Legs Talk: Dr David Jack

Dr. David Jack is a leading London-based aesthetic doctor, whose busy Harley Street clinic inspired him to create a simplified but effective skincare regime that treats skin health from the inside out.⁠ Dr. David Jack is also known for offering the infamous salmon sperm facial (known as polynucleotide treatments) - popular with A-listers like Jennifer Aniston and Kim Kardashion. It’s a skincare procedure that uses DNA from salmon sperm to improve skin texture, hydration, and elasticity.⁠
⁠Our founder Kate Shapland spoke with Dr. David Jack about what makes his skincare brand different to other doctor-founded brands, his daily wellbeing habits and his leg icon.

Tell me about your skincare brand because why is it different to any other, or another doctor's?

So my reason for starting my skincare brand was I found that my patients were very confused about what to use on their skin. I wanted to create a brand that is very simple to follow that will ensure people will use it over the longer term. Any skincare product is going to take months really to see the eventual outcomes from which means that giving someone a 7 step routine is not going to work. People aren't going to sustain that over the longer term, so what I wanted to do was combine lots of very active ingredients in a very small number of products which will target things like inflammation in the skin and old sun damage, all of the things that people start to notice as their skin ages. It's very much targeted towards the kind of 35 year old plus person, regardless of gender and skin type.

But simplicity is the key?

Simplicity is the key.

Inside and out?

Yeah. We like to call it simple steps, but complex formulations because we've really taken the thought out of having to kind of curate your skincare routine by using lots of different products and things like that with lots of different active ingredients. Instead we've kind of created things that are very well curated and have been tested, and things to show that they actually give really quite spectacular outcomes. If they've used it over the longer term, but there's not too much thought involved in it, people just know what they're doing, and understand why they're using what they're using.

Tell me about your interest in aesthetic medicine because I know that that's where all of this started.

Yeah so it started with my background with my career in plastic surgery. I was in the NHS doing things like burn surgery and hand surgery, and as part of that it was also thinking about the health of the skin as it heal, and I'd spent some time in New York doing a fellowship and as part of that I was exposed to aesthetics in the first place. This is back like maybe 20 years ago almost, and I saw just how skin was a very important thing, particularly in the American market, and it started to garner my interest in the field. When I came back to the UK I decided I'm going to start training in this, so I've been doing it for quite a while, but really thinking about how we can approach aesthetics from the skin health point of view rather than purely a kind of cosmetic thing, and that's been my real kind of interest for that I think. It's about your skin looking and feeling healthy rather than necessarily looking younger.

Now there's a particular treatment that I've heard you talk about on your podcast, and i've read a little it about it, about injecting salmon sperm?

Yes.

Tell me about this treatment.

So that treatment is called Polynucleotides, and it's basically using fragments of DNA and RNA from a variety of fish sperm, or fish cells really.

And not just salmon?

Not just salmon. There's trout, I think there's maybe cod as well, and when you inject this DNA, and it's not the sperm that you're injecting, it's DNA from the sperm, and this has the stimulating effect on the fibroblast cells which are the cells that produce collagen and elastin in the skin. What happens as we age, we lose thickness of the dermis of the skin which causes fine lines and wrinkles and crepiness of the skin, and kind of overall skin laxity. So this is a way of stimulating your own cells to produce more collagen, more elastin and thicken the skin over time, and usually you do a series of treatments. Takes about 6 months to see the results and it also has an effect on melanocyte cells which are pigment cells. So it can decrease hyperpigmentation, great for dark circles around the eyes which is an area that's quite difficult to treat. So it's a really versatile treatment.

Not just face though, body too?

Not just face, body too yeah. There's a lot of people that do the neck decollage, arms, even legs as well above the knees.

All about the fibres?

Exactly, keeping the skin tight.

David, tell me about you, your well being. I mean are there things that you do every day that make you feel good?

Absolutely. So I'm a real gym addict. I have a trainer that I see everyday so I go to the gym everyday. I'm a supplement junkie as well, and I've got a very extensive kind of obsession with sunscreen which I use every morning. I feel if I don't do this then I feel totally exposed, just because I've really abused my skin in the past in sun beds and I'm making up for it now. Trying to reverse the damage that's been done.

Tell me about how these supplements go down. Is it with a nice big mug of tea or is it something much more?

It's usually I have some capsules that I take and Omega 3's, and then I have a big smoothie in the morning with lots of greens, fruits, vegetables and proteins. I usually try to stick vegan with most of my supplements.

Leg day, you said you go to the gym. Do you have a leg day workout?

I do. Leg day is always Monday for me, beginning of the week. Get it done at the beginning of the week so I'm not dreading it for the whole week, although it's the most satisfying one probably. It's definitely the most difficult day of the workout week.

Morning, evening?

Evening. So I do clinic during the day and then 6 o'clock is my gym session with my trainer and we do things like squats and deadlifts, all of the kind of big power lifty type things.

What was the thing you were telling me about earlier?

A Bulgarian split squat.

What is that?

So that's where you have one leg on the floor, one leg on a bench, and then you're squatting with one leg with a weight. So yes it's isolating the quads on one side.

Lastly, leg icon. Who is it?

I would say Naomi Campbell. It's quite a force of nature