A positive inspiration

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A positive inspiration

Dr Howard Murad is a world renowned skincare expert, famous for his eponymous brand. But there is so much more to this incredible man – from his passion for art to his inclusive health philosophy. And for such a busy, high profile person, he remains humble and extraordinarily interesting, as Lesley Neil discovered

What attracted you to the world of health and wellbeing? Was it always something you were interested in?

Absolutely. From the beginning, I was always interested in medicine and science, but it was different at different times in my life. I went into pharmacy school before I went to medical school because my brother was a pharmacist and he encouraged me. But even while I was in pharmacy school, I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to be a doctor.

Why did you decide to specialise in skincare?

Life just led me that way. I finished my training as a doctor and I was inducted into the army during the Vietnam war. Before going, I had a residency planned in surgery because by then I wanted to be a surgeon – and I saw a lot of surgery in Vietnam as a battalion surgeon. When I came back to the United States, they attached me to the dermatology clinic and after seeing all the blood and gore, I was thrilled that people were going through skincare instead. I was very impressed by all the things that could actually be accomplished, so I was inclined to go into dermatology.

Why did you decide to found your own company and launch your own skincare line?

It was an evolution. When I opened my own medical practice, a lot of my patients came to me asking for something to use on their skin that wasn’t available, and with my background as a pharmacist, I used to write prescriptions that would be compounded by the pharmacy.

By the early 1980s, my practice was becoming more of a day spa and we had an electrologist and an aesthetician. This evolved into a full-sized medical spa and then into developing my own product range. So it wasn’t planned, but one thing led to another.

I believe that life should be about allowing yourself to have options at all times. I have a saying: “Make your mark on the canvas of life and let it direct you”. So the mark I made is I wanted some science and I wanted to help people – and that could have gone anywhere. There wasn’t any rigid determination. Life just took me where it needed to take me.

You advocate an “inclusive health” lifestyle. What does this mean and why do you believe it is so beneficial?

The difference between inclusive health and any other health is that we really look at how we can increase the hydration level of the body to make it younger and healthier. It’s a three-step programme looking at the ways we lose water and how we can control this externally, internally and emotionally.

The first way we lose water is from being out in the environment with the sun, air pollution and smog, etc, so using appropriate skincare – not just sunscreen, but moisturisers and antioxidants are also important.

Next, I look at every cell in the body because they’re all connected. A lot of people say that skincare is just taking care of your skin, but if you’ve ever had a sunburn, you’ll know that you might feel nauseous or have a headache too, so it’s all connected. Eating well is very important and eating a lot of water-rich foods is better than just drinking water. Think of a watermelon, for example. It’s almost all water, but it contains antioxidants, phytonutrients and roughage, and it makes your body alkaline, so there’s a lot more to it than just water.

And finally, it’s about finding ways to minimise stress and encouraging people to act younger – so to look the way when they were younger and they used to smile more.

You’re also a great advocate of laughter as a form of medicine. Can you tell us why you believe it’s so important?

Laughter is a big medicine, but it’s not about forced laughter – it’s what I call “listening to the toddler in you”. If you think of how we are now, we try to be perfect. We try to do things that are politically correct, we have all kinds of rules and regulations, more is expected of us and we have a digital dependency.

So we’re basically ground down and we feel less worthy. But you weren’t that way when you were a toddler. How many times did you fail? How many times did you try to walk and you fell and you kept on going? When you were a toddler, you didn’t care whether you were too tall or too short or too skinny or whatever – you didn’t have to be perfect.

All of those attributes, in a way, come down to laughter because if you look at toddlers, they are always smiling and laughing. I tell people that the best facelift is a smile.

Art helped you to recover from an operation a few years ago and you now recommend it as a form of therapy. Why do you think art as such beneficial powers?

I do art the way a child does it. I just go to the canvas and I don’t know what’s going to come. I like the words “expose yourself to your harshest critics without fear of rejection”, so I like to do art with people watching me. I say: What colour should I have?” And then I throw it on the canvas, and then I say: “And what colour now?” I’m just like a child, and the people who watch me understand that I’m trying to explain to them that returning to the child you used to be, when you didn’t have to colour inside the lines or be so perfect, is good.

What does your working day involve?

I have multiple jobs. Aside from seeing patients in my clinic, I like to teach, so I always have classes – teaching aestheticians and sometimes other physicians and beauty therapists. And I do a lot of research into ways of easing stress and things like that.

I’m fortunate that I have a son, a daughter and a nephew who are with the company and they do a lot of the business of the products, but I’m involved in that as well. So I don’t have one job – I have ten jobs and I like them all.

Can you tell us about your Inspirations app?

Murad Inspirations is a free app that pairs what I call my insights with my art. The insights were created over the course of maybe 20 years. Something will come to me when I see a patient, or it could be something that happens in my life.

One of my favourites is “In order to grow, you need to cut your umbilical cord”. This came about when I had a patient in her 30s who came in with her mother and her grandmother and whenever I asked her a question, one of the other two answered. She didn’t have a voice. We all have ways that people are shutting us down and not allowing us to speak, so that’s when I created this particular insight, and another one: “Be heard”.

Over the course of time, I’ve gathered over 400, so I’ve put them all in the app. Each day, it gives people a new saying or insight and a piece of art that they can then share with friends.

Murad has raised fabulous amounts of money for charities in the US, and this year the brand chose the Prince’s Trust as its first UK charity partner. Why this particular charity?

I’ve been fortunate, so I like to help. Most of our charities are to encourage younger people to progress. I think if we can help people on their way up, when they’re still struggling to understand who they are, we could make such a big difference in their lives. I have anther saying: “If you don’t have a dream, how can your dreams come true?” So encouraging people to have dreams, to look for the potential that they may have never even thought they had, I think that’s important, and we will continue to do work with UK charities in the future. People say I’m helping others, but it makes me feel good. In a way, it’s a selfish thing. It fulfils my life.

Are there any products you haven’t managed to develop yet because of particular scientific hurdles, but that you hope to be able to create one day?

Eventually, we will be able to take a little piece of a person’s skin, genetically bioengineer it and transform it into something younger. I don’t know what that will entail, but I think that as we go further in science, we will develop some sort of bioengineering material made from our own genetic makeup that we can make reform our genes to act the way they did when they were much younger. One of these days, we’re going to have a pill or a cream that will make skin cancer go away or make your skin look the way it did when you were a teenager. That’s what I would like.

What’s the best advice our readers can give to their customers?

Number one – be comfortable with who you are. It’s hard, but no matter who you are, you have things that others don’t and you have potential. So be thrilled with who you are and honour yourself – those are words that I like to use with my patients. Allow the unique you to blossom.

Next – eat your water. We know intuitively that water-rich foods are healthier. Fruit and vegetables are healthier for us than fried foods, which are dry.

And finally, it’s very important to use good skincare. People think of skincare as just taking care of your skin, but it’s beyond that because your skin is connected to the rest of your body. Don’t just focus on your heart or your liver or your brain – they’re all connected, so help every cell.

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