Skin Health And More With Chris Gibson

Your skin is the largest organ in your body. But what are you doing to care for your skin health? On today’s show, we have skincare and holistic wellness expert, author, and YouTube content creator, Chris Gibson. On the show today, he shares skincare tips that will help you look your best with his latest book, Acne Free in 3 Days.

Chris began with his own skincare journey and learned the ropes before the internet era. Get ready to live forever young with these easy-to-implement tips to keep your skin looking and functioning great!

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Skin Health And More With Chris Gibson

Top Tips To Keep Your Skin Clear

On our show we have skincare expert Chris Gibson, author of Acne Free in 3 Days, who you may have seen on Fox, CBS, NBC and ABC News sharing super helpful skincare tips to help you look your best. Chris shares a story of overcoming acne and identifies the number one cause of skincare issues. Tune in for some easy-to-implement tips to keep your body's largest organ looking and functioning great. Sit back, relax and get ready to Live Forever Young.

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Chris, thank you so much for coming into our studio here in St. Petersburg. How are you? I’m good. I look forward to this.

Chris, you are known as a skincare expert but you also have a lot of other talents, especially around areas of spirituality, holistic health and helping people in a holistic way. You had some good reasons for getting into this whole area of health and wellness. Can you tell us a little bit about what things were like when you were younger? What led you to get into this area of interest?

I find this as a common thing that people that have had some hardships early on and sometimes later on in life. Those things become your talents or your benefits. Childhood for me was fairly normal other than I had some health issues were on my skin. I had acne problems that started at eleven. I lived in an alcoholic household so there was a lot of stress.

I did okay in school but I was dyslexic. They didn't know that in the '70s. They didn't call it that. They thought you were stupid. It affected me more in math. It was hard for my parents to understand how I could be great in English and I could be great in science because I could understand the formulas but I could not do Algebra.

It was because I was transposing the numbers and the formulas. My senior year of high school is when they diagnosed that. At the same time, there was that ding on the self-esteem issue. I often wonder if that played a part in the skin issues that I had but some folks in my family genetically were more predisposed to oilier skin, which caused more acne.

I had a real struggle with it. It was in the early '80s and the typical thing in the '70s and '80s was antibiotics. They put you on tetracycline. It stains your teeth and all that other stuff. I was right on the edge of that and I had a great dermatologist who was wanting to keep me from getting scarring. I also had access to Accutane and all those other things but they didn't work. It became frustrating.

I tell the story and it's a true one. I'm about 24 years old. I wanted to go into broadcasting and the agent said, “You got to clear your skin up or you're never going to get a job on television.” That wasn't true and I know that looking back now, none of that's true but I believed it. I went to an expensive dermatologist in Dallas, where I was from and lived at the time. I spent $500. This is like 1984 to 1985. It’s a lot of money.

She gave me a prescription for tetracycline, which I tore and threw in the trash can on the way out and I was determined to figure out what was going on. There was no internet so I went to the library and checked out books. I learned that herbal approaches, and there was some idea that diet might have an impact on people with skin issues. I went to an herbal store, which I make fun of now.

They're everywhere, GNC, vitamin shop and all of those types of places. This was at the backend of a clandestine city. It’s not quite a city but out there in between Dallas and Fort Worth. I went in and the lady put me on butcher's broom. I don't think you can get that anymore. It was something to clean you out and had me go on taheebo tea, which is bark out of a South American tree and that's what we had the time. It stirred it up.

That upset me that it was worse but it also taught me that something was reacting. I started to notice. I paid attention to what I ate and I would notice that if I had a cola, no shame on Coca-Cola but if I had one, I could see my skin turning redder minutes after I would drink that. I went on an apple fast for three days, nothing but apples. I took a food vacation, water, had a colonic done, no acne.

Three days later, not even did I not have new breakouts, the old ones, redness and inflammation were gone. I was like, “Wow.” Is that how you came up with that book? Eventually, it would become a book but through the years, I had a corporate life and I did all these things that people do. I didn't go into broadcasting but I took all the courses that my parents paid for. I had a good corporate life and I would help people out especially friends of mine that knew I'd had the problem because a family knew. It was a big deal in my family.

They would all come to me when they were teenagers since I'm older now. There have been several generations of those teenagers and I would help them out. I was writing books on how to market online after the dot-com bust for companies. That was what I started and my business partner at the time was like, “You're 40 now and you don't look 40. You never looked like you had skin problems ever.

You need to write a book on that so that we know how to do this.” We did and it was an aside project. It was 61 pages. It was an eBook. There was no Amazon out there. We put it out on ClickBank and it went nuts. I simply told you what I told you guys, with more detail. Over the next year, after the shock wore off of the book doing that, I took questions from people and got answers. The book became a solid piece of material for people with acne, eczema and rosacea. We put that book out and I didn't think too much about it.

A TV producer picked up a free copy at a trade show. She tried it. She was 45 years old and had suffered acne her whole life. She called me and said, “Would you like to come to Ottawa, Canada?” They're much more open than they were. Now, I think it's better everywhere but they were much more open to the things I talked about in the book like probiotics, sugar and how to treat your skin. What ingredients are in skincare products that can cause you problems?

I went up there and did a demo on the TV and it went nuts. I didn't realize that was on the A-Channel, which is like their BBC. That went all over the country, in the US and the rest is history. I started doing television. I had been doing some radio shows but I had a good publicist here out of Tampa. She put me on a FOX local news station. Those producers talk to each other when they have somebody who's they call hot.

I was on the road on television for two and a half years. From Good Morning America down, all the way down to lifestyle shows in cities and stuff. It was crazy. Did that have an effect on your skin? No, I knew what to do. The hardest thing about that part of that journey was the travel. I’m about to start doing television in January 2022. You can do it from my home, on Zoom. I don't have to get on an airplane and be at a studio at 4:00 in the morning for an 8:00 call. I'm excited about going back on TV.

That'll be a little nicer this time around. There will be some shows you have to travel for. I don't want to get too far off the topic but that's a good thing that you brought that up because stress is part of that vicious cycle when you have skin issues. You think about all the people who get breakouts before their wedding, have eczema flare-ups or whatever.

There is something big going on. Your body's telling you what's going on, what the triggers are. Typically, what I did was get in a war with myself at first. You're so mad at your body and your skin for not being the way you want, especially as a teenager. I slapped my own face one time and I'm so mad. It’s more like I slugged it because it was that frustrating. Nothing they were giving me was working.

You're thinking there's something wrong with me too at the same time until you go on this discovery journey of what your body needs. It's funny because now if I get an occasional pimple, I'm like, “Whatever.” At 57, I don't care. It's my body and it's always because I slipped off the wagon a little. This time of year is very difficult for me. As it is for everyone, I’m human and it's the holidays.

I like peppermint ice cream and all this stuff. I have learned and done many shows on how to do things sugar-free but sometimes you want to have the same thing everybody else is having. Chris, you have a YouTube channel that has quite a few followers. It's growing fast. Tell a bit a little bit about it. It's interesting after the book dies down and life happens. We had that bad recession and my mom passed away.

This life changes and that happens to everybody as you go through your life. I took a break from all of that stuff and moved to Florida and got out of Pennsylvania. I love Pennsylvania but it's cold. Pittsburgh is one of my favorite cities but I didn't want to be cold anymore. I came down here with some friends in Florida.

The house is set. I got rid of everything. I sold my big house off. I got rid of all that because what you realize is part of your stress is when things go like that, you have a lot of responsibilities you don't want to have anymore. I did the big house, nice car and all that, “I don't want to do any of that stuff anymore.” I wanted to travel and relax. I came down here and spent about almost three years on the beach doing consulting and got the itch. One day, I got the urge, the call to go back on camera.

I'm like, “I want to go TV. I called my publicist and she said, “You have to get a new book. You have to have something to go on TV for.” I always wanted to control that piece because when you go on network television, there are certain things you can't talk about. They're not being mean. It's just there are these rules. It was hard to go and talk about enemas and colonics on NBC. Now, they will with the doctor show but not before.

I said, “I will try to do the YouTube channel. I set it up in 2010 and did nothing with it. I'll put a couple of videos out and see if I'm still relevant. The first one I did was timely in fact because there was a ban on chemical sunscreens in Hawaii because of the effect that chemicals were having on the coral reefs, not to mention the human skin. I did it. I videoed and it's terrible. It's on there. It was my first one. I was very TV-ish and very stiff but it did okay.

It got 10,000 views, which is good for a channel that doesn't have fifteen subscribers. I tried doing cooking shows, health and fitness, all this stuff I'm known for outside of skincare, the holistic health coach stuff to see what people wanted. The next thing was I did an intermittent fasting test on myself, where I had put on a little bit of weight sitting on the beach.

Everybody thinks come down here the food is like, “They put salami on everything in this area. I had about 30 pounds to lose, did so successfully, documented that and that did okay. It wasn't until I started talking about my age and how old I was. That it started opening the skincare doors again. I was helping people with acne.

I was doing the acne videos and they were doing okay. When I opened up about why I don't look 57 at 57 and the things that I did going back to what we talked about in the book. Telling that story, pulling that information out and providing it for people again, reviewing and teaching about skincare products, chemicals, topicals, diet and its role, the channel blew up overnight. I got called a lot of names. It's YouTube, after all. I got called a liar. I must have had work done. I've not had any work done. I needed to show my personal info. They wanted to see that on YouTube. I'm not going to put my personal address up on YouTube.

I saw some videos of you when you were on TV. How old were you? I was in my '40s. That's one of the things that helped me that I found out later the TV producers could not believe that I didn't look older. I did that from 41 until almost 47. They would come into the green room and they'd call my name. I go, “You're not what we were expecting.”

How do you need to look? I was focused on acne and inflammatory immune response skin diseases. That's where my focus was as a holistic health coach. I wasn't even thinking about anti-aging. It wasn't even on my radar. I showed up and I was like, “I guess I am that old.” I never put a number to my age. When I did, people didn't believe it.

It helped to be controversial on YouTube. You have a book out that is called Acne Free in 3 Days but now you're coming out with a couple of new books. You have one on spiritual lessons. Could you tell us about that?

The Spirit Lessons, I started that book several years ago thinking I had everything that needed to go in it but then I figured out things were still unfolding for me that are amazing things. I have the same struggles everybody else does but things tend to work out for me in a weird, miraculous and crazy ways. We could spend a whole podcast on that stuff but that’s what the book is for. It's a collection of things that I have learned and seen that are driven by things, not here.

They're driven by your higher self and your spirit part of yourself. You would have your called God, your soul, inner being, whatever you want to call it. It talks a lot about the law of attraction and how much self-direction we are given whether we want to be a victim, successful or whatever. Everybody's definition of it is that's different. It's a very personal thing.

The story goes through that and then it is anchored by some crazy stories of things that happened to me that worked out. It started off as a project for me. I wanted to document all the miracles that happened to me. I get chills when I talk about that. That's a feel-good thing. If you sit down, everybody's had insane things work out for them. Everybody has that experience somewhere in their life. When you start focusing on those and writing them down, you're bumping up the energy of that.

You're vibrating out that energy and it's attracting more stuff to you. I get the feeling I'm not done. There are more that's going to happen over the next several years that there may end up being two books. At some point, I'm going to cut it off and say, “I'll be dead by the time I write this book.

When exactly is it coming out? I hope in the next couple of years. There's been another project showing up that may be why there's been the drag on that. When things slow down for me, I respect that. I've learned to respect there is some reason there is some drag happening.

This book idea was presented to me by my subscribers and I don't know how I didn't think of it. They're like, “You have 475 videos on anti-aging, how to do diet fitness and all the way those things play a role in your health and your skin. You should do this in a book.” I'm like, “I guess I should do that, shouldn't I?” It's already done. I just need to go, pull the material and put it in a book.”

Is this going to come out sooner then? Does it have a title? I think it will be at the end of 2022. It's going to be something about some anti-aging rules. I think it’s called The Skinny Rules. I like that title so I was sticking with it. If you've ever written a book, titles start off one way as a working title and it usually ends up being something else. Acne Free in 3 Days was not what that book is called, although it’s a great title.

It'll be something to do with a full approach to anti-aging but I toy with that word because no one wants to look 21. Maybe there are some people out there to get plastic surgery that won't look twenty. They never looked twenty. They looked weird. What I focus on is being the best, healthiest version of you that you can be. It gets called anti-aging, reverse aging and you have to use those words because that's what society has used to describe that whole thing but it is a health focus that you have.

You want to look great. It's no good to go out and get a facelift if that's your thing and it's fine but not be able to get off the couch. How many feeble people have we seen in a store here in Florida? I had to learn when I lived here. You would see this person going down the aisle of the store and they're creeping along. You're like, “I feel so bad for them.”

They would turn around and they would have a 25-year-old face. It freaked me out. I was like, “Why would you do that?” I try to focus. I know I have my subscribers, a good deal of people trying to fix problems like skin damage. That's okay. They're not looking to look twenty. They don't want to look unwell, old or haggard. They want to look as good as they can look.

Your book is going to be coming out. It will help them with a plan. It is going to get them from where they are to their vision for themselves. It's going to include everything. That's a triad that you hear me talking about. How important is that vision or a person creating an image of what they want to become like in regard to the overall plan?

There are two images you deal with and you can go into all kinds of psychology about this. There is the image of what we want to be, which is what we aspire to work toward and where our goals are. There's also this image that is the reverse of that, that people carry around and don't think about. It is the lack of that. That's the same thing as saying, “I look and feel like crap.”

You're affirming those things. You have to begin affirming, I am where I am. There are things about my body I love. It doesn't matter how big you are, how skinny you are or what's broken. There are things about your life. When you're that unhappy with your body, you're not alive anymore. If you're still here, there are things about your life that you love and you sometimes have to go back and reaffirm those.

Set that image and move toward it with some consistency. There are two images that people struggle with. The body dysmorphia. All that stuff is very real. People see themselves sometimes completely different than how they appear to everyone else. It's shocking. I'm a big fan of taking selfies whenever you're doing fitness, skincare or anything like at 30 days, not every single day but 30 days, 60 days, 90 days so that you can see the improvement yourself and break that old image that you're carrying around that there's something wrong with you.

Tell us about people's attitudes. When they first start, it might have an attitude of, “I don't know if I can do this.” What is it that's most important about people getting a new attitude on so they can accomplish their goal? Segment intending bite-sized steps. In the weight loss book that I wrote back in the day, I talked about those bite-sized steps that you want to underperform a little bit in the beginning. If you have a plan you want to follow and it's 30 minutes on a treadmill, you realize that's going to be a struggle at first because you haven't done it. Start with 10 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day, 20 minutes a day and then 30 minutes a day.

Don't try to jump in and do too much at once because it causes frustration. Humans have to build habits. It takes us about 31 days to do that. You're not going to get off the couch. You're going to have to fight your old habits a little bit. I don't put people on diets but when I go through nutrition with people and I work out a plan with them, it's always a slow process.

I don't tell them to throw out all the cakes in your fridge the first day and ice cream. It’s, “Let's start moving it out and replacing it with something that's healthier.” If they do it that way, more often than not within 3 to 6 months, you've completely created a whole new paradigm for yourself, as far as health.

When we talk about weight loss, we refer to it as weight release because if you lose something like your keys, you're going to look for it. I focus on how you're going to feel because it's the feeling that will keep you motivated more so because everybody that comes back when they are successful, the first thing they say is, “Never, I look great in this dress. I can fit in my jeans.” All this stuff the weight loss industry throws at you as the reason, they are talking to that negative image data.

They go, “I can play with my kids and run the dog. I took the stairs at the mall and I was able to get up them. I can't believe I feel so good.” That is the new image. You are commercialism in sales often goes towards that negative image we have. I'm going to be able to fit in my jeans.

Chris, you mentioned the Law of Attraction earlier. There's an element of the Law of Attraction of feelings. Seeing this new image of yourself and then feeling what it would feel like to already be there and have gratitude for that feeling. Is that part of your teaching?

I do talk about that because it's already done. When you decide something or you've made a decision, you've brought that into reality, although you're not experiencing it physically yet. If you can stay focused in that way and positive and you're going to have that voice, “Don't beat up on yourself. You may fall off the wagon.” It happens every day but you can get back on the next day because your goal hasn't changed.

Chris, there's another aspect to your teachings and it relates to skincare but also anti-aging. Is this whole interior design with the nutrition and you have a show that talks about the five most important vitamins. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how it relates to the inflammation that we talked about?

We'll start with the inflammation part because it is the keystone of the issue. I talk a lot about energy in the body. Anybody who's done any certification, physical training or nutrition knows that it's all about energetics in the body. Nutrition and inflammation are married very closely together because there are certain nutrients, vitamin A, B, E, C, D3 and the Ks.

These vitamins all help the body regulate inflammation, repair itself and work in tandem with each other to create healthier cells. This is what we want. Your cells are always replicating. They're either going one direction or the other. They're not going to ever be exactly the same. The hard part is, do you get those from supplements? Do you get them from vegetables? How do you figure out what to do that? What I usually tell folks is, “It's usually a mixture.”

You need to have a clean diet as clean as you can have it of leafy greens but realize that there is some truth to the fact that some of the things that are grown now don't have as many nutritional values they did before mineral-wise, which is very important. Good solid supplements that are verified high quality can help make a big difference in collagen and peptides.

I did a test on collagen and peptides on the channel. It had a benefit to me. I explained the differences between that some people take collagen and peptides and they notice the improvement in hair and nails. Some people take them in joint health, which is how I first learned about them with my mother, having all the inflammation in her joints and how helpful they were back then. For some people, it's skin issues, dryness and those types of things.

My belief is that whatever you're deficient in those peptides that you replace is where you're going to see the impact on your skin or your body. Not everybody's going to have the same deficiencies in certain peptides because of genetics, background and ethnicity. There are a whole lot of things that go into play and what your body specifically needs.

Getting those vitamins on a consistent basis or back to that and trying to reduce the body's inflammation so that the energy that it's spending on that can go to replicating healthier cells, helping you feel better and recover faster from colds, flu or whatever. We've seen a worldwide example of what happens when people are caught in situations where they're not at the top of their health game. Things can take you out. That's how it works.

My goal has always been to try to give a very balanced view in nutrition, fitness, mindfulness and trying to reduce stress in your life. Once you start feeling good, you reduce stress. I always talk about that. Pick one area. In life coaching, what we do is when people come to us, they'll use up 3 or 4 areas. Their relationships and finances may be a problem, weight, health or whatever it is. I’m like, “If you'll take one area, focus on that and improve it, all the rest of them will improve.”

We did a show called Feel Better, Live Better and that's the same thing. When you start to feel better, it's almost impossible not to start living that. Don't attack them all at once. You're going to be overwhelmed, which is stressful.

Chris, if people wanted to engage with your teachings, what's the easiest and best way to do it? Are there multiple ways depending on how people like to consume information?

There are several ways. The books are still available, although I would recommend you go to my blog, which is Skin So Fabulous because you can download them free there instead of having to buy them. The new ones will not be free but the ones that are all are free. That blog is also a community. It's a mighty network where people are able to direct message me for help. There are courses in there which are questionnaires that you fill out and it tells you what skin type you are and what products are best for you. It’s a general tool that people like. All of it's free.

The videos, when they go out on YouTube, get posted there as well. You can see them in either place. YouTube is probably the best catalog because I approached creating the channel as a catalog. There are playlists by issue. There are anti-aging, videos specifically to the eye area, to sagging skin, overall health, weight loss and cooking. They all wanted me to bring back my cooking shows.

I’ll probably have to create a whole other channel for that. It's all segmented for you. I put out at least three videos a week. We do things like giveaways and stuff on the blog as a community so it's fun. We have a lot of fun over there with stuff and they help each other, which is amazing to me. The biggest amazing thing to me is my subscribers. On YouTube, you hear stories. You can have some negativity with some of the people and some crazy folks spied up in public.

By and large, subscriber’s comments are always very helpful. There is no bullying. I can't get to everybody anymore so a lot of times, by the time I get to a question someone's answered. It is awesome. They've answered it correctly and if not, I'll go in and fix it. They're very tight. I liked that. They’re YouTubers with millions of subscribers if I get there great but I would rather have 100,000 tight people that are helping each other out in a community style than a million people that don't ever watch or bullying.

What’s the name of your YouTube channel, Chris? I'm starting to evolve into some personality name. That's coming from the subscribers. They call me, Chris G. I said, “I sound like a rapper.” I may go with that eventually but it’s Chris Gibson. If you type in my name in the YouTube search bar and any skin condition videos come up.

What’s the name of your website? It’s ChrisGibsonLive.com and Skin So Fabulous is the blog. That’s easier to type that word in.

They can access the blog from your website as well. It's all interconnected. Every video that you watch and all the links from my social media. I'm all over that stuff too.

You have two new books coming out, one in about a year and the other one, maybe a year after that. Would you come back on the show again after the first one is released on anti-aging and talk with us about that?

Absolutely. Chris, this has been very nice having you here at the show. Rollie, thank you for participating and being in charge of the sound. Thank you for reading.

Important Links:

• Acne Free in 3 Days
• YouTube - Chris Gibson
• Feel Better, Live Better
• Skin So Fabulous
• ChrisGibsonLive.com

About Chris Gibson

I try to approach all aspects on my life within the 3 principles SPIRIT has directed me to do so over the course of many years starting in my late teens. Physicality, Mentality, and Spirituality. I like to call this the Triad of Earth School learning.  My early life focus was on my (PHYSICALITY) health problems I encountered at a young age. Born premature and club footed, I often joke I was already off on the wrong foot to begin with.

I also have battled dyslexia, attention deficit disorder (MENTALITY), and chronic problems in particular, including self esteem shattering skin issues like severe acne. Like many people, I discovered healing though a kind of spirit guidance which is what happened with me (SPIRITUALITY).

Modern medicine was of absolutely NO HELP! I was forced to research and seek alternatives and so I found myself guided to the answers. I have led a life of very good health ever since! Those answers healed and helped me and years later eventually became the basis for my first extremely successful book “Acne Free in Three Days”.

I suddenly found myself on radio and major TV shows eventually landing on the Lifestyle circuit. I was able to be a part of high level conversations about skincare and others such as addiction, childhood obesity, and teenage self-esteem.

The information I shared was helping a lot (thousands) of people.  I am forever grateful for the Acne book’s success but more so the sharing of information that really helps people. I have been doing this ever since! It is how I am called to serve others and I am passionate about it. Check out my YouTube channel Chris Gibson Live! for my TV appearances and tip videos! There always something to learn there.