People bond over different things, but inflammation is unlikely to be high on the list — unless your Dr. Barbara Sturm and Dr. Will Cole, that is.
After being introduced by Australian supermodel and beauty entrepreneur Elle Macpherson, the duo hit it off immediately over inflammation, which Sturm defined as an immune response necessary to fight certain infections, but is something that can get out of hand. That’s where they come in.
“When I met Will there were not many people talking about inflammation and I was like, ‘Oh my god let’s talk about it,” said Sturm, an aesthetics doctor with training in sports medicine, who launched the Dr. Barbara Sturm Molecular Cosmetics collection on Net-a-porter in 2014. “Ever since, we’ve been educating together. It’s for people to know what inflammation does, what it means, how we can prevent it and to live better….It just goes hand in hand what we are doing.”
Cole, a New York Times bestselling author and functional medicine expert, added that there is a lot of synergy between him and Sturm. “It’s really about beauty from the inside out and the outside in.”
Cole receives a lot of questions about inflammation on social media and his podcast, “The Art of Being Well.” The most personal way for him to connect, though, is through his telehealth practice, which involves studying patient’s lab test results.
“People really want to have agency over their health. They want to know why they feel the way they do,” he said. “Just because a doctor said so isn’t going to cut it for people. They really want to know why and there’s so much medical gaslighting when you’re talking about different autoimmune issues and hormonal problems and hormonal issues.”
Some of the most common issues patients want to discuss are digestive problems, anxiety, fatigue, brain fog and low sex drive.
While Sturm still sees patients one-on-one, it’s not as much as she used to since she started her skin care line, but there are still a lot of online classes.
“I love to give advice and I learned so much from the needs of patients,” she said. “There’s a need for education and especially the beauty market is so swamped with information and marketing promises and it’s important for people to understand this is inflammation. If I do this to myself, then it causes inflammation. It disrupts my skin barrier, it disrupts my microbiome. But I know this and then I make a choice. Do I do an acid peel or not?”
Acne for example has multiple causes, but one of them is inflammation, Sturm noted.
“Our patients want to know, they want to be informed, they want to learn more,” she continued. “The more you know the better you can save your health, you can save your skin, you can be good to yourself.”
Source: WWD