was performing chemical peels on my patients in 1988. So I like to say that I’ve been doing this before it was fashionable but I just took a step back in about 10 years ago and decided to just focus exclusively on cosmetic dermatology. And when you do that, you end up not being able to leave out the internal wellness as well because so much of what happens to our skin is a reflection of what’s going on within our inner bodies. So what I initially start to doing was just looking at skin and skin treatments and lasers and Botox and that sort of thing. And eventually my service menu expanded to include ways of treatment and then they’ve included hormone treatments and then it included micronutrient treatments and then I brought on acupuncture. And so it’s sort of morphed into a little bit of bigger… And it is a little unique because both those wellness practices don’t include the aesthetic component, in most aesthetic practices really don’t include the wellness. So we do provide both because beauty begins with beautiful skin, but beautiful skin begins with a healthy body. But to me it all kind of sits under the one umbrella.
N: Not a lot of the time is spent on nutrition in medical school. You were in medical school, is that something that you can agree with? Is that not a lot of nutrition was taught in school, more so prescribing drugs and traditional medical procedures?
T: Unfortunately I will have to agree with that comment because I was trained at the University of Toronto, in Toronto Canada. And there is a huge nutritional sciences program that’s actually at the medical school of Arizona. So I had an entire course in nutrition, which is more than most medical schools. The vast majority of medical school in the United State and Canada as well, I’m not gonna completely eliminate them have maybe an hour of nutrition as part of their program. And so it’s very difficult for physicians unless they have a specific interest in nutrition to be able to guide their patients as well as a nutritionist can. So I was lucky, I always had an interest in nutrition. So for me, it also came easily and it wasn’t just what we learned in medical school and that one hour, we’re you know what’s the calorie and what composes a healthy diet, fats, carbohydrate. And that was pretty simple. I mean I delved much further into it because I was an athlete and I was always looking at how do you get better performance and so I took extra courses as well in nutrition. But for the most part, most physicians really don’t and they kind of struggle to help people get as healthy as they possibly can.
N: Well let’s talk briefly the age range of your patients. Do you normally treat people that have begun to age and see the effects of aging as far as wrinkles and that sort of thing? Or maybe young folks who are looking to make sure that they remain young, as far as their looks are concerned?
T: Yes. I kind of do extensive range on teenagers all the way up to, and you will be surprised to believe this but there are individuals in their 90’s.
N: Wow.
T: So it’s never too late to come in and have our services. So the younger like the teens typically come to see me more because their moms bring them in mainly for acne reasons. And I do look at their diet and I do look at the nutrients and there is a prescription vitamin pill actually that’s specifically designed for acne. And so it’s probably the most common thing I prescribe to teens when they have acne problem so I do see teens for acne. But believe it or not even as teenagers now I’m finding there’s more and more emphasis on am I eating a healthy diet? And what can I do to prevent wrinkles? And so the patients who are in their 20’s and early 30’s, they’re sort of more in prevention mind frame and they do come in to often to take off to college 20, or 30, or 40 pounds that they put on during college.
N: Okay.
T: So we see them for weight loss.
N: The fresh from 15.
T: Uh huh. It’s more like it’s not fresh from 15 anymore. We had somebody come in the other day who would put on 40 lbs. in a semester.
N: Wow.
T: I don’t know how one does that, but she did. It was sort of like I said “Way to go,” I never seen that before.
N: You win the price.
T: You win the price, not that it’s a good one to win. But I have to say the bulk of my practice is probably women between the ages of 40 to 65. And then I’m starting to see sort of men in that age group, but it’s probably 80% female, 20% male ratio which is not unlike any other practice in medicine. And men don’t really like going to doctors unless it’s a cardiology practice, where they’ve already got their M.I and they kind of have to see the doctor. So unlike cardiology my demographics are not that different. But most people in the 40 to 65 year old practice when they come to the Wellness branch usually they’ve gone to a billion doctors and they’ve had extensive blood work and imaging and they still find that they’re having issues with either digestion or rashes or just not feeling well or having trouble losing weight and they come to us as the place of last resort. And we just sort of take a different perspective on what could be going on with them and try to get them feeling better. And most of the time we could take them off most their medication and they tend to feel a lot better off with their meds so.
N: You talked about teenagers all the way up to folks that are in their 90’s. Now when you’re young, young adult to teenager, you’ve got no fear, you’ve got your whole life a head of you. And when you’re in your 90’s, you’ve seen pretty much well everything that there is to see, nothing pretty much surprises you. When it comes to coming in for treatments, what about the fear factor? Are people pretty much once they’ve come to you, they’re pretty much “I don’t fear anything, I’m ready to roll.” Or are there still an unanswered questions about undergoing say for instance Botox or any of the other non-invasive treatments that are less invasive treatment that you have?
T: Well thank you to Hollywood, there is.
N: (Laugh)
T: And there’s two, I would say there are two fears that people come in, especially in the cosmetic ends. When it comes to the wellness end, it’s different. But on the cosmetic end there is 2 main fears I hear every day. One is, will it hurt? And so I spend endless hours trying to perfect my technique so that discomfort is minimal. But the other is “Am I going to look like fat bad Hollywood star I just saw in the Academy Awards?” on or whatever award show they finished seeing recently. So they’re really they have this concern that I’m gonna do something to them that’s gonna make them more like some mutation that should be on the new Star Wars. So those are, people still have fears. And so my approach with all of my patients is we specialize in scaredy-cats and let’s take it one step at a time, and I’m not in any hurry and so why don’t we start with an area that bothers them the most and we’ll do something there. And then we’ll gradually tackle each area in sequence until they’re happy with how they look in the mirror and we’ll try to do it as painlessly as possible. And once I have done a treatment on them, they’re able to see it for themselves that’s not really my goal, my goal is to restore youth and beauty and it’s certainly not to just take their money and do whatever I want with them. So but those are people never stop being fearful, it’s kind of how the human condition is.
N: And where can our listeners get more information about Fresh Skin?
T: I’m located in Downtown Highland Park which is Suburb of Chicago. My website is www.myfreshskin.com and my phone number is 847 681 8821.
N: Thank you so much. You’ve been listening to Health Professional Radio. I’m your host Neal Howard. It’s been a pleasure speaking with Dr. Josie Tenore, the owner of Fresh Skin in Highland Park Illinois. And she’s been here with us today talking about some of the fears and concerns that folks may have when they consider cosmetic treatments for aesthetics. We’ve also been talking about the wellness portion of her practice, not only beautiful skin. But overall well health as far as nutrition is concerned, exercise and weight loss. It’s been great having you here with us today Dr. Tenore.
T: I appreciate your time. Thank you very much.
N: Thank you. Transcript and audio of this program are available at healthprofessionalradio.com.au and also at hpr.fm and you can subscribe to our podcast on iTunes.