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microbiome

How Three Pounds of Gut Bacteria Determines Your Skin’s Health

February 9, 2021 by Dr. Julie Greenberg Leave a Comment

Gut Health

The quest for beautiful skin is ubiquitous in Western society: we all want to have young and healthy skin. It seems reasonable that what we put on our skin would influence its appearance, but science is showing us that it may actually be what’s inside our body that has one of the largest impacts on skin health: our gut health, which is directly impacted by the health of our gut microbiome.

The Gut Microbiome

There are 3-5 pounds of bacteria that live in our gut, depending on how big we are. And those bacteria can determine a lot about how healthy we are, including our skin health. Most of those bacteria live in our colon or large intestine, and they ferment food that we have eaten but cannot digest. We depend on that bacteria to maintain our gut health and keep us healthy overall in return for feeding them. There are hundreds of species of bacteria in our gut, and some are good guys, while others are not so good.

Competition For Space

Did you know that there’s fierce competition for real estate brewing in your gut? That’s because there’s a limited amount of space, so bacteria are always trying to take over and get more room so they can grow. We want the good bacteria to win the fight, and we can help them by feeding them what they need: fiber! That’s one of the reasons why a diet high in fiber is so important. We can’t even digest fiber, but our good gut bacteria can. So to improve our gut health we need to feed the good bacteria, so they can survive and grow.

When we eat sugar, refined carbohydrates, and fat, we feed the “not so good” guys. And when we take antibiotics, we wipe out large colonies of bacteria, both good and bad, and whoever is left fights for more territory. It’s like when you arrive at the pool on a hot summer day at a resort, and there are no lounge chairs left. You lurk around, waiting for someone to get up and leave so that you can pounce and put your towel down to claim the spot. Well, our bacteria do the same thing. And once they’ve taken hold, it can be hard to get them to leave.

Benefits 0f Good Bacteria

Why do we care who wins the battle for real estate in our gut? Because our health depends on it! Yes, even our skin. The beneficial bacteria supports gut health and our overall health in many ways. For example, here are just a few of the things our gut microbes do for us:

  • Keep bad bacteria in check
  • Keep inflammation in our body at a minimum
  • Support a healthy immune system
  • Produce vitamins: vitamin B6, vitamin B12, niacin, and folic acid
  • Help digest food
  • Regulate our hormones

Leaky Gut

The term “leaky gut” gets thrown around a lot today, but it is important to really understand the concept in order to understand how gut health relates to skin health. We are a tube from our mouth to our anus, and the purpose of that tube is to extract nutrients from the food we eat. We then need to send those nutrients out to every cell in the body to provide nourishment so they can survive, which is why our bloodstream is connected to our intestinal cells.

Tight Junctions

The tiny cells in our small and large intestine have a big job: they have to let through very small molecules into the bloodstream, like vitamins and minerals while keeping out bad bacteria and large molecules that don’t belong in our blood. For this reason, our intestinal cells have “tight junctions.” Tight junctions are what they sound like: they bind one intestinal cell very closely to the one next to it so that nothing gets through.

When we eat, the tight junctions get a signal to “open up” so that we can let nutrients through, but then they close back up so that nothing else can breach the barrier. Leaky gut happens when these tight junctions get compromised, and instead of being able to close back up, the channels are always open and are too big. Then bad things like undigested food or bad bacteria can get through and “leak” into our bloodstream. This is the leaky part of leaky gut.

Leaky Gut Leads to Inflammation

Once our tight junctions are compromised, and we have leaky gut, inflammation will follow – affecting your gut health. This is because the body must respond to all of the bad stuff that is now flowing into the bloodstream. The body naturally produces inflammation to fight intruders, but ideally, the situation is only temporary. For example, when you get a paper cut, you have just introduced bacteria into your bloodstream.

Your body will note the invasion and send immune cells, such as neutrophils and macrophages, to come to create inflammation and kill the invading bacteria. Bacteria will also call the necessary cells to heal the cut in your finger. But then, once the threat has passed and your finger has healed, inflammation goes away. The problem with leaky gut is that the bad stuff keeps on coming. If the body can’t fix the tight junctions and stop all the bacteria from leaking into the blood, then it just has to keep fighting. And that leads to chronic inflammation.

Healthy Microbiome, Healthy Gut!

This is why the makeup of the bacteria in our gut is so important. The good bacteria help keep tight junctions intact and nurture healthy cells so that we don’t have leaky gut. The “not so good” guys do the opposite. So if we want a healthy gut, we must maintain a healthy gut microbiome.

There are specific keystone species that we want in particular such as Akkermansia muciniphila probiotic. Akkermansia is a good bacteria that help our gut produce a protective mucosal layer over our intestinal cells. It actually eats some of the mucous layer, but when it does this, it signals special cells in the gut, called goblet cells, to produce more mucous. So we have a symbiotic relationship with Akkermansia that actually enhances the mucosal layer in our gut.

Another star bacteria in our gut is Faecalibacterium prausnitzii. Its main job is to produce butyrate, which does several beneficial things, such as: feeds our intestinal cells, decreases inflammation, and enhances tight junctions.

Skin: The Largest Organ

Our largest organ is our skin and its connection to a robust blood supply providing a constant stream of nutrients. The skin we see on the surface is actually dead. It is the layers underneath that we cannot see that are alive and determine the health of the skin that eventually makes its way to the top. The skin is nourished by what we eat, so of course, our diet contributes to our skin health. But as we’ve already discussed, if we have a leaky gut, then whatever has leaked into our bloodstream is flowing around our whole body.

Healthy Gut, Healthy Skin

The skin really is a window into what’s happening in the gut. There are numerous studies that show many different types of skin disease are connected to the gut microbiome. These include: eczema, rosacea, psoriasis, and acne. Studies show that people with dermatological disease have higher levels of leaky gut than normal healthy controls.

Studies also show the microbiomes of people with eczema, rosacea, psoriasis, and acne tend to have too little good gut bacteria and too many bad bacteria. As we learned, this leads to inflammation, and this is a part of the root cause of dermatological disease. Inflammation is also bad if our goal is to have healthy, youthful-looking skin. It increases the breakdown of collagen and elastin in the skin, which leads to wrinkles and droopy skin.

Feed Your Friends!

So while there are some topical products that can help improve the look and feel of your skin, if you really want healthy skin from the inside out. Start giving your gut microbiome a little love and make sure you’re eating at least 35 grams of fiber a day to make sure you’re feeding your good gut bacteria!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: diet, gut health, Healthy Skin, holistic health, microbiome, skin health

How To Enhance Your Skin Microbiome

December 29, 2020 by Dr. Trevor Cates Leave a Comment

Skin Microbiome

Our skin is home to a vast array of microbes, and together they make up our skin microbiome. 

Many people typically only think of their skin as it relates to beauty — but our skin’s health is essential to our overall health. After all, it serves as the interface with the outside world. Our skin is our frontline of defense against injury or potential pathogens, and our skin microbiome is the cavalry protecting the frontline.

What’s A Microbiome?

The skin microbiome, or skin flora, is the term used for the trillions of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and viruses – that live on our skin. There are 1,000 different bacteria species and almost 80 different types of fungi species. Some of these species even reside in your gut flora. 

The microbiome changes depending on the location on your body or “eco-niche.” Each species has a preference for the amount of light they can be exposed to and whether the skin is dry, oily, moist, or hairy – so every “eco-niche” has distinct communities of microbes. Also, depending on if you are older or younger, and depending on your gender, certain microbiome species may prefer to live on your skin. For example, a sweaty adolescent male verse an older postmenopausal female will have very different microbiomes. 

How does skin microbiome play a role in our health?

The human digestive tract contains a delicate balance of microorganisms called the gut microbiome. The balance of gut microbiomes includes friendly bacteria that help regulate harmful bacteria, parasites, or an overgrowth of candida.

Besides the obvious health implications, body microbiome health matters. This is because a healthy and balanced microbiome will directly impact how your skin looks. Simply put, “as we age, toxins, stress, infections, poor dietary choices, and certain medications can negatively affect the gut microbiome.” 

1. Influence Immune System

Skin microbiome was once thought to only exist on the skin’s surface and not deep into the dermal layers. Later, it was discovered that these microbes could move into the dermis and into subcutaneous fat. Meaning, the skin microbiome can influence and impact our immune systems through contact in these dermal layers. Depending on good microbes’ health, it will affect (negatively or positively) your immune system’s response to pathogens. 

2. Protect Against Infection

Healthy good skin microbiomes and gut microbiomes can protect you against infection. This is because when good microbes flourish, they can crowd out the pathogenic (bad) species. 

Prebiotics are one way to promote the growth and activity of beneficial microbes. Prebiotics are ‘good’ bacteria promoters – like foods, fiber, and herbs. Examples of prebiotics include chicory root, Konjac root, dandelion greens, garlic, leeks, onions, oats, barley, and apples. In case of skin or digestive infections, a prebiotic and probiotic combination is a beneficial addition to your physician’s prescribed treatment plan. 

Another way to protect against infection is by balancing the skin’s pH. Our skin prefers a relatively acidic environment – a pH around 5.0. This slightly acidic environment provides the perfect environment to inhibit pathogenic (harmful) species. Using skin care products that offer an ideal pH balance can help fortify a healthy microbiome to protect against infections and skin breakouts.  

3. Reduce Inflammation

When the body’s microbiome is not balanced, the immune system will respond by releasing agents to balance the system. Unfortunately, the antimicrobial peptide agents the immune system releases cause inflammation and may weaken the skin microbiome and the barrier protection it provides the skin. Also, many other health issues are associated with inflammation. 

On the other hand, good gut and skin microbiome have the opposite effect. A good microbiome inhibits the release of inflammatory compounds from the immune system. Increasing your intake of both prebiotic and probiotic foods can support a healthy immune system to decrease the inflammatory response. 

4. Protection From The Environmental

The microbiome can protect our body from the outside environment. Both these organ systems are responsible for creating a protective barrier against the external environment. Each has its unique mechanisms for interacting with the immune system and working to protect against outside pathogens. In their way, both the skin and gut microbiome can minimize oxidative damage and exposure to allergens and aid in wound healing to repair damaged barrier functions. If we lose beneficial microbes, then we lose their protection.

HOW TO ENHANCE YOUR MICROBIOME

  • Eat prebiotic foods such as flaxseed, chicory root, Konjac root, dandelion greens, garlic, apples, leeks, onions, oats, and barley.  
  • Eat probiotic foods like kimchi, sauerkraut, pickled produce, yogurt, and kefir.
  • Take a high-quality probiotic supplement daily
  • Cut back on excess carbohydrates and sugars
  • Balance your skin’s pH with natural skincare products formulated with an ideal pH. 
  • Use pure, natural Argan oil to regulate the skin’s acid mantle and impart luminosity, softness, and moisture to your skin.

“There is no magic bullet when it comes to restoring and maintaining a healthy gut and skin microbiome. The good news is that with a few simple changes to your lifestyle you can change you can achieve better health and gorgeous, glowing skin.” 

Would you like to learn more about the importance of gut and skin microbiomes? Then take a moment to watch three of my favorite, very insightful microbiome interviews on The Spa Dr. podcast:

  1. The Microbiome Solution with Naveen Jain
  2. Healthy Skin and The Skin Microbiome with Dr. Trevor Cates
  3. Addressing the Gut Biome with Christa Orecchio

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Acne Treatment, anti-aging, clean eating, clean skin, digestive health, eczema, glowing skin, microbiome, skin microbiome, trevor cates

Natural Skin Care Tips with Dr. Trevor Cates

June 25, 2020 by Dr. Trevor Cates Leave a Comment

On today’s podcast, I cover natural skin care tips to bust myths and clear up common misunderstandings. Words like “natural” and “hypoallergenic” are now common in the skin care industry but actually lack regulations and true meaning. So, it’s important to separate out the science from the fads. In this podcast, I dive deep into what to look for and what to expect from natural skin care products and your routine. I also share examples of toxic ingredients and where to find additional resources as well as some of the best natural ingredients to look for.

To learn more about Dr. Trevor Cates

Website: www.thespadr.com

Natural Skin Care Tips

Dr. Trevor Cates: Hi, I am Dr. Trevor Cates, author of the bestselling book, Clean Skin From Within and founder of The Spa Dr. I get questions a lot about skin care products, and there are so many skincare products available to us today. There are ones that are more synthetic and then there are ones that are more natural. Natural skincare products have gained a lot of popularity in recent years and skincare companies, manufacturers that have typically made more of the synthetic types of skincare products are now starting to make more natural skin care products.

So it is a huge trend, a shift that is happening because of the public’s demand for using natural skincare products. With that comes some confusion and a little bit of marketing hype to get your attention. I want to help you weed through all of that, so that you can understand the difference and what to look for when it comes to natural skincare products.

So some of the misconceptions about natural skincare products are that if it says natural on the label, that means it’s natural, that it’s clean, that it is made from all natural ingredients, but that’s not actually the case. The word natural, and the word hypoallergenic also are words that are oftentimes used with skin care manufacturers, and with marketing claims. But unfortunately there’s no regulation really around those words.

So the word natural doesn’t necessarily mean that it contains all natural ingredients or that even half of the ingredients are natural, or maybe even 10%. There really isn’t any regulation around using the word natural. I want to put that out there just to kind of explain that it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use natural skincare products because ultimately you should, and I will explain why, but it’s important to understand what you are looking for when it comes to natural skincare products.

When you are looking at skin care products, what you want to look for is, and the reason why people are choosing natural is because we understand that we want our skincare products to be free of toxic ingredients. But the other thing is we also want them to work. So you don’t want to give up the efficacy, the results, just because you start to use more natural products. Really, we want both. And I will break all that down for you today.

When we are looking at natural and why we want natural, there are many skincare ingredients that unfortunately can have harmful effects in the body. For example, there are some ingredients in personal care products that have a potentially carcinogenic impact. And then there are other ingredients that are known to be endocrine disrupting chemicals. That means that they could have potentially hormone disrupting effects in the body.

Endocrine disrupting chemicals are a class of chemicals. What happens is they kind of look like hormones in the body, or they will bind to hormone receptors and turn off the function or change the way that they function. They wreak havoc with hormones and the body. We are exposed to endocrine disrupting chemicals in our air, water, food, personal care products, and a lot of different endocrine disrupting chemicals that we are exposed to on a day to day basis.

The idea is that we want to reduce our total exposure to these because of the potentially harmful effects and how much of these we are exposed to. One of the places that we have really great control of our exposure is for our personal care products. We choose what personal care products, what skin care products we use, you have total control over that.

That is one way you can limit your exposure to these endocrine disrupting chemicals, which this group of chemicals have been linked to a number of different health issues in the research. We have seen them linked to certain types of cancers, like breast cancer, prostate cancer. We have seen them linked to hormonal problems like thyroid disease. Hypothyroidism, autoimmune thyroid disease, as well as infertility, early menopause, early puberty, or breast development in young boys.

The list goes on and on. And if you think about all the different ways that your hormones impact your health, you could see how the list goes on and on, because it’s not just your sexual health or your thyroid, or even your adrenals, but also your ability to maintain your weight because insulin is a hormone. Then there are also other hormones that play a role in our weight and keeping that weight off, also they impact our blood sugar balance.

The list goes on and on and our brain function, all of that. Hormones are so important as you know. And the last thing we want to do is interfere with their function. And again, we are exposed to so many of these endocrine disrupting chemicals. Unfortunately, we are exposed to more of them now than we ever have been, because there are new chemicals that are being introduced today that have this impact that are known. We are starting to see the research unfold on that.

There are chemicals that have been around for many, many years. And even the ones that may have been banned can continue to exist in our environment. For example lead, it continues to exist in the soil, even though it has been banned from gasoline and band from lead paint. It continues to exist in our environment. It gets on the soil. That means, it gets into our food supply, gets into our water. And it means we are also exposed to it.

Even if it is banned in the U.S., it could still be around in another country, like in China and can travel over in clouds and rain down into our environment. So I don’t want to spend time being doom and gloom on this, but again, endocrine disrupting chemicals are a big problem. And one of the ways that we are exposed to them is through personal care products. An example of this is fragrance is in so many personal care products and skincare products.

If you think about all the different products you use on a day to day basis, many of these probably do contain fragrance. The problem with fragrance is it’s not one ingredient, it’s a whole group of ingredients. These fragrances have endocrine disrupting chemicals in them. For example, diethyl Phthalates is a plasticizing agent. It is used in fragrance to help the smell last longer, but it is a known endocrine-disrupting chemical.

What we want to do is to stop using fragrance and use either fragrance free or those scented with organic essential oils. Organic essential oils are a really nice alternative to synthetic fragrance. This is just a highlight. I talk about in my book, Clean Skin From Within, I give a whole list of different ingredients to avoid and to look out for, and also alternatives to those that are more natural. What I love about natural ingredients is not only are they clean, but there are benefits to these natural ingredients, if you are using the right ones.

Essential oils are one of those examples of where you are not only going to be avoiding the potential harmful effects of ingredients in skincare products, but you are going to get the benefits of some of these essential oils. Some of the essential oils that we use in The Spa Dr. products, they are known to help lift your mood, make you feel happier, and what a great thing to add into your self care routine, because it can be a great addition and help be supportive.

There are other ingredients that I find particularly helpful, and I am going to touch on those in a moment, but first I want to share with you my experience with natural skincare products. I grew up on an organic farm in Virginia, and as a child I remember my parents tried to use as much natural as possible, and we would make some of our own things. We would use ingredients straight from nature for healing the skin, for example, we would use things like aloe.

We had aloe plants and anytime anybody got an abrasion or a mild burn, we would cut up an aloe leaf and use that. I remember the how soothing that would feel the moment my mom had put that on my skin. And I remember the benefits of that. We didn’t use a lot of over the counter medications or skincare products you might find from a drugstore or a spa or a dermatologist. We used a lot of things from nature.

I remember as a child, I had developed skin issues. I will explain in a moment why I think I had those health problems and why that got triggered in me, but I had a lot of eczema and itchy skin issues and hives. And one of the things that I remember so well, that was immediate relief was my mom would put me in a bath with oats. She would get just raw oats and she put them in the bath.

And I remember as soon as that would touch my skin, I would feel relief. And it wasn’t the water because just being in a bathtub, I would just get itchier. But as soon as the oats would open up and they get this kind of slippery feel to them that would coat my skin and I felt immediate relief. That was my experience growing up. I have always loved to incorporate the healing powers of nature in my own life. And of course, later on, as becoming a naturopathic physician, I have seen the healing powers of nature and how our body is so wise.

And when we are given the right tools and support, our body can heal beautifully. But most of the time we forget to do that. Oftentimes we forget, and instead we will use topical creams that just suppress the issue, or we will try and cover it up with more makeup. But really if we use more of these natural products and ingredients, and even using food as medicine, all of that from the inside out, it helps support our body and helps remind our bodies that it is wise and that it can restore health naturally.

There are some things to think about when it comes to natural, that you might call the dark side of natural. That just because something comes from nature, doesn’t always mean that it’s healthy or good. And an example in particular that I’m thinking about is mold. Mold of course grows naturally, but it could be extremely toxic to humans, to us and to our health and our vitality. Unfortunately, as a child, I had all this great stuff of living on an organic farm, but we had a mold problem in our home and mold would grow.

I saw little black specs on the walls that were painted white. We have to repaint those. I had a doll one time I left on the carpeted floor in my bedroom, and I left her there for a couple of days and I picked her up and she had mold growing on her. We definitely had mold in my home. When I look back now, I think that is where a lot of my health issues stem from. Thankfully we moved out of that house when I was still pretty young.

Between getting away from the mold and then also finding a holistic practitioner, that is what was able to help me to be able to get my health back on track. My skin problems resolved, my health overall improved, and that is what led me to become a naturopathic physician. And because of my interest in skin and that understanding of how our skin is an outer reflection of our inner health and how we restore our health, our skin improves, and our overall health improves because of my own personal experience of that.

I loved that I was able to incorporate that into my own practice and as what led me to write my book, Clean Skin From Within and create The Spa Dr. skin care line. That is my own personal journey. I am sure you have your story too, on why you are interested in natural skincare products. Maybe you have already read my book, Clean Skin From Within, and are also doing things to help your body from the inside out and you know, about the healing powers of nature.

I always like to hear your stories and your experience as well. Let’s go ahead and talk some more about ingredients, because there are the ingredients to look out for, and then the ingredients that you want to make sure that you are including in your skincare routine and your products. Just because something says it’s natural doesn’t mean that it is safe or effective. I want to make sure that we are talking about safe and truly natural, and also how to make sure that the product is actually working. The first thing is, is it safe?

When we look at natural skincare products, you want to look at the ingredient label, and just because it says natural doesn’t mean it’s safe. You want to look for things like synthetic fragrance. You will look for fragrance. That is one key that this is not truly a natural product. I have seen many natural products out there with fragrance still in it. That is one key. Parabens are another one, especially if they are multiple parabens listed on the label.

There are alternatives to these, and they are concerned about parabens and being detected in breast tumor tissue. That is another one that it would be good to avoid. There are also formaldehyde releasing chemicals. There are things like DMDM hydantoin, and there are other ones too, and I know it is even hard to pronounce some of these, but these are just some of the examples. Also oxybenzone is a chemical ingredient used in a lot of sunscreens, and it is also a known endocrine disrupting chemical.

Those are some examples of things that you want to make sure that you are trying to avoid because of the potential health issues with them. It is always great to have more research on these, but until we clear up some of the confusion and the concerns about these, I think it is best to avoid these and other ingredients that I talk about in my book. Mineral oil is another one. There are so many plant-based oils that are much better alternatives to mineral oil and any of the petroleum by-product types of oils.

If you see petrolatum or petroleum in mineral oil, those would be other ingredients that I am just concerned about because they come from the same place that gasoline comes from and they are refined to be approved for skincare product use, but there are concerns about possible contamination. I just think there are so many natural ingredients that are a better alternative that are going to help ease your mind about the toxicity concerns, but also provide nourishment to your skin.

That makes me want to turn then to looking at natural ingredients. I mentioned essential oils already. I prefer organic essential oils, and I think oils in general, I did a whole video series on oils as well, so you can capture that. I talk more than you would ever want about oils for skincare and have already covered that. There are definitely some benefits that you can get from plant-based oils. They are rich in antioxidants, they are rich in certain essential fatty acids that our skin needs to be supple and healthy and, and have that barrier function that the skin is supposed to provide.

All of these things you can get from really great plant-based oils. Some of my favorites are argan oil, seabuckthorn fruit, all pomegranate seed oil, raspberry seed oil. These are awesome. These are some examples of really beneficial oils that can help the skin. I mentioned as a child, I like to use aloe on my skin and we use that in my family. That is one of the ingredients that you will see in a lot of The Spa Dr. products, because it is such a powerful ingredient.

Aloe Vera is very soothing and healing to the skin. That is another powerhouse ingredient, and it can be used in cleansers and moisturizers and topical treatments and even hand sanitizers that are more of the natural hand sanitizers. Aloe is a great ingredient to make up for the fact that a lot of those have alcohol, which is drying to the skin. Aloe can add some of that protection and hydration back to the skin. I also mentioned as a child, I took those oat baths and oats are actually very soothing and healing to the skin.

I experienced it as a child, and I have also seen it. That is why I use it in The Spa Dr. body products, because of the soothing benefits. Now, if you are using natural skincare products, and again, make sure they are natural, that it doesn’t contain any of the other ingredients, just because it says it contains oats or oatmeal doesn’t mean that the other ingredients are natural. That is one thing you have to look out for because there certainly are certain products out there that say they contain oats that are beneficial, but yet it contains other ingredients that you don’t want.

The other thing is when you look at a natural product containing oats, you want to make sure it’s gluten free oats, because we don’t want that gluten exposure, especially if you have a gluten sensitivity, like my daughter, she is extremely sensitive and intolerant to gluten. I wouldn’t want her to have that exposure even topically. You don’t want that gluten exposure. You want to make sure that they are gluten free oats.

Those are some of the ingredients, and there are also things like CoQ10 is a great ingredient. It has been shown to be very protective and a beneficial antioxidant for the skin. I also really like certain teas, there are certain herbal teas that are good, green tea, white tea, black tea. These are all great for the skin providing antioxidants and some of the tannins and things in there can also be fantastic.

Turmeric is another ingredient that is anti-inflammatory for the skin both internally and externally. This is a fantastic ingredient. You want to be careful with using Tumeric in DIY skincare because of its bright yellow color. If you were to make a face mask out of it and you have fair skin, it might actually stay in your skin, if you don’t use it properly. In skincare products, you can find it in a way that the color has actually been diminished, but the beneficial properties of it still remain.

A good skincare manufacturer can do that. That is what we have at The Spa Dr., we use Turmeric but you are not going to notice that bright yellow color from it. Other ingredients that I think are particularly great is arnica, that is very calming and restorative to the skin. You may have used arnica gel in case of a bruise or a mild trauma, it is used in first aid. If you think about it, our skin is being traumatized every single day.

Arnica is a nice ingredient that helps soothe and heal the skin. Gosh, there are so many great ingredients to talk about, green algae is another one that you may, or may not be using in your skincare products. Green algae, chlorella has a purifying and energizing impact on the skin. It is also a powerhouse ingredient. Resveratrol, which actually comes from the skin of grapes. You may have heard about the health benefits of red wine, and that is because of the Resveratrol there, and that potent antioxidant is also great to use in skincare products.

Those are a few of my favorite ingredients. Now, when it comes to other ingredients that you might find in your skincare products that are maybe not as good for your skin, one example is the ingredient dimethicone. Dimethicone is used in skincare products to help trap moisture in. But the problem with that is if you put something with dimethicone on your face and you go to the gym and you are exercising and you are getting warm, it is hard for your skin because it is just trapping in that moisture.

It is also trapping in the heat. Your skin is not able to breathe. You might notice that you are more likely to get flushed and overheated, and also we are concerned about what that might do to the skin microbiome. The skin microbiome is a really important part when we are talking about skincare products, including whether or not to use natural skincare products and which natural skin care products to use. The skin microbiome is all about the microorganisms that live on and protect the skin.

They are different fungi, there is bacteria, there are little mites that live on the skin. These are all to a certain extent normal and natural. The problem is when they get out of balance. That is when we get problems where we get acne, we get rosacea, we get eczema, and a number of skin problems can be at least in part due to the skin microbiome and that barrier function of the skin, that mechanism that our skin provides is no longer functioning the way it should.

This can lead to problems with leaky skin. You may have heard of leaky gut while there can be leaky skin too, where the skin doesn’t have that proper barrier function. It breaks down and the skin microbiome is part of that protective functioning. Just like your gut microbiome is really important to your digestive health. There is so much we are learning about the gut microbiome and its impact on the skin and our overall health.

The skin has its own microbiome that needs to be supported and protected. Even if a product is natural, that doesn’t mean that it’s going to necessarily help the skin microbiome, or I should say, even if a skincare product is called natural, it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily going to help. There are certain natural ingredients that help promote a healthy microbiome. Then there are other ingredients like dimethicone that are used to just trap in moisture, but they are not actually helping support a healthy skin microbiome.

It could set you up for an opportunity for imbalances in the skin microbiome. Just use caution with that ingredient and at least to be careful, if you are going to be somewhere where you are going to be perspiring, maybe you are in a warm place, or you are going to the gym, avoid products with dimethicone and realize that it is not really hydrating. It is just trapping in the moisture.

While you have products with this ingredient in there, it might be making you look moisturized, but when you rinse it off, it is actually not improving the quality of your skin. When we look at natural products, we want them to promote the health of the skin. We want them to present a healthy skin microbiome. We want them to feed a healthy skin microbiome and that barrier function of the skin.

We want to keep it healthy. The first part is to make sure that natural products are clean and clear of harmful ingredients. The second part is you want them to work. The way we ensure that they work goes back to the skin barrier function and the mild acidity of the skin and the skin microbiome. I just mentioned the skin acidity, our skin has this natural mild acidity to it that helps support healthy skin microbiome.

This is really key because a lot of the things that we do with skin, like cleansing the skin, using bars of soap, washing that actually has a high pH and it is disrupting the natural, mild acidity of the skin. We want to use natural skincare formulas that the pH is more towards a mild acidity. More on the 4.6 to five pH range or anything over 5.5 is going to be too high of a pH for our skin. It is not going to provide that environment to enrich our skin, to help the skin microbiome and the skin barrier function.

Check your skin care formulas and make sure even if it is natural, it needs to have that pH. This is part of why I created The Spa Dr. Skin Care line, because I knew that there were natural skincare products out there that were clean and free of harmful ingredients, but a lot of them had a pH over 5.5. The research shows that our skin does best with that natural, mild acidity, because it helps the health of the skin, which in turn keeps it free and clear of breakouts as well as helps it aging gracefully, which is what we all want.

We want that smooth, clear complexion, graceful aging. We don’t want sagging skin and lots of wrinkles before it is time. Over time that does happen. It is a natural part of the aging process, but we certainly don’t want it to happen before other people, our age. We want to age gracefully. All of that are things that play into the importance of supporting the health of the skin microbiome. You may be wondering where are the best places to get natural skincare products? Where can I look, where can I find out more?

There are a few good resources that I want to tell you about. One is, ewg.org, an environmental working group has a skin deep database where they have a lot of information. They put out there about skincare ingredients and ratings of different skincare products that are out there. You can go to ewg.org/skindeep, is a place you can go to check that out. They also have skincare products that they verify and they test them.

They look at them and they make sure they meet their criteria. The Spa Dr. skincare products are EWG verified in case you were not aware of that. There are other ones out there. That is one resource, a place where you can get information is, EWG. There are also other organizations that provide similar information that you can find online. In my book Clean Skin From Within, I also talk about individual ingredients more than the ones that I mentioned today, both ones to avoid, and then also natural ingredients.

I can go more in depth in a book, then I can in a video. I cite the research and explain exactly which ingredients are particularly harmful and why. I could not go into all of that explanation today. You can find that in my book, Clean Skin From Within. When you are looking for natural skincare products, as I mentioned, EWG have verified certain products and you can find resources. You could go to your local, natural health food store and see what is available.

There are natural skincare products online. You can find them pretty much all over the place. But here is the thing, you want to look at the ingredients. You want to be aware of what to look for and what not to. That is really the first step. Then find a manufacturer that you believe is going to be in for the long haul of really providing clean, natural, effective solutions. Who do you feel are the ones that are staying on top of looking at ingredients and making sure that they are really high quality and truly pure.

At The Spa Dr., we do a lot of quality control testing. Whenever we get raw materials in, we test those to make sure that they are what they say they are, and that they are actually clean. Then once we make the formulas, we test them again for purity, for pH, we test a number of different factors, and this is not standard. I can tell you my quality control person has worked in the industry for almost 30 years. She has worked for a lot of different companies.

She said that definitely not everybody does this. These are the kinds of questions to ask of the manufacturers if they have a brand that you really love their skincare products. Ask them questions about their quality control process, where their ingredients come from. Are they truly natural, truly organic? Are they listing everything on the labels or are they hiding anything? Because I think it is important to be transparent and always share what is in the skincare products.

We certainly do that as well. Also find out about the pH, if they can’t give you that information, you can get a simple pH strip and test the product yourself to make sure it’s under 5.5. Hopefully that gives you information that can be valuable today. Of course, you can find all of these ingredients, the positive, good ingredients I talked about today in The Spa Dr. skincare products. I have looked at the research carefully.

I want this for myself, my patients, my family, my friends, I want clean and effective natural solutions too. I know we have problems like skin sensitivity, skin eruptions and issues and aging, all of that. And we want our skin to be optimally healthy, just like the rest of our body. We want our body to be healthy, and we want our skin to reflect that because after all, you know, we are living longer, we want our skin to keep up with it. So you can find The Spa Dr. products at Thespadr.com. You will also find lots of information, free information. There are our blog and podcast and more. I hope this was helpful for you today. And I will keep giving you more information. Feel free to send us questions and feedback so that we can keep providing you with great content.

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Filed Under: Podcasts Tagged With: clean skin, microbiome, natural skincare, skin tips

Skin Microbiome and Eczema with Skyler Stein of Gladskin

June 11, 2020 by Dr. Trevor Cates Leave a Comment

At least 32 million Americans are estimated to have eczema. I had eczema as a child and know well how much this skin condition can impact your life – the itching, the embarrassing rashes kept me up at night. This is what led me on my path to help others with natural solutions for skin. So, whenever I hear about a natural option for people suffering with eczema, I’m curious to learn more. So that’s why I asked today’s guest to come on The Spa Dr. podcast.

My guest today is Skyler Stein who holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.A. from Duke University and leads Gladskin USA, a biotechnology-driven skincare brand. He has an interesting story that led him into the microbiome space (which he shares during the interview).
In this interview, we discuss the gut-skin connection and Skyler shares some research in the skin microbiome space that has led to topical skin care to support people with eczema.
So, please enjoy this interview.

To learn more about Skyler Stein

Website: us.gladskin.com

Social Media: Instagram: @gladskin.us

Special Offer:
20% 2+ bottles & Free Shipping
Code SPA20 @ us.gladskin.com

Skin Microbiome and Eczema

Dr. Trevor Cates : Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. I am Dr. Trevor Cates. Today we are talking about the skin microbiome and eczema. At least 32 million Americans are estimated to have eczema. I personally had eczema as a child and know how much this skin condition can impact your life. The itching, the embarrassing rashes kept me up all night. This is what led me on my path to help others with natural solutions for skin.

Whenever I hear about a natural option for people suffering with eczema, especially when it has some science and research behind it, I’m curious to learn more. So that’s why I asked today’s guests to come on The Spa Dr. Podcast. My guest today is Skyler Stein who holds an MBA from Harvard business school and a BA from Duke university and leads Gladskin USA. A biotech driven skincare brand. He has a really interesting story personally, that led him into the microbiome space, which he does share during the interview.

Dr. Trevor Cates : Also in the interview, we discuss the gut skin connection, all about the skin microbiome and Skylar shares some research in the skin microbiome space that has led to topical skin care to support people with eczema. Now we know that the inside out approach is important as well as what we put on our skin. So please enjoy this interview.

Dr. Trevor Cates : Skylar, welcome to the spa doctor podcast. It’s great to have you on.

Skyler Stein: Thank you for having me, Dr. Cates.

Dr. Trevor Cates : You have an interesting story. I would love for you to share what got you interested in one of my very favorite topics to talk about, which is the skin microbiome. You started with an MBA from Harvard and things took a turn and led you down the path to the microbiome space. So why don’t you tell everybody about your journey?

Skyler Stein: The story actually begins in my undergrad. When I was at Duke university, I started studying genomic sciences. I was really interested in science and how the implications for society of the new emerging genomic sciences ultimately shifted that focus to energy and the environment while I was at Duke because I saw so much of the systems were so unsustainable and they had to change and there was going to be so much opportunity to go along with that change.

I brought that major and focus in energy and the environment to my career after graduating, where I worked in finance, and investment banking and venture capital and private equity, really identifying new renewable energy and alternative technologies and commercializing them and bringing them to life. Then I decided to go back to Harvard to get my MBA. And about three weeks in, I started feeling really lousy.

I was fatigued. I couldn’t concentrate or focus. I was having trouble remembering words. I had been completely healthy my entire life. And I just knew I wasn’t feeling like myself. So I went to a number of different doctors, and after seeing about six doctors, someone tested me for Lyme disease and that came back positive. I took a medical leave from Harvard, moved back to San Diego where I’m from and started treatment. Treatment for Lyme disease involves lots of antibiotics. So I was essentially taking four to five antibiotics for four to five months straight, really not understanding the consequences or the collateral damage that that would cause.

I started researching more and more about the impacts that antibiotics have on the body and discovered the microbiome. This was back in 2014 and it was really when the microbiome space was really starting to take off. There were some really exciting studies that were coming out in mice and in humans showing that the microbiome affects everything from not just healthy digestion, but everything. There are links to many chronic conditions, neurodegenerative, obesity, mental health, really you name it. There is a new study coming out everyday showing the connection between the microbiome and those health conditions.

And I was completely fascinated by this. Luckily San Diego is a hub of microbiome research. There is the Craig Venter Institute. He is the guy who first sequence the human genome, and UCSD, which has developed a microbiome Institute with some of the leading researchers in the world there. I actually decided to do an end of one study on myself, tracking my microbiome weekly for a year. The results just fascinated me.

For those listening, I have this chart that shows weekly how the different types of bacteria changed through different medicines I was taking through different supplements I was taking through different diets and alternative treatments. I could over time correlate the health of my microbiome with how I was actually feeling. And it was such a light bulb for me.

I had read these studies and I thought this was fascinating, but when I really saw the data correlate to my own health, I decided this is really a space that I want to dedicate the next chapter of my career and my life to. I healed fully from the Lyme disease. I went back to Harvard and then I went to finish my MBA at Harvard and went to join Obvious Ventures, which is a venture capital fund started by some of the founders of Twitter.

That focuses on world positive investing. And I went there to focus on something similar to what I was doing in the energy space, but finding microbiome technologies and the opportunity to commercialize them. So while I was at Obvious Ventures, I spent all my time talking to as many researchers, academics, startups that were focused on microbiome sciences to improve human health.

As part of that process, I really focused on the skin microbiome space. There is a lot of work done in the gut microbiome. But there was less attention at the time on the skin microbiome. The science was clear that it is as important to our skin health as our gut microbiome is to the rest of our health. Through that process, I met the team at Gladskin, they are based in the Netherlands, near Amsterdam. I saw what they were doing.

They showed me their research. They showed me their results and they were leaps and bounds ahead of any other player who I had talked to in the States and decided to join them full time to bring that technology to the United States.

Dr. Trevor Cates : Fantastic. Thank you for sharing this. And thank you for sharing this slide. Before you close out of this, for those people that are watching the video, can you explain what exactly we are looking at here? What are the different colors and then it looks like you were taking antibiotics, then you took antifungals and then maybe did some travel. Is that what we’re seeing here?

Skyler Stein: Yes. I start at the beginning of this chart, you can see the first three bars. This is when I was on heavy antibiotics, essentially 80 to 90% of my entire microbiome was made up of one type of antibiotic resistant bacteria. When you are taking antibiotics over a long period of time you are naturally breeding more and more, and all that survives are the antibiotic resistant bacteria and they continue to thrive.

The type of bacteria is called Enterobacter which can cause lots of problems. And I was feeling it with my symptoms then. Through taking all the antibiotics, and by killing all the bacteria, it allowed the fungus that naturally lives in your gut in a healthy balance, it caused that to allow it to overgrow because the bacteria was not there to keep the fungus in check.

So you can see in the next chapter where it says antifungals, once we reduce the amount of the fungals, we could increase the amount of healthy bacteria back into my gut so it looks like a more naturally healthy balance over the next six months or so with the blue charts. That is essentially a healthy bacteria, different types of healthy bacteria that are starting to repopulate in my gut, to make me more healthy.

Fortunately around Thanksgiving. I took a family trip to Mexico, to Cabo, and drank the water. What was interesting is, it caused complete eradication of all the progress I had made over the prior six months and that same antibiotic resistant bacteria that had grown when I was taking all the antibiotics,it allowed that to really come back and thrive, which was fascinating.

My microbiome looked different actually going forward from the impact that Mexico had. I then saw an ayurvedic practitioner who prescribed me a three day cleanse of Kanji water. And I can tell more about what that is, but it’s essentially different ayurvedic spices with over cooked rice. I just drank the water from that for three days, and you can really see over those three days, this healthy bacteria coming back and repopulating.

It was essentially a way to selectively feed the healthy bacteria in your gut. And for me, this was such a turning point and the light bulb for me, that the microbiome really is the missing link between some alternative Eastern therapies in Western science. Now that we have the technologies to really measure what these alternative treatments and the effects they really have. It is a way to really quantify the impacts there.

Dr. Trevor Cates : Yeah, fantastic. The pink that we see in the graph there looks like it was present a little bit after the antifungals, and then it became much more prolific. What is that?

Skyler Stein: Yes. Those are called Bacteroides. It is generally healthy bacteria found in many people’s microbiomes, generally people who are healthy have a large portion of their microbiome, with Bacteroides type of bacteria. After that Kanji ayurvedic cleanse that I did, it became a permanent part of my microbiome going forward from that date. So even though I still wasn’t on it created an environment that made it healthy for that type of healthy bacteria to continue to grow.

Dr. Trevor Cates : Okay. Very cool. And then what kind of test was this that you did?

Skyler Stein: This is essentially a test where they sequence all of the bacteria that are in your microbiome. So it is called a 16s test. It allows you to look at the 16s gene on each of the bacteria, which gives you a good idea of the taxonomy of that gene.

Dr. Trevor Cates : Right. Okay. This is the gut microbiome, not the skin microbiome. I just want to clarify, and this also doesn’t include fungi. This is just the bacteria, not fungi. It would have been interesting to see what happened after the antifungals to the balance of those.

Skyler Stein: Absolutely this is just focused on the bacteria, but you can see the impact of the antifungals, which don’t directly have impact on bacteria, but you can see indirectly what happened to the bacteria by taking them. It would have been fascinating to see the antifungal data as well. But I think this also paints a pretty clear picture of what was happening there.

Dr. Trevor Cates : Let’s talk more about the skin microbiome, because you were just talking a bit about the gut microbiome. Now I have talked to my audience some, they know that in my book, Clean Skin From Within, I talk about the skin microbiome and the gut microbiome, how it connects to it. Tell us a little bit about your understanding of the skin microbiome and what fascinates you so much about it.

Skyler Stein: Yes. It is widely known now that a healthy balance of bacteria in your gut is required to be healthy. I think most people in the U.S. understand probiotics and understand healthy balance in the gut, but there has been way less focus on the skin microbiome. When you tell people that your skin works the exact same way as your gut, and it also needs a healthy balance of bacteria in order to be healthy, it’s a light bulb that goes off, they are just so intuitive for so many people to really understand.

We have completely disregarded the skin microbiome. We have been taught that we are dirty and we need to scrub it clean and to essentially disinfect it every single day. And by doing that, we create an environment that is unhealthy. It is essentially like taking antibiotics for your gut every day. It doesn’t create an environment for those healthy bacteria to be able to thrive.

We also know that different parts of the body are colonized with different types of bacteria, depending on the environment that they are in. And actually, different people’s forehead to forehead is more common than my own forehead to the back of my knee. In terms of what the skin microbiome looks like there. More research is showing that there has been a connection between the skin microbiome, the types of bacteria that live on the skin and different types of skin, inflammatory skin conditions for a long time.

It was taught in medical school that the microbiome is really a reflection of what is happening of the disease on the skin. It is a symptom of what the cause is of the actual disease. There is more and more evidence coming out now that the skin microbiome is actually the cart pulling the horse where it is the imbalance in the skin microbiome. That is really the driving force that’s causing these different types of inflammatory skin conditions.

Dr. Trevor Cates : Yeah, absolutely. What you said about hygiene, I really want to emphasize that because I do think that for so long and still for many people, when someone has a skin problem like acne or eczema, psoriasis, dermatitis, a lot of these things people will think, Oh, that means my skin is dirty and I just need to clean it more. I need to use more cleansers and soaps and, and that’s actually further disturbing, disrupting, damaging the skin microbiome instead of moving in the right direction.

Skyler Stein: Oh, absolutely. If there is an invasive weed in the rainforest, instead of carefully weeding out the one problem, essentially what we are doing is we are burning the whole rainforest down and hoping that it comes back completely healthy and diverse. Because there is less flora and fauna and all those symbiotic relationships there, when you burn everything down, it really creates an environment for the bad pathogenic invasive species to take a hold without the protective species to keep them in check.

Dr. Trevor Cates : Right. Absolutely. Antibiotic resistance and all of that as well comes into play when we are using topical antibiotics or even oral antibiotics.

Skyler Stein: Yes, absolutely. Specifically within eczema or atopic dermatitis, which is a condition that affects about 30 million Americans up to 20% of children. There was an article put forth by Heidi Kong at the NIH that shows right before an eczema flare up happens, there is the signature microbiome imbalance that precedes it for the vast majority of people. And that it wasn’t until the microbiome healed, that then allowed the flair to resolve, which is a really fascinating piece of research that has caused many more skin microbiome researchers to dive deeper into really what’s happening here.

Dr. Trevor Cates : Yeah. I started going to some of the skin microbiome conferences a few years ago. We have been talking about the gut microbiome at Naturopathic medical school. I started learning about it there but the skin microbiome has been a little bit newer and certainly I became very interested in it. When I was going to the conferences, I realized there was so much we still don’t know, and that we are still learning about the skin microbiome and it is super complex.

I think a lot of times people are quick to jump to this assumption that the gut microbiome is going to be similar to the skin microbiome, at least the general public. So whatever is good for the gut microbiome must be good for the skin microbiome to put on topically. People are using products or bacteria that are in the gut on the skin, but that is not going to really help.

Skyler Stein: Right. I think there are a lot of companies that, for example, will put lactobacillus yogurt extracts, which lactobacillus is really healthy bacteria for the gut, but doesn’t naturally exist or live on our skin. Not all probiotics are created equally. It is really important what exactly you are applying to your skin, especially depending on the problem that you are experiencing. It is definitely not a one size fit all. It is so complex and the more we are researching, the more we are learning, how much we don’t know about it.

Dr. Trevor Cates : Yeah. The challenges with the skin microbiome and using a topical on the skin, because I was so excited about initially, I thought, okay, well, I am going to do some research and start adding probiotics to my skincare products. It is not that simple because first of all, the bacteria are so different and they vary, like you said, from one person to the next, from one part of your body to the next, it varies so widely.

And then even if you identify an organism, how are you going to make sure that it stays alive in the topical in a way that is going to actually provide benefit rather than just being on the label. Then you also have to deal with the FDA regulations, of no live bacteria are supposed to be living in a skincare product. I realized, okay, this is way complicated. Maybe I need to take a step back here. It sounds like Gladskin is one of the few companies. There are a few emerging that are getting to the real science on this and figuring out some solutions for people. And especially, it looks like that is his focus on eczema on atopic dermatitis, right?

Skyler Stein: Absolutely. That is where we are starting. We see tremendous results with our Gladskin product for people with eczema. It is really about our view. It is about two things, keeping the bad pathogenic bacteria levels down as low as possible and keeping the healthy ones up. Sometimes just applying a probiotic will help with the healthy bacteria. But if there is a problem bacteria on your skin, that is really causing inflammation, that is really irritating things.

If you don’t get rid of that, you are not going to solve the problem. Gladskin uses what is called Endolysins technology and science. This has been available in Europe for about five years now. Gladskin has been sold there. We have helped hundreds of thousands of people in Europe with that technology. We just launched Gladskin into the U.S. in January. We are just getting started and really focusing on educating about why Endolysins are different and how it is really a different category and approach overall of treating it compared to anything else that is really available in the U.S.

Dr. Trevor Cates : Yeah. Amazing. Can you explain what is different about people with eczema, atopic dermatitis than everyone else?

Skyler Stein: Yes. So with people with atopic dermatitis, there is this particular species of bacteria called staph aureus, which is commonly known as staph. There is a difference between people who are colonized with it, meaning you have it on very low levels versus a full blown staph infection. Traditionally, it has been thought that as long as it doesn’t look like a classical infection, there is nothing you should really do about it.

Antibiotics should really be spared for the times that it’s a full blown infection. But what the research is showing now is that the vast majority over 80% of people with eczema are colonized with this bacteria. Even if it’s not at clinical levels where it is called an infection, but it can be causing inflammation all along the way. Previously doctors were only told to treat it if it was classified as an infection. Gladskin really focuses on balancing that skin microbiome at the core before things get out of control, even if it is not showing up as an infection.

Dr. Trevor Cates : Okay. Can you explain a little bit more about how this really helps, going a little bit deeper into how exactly this helps people with eczema?

Skyler Stein: Yes. The Heidi Kong article that I mentioned showed that the microbiome balance proceeds an eczema flare, and then the microbiome balance needs to heal before the flare can heal. Gladskin takes the approach of constantly monitoring and keeping that microbiome balanced. To reduce the likelihood of flares from happening and to help them to resolve quicker by really focusing on the microbiome first.

Dr. Trevor Cates : Okay, great. What are some of the other things that you guys have found with the skin microbiome in ways that help people with eczema?

Skyler Stein: Yeah. We found that the vast majority of skincare products in the U.S. are packed with preservatives. We think about preservatives as something to keep our product fresh so that it can stay on the shelf longer, so we can have a longer life, but preservatives are really broad spectrum antibiotics that kill bacteria. Every day that we are applying skincare products with preservatives, we are putting those broad spectrum antibiotics on our skin.

The preservatives are really important for the way most skincare products are produced because it helps keep the product safe. It helps keep consumers safe to make sure that there aren’t unhealthy problems causing bacteria inside the bottle, especially products that you kind of dip your fingers into every day. It is a way of keeping the product clean without infecting it every day.

Those preservatives can be really irritating for people. It is a similar line of thinking right now with COVID and everybody is constantly washing their hands, constantly disinfecting their hands and more and more people are seeing their skins are getting more sensitive. There are more eczema type flare ups from the overuse of those products. All those products are doing is killing the skin microbiome, which otherwise keeps your hands healthy.

It is really the awareness of it and the importance of the skin microbiome is becoming more and more obvious to people. So long story long answer to your question, but it’s about using products that both can preserve the healthy bacteria that naturally are growing on your skin and minimizing the pathogenic bad problem causing bacteria.

Dr. Trevor Cates : Great. What is some of the research you have done? You can make claims on the product. So obviously you have done some research on this.

Skyler Stein: Yes, we have done a lot of research. Mike Rios, the biotech company that developed this is a hundred person, biotech company in Europe. We have done a tremendous amount of research. There was a double blinded placebo controlled trial in Europe with Gladskin and it showed that there was roughly 80% reduction in reported flare ups compared to the product that did not have the Gladskin technology inside of it.

Dr. Trevor Cates : Wow. It is great to see that. I had eczema as a child and my daughter started developing it too when she was younger and once it starts and you get that flare up, it just gets harder to manage. And it’s nice to know that there are things to help with calming it down. I know with my daughter, for a while, she was starting to get it on her hands. What we realized is that at school, the soaps that they use in the dispensers was really irritating her skin.

The more she would use it, the worse her eczema would get. It started to get better over the weekend when she was home, then she would go back to school and it would come back. I actually had my pharmacy compound a natural hand-wash for her. She started using that instead and took it to school with her and used it and that helped. Of course she also has a gluten sensitivity, and so if she eats any gluten at all, she gets a flare up of eczema.

That was another thing that we had to work on from the inside out and helping her gut microbiome. I definitely know it is challenging if people are looking for options besides topical steroids and the conventional treatment, which can calm the flare up initially, but it is not a long term solution. And it’s certainly not the best solution either. If you can find other things to help soothe the skin, support the skin microbiome, it’s certainly a healthier approach. And it is certainly more of a Naturopathic approach from my perspective of helping support the body to heal itself. The body is very wise when just given the right tools, it can recreate balance and good health.

Skyler Stein: Absolutely. Eczema is a chronic skin condition. And so we need tools and medicines that align with the chronic nature of the condition. Steroids are fantastic over a two week period, but it is really a bandaid for the two week period without getting to the root of what’s really driving the disease.

Dr. Trevor Cates : Skyler it has been so interesting having you on, and I love your personal story. Thank you for sharing your personal story at the beginning, and what led you to Gladskin and all of the research and things that they are doing there. Tell everyone where they can find you learn more about the solutions that you all have.

Skyler Stein: Yes. You can come check us out at gladskin.com. You can purchase the product directly from there. If it doesn’t work for any reason, we offer a no questions asked guarantee to make sure that everybody is happy. Thank you so much for having me on the show.

Dr. Trevor Cates : Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for coming on.

Dr. Trevor Cates : I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Skyler Stein. And if you’d like to have more information about Gladskin, you can go to thespadr.com, go to the podcast page with their interview and you’ll find the information there. They have generously offered a discount for people who would like to try out the products and I don’t make any commissions. I don’t make any money from the sale of this product. I have no association with this product. I just heard about it, thought it was very interesting. I love hearing things that people are doing innovatively, especially in the skin microbiome space, because it’s so near and dear to my passions. So while you are at thespadr.com, I encourage you to join the spa doctor family. So you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows and information. You can also take the skin quiz to find out what messages your skin might be trying to tell you about your health, including the skin microbiome, and how much that might be playing a role in the health of your skin. You can go to theskinquiz.com to take that online quiz. Also, I invite you to join The Spa Dr. on social media. We are on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest. And I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.

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Filed Under: Podcasts Tagged With: eczema, gut health, microbiome, skin rash

Detox Your Body with Dr. Trevor Cates

January 9, 2020 by Dr. Trevor Cates Leave a Comment

In today’s podcast, I’m busting myths around detoxification and sharing best practices for following an effective cleanse. This time of year is the perfect time of year to follow a cleanse program, but it can be overwhelming to know how to choose one, if it’s right for you, and how to do it correctly. Since skin is an outer reflection of outer health, a cleanse can be a great way to address root causes and revitalize health and skin. After 20 years in practice as a naturopathic physician, I’ve discovered the most important aspects of detoxification programs, and in this podcast, I walk through the 3 main steps that are essential for a safe and effective cleanse.

Join us for the Clean Skin Cleanse Program on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/thespadr/

During the interview, I mention my favorite air purifier to help effectively clean the air in your home. Here’s the link to learn more about it. https://thespadr.com/products/healthmate-plus

The program I talk about is all in my book, so, to get a copy of my book for free (just pay S&H) go to book.thespadr.com

And, to give cleansing a boost, consider adding in our All-In-One 14 Day Cleanse Kit.

If you choose a reverse osmosis water filtration, consider adding our True Hydration Drops to your water to add minerals back in.

Last but not least, to achieve a clean body with a clean slate, I suggest you try The Spa Dr.’s Daily Essentials four step skin care system.

Transcript for Detox Your Body

Dr. Cates: Hi there. Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. Today I want to talk with you about cleansing and detoxification. This time of year is the perfect time of year to be doing a cleanse or a detoxification program because we’ve just finished up the holiday season where there is stress and eating things that you probably wouldn’t normally eat or maybe excess sugar, excess sugar and caffeine, alcohol, those types of things. We’ve been overdoing it with most likely and also we’ve been really stressed and holidays bring in a lot of times of stress, so it’s the perfect time of year to be doing a cleansing detoxification. It’s also one of the biggest questions I get asked about because there’s so many myths out there about detoxification and cleansing and so many different programs and information online. It can be a bit overwhelming. So I wanted to do today’s podcast all about detoxification and cleansing the safe way to do it, tips for doing it successfully and what you should look for as far as results, how you know you’re going on the wrong track.

Dr. Cates: All of that information I want to share with you today. So let’s go ahead and dive in. And first of all, people ask me, how do I know if I need to do a cleanse program or a detoxification or what does that even mean in the first place? Okay, so typically what we’re talking about is when your system feels burden, when you, especially when you’ve gone through, like I said, the holidays with eating too much sugar, maybe too many processed foods, eating out a lot, getting a little too much alcohol, caffeine, those types of things really put a burden on the body and the on the liver, the kidneys, the lymphatic system, all of our pathways of detoxification, including our digestive system, gets burdened by all of the things that we might tend to do in excess that we know aren’t really healthy for us, but we tend to do.

Dr. Cates: That can oftentimes, as you know, I’m author of the book, Clean Skin From Within, I talk a lot about skin and when we need a cleanse, oftentimes it shows up on our skin. Our skin can look dull, dry, we can be breaking out more in acne. We might just feel like our skin just is aging all of a sudden very quickly. There might be rashes, all of flare ups of things like eczema and rosacea can also be signs that the body is being burdened and our pathways of detoxification and elimination are not working very well. So it’s nice to push a reset button and do a cleanse program to help support our pathways of detoxification, like our liver and kidneys and our skin is actually an organ of detoxification and elimination. And then of course our digestive system. All of that needs extra support at times. And this can show up not just on your skin.

Dr. Cates: Of course that’s a lot of my focus and one of the easiest, most simplest signs that our body gives us is on our skin. But also we might just start feeling more achy, more aches and pains and stiffness. A lot of people will say to me, I feel like I’m just getting old, but maybe it’s not that you’re getting older. Maybe your body just needs a break from a lot of things you’ve been doing and you might have a lot of internal inflammation. Your body’s not able to function as optimally as it has been when it’s at a healthy state. So in addition to feeling achy, maybe more pain and stiffness, you also might start to feel some brain fog, moodiness, fatigue, changes with your hormones, your hormones could, if you’re a woman in particular, you might notice changes with your cycles.

Dr. Cates: You could also notice headaches, irritability, digestive issues. These can all be signs that your body has reached a point where it needs additional support and that could be a good time for a cleanse or detoxification program. Now I want to clear this myth up. So I think that a lot of people think that you do a detox program and then you just go back to living the same way of drinking a lot of alcohol, eating fast foods and eating and living an unhealthy lifestyle. There is no detoxification program that’s going to replace healthy daily habits. Those are the things you want to focus on. You really want to use a cleanse program to get you on track or get you back on track. And so that you’re, it because it’s those daily lifestyle choices that we make. Those are the ones that help us feel our best, look our best, live longer in a healthy way.

Dr. Cates: Those or the daily lifestyle choices that you make. That’s what’s going to change genetic expression to help us live healthy, longer lives and being free of disease and symptoms including skin problems. So I, I don’t want to, to make anyone believe that there’s a, with some detox program that’s going to fix you do one time and that you can go back to eating an unhealthy lifestyle, an healthy diet, living an unhealthy life. Of course. Just want to make sure that’s clear. And again, I think of a detox program is like pushing the reset button. It is a chance to get things back on track, give your body a boost, give your body some new, accelerate the healing process so that you can get back on track. And often times if you do a cleanse program correctly, you’re not going to have the sugar cravings, you’re not going to have those desires to eat those trigger foods and some of the things that we’ll be talking about, those cravings, those tendencies are just not going to be there.

Dr. Cates: So I created a two week program, a two week cleanse program and people can find out more about that in my Facebook, I have a private Facebook Group Clean Skin From Within and you can go there and you can join the group. It’s completely free. I lead people through this two week program and we’ve already started it this year in January of 2020 but it is a great way to be involved and truly understand and I lay it all out in my book, Clean Skin From Within. You can get a free copy at book.thespadr.com just pay the shipping and handling fee to get it to you. So I’m going to talk about a little bit about that two week program, but to get the full program, all you have to do is get my book and follow the program.

Dr. Cates: I’ve been doing this for, I’ve been seeing patients for almost 20 years now and I have been doing a version of this program with my patients for 20 years and narrowed it down to two weeks as a perfect amount of time. Again to press that reset button to get you back on track. But let’s go ahead and talk about some of the things that are really key and essential for detoxification. Really, I think of them as three different steps and you can learn a lot more again, in my book, especially in the clean body section on my book, I talk a lot about detoxification, but let’s talk about this. So the first thing is you want to reduce the level of toxic exposure that you have. There is no point in doing a cleanse program and taking supplements or doing, changing your diet if you, if you’re continuing to be exposed to more toxins in your environment because your body reaches a certain level and it’s hard for it to continue to processing everything that’s being exposed to.

Dr. Cates: So as if you’re planning on doing a cleanse program, the first thing you want to do, is look at all the ways you can reduce your exposure to toxins in your environment. And that means your air, water, food, personal care products, and your home. Those are the places to start. That’s where do you want to focus on, because that’s where you have the most control. And that’s where you live most of your life, right? Like you’re sleeping every night in your home, your the foods that you’re eating, the water that you’re drinking, the air that you’re breathing in your home, that’s where you want to focus. So let’s talk about why in particular. So when you’re exposed to one of the biggest group of chemicals, class of chemicals that are of concern for our health, are endocrine disrupting chemicals. So this group of chemicals, what happens is they can really disrupt our hormone function.

Dr. Cates: And again, this is another reason why we want to do a cleanse is to help with balancing hormones and getting our hormones back on track. So when we’re exposed to this group of chemicals, it’s further complicating and making issues with hormone balance. So you want to reduce these chemicals. Now they’re in so many different places. Pesticides in food, toxins in air pollutants, toxic ingredients in skincare products, in cleaning products. Many of these are places where we’re exposed to endocrine disrupting chemicals. So there’s been a lot of research done on this class of chemicals and what what’s been found is what happens is they will bind to hormone receptors and actually mimic hormones or, or turn off the functioning, interfere with the functioning of the hormone receptors so our hormones can’t function the way they should optimally. So what this means is that this is one of the reasons we are seeing more rates of infertility.

Dr. Cates: Certain types of cancers like breast cancer, prostate cancer, thyroid disease is definitely on the rise. We’re seeing these and many other health issues related to hormones on the rise because we’re exposed to more of these endocrine disrupting chemicals now than we ever have been. There are these chemicals that have these endocrine disrupting chemicals have been in our environment for many years and they don’t just go away. Things like lead from gasoline or from paint. It doesn’t just disappear because we banned it. It continues to exist in our soil and, and even if we ban chemicals and the U.S., they still exist in other, they might still exist in other countries like in China and they could travel over in clouds and with the environment travel over in clouds, then it rains down and puts these chemicals into our water, our soil. And so we want to do everything and I don’t want to be doom and gloom here what I wanted to do is bring your awareness to this because what you want to do is just reduce your toxic exposures, especially of these endocrine is mud disrupting chemicals as much as possible so that you’re getting less of these because it’s not just when you think about endocrine disrupting chemicals and hormone dysregulation, it’s not just sex hormones, it’s also thyroid hormones that that impact our metabolism, our energy, our adrenal hormones.

Dr. Cates: Again, that give us energy that help us with healthy aging, our melatonin, which helps us sleep at night, growth hormone, again, anti-aging benefits there and the list goes on and on. You know, there’s also insulin which helps keeps our blood sugar regulated and which helps with weight. So many different hormones. And then of course there are the sex hormones to estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. And then there’s DGA and there’s so many different hormones that cause our bodies to function optimally. And so we want to reduce these chemicals, this endocrine disrupting chemicals. Okay. Enough about that. You can read more about that in my book, if you want to delve in more, also you can find a lot about endocrine disrupting chemicals there’s tons of research on this.

Dr. Cates: But let’s talk about how you can reduce your exposure to these air, water, food, personal care products, and your home. So in your air, in your homes, you can get an air purifier and these units, one of my favorites is Austin Air and I can provide a link for that for anyone that’s interested in Austin Air. I do think it’s one of the best air filters out there because of the combination of HEPA and ionic filtration. And it is, it’s been used for many years. I’ve been using it in my practice recommending it for my patients for 20 years. And it’s one of my favorites for the, you know, the longevity of the unit and all of that. So I do think it’s a fantastic, air purifier. It’s what I have, one of the ones I have in my own home in my kids’ bedrooms and my room and our living room. So you can get an air filtration system to have in your home.

Dr. Cates: The most important place. If you could only have one air purifier, the most important place to put it is in your bedroom because that’s where you spend the most time. And unfortunately, you can’t just put one air filter in a home and expect it to filter the whole home unless you have a one room home. But, but typically you’ll want different size units for different, for different rooms. So look at getting an air purifier. Now, if you live in a City, this is going to be particularly important because of the air pollution that you have, where you live. Also, if you live in a place like I do in Park City, Utah, in the winter time, our homes are so sealed and energy efficient, which is great, but we’re not getting any fresh air in the home. So anything of all the furniture and any paint, any carpeting, all of that is going to be offgassing into the air.

Dr. Cates: So indoor air quality is actually worse than even, air in a City. So if you, have your home is pretty closed up, you’re not able to open up the windows, definitely that’s another situation where you want to get an air purifier and you want to change the filters as indicated with whatever unit you end up getting. You could also, if you have a central air system in your home, you can also get filters and change those regularly, especially when you’re running the air either in the summer or the winter and you’re running it regularly. You can get good air filters for that. That’s not quite the same as getting an air purifier, it’s not going to clean air, quite the same and the particle size. But it is a something that you can do. So just make sure I, I recommend changing those once a month if you’re running your air system on a regular basis.

Dr. Cates: And then also getting your air ducts cleaned periodically to make sure that, that the airflow through the filter is working well and you’re not getting mold and debris and different things built up in the air system. So that’s air. Okay. And that is part of your home. You can also look at your work environment and that’s another place that you might have control over, but not always. I work from home so I, get to purify my air and my home and office all at the same time. So the other thing is water. So having a water purification system is key and it is really hard to find clean water. It doesn’t really matter where in the world you live, it’s really hard to find clean water. So whether you are on City water or you have a, well one thing, if you’re really not sure the best system to get, you could have your water tested to see what’s in it.

Dr. Cates: Or if you’re on a City water, then you can look at their tests to see what’s typically found in the water, where you live. Where I live in Park City, it’s this beautiful pristine mountain town, you think that the water would be perfectly clean, that you could drink it from the tap, but it’s also a mining town, not anymore, but it used to be and because it used to be a mining town, there is lead and arsenic and other heavy metals in the water. I have tested this, I’ve seen it show up. The levels show up high in my patients here, so I always tell people in Park City and you know of course wherever you are your water is going to be different that it’s important to get a water filter. The best water filter system that I find is a reverse osmosis water filtration system and if you’re concerned about it taking out the minerals in addition to all of the toxic chemicals that might be in the water, then you can do have an add back system.

Dr. Cates: We also at The Spa Dr. have electrolyte drops that you can add to your water after it’s purified. But the biggest thing is again, we want to reduce your have the heavy metals that might be and water PCBs, pesticides, these are fluoride, chlorine. These are commonly found in water, but they are not good for our body. These do have many of these have endocrine disrupting effects or they have been linked to other health issues. Really depending upon what you might find in your water. So water, get a purification system. If you can’t get a reverse osmosis system or maybe you’re renting your home, you can get something more temporary, you can add to the faucet or you can get pitchers that filter the water. Don’t, those don’t necessarily filter out as much as reverse osmosis systems, but they still are better than just drinking straight tap water.

Dr. Cates: In addition to drinking water, you’re also going to be in your shower and your bath. You’re going to be getting, you’re going to be also beginning these toxic ingredients that might be in your water, the toxic chemicals that might be in her water through the air as it aerosolizes chlorine will go into the air and you can, you breathe it in. And especially when it’s hot and steamy, it can have detrimental effects to the body. So you want to also, have a filter for your shower and perhaps your bathtub if you take a lot of baths. So another thing to think about. In my home, I have a whole house filtration system in addition to our reverse osmosis system. Now I don’t, you know, it might be a bit more, especially if you’re renting your home, it may not be what you want to invest in, where you’re living right now.

Dr. Cates: But if you know you’re going to be in your home for many years, I’ve been in my home for 10 years and plan to be here longer, then you will want to, it’s a great idea to invest in this because if you think about the people that buy water and they have jar jugs of water and they go through that, if you look at the long term, you’re actually probably going to save money in the longterm if you get a, a reverse osmosis system or something and take your water with you. So that’s another key is when you leave your home, you take your filtered water with you. And we have at The Spa Dr., we have our stainless steel water bottles are insulated, are beautiful, but something like that so that you can take your filter water wherever you go. And preferably storing in stainless steel, glass and avoiding plastics as much as possible.

Dr. Cates: Plastics. And this is, this is kind of segwaying into other aspects of ways to reduce toxin exposure is what you store your food in. And so not only are plastics bad for the environment and you may have seen some, there are documentaries out there talking about the harmful effects that all the plastics, the plastic bags, the plastic straws and the water bottles and all of that are having on our environment. So the more you can do to reduce your use of plastics, especially the single use is going to be better for our environment as well as our health. Even if it’s a BPA free plastic, it could have other components in there that could also have endocrine disrupting effects. BPA is one of those chemicals that has endocrine disrupting effects and it’s been eliminated from a lot of plastics. But unfortunately there are other aspects of plastics that could also still have endocrine-disrupting effects.

Dr. Cates: So store your food, your water, your drinks in, stainless steel, and cooking stainless steel, um, glass, ceramic, those are all much better choices. When we go to food, choosing organic as much as possible, that’s going to help reduce your exposure to pesticides. So that’s food and making sure that you’re getting clean sources if you can grow your own, that’s fantastic. And in addition to food, the next thing that I would say is really important to look at our personal care products. These are the things that you put on your body every day. If you think about all of the different products that you’re using, the shampoo, the conditioner, the skin care products, the deodorant, the shaving products, all of that really adds up. And so what we want to do is reduce our exposure here. Again, looking at labels and being aware of what you’re putting in your skin care products.

Dr. Cates: And you’ve heard me talk about my skin care products and what led me to create The Spa Dr. line you know what I was finding is that there were, it was actually hard to find truly clean skin care products that got my patient’s results. And so that’s why I created The Spa Dr. skin care line is to find something that was truly clean. Whereas what I was finding with a lot of so-called natural products is that many of them would say that they were clean. When I started to look carefully at the labels, there would still be fragrance, there’d be parabens, there’d be things like phenoxyethanol and dimethicone and things that actually not only are harmful for your body, but they’re harmful for your skin and the skin microbiome. So that’s why I created The Spa Dr. skin care line is to have products that are truly clean and still help give people results.

Dr. Cates: So what you want to start doing is looking at your personal care product labels. And if sometimes you can’t even find the ingredients are so hard to read. So you can go on websites, environmental working group, ewg.org is a nice resource for going to their skin deep database where you can actually do a search for a product that you might be using and it gives you a rating of how safe and how clean it is. The Spa Dr. skin care products are EWG verified. We’ve met their stringent, a really strict criteria for being clean, healthy skin care products. But you might be using other products as well and you’re curious about those. So you can go and check that out. That’s a great resource also in my book, Clean Skin From Within, I have the top ingredients to avoid and then other healthier alternatives.

Dr. Cates: Like for example, you can use organic essential oils instead of synthetic fragrance, much healthier alternative. And that’s what we use in The Spa Dr. line. So again start looking at your labels just like you might do with your food labels and, and asking questions about those personal care products. And don’t forget, it’s not just the products that you put on your face, the rest of your body, your hair, think about whatever you breathe in, whatever touches your skin, if you wouldn’t put it in your mouth, stop and think, is this really good for my body? Because if we’re doing a detoxification program and you’re continuing to add these things in, your body is going to be working hard on eliminating those rather than what’s stored up in your body. So that’s what we want to think about with a detoxification program is, is to really clear out your body and, and you’ve got to reduce these exposures in order to, to appropriately effectively do this.

Dr. Cates: Okay. And so then the last aspect is really just looking at your home in general and all the different ways that you might be exposed to toxins in your home. So thinking about what are some simple things that you can do with your cleaning products, and that includes all the things that you’re using to clean things as well as your laundry and your soaps and those, all of those are contributing. Are you using pesticides in and around your home? All of that is going to be, they’re going to add to that total burden of toxins. It’s like our body becomes this soup of toxic ingredients that we’re exposed to from our environment and they interact with each other. And we already see a lot of the research coming out on the harmful effects on these, but we don’t even know how all of these things interact within our bodies.

Dr. Cates: So even doing something as simple as when you come home, when you come in your door, removing your shoes instead of walking through your home with your shoes on. Because if you think about where you been, you may have been walking at the gas station and picked up gasoline on your shoes. You may have walked through a park that sprays pesticides and you’re bringing that into home. And especially if you have pets or small children or you spend time on the ground doing yoga or stretching, you don’t want these things, especially in your carpet, your flooring, they get tracked throughout the entire home. They also attached to these, these chemicals will attach to dust particles in your home and they’ll linger in the corners and then they get stirred up and you breathe them in in addition. So okay, I think you’ve got the idea here on the step one, which is reducing toxins in your air, water, food, home, personal care products. Look at all the different ways that you can do that and really, when it comes to detoxification, that is one of the most important steps.

Dr. Cates: This next step is decreasing inflammation and supporting your body, especially with elimination. So before we really go into detoxification and amping up that that’s at, which is actually step three, the final step is to actually support your body so that when you do the detoxification program, it’s in the right place to do it. If you do a big detox program, especially a liver detoxification, a colon cleansing, if you start to dive into this without creating a good foundation for your body, you may actually feel worse. It may be a strain on your body. So I like to let people know that, you know, get your body ready for this. Go into it gently. Don’t try and go into an extreme detoxification program and tell your body is really better.

Dr. Cates: And it’s tell us in a good state. And one of that is decreasing inflammation and making sure that your elimination is working properly. Because if you start taking supplements and the exit door is closed, like you’re constipated, you can’t get things out, your liver is not working well, your kidneys aren’t working well, your skin is dry, you’re not exfoliating properly. If all of that’s not done first, it’s just going to get stirred up inside your body and it can’t get out. So step two is about decreasing inflammation and helping support elimination. So to help decrease inflammation, you want to avoid big triggers. In addition to the chemicals they talked about avoiding, you want to avoid big trigger foods. Things like sugar and dairy for a lot of people those are. In my book Clean Skin From Within and in my two week program that I lead everybody through on my Facebook group, I talk about 10 different things to avoid for two weeks and it’s really important to identify these, what your trigger foods are and doing this program is a great way to identify what your trigger foods are because they’re typically the same for a lot of people and you want to switch to more anti-inflammatory foods and again, in my book Clean Skin From Within and then the Facebook group, I talk about all of that. I talk about my whole two week program. The focus is on anti-inflammatory foods, nourishing foods, cleansing foods that help support your body. So you know it’s a great thing to switch over to that to help support your body. And that’s not just when you’re doing a cleanse program, but really on an ongoing basis. But before you go into some big detox program, you want to make sure that you’re doing that and you’re supporting your body. You also, like I said, you want it to support your exit routes, your elimination part of that’s your digestive system. You don’t want to be constipated going into a liver cleanser, a detoxification program. So what you might want to consider, things that you can do to help support address constipation. Let’s start with digestion. Drinking more water.

Dr. Cates: You want to be drinking, making sure you’re drinking at least eight glasses of water a day, filter water, of course. Increasing your fiber intake. Most people do not get enough fiber. We really need 25 to 30 grams of fiber a day and most people only get 10 grams or less. So one of the ways you could do that is eat more vegetables, six or more servings of vegetables. You could also, you can get them some and legumes, beans and peas. You also might want to consider a supplement like chia seeds, some of those kinds of seeds and things that can help add in some additional fiber. And if that still doesn’t work, you might want to consider an herbal laxative or work with a healthcare provider who can help figure out why exactly you have the constipation. You might have some hypothyroidism or other health issue that’s causing you to be constipated.

Dr. Cates: Certainly you don’t want to do a big detoxification program until you’ve addressed that. You also want to support your kidneys by drinking filter water. You want to make sure that they’re working properly and improving your skin’s ability to perspire. Perspiring. Sweat is an important part of detoxification. We have a lot of our, the toxins in our body are stored up in our fat cells and when we sweat lipolysis happens where the fat cells break down and where those toxins are stored, those can be released and it is a fantastic way to help with detoxification. However, if you’re not able to perspire well because your skin is really dry, you have clogged pores, any of that going on then then that could be a problem. So you want to make sure that you’re exfoliating your skin properly, both your face and your body.

Dr. Cates: We have our, at The Spa Dr. we have our Pearl and Rose Petal Facial Exfoliant. It’s just the perfect combination of ingredients for gentle but effective exfoliation for the face. And that’s where I want you to be really careful and you don’t want anything abrasive on the face because that can be very damaging to the delicate skin on our face. On your body you can do some of the DIY, a little bit more, a little bit more abrasive exfoliation on the body is okay, especially in the areas where you know, the skin is thicker, you can do that. In my book I have some DIY skincare recipes for exfoliation as well. So you want to do that, you might want to consider dry skin brushing. That’s another great tool I talk about in my book and recommend doing during my two week program because not only does that help your skin and also helps with your lymphatic flow, the lymph flow in your body, which helps transport the chemicals that might be stored up in your body and helps your body eliminate them.

Dr. Cates: Okay. So let’s talk about step three, because this is probably what you’re really excited about to learn more about is, is actual detoxification. How do I help ramp up amp up my body’s elimination detoxification pathways? And this is true, this is, this is a great time of year to do something like this. What you want to do is to be, first of all, let’s talk about food. There are foods that are particularly cleansing foods, so you want to focus on eating a lot of these foods. So things like the from the cruciferous vegetable, family, turnips, cabbage, kale, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, collards, mustard greens, radishes, rutabaga, all of those are really great as well as onions, garlic, and even fermented vegetables, those are also great. So there are components and cruciferous vegetables like Indole-3-Carbinol, Sulforaphane and DIM that actually help with detoxification, they help with liver detoxification.

Dr. Cates: And also they help enhance, they have antioxidant properties that the body needs to help fight against oxidative damage, which is one of the reasons why we do detoxification and cleansing programs is to fight that oxidative free radical damage that speeds up the aging process. And also it makes us more susceptible to certain diseases like cancer. So we want to do, you know, get lots of antioxidants in our diet as well as these components that help with liver detoxification. In fact, Indole-3-Carbinol helps increase the livers ability to metabolize estrogen by almost 50% so one of these great aspects of hormone balancing foods in this all ties back to detoxification. So great foods to eat, the cruciferous vegetable, family, garlic and onions, they have those sulfur compounds like allicin that helps support detoxification pathways.

Dr. Cates: You can also drink some herbal teas and some of my favorites for our detoxification are dandelion chicory and milk thistle. These help both support kidney and liver function. So you get kind of both with that, drink plenty of these herbal teas. And you can also bump up detox support with supplements. Now you want to be careful and if you have any existing health issues, you want to work with a healthcare provider who is experienced in this and that’s a licensed practitioner that understands the body and detoxification, understands your unique health situation, but they’re the ones that are typically safe for people to take. And that includes supplements like milk thistle, which helps with liver detoxification as well as N-acetyl cysteine or NAC, which is an amino acid and vitamin C, something as simple as vitamin C all three of these help with increasing glutathione production glutathione is produced by the liver and helps is, is key and helping with detoxification to help eliminate the toxins that are stored up in the body.

Dr. Cates: Also, turmeric and I really in a supplement form this one, you’re going to get more of the benefits, but turmeric is a rich in anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties and also helps with liver detoxification. So it’s a really potent, herb plant, but when it’s put into a supplement and a potent form, similar to let what we have in our Skinflam-Ease is a supplement at The Spa Dr. It can have really beneficial effects and we just, we know these effects of turmeric aren’t always, we’re not going to just get it necessarily from food and that’s when supplements can play an important role and and helping really amp it up, take it to the next level because when we just take turmeric and getting turmeric in your diet is great, but if we’re really looking at ways to detox and getting those anti-inflammatory and antioxidant benefits usually want to take it in a supplement form and a potent form that is absorbable by the body.

Dr. Cates: Okay. So those are some ideas on supplements. Certainly there are a lot of other options for a detoxification. We also have, actually I have it right behind me are all in one a 14 day cleanse kit so that at The Spa Dr. we have it all set up packets of supplements and easy to take in 14 days so there are programs like that that you can incorporate into doing a program. Now I like to do it as a two week program. That’s what I found that works best for my patients. And it’s really the a way to get started. And then you want to have your daily detoxification practices that you have because really it’s not just the two weeks that you want to detox its that ongoing, those daily lifestyle choices. So eating cruciferous vegetables, not just during those two weeks, but eating them on a regular basis, find a way to love them.

Dr. Cates: That’s why I put lots of recipes in my book is because I know people say oh I can’t stand broccoli. I don’t like, I’ve never made these types of vegetables before, but get creative. Use herbs and spices and really great oils like, you know, like coconut well and, ands avocado oil and things like that to help make sure that you’re, you’re getting, um, getting the most out of those and you cooking them and enjoying them. Put them in soups and stews and, and get them in your diet in the way that you can. So in addition to the supplements, there are a few other things that I would recommend to incorporate into your detox program. And so another one is looking at ways that you sweat more Again, it’s one of these detoxification pathways. So how can we, how can we sweat more? Of course, exercise, moving, arobotic activity that can definitely be a way to help you sweat more.

Dr. Cates: Remember I talked about lipolysis is breaking down at fat cells and then it gets released through sweat is an important part of that. I really think it’s great to use all of the detoxification pathways, liver, kidneys, lymphatic system, skin, sweat, use all of it to your advantage and including your digestive system. Bring it all together and that’s when you’re going to get the best results. And so exercise is a great way to get more perspiration. And another way to do that is through saunas. Now there are a lot of different types of saunas out there. Some are better than others, but there are actually ones that you can get. I have one right outside the back of my house and it’s a little unit, you could squeeze two people in there, but it’s really more for one person and it’s an infrared sauna.

Dr. Cates: It’s a beautiful sauna. It is not really as expensive as you would think. So they’re great if you could have them at your own, in your own, you know, space. But you could also go to, I mean their wellness centers and healing centers that have saunas. You can also find them there if you’re not able to get one for a home use. But saunas help with, again, with that lipolysis that sweating the detoxification. So it’s a great thing to add into a detox program. And then if you get a chance to do, massage and body work while you’re doing a program, that’s another way to help with detoxification because then you’re really, you can really tap into that lymph flow. So at the very least doing the dry skin brushing during a detox program, again, you’re getting exfoliating the skin, you’re helping with the lymph flow, the circulation in your body.

Dr. Cates: But you could also get some body work done, massage, lymphatic massage, all of that helps with your lymph flow, your circulation and even exercise also helps with lymph flow, so we don’t want to forget about that. And then last but not least, when we’re talking about a detox program, don’t want you to forget about the stress component. The clean mind as I talk about it in my book, that is an important part of a detoxification program is to figure out ways to incorporate mindfulness and stress management. Please do not forget this in your detoxification program. A lot of these tips and tools are in the clean mind section of my book, Clean Skin From Within, and I learned these when I was doing my Spiritual Psychology Program a Master’s Degree in Spiritual Psychology. Many of these tips and tools I learned there. So you can find things like learning about gratitude journal or forgiveness exercises, meditation, breath work exercises.

Dr. Cates: These are all really powerful tools and especially when you are doing a detox program. Sometimes emotional things come up and it’s really important to have these tools and resources available to do that. Now I know I’ve covered a lot today on all the different aspects of detoxification and cleansing and I could go on and on about more about this, but I would encourage you to join us in the Clean Skin from Within Facebook group. Just ask to join the group and you can, you can join in and we’re right now we’re doing the two week program and it’s free but if you’re joining after the fact after we got started it’s okay. You can still join in any time and get the resources and tools that we have in there. The bonus recipes and some of the shopping guides and some of the tools and resources we have in the Facebook group are available to you.

Dr. Cates: Plus I have all of that in my book Clean Skin From Within. You can get a copy of that and also follow the two week program and it is clean skin from within. and the focus is on the skin, but really from the inside out. And again, your skin is an outer reflection of inner health. So when your skin is healthy and glowing, it’s a really good sign that the inside is matching. So I encourage you to do a detoxification program, whether that’s my Clean Skin From Within program or another one. And I hope you have a very healthy 2020.

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Filed Under: Podcasts Tagged With: gut, microbiome, mycobiome, skin

Achieving Gut + Skin Balance with Dr. Mahmoud Ghannoum

January 2, 2020 by Dr. Trevor Cates Leave a Comment

On today’s podcast we’re talking about how to achieve gut balance and how this impacts your skin. My guest is Dr. Mahmoud Ghannoum who is the scientist that named the mycobiome. The Washington Post called him “the scientist who is now known as the leading microbiome researcher in the world.” He has published over 450 peer reviewed papers, his work has been cited over 21,000 times in the literature. He has been actively funded by the NIH continuously since 1991, for his work on the fungal and bacterial communities in our body with over $25 million in NIH funding to date .

Dr. Ghannoum lectures across the world on the microbiome, from the Pasteur Institute in France, to the NIH. And, he is also the founder of the antifungal clinical testing company, Next Trillion Sciences (NextTrillionSciences.com), and has been involved in the development of 95% of the antifungals that have come to market since the 1990’s.

On today’s podcast, we discuss the difference between the microbiome and the mycobiome and how these play a role in your health, including your gut, brain and skin health. Dr. Ghannoum shares best foods and lifestyle habits that help support the microbiome and mycobiome for optimal health and longevity.

So please enjoy this interview…

And, here’s a special treat: As you’re listening to Dr. Ghannoum, you’ll find out the answer to a question we’re asking in the email going out to our followers on January 2 for a chance to win a free signed copy of his book! If you’re not on our email list yet, subscribe to The Spa Dr. Podcast or take TheSkinQuiz.com and then be sure to add us to your email addresses so you’re sure our emails will end up in your inbox.

To learn more about Dr. Mahmoud Ghannoum:

https://drmicrobiome.com

Social Media Links:
https://www.facebook.com/drmicrobiome/

Dr. Ghannoum’s papers/citations
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mahmoud_Ghannoum

Transcript for Achieving Gut + Skin Balance

Dr. Cates: Hi there. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. On today’s podcast we’re talking about how to achieve gut balance and how this impacts your skin. My guest is Dr. Mahmoud Ghannoum and he is the scientist that named the mycobiome. The mycobiome is the fungal community in the body. Well, why is this important well, stay tuned, I’m going to explain that as well. The Washington Post actually called him the scientist who is now known as the leading microbiome researcher in the world. He has published over 450 peer reviewed papers. His work has been cited over 21,000 times in literature he has been actively funded by the NIH, the NIH, the National Institutes for Health continuously since 1991 for his work on the fungal and bacterial communities in our body with over $25 million in NIH funding to date. Dr. Ghannoum lectures around the world on the microbiome and he is the founder of the antifungal clinical testing company, Next Trillion Sciences and has been involved in the development of 95% of antifungals that have come to market since the 1990s and I actually ask him about antifungals at the end of this interview. On today’s podcast, we discussed the difference between the microbiome and the mycobiome and how these play a role in your health, very important role in your gut, brain and skin health. Dr. Ghannoum shares best foods and lifestyle habits that help support the microbiome and mycobiome for optimal health and longevity. He’s got a book that’s now out about this as well, and he talks about about this new book and he’s just a wealth of knowledge, so I hope you enjoy this interview.

Dr. Cates: Mahmoud it’s so great to have you on The Spa Dr. Podcast. Welcome.

Dr. Ghannoum: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s great pleasure to be with you.

Dr. Cates: I’m so excited to have you on because you have been doing a lot of interesting research on something that I find completely fascinating and I myself have looked into a lot and that is having to do with the microbiome and the mycobiome and you have a, you’ve also done a paper publish a paper on the gut skin brain connection. And so let’s start with that. Let’s start about that connection because I think for so many years people thought of the skin as just being the superficial thing that’s not really connected to the gut and you know, the brain, like how is this all connected? So tell everybody how this comes together.

Dr. Ghannoum: Sure. You know a lot of the time people think of the gut brain access, but in fact there is gut skin brain access. We published a paper as you mentioned, inform theory of microbiology. Okay, well we showed that if you have an imbalance in the microbiome in the gut with respect to the micro organisms, what happens, it could affect your skin. Also because of the communication between the brain, the gut, also reflects in the skin. So really in a way we have communication between gut, skin and brain and there are evidence to show that people who, for example, there was a good study where people had acne and they took a probiotic in fact not prebiotic, probiotic, uh, bifidobacterium. And what they found that when they, the balanced their gut microbiome, the acne really got to reduce.

Dr. Ghannoum: Another very interesting study was, you know, people when they have UV exposure of the skin, how we lose some elasticity and this sort of thing, and a study was done where they showed that if you take probiotics to ensure that your gut microbiome balanced, you skin elasticity is maintained, even when you have some UV exposure. You know, so that, that’s really very interesting. You know, the other thing from the scientific point of view, I am as you know, professor at Case Western Reserve University, and what we have, we have a grant to look at psoriasis and we looked at the skin psoriasis and what we found that we compare affected versus unaffected areas. This is where you have the plaque and the lesions versus those that are not. And we found that there is imbalance in both the bacteria and fungal communities in the skin, in these psoriasis patients. So definitely there is a clear link between our gut skin as well as the brain.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, it’s amazing the, the information that’s coming out about the gut microbiome and the skin microbiome. And can you explain to everyone what the differences between the microbiome and the mycobiome and for some people that sounds like the exact same thing, but it is very, well not very different, but it is different.

Dr. Ghannoum: It’s different. You know, I completely understand why people sometimes think of the microbiome without thinking about the community except bacteria. Everybody used to talk about bacteria as being the main member of the microbiome and they really use the term microbiome and bacterium, in the same way. Okay. But research is showing that in addition to the bacterial community that live, let’s say in the gut, since we are talking a lot about the gut or the skin for that matter, it’s not only bacteria. We have bacteria, we have viruses, we have fungus as well. And the difference between them, we call it the mycobiome because mycology is the study of fungus. So I came out with this coined this term of mycobiome to describe the fungal community. Yeah. Yeah. To contrast with bacteria.

Dr. Cates: M Y. yeah. So that helps the spelling is different. So what, what led you to be so interested in the mycobiome?

Dr. Ghannoum: Well, you know, for years, I direct the center for medical mycology and I’ve been studying fungus for over 40 years, you know, and it took me back to when I first went to England to do my a doctorate where I was given a paper by my mentor You know, our advisor they come and tell you, what you are going to do, your doctorate on. So I looked at it and what it was, it was about a rabbit which was treated with an antibiotic. And lo and behold, that rabbit became more susceptible to fungal infections, especially candida and that taught me, you know that in our body, we have both communities living together and if one becomes imbalance, let’s say we use antibiotic, we kill all the bacteria, the fungus take the opportunity and they start to grow and causing carbon.

Dr. Ghannoum: So that was in 19, believe it or not, 74 up to 78 that’s what I spent my life studying. And then let’s, let’s come fast forward to around early 2000, 2008 I used to go to all these meetings and people talking about microbiome, meaning really bacteria. And then I tried to bring attention that we really need to look at these two communities because they work together in good and in bad. They could be helpful, but at the same time, when they are imbalanced or what we call this biosis, they will cause harm to us. That’s really what led me to uh, go into the study of not only the bacteria but the fungi of course, which is my specialty in 2000 and then I published the first paper on the mycobiome.

Dr. Cates: Right. Right. That’s so great. And I think we are shifting away from this idea that microorganisms are bad, right then that we understand now there’s so much research that we need balance that there are good ones, there are bad ones, there are ones that just are, they just exist. The commensal ones that need to be in the right balance and that there is this synergy that we need, and so how does the mycobiome play a role in our health?

Dr. Ghannoum: Which is very, very good question. And I really agree with you. We really need the balance. Now people, when they talk about candida, as you said, they always think, Oh it’s bad than use. This can be, that could cause candidiasis. It could cause, you know, various diseases. In fact, 50% of the people, the population have candida as a colonizer, which means it’s at low level. When it is present at low level it can help us, you know, it kind of breakdown the food ferment food, which gives food to the beneficial bacteria and that will really help our immune system and make us. So that’s if we have it at low level, the problem starts when we encourage the growth of this fungus and overgrows by getting rid of the beneficial organism. Then we are going to start to have digestive issues and other issues so it’s two sides of the story. They could be good when they are in balance, but when they go out of whack then it becomes bad.

Dr. Cates: So what are some of the symptoms that people should look for that could indicate that, there is an imbalance?

Dr. Ghannoum: You know, simply the constipation, bloating. You may have some time blood in the, the stool. If you have some inflammation you feel sometimes you have some pain for example. And there are studies to show that like for example, Crohn’s disease patients with their symptoms, inflammatory symptoms there is imbalance. So if you have any bad feeling, any of these symptoms, which are what as we said, we call them inflammatory symptoms, then you know there is something not right there and you need to try to adjust it.

Dr. Cates: Right, right. So and this does play a role on the skin cause we already talked about the gut skin connection. So if some, if the digestive system is off, if the microbiome of the gut is off then that could impact the skin as well. And this includes the mycobiome, the fungal.

Dr. Ghannoum: Hundred percent really. We actually completed a study as I mentioned in psoriasis and we look not only at the skin, a microbiota, but also we looked at the gut microbiota to see whether there is a relation and we showed that in cases of disease you have imbalance in both bacteria and fungus. Yeah. So it’s definitely the right way to look at it. Our gut could affect not only our digestive symptoms, but also our skin. Sometimes also some, sort of autism, Alzheimer, all of these diseases which are related to our brain. You know, degenerative diseases also are affected. So it’s really fantastic what’s happening now with our understanding of the microbiome. Because as you said, when you look at it, it’s not all bad. There is bad, but there is good. And we need to learn how we can keep, our gut balanced because that’s going to help us overall.

Dr. Cates: Right.

Dr. Ghannoum: Yeah.

Dr. Cates: So let’s talk about that. What, how does food play a role? The foods that we eat, how do they play a role and the mycobiome?

Dr. Ghannoum: Well, as you know our body requires carbohydrates, requires the proteins it requires as well as fat for, you know, our cells are made of this. So in a way you need to select the type of food. Like if we decide we want to go after carbohydrates, we need to select resistant starch because the resistant starch has these fibers which can be broken down by the microorganism in our gut, which are beneficial organism. And by doing this they are going to help our immune system on our wellness. However, if you eat something, let’s say red meat, okay, especially high fat red meat, what happens, you are feeding the bacteria that are pro-inflammatory, which means they increase our inflammation. So by selecting which food we eat, you are able to go some way to balancing the gut. You know, and I say some way because in addition to diet we really need to select some good lifestyle which we may be able to talk about because that also influenced our gut.

Dr. Ghannoum: Now with respect to the fungus can be that for example, how can we make sure it stays a colonizer and it’s helping us instead of working against us. Number one is that candida loves sugar, refined sugars are the best friend for candida, so we need to limit those low carb and that’s choose the right carb like as we said, the resistance stash for example. Now in addition, we need to have some lean proteins, good proteins from plants, from fish. This would really help us a lot as well as some poultry as well. Chicken and the sort of thing are beneficial. So by selecting the right type of food, it’s like a garden. You are feeding your garden and you are going to grow the nice, beautiful roses rather than all the weeds.

Dr. Cates: Right. So with the carbohydrates that are beneficial, would those be more of like the high fiber carbohydrates? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so when you look at things like, the carbohydrates, high fiber carbohydrates, are we looking, you know, legumes and what are some of the best ones for us to eat?

Dr. Ghannoum: Yeah, legumes is one of them. There is also, you have resistance starch you’ll find that in bananas. Unripened bananas in Bali for example, it is there, you know, the other good fibers. Believe it or not, in pumpkin’s pumpkin’s they have real, they are rich in fiber. So these are good to feed our good micro-organisms or good microbiome in our gut, which again is going to help us balance.

Dr. Cates: Oh, that’s great. That’s great to hear about pumpkin, it seems to be really popular right now. Not pumpkin spice but actual pumpkin.

New Speaker: Yes. Yeah. I was looking at pumpkin recently because you know, we are near Thanksgiving and I looked at it has good fibers, had a lot of minerals as well as vitamins. So it’s really good, good stuff. It’s not just to have as decoration in the front of our houses.

Dr. Cates: Right, right. Absolutely. Okay. And so when we look at the microbiome and, um, and, and the impact it plays, it plays a role in our digestion, our immune system, our mood, all of that as well as our weight, too right?.

Dr. Ghannoum: Definitely. Oh, the way. You know, there was a study done in Spain of all places, and they looked at people who are obese compared them to people who are lean. And they found that there’s differences between them. People who are obese they tended to have high levels of ascomycota this is one of the phylum of fungi. As people who are lean, they have more zygomycota, you know, so there are different sort of different phylum, different members of the fungi and these, they tend to be different in obese versus those who are lean. And there was a study in the same study actually, where they looked at people who lost weight, they became lean. They really had an increase in one of the genus, in one of the a genus of the fungi like muka. So definitely we have a change and to be clear, it’s not the only change in the fungi, but also we see in obese patients they tend to have for example, high firmicutes which is a bacterial phylum. So definitely, there is a relation, as you said, between the gut microbiome and obesity and weight control.

Dr. Cates: And do you think that, and I’ve been reading that research as well, and do you think that that’s due to people’s diet? Do you think it’s a genetic factor or maybe a combination of the two?

Dr. Ghannoum: I really think a lot of the time our diet plays a really central role in controlling the, what you call our weight. Okay. In fact, in our diet, which is in the book, Total Gut Balance, which is going to come, we, and you mentioned, uh, we did this study where we put people in this diet and at the end of it they lost weight between two to 10 pounds in four weeks time. Now, this is one factor. The other factor, as we mentioned, lifestyle. Lifestyle is very, very important because you know, for example, it’s good to exercise because there are studies to show that if you exercise you are going to have better balance of your microbiome. Okay. So the other thing which is very, very critical is we need to take care of our stress. And you know very much, very well. We are all so stressed out. We work hard and the ladies, when they go and take care of, they work hard, they take care of the kids. They have to do all of this. I tell you, I once, maybe I’m going a side a little bit. I was once, the responsibility to take care of my kids and I told my wife, Oh my God, this is really hard. So we need to lessen the stress, on us because if we have stress because of the gut brain connection, we are going to have bad imbalance.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, I know your son. So I think that’s probably what the stress was about. We’re all stressed and certainly this time of the year too, we’ve gone through the holidays and that is an additional stress on the body and that can really, so now is the time to do kind of a reset right and get back on track. And so what are some of the things that you recommend as far as lifestyle changes in addition to diet? What are some of the things you think are particularly important?

Dr. Ghannoum: I mean, one of the first one is, as, as I mentioned, is exercise. We need to exercise. You don’t have to be really kill yourself. You know, people, sometimes they go from one, you know, a side of the pendulum to another. No, moderation say maybe 50 minutes, three times a week. If you don’t even go on to run, just go out and walk. This is really very important. So exercise is very important.

Dr. Ghannoum: Number two is we need to have to reduce stress. Some meditation, I started to do yoga about one and a half years ago because you know, I loved it. I never done before a yoga but now I go and the one and the half hour you are in the yoga class, you are just thinking about the move you are trying to meditate. I’m not thinking of where on the surface thing. And I find that to be very, very relaxed. I see. And my wife laughs at me because I’m the only male in there with all the woman. I gave a talk the other day, I said, at the big meeting, I said I am talking to the male audience, please take up yoga is very important. So these are the other thing which is very important. Sleep, you know, you need to try to have you know, seven to eight hours of sleep because this is also a good time to rejuvenate as you know better than me.

Dr. Ghannoum: Yeah. So all in all, if we try to take these moderate activities, it’s going to, with our diet you are going to have a really gut balance and therefore better GI symptoms or gastrointestinal symptoms that are going to be better, you can control your weight and also you will be happier all around.

Dr. Cates: And it’s so amazing that, that this concept of sleep and movement and meditation, yoga, that this plays a role in our microbiome and the mycobiome. But it’s true and there’s, I mean there’s a lot of good evidence to support it.

Dr. Ghannoum: I’ll tell you something, an evidence we had, we had a lady take our tests with biome test where it’s, your gut to report to look at the profile of your mycobiome, basically bacteria and fungi. And what we found that her profile was greatly imbalanced. So the other thing we do is we look at questionnaire to see what is she doing. We just spoke to diet. She eats a great food food that supports the balance of the gut. But when we look deeply into does she have stress? And she was extremely, severely stressed. So we figured that out. This is really what’s leading to her imbalance and we advise that, you know, all nutritionist advise it to try to, you know, relax, do meditation as we mentioned you know. So definitely there is evidence that this is what happens.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. And thank you for looking at this and writing your book on this important information. One of the things that you talk about is the, the gut biofilms and for people who aren’t familiar with this, can you explain what that is and how it builds up and what we can do about it?

Dr. Ghannoum: Sure. The best way to explain what is a biofilm is when we look on our teeth, the plaque in our teeth is a biofilm. So basically bacteria sticks to our teeth and gum and then they form what you call this biofilm. So what it is, organisms or micro-organisms, they come together and they bind together, they adhere together and they start producing these sugars or polysaccharides to cover them. It’s like as if they are, undercover, like you have jello and inside the jello you have a little m and m’s or raisins, the raisins are the organisms and the jello is the matrix which covers them and protect them. So we know about the mouth but until our publication in 2016 we did not know that there is really biofilm in the gut, especially formed by the pathogenic organism or organisms, micro-organisms that can cause disease. So what can we found that candida which is one of the fungus with ecoli and serratia marcescens two bacteria. They come together, they adhere, they start producing this protective layer and guess what? They are on our gut lining and they start to cause damage to that. And that’s where it becomes a problem where inflammation increase and this sort of thing. So that’s why we really need to have a way to try to eliminate this biofilm or what we call to make it simpler digestive plaque. It’s like the plaque in our teeth but instead its in our gut.

Dr. Cates: Right. And so they’re both bacteria and fungi that are involved in this biofilm, right? That, yeah. So it’s really like, it’s a combination approach that we need for, addressing these. Right. So a lot of times people focus on the bacteria but not on the fungi.

Dr. Ghannoum: Absolutely. Absolutely. And that’s why we really want it in the diet. To put some elements, like for example, apple cider vinegar is fantastic has been shown to get, eliminate the biofilm. Also you have garlic is fantastic. I know sometimes because of the smell, but it doesn’t matter, just have it and brush your teeth, it’s a great for our health. You know, coconut oil is another, a fact that that have been shown to work against biofilms. So we recommend these in the diet. In addition, I published a paper in April of this year, 2019, where we look at these organisms coming together. How can we break this biofilm and that paper, which was published, in 2019 showed that we select a probiotic we selected that has both bacteria and fungal probiotic strains like Saccharomyces for example. Saccharomyces is a good fungus. So again, which stresses that point, not all fungus, is bad.

Dr. Ghannoum:                   Fungi is really good sometimes. But in this case we found that Saccharomyces lactobacillus as well as bifidobacterium, they work together and they are able to break these pathogenic biofilms. And we showed that, really both in-vitro as well as enviable. So this is really a great way to eat the right to get rid of this biofilm, eat the right food, which has anti-biofilm activity and also enzymes, which is also part of the provider, which we have amylase which is also shown to break these biofilms. So a good combination.

Dr. Cates: So can I ask you, when it comes to, I know some doctors will treat with antifungals, the antifungal medications. And I know with antibiotics, we’ve seen that over use of antibiotics as medications has created dysbiosis imbalances. You’re killing off not only the harmful bacteria, but you’re killing off the good bacteria too. So it’s created some issues. And of course we know antibiotics still can be, helpful when indicated, but we need to be mindful of when we prescribe them. What about antifungal medications, are there concerns about those as well?

Dr. Ghannoum: You know, usually in general, a lot of medications now the studies are starting to show that they affect our they kill certain colonizer. So, so in the case of fungi, using an anti-fungal that is a broad spectrum. It may kill the beneficial organisms such as saccharomyces That’s why I think if you take an anti fungal agent, it’s good idea to try to take a probiotic to try to rebuild the beneficial fungi and bacteria in our gut. So yes.

Dr. Cates: Right. So, and that might include Saccharomyces boulardii something, something along those lines along with a probiotic. Okay. Yes. Great. So now I know with your diet, there are foods that you recommend to help improve the microbiome that, um, that maybe, you know, some people haven’t really that maybe I’ve got a little bit of a bad rep. So what are some of those foods?

Dr. Ghannoum: Yeah, I mean some of it is like, Oh, as you said with carbohydrates for example, people say, Oh, you should stop all carbohydrates, which is not true. I mean, low sugar is good, but it does not mean that you have low carbohydrate because you know, to make it simple and we have different types of carbohydrates, some of the carbohydrates, simple sugars, glucose, when we eat it, it goes into our intestine and our body is able to break it down and then it give us some energy, but also good could change into fat. Now instead of having these specialty, taking too much carbohydrate in one setting because your body cannot get rid of it and it’s going to go and change into fat, try to lower the amount of these. But take carbohydrates such as resistance starch, which we mentioned before, which will go through our intestine they are not broken down by us, but when they reach to the colon where all these good bacteria is there, they start to break it down. They are able to break it down. That’s why they call it resistance starch okay. But when they break it down, they produce all these small molecules or compounds, small compounds that are like, that are beneficial, such as short chain fatty acids. These are very good because they support our immune system. So it’s a matter of selecting the right food, which not eliminating all type of food. You cannot eat this, you cannot eat that, no just be selective, and that would be good.

Dr. Cates: Right. And you know, I’ve had some people tell me that when they eat carbohydrates or when they eat beans, for example, that they just don’t agree with them that they can’t eat them. So what do you think about talking to people about transition? Because for some people there dysbiosis, it takes a while to rebalance. So initially eating more of these carbohydrates, you know, high fiber foods might not feel that great as they’re rebalancing, as we’re rebalancing and getting a healthy gut microbiome. Right?

Dr. Ghannoum: You are absolutely right. That’s why when you start with any diet in that to be fair, you really need to take a time to transition. And we, for example, in the book, we give people a one week plan and then so that they can get used to the food and then after that they can adopt the diet for life. And the nice thing is the diet is flexible they kind of change and it’s not too restrictive. And I really agree with you. We need to give them this period. In fact, and we did the clinical trial where we had people, take a stool sample at baseline before they started up the diet so that we can look at the microbiome, both bacteria and fungi. And then we took another sample after two weeks and then a sample at the very end, but at the same time, and we looked at this, the profile, but at the same time we capture the gastrointestinal issues which you are referring to. For example, bloating. Okay. People go direct on fiber they feel really bloated. They don’t like it or they produce gas. So that’s why we noticed in this study, like the first week, people don’t feel, you know, some members they said, yeah, you know, we need some time. It’s not perfect. But then you start seeing this slight changes by two weeks and then by three and four weeks, they really reported great improvement. So it’s very, very important what suggested is you need to really ease into something new and not just jump like people tend to be too, you know, they are keen, they want to get better so they go all in. No try to transition slowly and you’ll be fine.

Dr. Cates: It’s, it’s so true. I’ve been seeing patients for almost 20 years now and there’s definitely, it’s, it’s so variable how people react to foods and that we need to be patient, but, but we do know the research continues to support things like these, you know, the high fiber, foods and beans and legumes and vegetables and how beneficial they are to our health. It sometimes it just takes them a while to adjust depending and everybody’s different. So, yeah, it takes a little while to, accommodate. And so is there anything that you suggest during that transition time to help people?

Dr. Ghannoum: I would start by don’t change completely your diet. Let’s start to use a little bit of fiber let’s say. Let’s start, if you are eating, a lot of people eating westernized diet. A lot of meat, invariably maybe every night or all at least four times, four nights a week or four days a week. Try to supplement it, take a little bit better food at the same time. Continue doing that and slowly, slowly what you are going think about it. It’s what we are going to do is again, we start to feed the good organisms in our gut, which is going to help us. So transition, I would say is the best way really too to ease on. Don’t like for example, if you will, haven’t had fruits and vegetables. I come from the Mediterranean, I love fruit and vegetables because it’s all over the place.

Dr. Ghannoum: But if you haven’t had this for a long time and then suddenly you start to take it in, it’s going to cause some loose, maybe stool and this sort of thing. So moderation, slowly, slowly go and start to adjust. And that’s why you have the first one or two weeks to ease into the diet and that will help you. And the good thing is you will, you’ll be able to change the fungus in your gut very fast. It is starting to show that’s fungi can change in a short term diet, where as the bacteria, it takes longer, longer. So this, by easing in, I think it’s going to help you.

Dr. Cates: Excellent. All right, well it’s been so great having you on the podcast. Thank you for all of your information. Will you tell everybody where they can find your book and learn more about you?

Dr. Ghannoum: Yeah. The book is called Total Gut Balance. You can find it on, Amazon as well as Barnes and Noble. There is also totalgutbook.com. I would like to have people to go to Dr. Microbiome drmicrobiome.com because I started a site where people can learn a lot different aspects, how to balance their gut, what type of food to have, what type of recipes. I think this would help them a lot.

Dr. Cates: All right. Fantastic. Well, thanks again for coming on and, and good luck with the new book.

Dr. Ghannoum: Thank you very much. It’s a great pleasure.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr. Ghannoum. To learn more about him you can go to thespadr.com go to the podcast page with his interview and you’ll find all the information and links there, including how you can get a copy of his book. And speaking of which, if you are on The Spa Dr. email list, if receive our emails we’re going to look check your email inbox because we’re going to be giving an opportunity for you to have a possibility of winning a copy, a free copy of his book.

Dr. Cates: So if you aren’t on my email list, now’s a great time to set up. You can go to thespadr.com to make sure that you sign up for our email, our emails that we send out. Or you could also take The Skin Quiz and you can go to theskinquiz.com take the online free skin quiz and find out what messages your skin’s trying to tell you about your health and what you can do about it. And then you’ll also start receiving our emails. We have special offers that we send only to our email recipients, and so make sure you’re on our email list at thespadr.com. And also I invite you to join us on social media. It’s a great way to engage with us and learn. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube, and I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.

 

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Filed Under: Podcasts Tagged With: gut, microbiome, mycobiome, skin

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